Remembering the war of 1812.

• Author: Abel, Kerry

This year, the Canadian government has decided to commemorate the War of 1812 bicentennial by recognizing key battles and heroes in re-enactments and other events, restoring various heritage sites pertinent to the war, and honouring a number of military regiments with connections to the militias of the war era. This article looks at the history of the War and how it has been perceived by the various parties who participated.

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Two hundred years ago, an anxious American president reluctantly signed a declaration of war on Great Britain. Indeed, on the face of it, James Madison was sensible to be concerned. His new nation was in a state of political and financial disarray. Its army and navy was miniscule in comparison to the British war machine, which was in high gear fighting against Napoleon and the French. But in the nearly thirty years since the conclusion of the American War of Independence, British authorities had never fully reconciled themselves to the loss of thirteen of their colonies in North America and had been pursuing policies that angered raw, youthful American sensitivities.

American frontiersmen alleged that the British were sending agents into the Ohio country to stir up the Indians against American expansion. American politicians and merchant-shipping men complained that the British were stopping American ships on the open seas and unlawfully removing American citizens under the pretence that these men were still British subjects because of their place of birth. And a growing population of Irish immigrants, scarred by the experiences of the 1798 Irish rebellion, fanned the flames of anti-British sentiment. The time had come, the chorus sang, to force the British to recognize the sovereign nationhood of the United States of America once and for all.

But how could that be done with a professional navy of only five frigates, ill-equipped either to challenge the formidable Royal Navy with its thousand warships, or to interfere with any reasonable expectation of success against British commercial shipping? Or with a professional army of only about 10,000 men, a mere handful on any European battlefield? Instead the War Hawks suggested they could humble Britain by conquering her colony of Canada. Here the odds were much more clearly in the Americans' favour.

Canada, consisting of two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, was thinly settled, poorly defended, and economically weak. Above all, the majority of settlers in the western districts were of American origins and undoubtedly would be only too pleased to welcome an American army as liberators from the shackles of British rule. A "holiday campaign" said one; a "mere matter of marching" claimed Thomas Jefferson. Of course, the Americans had tried and failed to conquer Canada...