Posted on 09/25/2017 5:13:31 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
In a relatively rare admission for an American scholar, a leading U.S. historian who authored a provocative new tome about North American military conflicts states bluntly that Canada won the War of 1812.
Johns Hopkins University professor Eliot Cohen, a senior adviser to former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, writes in his just-published book Conquered Into Liberty that, ultimately, Canada and Canadians won the War of 1812.
And Cohen acknowledges that, Americans at the time, and, by and large, since, did not see matters that way.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalpost.com ...
Hmmm. What could have being going through their minds? Ally with Napoleon or Crazy King George III? ...Napoleon or insane George III?
;-)
No, really, I thought the U.S. was neutral with respect to the Napoleonic wars. Napoleon probably liked seeing the U.S. get into it with Britain, and likewise on the part of the U.S. But I don’t recall any alliance or real assistance between the two. The U.S. wanted to stay out of European affairs.
Moved there after the Revolution? They were expelled, and their properties seized (some ended up on British islands as well). We had no use for monarchists after the Revolution.
If you see the forts on the Canadian side of the border (mostly museums today), it is hard to believe they viewed it as a victory.
You have to consider the fact that Monroe, having been tasked with negotiating with Napoleon to obtain New Orleans so as to open up American trade via the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, ended up with the Louisiana Purchase agreement. The proceeds of which Napoleon used to fund a fleet (which the British succeeded in sinking). There was no reason the British would have liked that.After burning Washington but finding that taking Baltimore would be too hard, the British fleet sailed to New Orleans to steal (not the word they would have used) the cotton and other supplies they expected to find there. What they found instead, of course, was Andrew Jackson, who soundly thrashed the veteran British army in a battle after the treaty ending the war had been negotiated (but not yet known of on this side of the Atlantic).
We invaded Canada in 1812 just like we tried during the Revolution. The Canadians repulsed the invasion at Quebec and we retreated back to the U.S. However, the Canadians did not follow up with an invasion of their own. They won the battle but not the War of 1812 (the hosers!).
What’s Canada?
I'm not so sure of that.I get to Montreal on a semi regular basis and the drive west from the "Eastern Townships" toward the city is quite nice and the parts of the city I've visited also seem nice.
Also I driven from Winnipeg toward Michigan and thought that was pretty good too.
Add to that the time I got lost in suburban Toronto (don't ask me exactly where,I was *really* lost) and found the neighborhoods I was in to be quite nice (very much "upper middle class" by US standards) and I'd say that yours might be an unfairly pessimistic analysis.
Great Britain must have been sorely tempted to intervene in the US Civil War but feared extreme blowback if they backed a losing cause.
Many upper class Brits sympathized with the Confederates but the middle and working classes opposed slavery strongly. British and French imperialists hoped to profit from breaking up the United States. France had invaded Mexico and installed Maximilian as Emperor. The British government would have had great domestic difficulty in siding with the Confederates, as Louis Napoleon of France proposed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_intervention_in_Mexico
Wrong war. lol.
It was the only USA vs. Canada war I heard about. I know we have been invaded by Canadians many times, actually in a couple of more weeks this years invasion will begin down here in Fla.
Maybe the British didn’t know that Jefferson threatened through a diplomat in France to ally with the British (among other things), if the purchase wasn’t completed. The French were also largely considered by Protestants in the U.S. to be a foreign culture.
But still, I’d long forgotten what you just told me. The British would have been suspicious about the possibility of a U.S. alliance with the French. That’s a good point. Thank you. Good learning! I should also have remembered that it’s not a good idea to argue seriously about the War of 1812-1815. Too complicated! ;-)
My #51 contains a link to a good recent book on the War of 1812, and a quote from its concluding paragraphs. But, as you suggest, one book cant begin to do the period justice.
The pig war was in 1867 over the San Juan islands.
We have a different definition of Neutral then.
Your definition seems to involve both countries fighting against the third country.
Can you say Coordinated Attack? I knew you could.
On June 18, 1812, President James Madison, after receiving heavy pressure from the War Hawks in Congress, signed the American declaration of war into law.
The French invasion of Russia ... began on 24 June 1812 when Napoleon’s Grande Armée crossed the Neman River in an attempt to engage and defeat the Russian army
Hmmm.
As Hillary would say, Coordinated, as in matching uniforms?
The sacking of Washington!
A very disgraceful day for American arms.
A small, very small British force of only about 5,000 was able to march on and seize and burn Washington !
The far more numerous US forces completely failed.
All in all, a lashup.
Thanks!
Yup... they have arrived and their Maple Leaf flag is now unfurled and flying down at the RV/trailer park on the corner...
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