The Weight of Vengeance: The United States, the British Empire, and the War of 1812 | By Troy Bickham | Oxford University Press | 325 pages, $34.95
If any large-scale war in American history has been forgotten, it is the War of 1812. The war between Britain and the United States lasted three years and claimed the lives of 15,000 Americans. Delaware and Arkansas have memorials to the conflict, but the nation’s capital has not seen fit to honor its fallen soldiers from the war with any public tribute, even though the British burned down the White House in August 1814. One might think Washington would honor such a historic occasion.
On this, the war’s bicentennial, the War of 1812 is especially important to recall, since it reminds us of the dangers of going to war unprepared, without clear goals, and by choice.
Texas A&M University historian Troy Bickham makes the case for the war’s importance in his new book, The Weight of Vengeance. He does so by “tak[ing] a broader view of the war, interpreting it not simply as a North American affair but as an Anglo-American struggle set against a global backdrop of armed conflicts.” In particular, Bickham shows how Britain’s struggle against Napoleonic France influenced what it calls “The American War.”
Rather than structuring the book chronologically, Bickham organizes it into chapters examining different aspects of the war. The respective American and British cases for war, and wartime opposition in both countries, for example, are all given separate treatments. This has the effect of stopping the story at riveting points, and it is unclear why opposition to the war is considered worthy of consideration as a subject, while, say, military battles are not.
The Weight of Vengeance argues that the war was very deliberately waged by the Americans. Led by President James Madison, the United States felt that its sovereignty was simply not being respected by its former colonial masters. When Madison listed his reasons for going to war in a letter to Congress, they included Britain’s ongoing interference with the international trade of the U.S.; the impressment of sailors from American merchants on the high seas; and Britain’s encouragement of American Indians to rebel against American authority. It was determined to rectify that situation, even at the cost of war. The US was eager to swallow Canada, and assumed that since Britain was preoccupied with its European problems, it would, to borrow a term from a recent war, be a cakewalk. The Brits were less eager to go to war, but they, too, were perfectly prepared to do so. “Even though Britain had no intention of reabsorbing the United States formally into the empire, keeping the former colonies as a client was a real possibility,” writes Bickham. They too misjudged their opponents, underestimating America’s resolve to become a truly free nation.
The result was a bloody, unexpectedly lengthy, and wholly avoidable conflict, which surprised and taxed both sides. The Weight of Vengeance highlights how weak and unprepared the Americans were compared to Britain, which was, at the time, the strongest power in the world. Difficult as it may be for contemporary readers to believe, the United States was then a poorly armed nation. “[T]he United States had no ships of the line, a mere eight frigates to Britain’s 124, and twelve sloops; and of these twenty American ships only seventeen were unfit for service,” Bickham writes.
For Bickham, the War of 1812 was of major significance in that it killed the last vestiges of Anglophobia in the United States, and committed Americans to republican rule. The country also committed to building stronger defenses, a pattern that lasts today, 200 years after the war began. England was forced to recognize America as a country that could not be pushed around. Indeed, the Anglo-American “Special Relationship” that arguably continues to the present day was cemented in the 1812 War. The conflict convinced Britain of America’s power. Finally, the US became more determined to expand its borders, as it proved it had fine soldiers and seamen, writes Bickham.
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"For Bickham, the War of 1812 was of major significance in that it killed the last vestiges of Anglophobia in the United States, and committed Americans to republican rule."
You might want to fix this, I'm sure the writer meant Anglophilia. Thanks for this review. I'm particularly interested in the War of 1812 because my late father, Dr. Sam Meyer, wrote a book about Francis Scott Key entitled Paradoxes of Fame: The Francis Scott Key Story.
#1 Posted by Harris Meyer, CJR on Wed 27 Jun 2012 at 03:03 PM
"The result was a bloody, unexpectedly lengthy, and wholly avoidable conflict ..."
Just like every U.S. war since.
#2 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Wed 27 Jun 2012 at 03:08 PM
The War of 1812 was "America's first neocon war."
http://www.salon.com/2012/06/19/birth_of_the_war_hawks/
A must-read.
#3 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Wed 27 Jun 2012 at 03:14 PM
The War of 1812 was inevitable.
Jefferson and Madison tried everything they could do to avoid it, but England and Napoleon had America's nuts in a vise.
They both screwed with our shipping, and we couldn't tolerate that. In practice, not just in principle. Shipping was the lifeblood of our existence.
Jefferson, the eternal pacifist, tried everything - even pushing New England to the brink of secession with the Embargo Act - to avoid war, but the only sure way of doing it - by aligning with England and Spain would have meant taking on Napoleon - a task that in 1812 seemed suicidal (though he contemplated doing exactly that).
As for the "determination to annex Canada".. Where does this come from?
Sure we invaded Canada in a failed three-prong attack, but there was no national consensus to annex Canada. Indeed, doing so was the LAST thing the New England states wanted - they sure didn't want any more agrarian states and they made more money dealing with England than they did dealing with the southern states.
The very notion of any hardened expansionist intent is dispelled by the fact that the American delegation had agreed to the Treaty of Ghent (which returned all occupied land and maintained borders) BEFORE Jackson's famous defense of New Orleans. In fact, the ink was already dry on the treaty when the battle raged.
