In 1812 the United States became involved in a major war for the first time under its federal government when, on 18 June, Congress passed an act declaring war on Great Britain. The causes of the conflict, a by-product of the Napoleonic Wars, had been building up over many years, and discussions by numerous scholars have led to the conclusion that there were three chief influences that precipitated the American declaration: interference with trade, continued impressment of seamen, and incitement of Indians on the frontiers.

With antecedents going back to at least 1803, when war had again broken out between...

Given the commitment to the offensive, the strategic problem that faced the United States was simple. The two Canadas consisted of a long narrow string of settlements bordering the St. Lawrence River and the lower Great Lakes. The population was sparse, and the resources for the defense much below those of the United States. The principal base was at Quebec on the lower St. Lawrence. From there, a line of key posts stretched 815 miles to Fort Malden at Amherstburg, Upper Canada, and some 345 miles farther to Fort St. Joseph on the island of the same name, northeast of...

As the events of General Hull’s campaign unfolded, no military action took place in the East. The whole period was spent in preparations made with little sense of urgency. Eustis did recognize that the Canadian frontier would require some protection. He therefore sent a requisition on 24 March¹ to Governor Daniel Tompkins of New York, for militia to protect the frontier. This was two days before the requisition for Hull’s troops went to Governor Meigs. Eustis suggested that Niagara, Oswego, and a port near the mouth of Black River be the garrison points. He further suggested that 400 to 600...

The news of Hull’s surrender and the fall of Detroit stunned the people of the western states. Its impact was greater in the West because of its proximity to the action and because of the direct consequences that were likely to follow. The concurrent fall of Fort Dearborn removed every restraint to Indian action, and attacks were not long in coming.¹ Only Prevost’s armistice, which restrained Colonel Procter from giving British assistance to the Indians during the crucial period, blunted the edge of the attacks.

One who was not caught by surprise at Hull’s failure was Governor William Henry Harrison...

While the expeditions against the Indians were in progress, General Harrison had been occupied, primarily, in a struggle to accumulate the necessary supplies of provisions, clothing, ammunition, and artillery at forward bases to support the coming campaign. He had also to organize his army, especially his right wing, and to contend with contractors who were either profiteering or failing completely to fulfill their contracts.

In mid-October, Harrison was optimistic, prematurely as it proved, about the supply situation of the left wing. A chain of forts had been built to guard the line¹ and secure supplies on the way to Winchester’s...

Operations in the South were strictly minor in 1812. They were, however, of considerable importance and were concerned with the nettlesome Florida question. Just as the people in the West looked forward to the acquisition of Canada as a result of the war, so those in the South looked forward to the acquisition of Florida.

West Florida had been a bone of contention between the United States and Spain ever since the Louisiana Purchase. The United States claimed that all of the area west of the Perdido River was a part of Louisiana and hence of the United States. The...

The year of 1812 had been one of almost unmitigated disaster insofar as the war on land was concerned. Some of the forays against the Indians were the only successful operations that had occurred during the year. As far as the war against Great Britain was concerned, instead of the conquest of Canada, the nation had achieved only the loss of the vast Michigan Territory.

The one positive result of 1812 was the elimination of a number of unfit generals. Hull, Van Rensselaer, Smyth, and Winchester had all failed, although with many extenuating circumstances in the first two cases. Dearborn,...

General Harrison had determined in mid-February to bring the winter campaign in the Northwest to a close because of the unseasonably mild weather and the approaching expiration of the terms of service of most of the militia. He needed a permanent position at the Rapids that could easily be defended and supported, which would prevent a hostile advance up the Maumee, and which could serve as a springboard for the advance on Detroit. Since Winchester’s camp was unsatisfactory, Harrison chose a site on the right bank of the Maumee, just above the present town of Perrysburg. It was well-located on...

Operations in the East had come to a standstill after the farcical debacle of Smyth’s and Dearborn’s attempted invasions of Canada. The hiatus continued throughout the winter of 1813 except on the upper St. Lawrence where a petty warfare was waged, reaching a climax in late February. The command there was entrusted to the newly promoted Major Benjamin Forsyth, whose headquarters was at Ogdensburg. His main force was his company of riflemen supported by New York militia.

On the night of 6 and 7 February he had carried out a well-executed raid on Elizabethtown, just beginning to be known by...

Several weeks of relative inactivity had followed the repulse of General Procter at Fort Stephenson. Two factors were chiefly responsible. The most important was the naval question, the domination of Lake Erie. It would be very difficult for the Americans to reconquer and hold Detroit and Michigan without control of the lakes. Moreover, it would require much larger forces to do so as a long, vulnerable line of communications would have to be held in force. American control of the lakes, on the other hand, would make the reconquest relatively easy and would make Procter’s position untenable.

A second factor...

The day after Secretary Armstrong dispatched the order relieving General Dearborn of command of the 9th Military District and of the armies operating therein, 6 July, a further order went out to General Boyd informing Boyd that the command of the army devolved upon him until the arrival of a new commander. Boyd was informed that he was not to engage in any operations with the enemy that could be avoided. He was to obey the orders of Generals Lewis and Hampton.¹

In a letter to General Lewis,² Armstrong explained the reason for these orders to Boyd. The defensive was...

