In June 1812, hostilities began between America and England, fought with varying success around the U.S.-Canadian border, the Chesapeake, and the Gulf of Mexico. Indians participated in the conflict on both sides. During the Napoleonic Wars, the United States and Great Britain fought in the Anglo-American War of 1812-1815 (Dudley, 2021). A major foreign policy action, the acquisition of Louisiana from France in 1803, marked the first term of Jefferson’s presidency (Narrett, 2020). Britain realized that a Franco-American rapprochement had occurred, and relations with the United States deteriorated. The acquisition of vast territory gave rise to growing expansionist sentiments among the planters of the southern United States. England fiercely resisted the incorporation of Florida and Louisiana into the United States, one of the causes of the War of 1812 (Hubert & Furstenberg, 2020). Americans referred to this war as the Second War of Independence because it established the United States as an independent nation. The war between England and America was a significant event that influenced the further history of the states.
There were many reasons for the clash between the United States and the former metropolis, the British Empire. Only some of them had to do with the events in Europe. Americans were very negative about Britain at the time, and the British looked with contempt at their former fellow citizens who had betrayed the king and did not take the new state seriously. Britain, actively engaged in a series of military campaigns in different parts of the world called the Napoleonic Wars, tried to block France’s foreign. Thus, the victim of this policy was also the United States, which at that time maintained neutrality. After British cruisers started seizing American commerce ships and forcefully capturing British-born American seamen who were still His Majesty’s subjects in order to add them to their crews, the war intensified. Part of the American establishment also hoped to annex British Canada to the United States, a large part of whose population were refugees from the United States who remained loyal to the British crown. Thus, communication problems led to the declaration of war after London abandoned its ban on U.S. trade with France.
This armed conflict led to the perception of the different populations of the United States as one, and the United States loudly asserted itself on the world stage by engaging in a superpower war. In the course of this war, the last powerful alliances of Indian tribes that theoretically could have resisted the expansion of the United States were defeated. The European powers, which had colonies in the Americas, also made no further attempt to hinder this expansion. After the War of 1812, the United States bet on strengthening the navy and the army: the war had shown that the militia had to be more capable of conducting serious long campaigns and handling artillery professionally (Nobbs Jr, 2021). Several American leaders who rose to fame during the war later led the United States. Thus, the future President James Monroe, which declared that the United States would not tolerate interference by European powers in American affairs, led the State Department during the war and then the War Department.
In the White House, Monroe was succeeded by John Quincy Adams, head of the U.S. delegation that signed the Treaty of Ghent. Incidentally, as a very young man, he served as secretary of the U.S. Embassy in St. Petersburg. Adams, secretary of state in the Monroe cabinet, was the chief ideologist of the Monroe Doctrine. Adams also tried in every possible way to establish relations between the United States and the states of Europe, hoping that in the event of military conflict, Washington would not be left without allies, as it had been in 1812 (Hickey, 2021). After Adams, Andrew Jackson, the hero of the War of 1812, who defeated the British allies of the Sioux Indians and then repulsed the British attack on New Orleans, became president (Nobbs Jr, 2021). He won the presidential election two decades after the battle of New Orleans, and his fame had not faded by this time. Another fighting general, William Harrison, also led the U.S., whose troops halted the advance of the British and allied Indians led by Tecumseh into the northern United States. Harrison caught a cold at his inauguration and died 30 days after office.
In conclusion, because the British ignored American neutrality, tensions arose between the British and Americans, which led to the War of 1812. Three years passed during the War of 1812, and the conflict caused several deaths and contributed to the collapse of American commerce. American forces were reduced because the British and Indians fought the Americans. The nascent United States was drawn into the War of 1812 in conflict with Great Britain, from which the American colonies had declared their independence in 1783. This struggle resulted from a larger struggle between Great Britain and France to control Europe and the rest of the world. Thus, the war has many implications that have affected the history of both countries.
References
Dudley, W. S. (2021). Inside the US Navy of 1812–1815. JHU Press.
Hickey, D. R. (2021). The Legacy of 1812: How a Little War Shaped the Transatlantic World. London Journal of Canadian Studies, 28(1), 1-14. Web.
Hubert, O., & Furstenberg, F. (2020). Introduction. Entangling the Quebec Act. Entangling the Quebec Act: transnational contexts, meanings, and legacies in North America and the British empire, 3-43.
Narrett, D. (2020). Imperial Crisis, Revolution, and a New Nation, 1763–1803. A Companion to US Foreign Relations: Colonial Era to the Present, 1-25. Web.
Nobbs Jr, G. H. (2021). Failoure On All Fronts: The United States Army in the First Year of the War of 1812.