The War of 1812 would have been avoided if Jefferson had grown some stones and built a Navy instead of trying to screw with the free market with sanctions and embargoes. Our sailors were better than English sailors and our boats were better, than English boats and when war finally came, and when we starting kicking some English navy ass, it didn't take long for England to give up and go home.
Let's deal with history the way it is.
#4 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Wed 27 Jun 2012 at 04:21 PM
The war was necessary for Madison and fellow Hamiltonian Federalists who salivated for their crony-run national bank, which would finance the war debt. (Some things never change.) Jefferson was no pacifist; he hardly even lived up to his own non-interventionist ideals.
#5 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Thu 28 Jun 2012 at 10:22 AM
I don't think you can so easily discount the attacks on our shipping and trade by both the British and the French. More than 5000 American sailors were impressed by the British navy and both countries banned our ships from trading with the other country. We couldn't exist without trade.
We were between a very large rock and very hard place. I don't see how we could have done anything else politically to avoid war without blowing apart the country.
Had we built a navy, however, as Jefferson refused to do, I believe we could have easily defended our merchant trade and thus prevented the war. France wanted out of the New World anyway after Haiti fell and England had become happy trading with the New England states. It did not take a whole lot of adversity and expense to convince England to cut and run.
Jefferson took all kinds of heat for his attempt to fix the problem with sanctions, and he nearly sent the New England states into an alliance with England over the deal. I've seen it written that during the war, the New England states sent more money to the Exchequer of England than they did to Washington. It is to his credit that he chose not to seek a third term in 1808, but I doubt he would have won if he had tried.
Of course, adversity is the mother of invention... It is rather convincingly argued that the Embargo Act (and the subsequent war it failed to prevent) each contributed to the birth of the American Industrial Revolution, which put us into a position to put the heat on the Europeans to stay out of the Civil War.
#6 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 28 Jun 2012 at 07:26 PM
The reviewer's claim that "American entered the war determined to annex Canada" is very much open to dispute. One of the more important US historians on this war, Donald Hickey, as well as other historians, have disputed the claim. Annexation was a possibility, but the conquest of Upper Canada (Ontario) and at least part of Lower Canada (Quebec) was intended to pressure Britain to negotiate an end to its maritime practices that the US opposed.
#7 Posted by Harry A, CJR on Fri 29 Jun 2012 at 07:58 AM
I agree with others here--the reviewer needs to re-check his history. The annexation of Canada was not the goal of all Americans or even the major war aim, and plenty of Americans talked about it after the war, too. I bothered to read the book, and it goes into great detail about it as a war aim and how divisive it was (in Canada too).
And also to the reviewer--since when did we determine a victor in war according to the propaganda reasons belligerent government gave for declaring it????
I couldn't believe the reviewer was actually complaining about the war opposition being covered in this book! Hardly a fitting comment for CJR. More early American history should include how controversial these wars were at the time so present politicians can stop pretending how in the good old days of early America everyone loved going to war and patriotism was measured by how much someone blindly supported the government. So I say kudos to the author for covering the opposition rather than giving us yet another blow-by-blow analysis of who flanked right and why.
#8 Posted by Dan S., CJR on Sat 30 Jun 2012 at 09:34 AM
Yes. Since when was war just about the battles, as the reviewer would have it? Instead of criticizing the author for taking a fresh approach why not thank him? I heard the author on the Diane Rehm show last week. The show made me think the war was worth learning more about. A lot more to it than the national anthem and battles (which didn't seem to matter much anyway and neither side managed to conquer anything).
#9 Posted by Sarah KT, CJR on Sat 30 Jun 2012 at 10:18 AM
Jordan Michael Smith seems to have read wikipedia and then judged the book against this limited knowledge. The is a subjected in which I am interested, and I can say categorically that the review as a host of factual errors.
All Americans were NOT determined to annex Canada. It was never listed as one of Madison's war aims. The argument was that Canada should be invaded because there was not much else the Americans could do against superpower Britain, and it would cut off the Native Americans from British guns. Sure, some Americans would have liked Upper Canada, but this wasn't a motivation for the war.
The battles are interesting if you are interested in battles, but they had little impact on the outcome of the war. The exception was the naval history, which the reviewer doesn't discuss (I don't know about the author).
In terms of victory, historians are divided over who one, and there is a lot of a debate. The war ended with neither side claiming victory in the treaty or conceding anything. The author is not novel to say the Americans won, but his argument/explanation sounds interesting. The Diane Rehm show's recent panel all agreed that America won, but gave different reasons. Bickham, who was on the panel (I think), stated that the Canadians were also winners and that the real losers were the Native Americans. But then what else is new in North American history?
That the book discusses the opposition to the war in detail makes it novel, as does the fact that it gives so much attention to the British view. Neither of these topics get much attention in standard accounts. Instead, likely to the review's delight, they are nationalistic accounts of American greatness with all sorts of details about battles the Americans generally lost.
I admit that I haven't read the book, but the review, while mixed, makes me want to read. it even more to finally read something that is not all about national myth-making and battles. The U.S. was not the center of the world back then, and acute studies of battles are not the best way to understand a war.
#10 Posted by historybuff, CJR on Sat 30 Jun 2012 at 10:42 AM