200 Years Ago Today, America’s First War Begins

Two hundred years ago today, the War of 1812, the first war that the United States of America fought as a nation, began when President James Madison signed the Declaration Of War that had finally been approved, after rather contentious debate, by Congress the day before. The final vote approving a Declaration of War was the closest such vote in American history, and ironically also the first. Just about three years later, the war would come to an end with very little actually changed between the United States and its former Colonial maaster Great Britain. We didn’t lose the war despite the fact that the British had managed to blockade Baltimore, invade the country, and chase President Madison into hiding when they captured Washington, D.C. and burned the White House. We didn’t win either, though, considering the fact that efforts to expand American territory north into Canada ended in failure. The one battle of the war that is still remembered by history, the Battle of New Orleans, created an American hero in Andrew Jackson, but it also gained the historical distinction of having been fought after the United States and Britain had reached agreement on a peace treaty during negotiations in the Belgian city of Ghent.
Two centuries later, it’s hard to even agree on what the aims of the war actually were. The impressment of American sailors by the British Navy was one issue that aroused considerable ire in the United States, but the conflict was also wrapped up in support allegedly given to Native Americans in the Northwest Territories by the British Army, as well as efforts by the British to restrict trade with France during the ongoing Napoleonic Wars, which were arguably more important to London than the conflict with that minor nation on the East Coast of North America. By the time the War was over, though, it was decidedly unclear what the fighting was all about other than perhaps a reflection of the fact that a conflict of some kind between the United States and the British in North America had been inevitable ever since the Revolutionary War had ended.

Read more: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/200-years-ago-today-americas-first-war-begins/