The Champlain frontier saw little action in the war until the latter part of 1813. General Dearborn’s abortive invasion of Canada at the end of 1812 has been noted. The regular troops that he had employed were transferred with General Pike to Sackett’s Harbor and were thereafter employed in the Lake Ontario theater of operations. It was necessary, therefore, to reconstitute an army in the Lake Champlain theater, a process that occupied most of the spring and summer of 1813.

The Lake Champlain area was of great strategic importance, providing a route into the heart of both Canada and the...

Almost at the very time that the power of the Northwest Indians was broken permanently at the Battle of the Thames, the Creek Confederacy, most powerful of the groups in the old Southwest, initiated a war with the encroaching settlers in the Mississippi Territory. The Muskogees, as the Creeks called themselves, belonged to the Muskogean Nation, which ranked in importance with the Algonquins and Iroquois among Eastern Indians. They occupied or claimed a large territory from the Tennessee River to the Gulf of Mexico, including most of the present state of Alabama and a large part of Georgia, extending east...

For a few hours on 14 January 1814, General Jackson held Fort Strother with only 130 men. Colonel William Lillard’s regiment of East Tennessee troops marched off that day despite Jackson’s appeals to them to remain if only for twenty days for a blow at the enemy. They claimed that their term of service had ended and they would not serve a day longer. Jackson instructed the officers to raise a new force of six-month men to replace those who claimed only a three-month tour of duty.

Jackson had dispatched Colonel William Carroll to Nashville to stimulate Governor Blount to...

During the winter and spring of 1814 there was a nearly complete shakeup in the army’s top tanks. Five of the six major generals had been assigned to the northern theaters of operations. Henry Dearborn, the senior among them, had demonstrated during the previous year his incapacity for active command in the field. He was too important politically to dismiss out of hand, so he was relegated to the command of the defenses of Boston where he would be occupied but could do little harm. Morgan Lewis, being in his sixtieth year, was unfitted by age and health for a...

The United States faced an unpromising situation as the campaigning season of 1814 approached. In the first instance, the morale of the country was not good. All the efforts made in 1813 had produced little result. In the East, opportunities had been frittered away. The campaigns, ill-conceived and ill-conducted, had left the country actually worse off in that the Niagara frontier had been devastated and the British held, in Fort Niagara, a sally-port into the United States if they chose to use it. In the West, to be sure, the territories lost as a result of Hull’s defeat had been...

The powerful reinforcements that the British government had dispatched to North America could not be deployed for effective action until the latter part of August. Meanwhile, the British made use of their naval superiority to threaten the entire New England coast. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Pilkington sailed from Halifax on 5 July 1814, the day of the battle of Chippawa, with a detachment of artillery. He rendezvoused on the seventh at Shelburne, Nova Scotia, with a naval force under Captain Sir Thomas Hardy who had commanded Admiral Nelson’s flagship,Victory, at the battle of Trafalagar. The force, which had come from...

The British were slow to apply their great naval preponderance against the United States in the War of 1812. The main reason was, of course, the crucial struggle against Napoleon that absorbed the major part of British forces at sea. The British also had contempt for the little American navy of sixteen vessels and did not realize what a problem the American privateers would be. Finally, the British had only a small squadron on the North American station at the outbreak of the war. Vice Admiral Sir Herbert Sawyer, its commander, had one sixty-four-gun ship and seven frigates, plus some...

General Ross reembarked his troops at Benedict on 30 August. The most pressing need was to rest the troops and to provide for those wounded that it had been possible to bring back to the transports. The latter were dispatched, some to Halifax and some back to England. While these matters were being arranged, a debate developed over the course to pursue. There were major differences of opinion within the British leadership. The obvious objective was Baltimore. Admiral Cochrane had written to Lord Bathurst while waiting for the troops to return from Washington¹ and declared that Baltimore could be destroyed...

The Western theater of operations in 1814 had nothing like the importance that it had in the previous campaigns. The principal concerns of both the government and the inhabitants of the region were the pacification and control of the Indians and the prevention of a reestablished British presence in the area. The second was a necessary condition for the first. Neither seemed likely to produce any major military efforts. This prospect was one of the factors that produced General Harrison’s resignation. Neither he nor his successor, General McArthur, had repaired to Detroit. Since General Cass, soon to resign, was absent...

General Andrew Jackson’s attention had been directed to the gulf region even while he was at Fort Jackson concluding the treaty with the Creeks. The flight of the Red Sticks to Florida was emphasized by the absence of all but one of their chiefs from the council at Fort Jackson. Jackson’s scouts and spies brought him information that indicated not only that they were not subdued but that they were receiving active support from the British and the Spanish. He determined to proceed to Mobile as soon as the treaty was concluded. The information that was most disturbing concerned the...

The ultimate British objective in their operations in the gulf region was New Orleans, entrepôt for both the South and the Midwest. Its importance to the United States in that day can hardly be exaggerated. It is located near the mouth of the great natural waterways that drain the southern portion of the great land mass of the North American continent. Before the building of the Erie Canal and the railroads, it provided the only outlet to the world’s markets for the regions west of the Appalachians. The new states in that region were so dependent on access to that...

Having determined to stand at the Rodriguez Canal, Jackson ordered the construction of an earthen breastwork from the river to the swamp. Although the plain along the river was generally about a thousand yards wide, it here narrowed to some six hundred yards. The earthwork was extended into the swamp for a distance of about two hundred yards. There was much grumbling among the troops, who did not regard digging as a part of warfare and objected to doing what they felt to be slaves’ work. However, they came to realize its importance, and day by day the works rose...