U.S. Forces Failed to Conquer Canada 200 Years Ago (2012)

https://www.history.com/news/how-u-s-forces-failed-to-conquer-canada-200-years-ago

by gscott • 7 years ago

43 62 7 years ago

Causality12• 7 years ago

The War of 1812 is a fascinating study in the ways we record and teach history. The US teaches it as a US victory because the US got everything it went into the war looking for and repulsed a British invasion. Canada teaches it as a British/Canadian victory because they too got everything they went into the war looking for and repulsed an American invasion.

romwell• 7 years ago

Whereas, like many wars, it should really be taught as a mutual loss: a useless conflict that neither side needed.

Spellman• 7 years ago

The US did get a National Anthem out of it I guess...

And a burned down White House

IllogicalLogic• 7 years ago

The US barely won the revolution.

Luckily during the war, a volcano (Laki, Iceland) threw Europe & much of the British empire (including India & Africa) into a multiyear drought, causing one of the coldest/longest winters in the USA.

About 3 months after the eruption formal negotiations to end the war began.

No eruption, possibly no USA but historical accounts I've seen rarely mention the role of mother nature.

opps90• 7 years ago

I'm American and it was taught as a stalemate. I think most history classes probably teach it that way, and that's the most accurate interpretation. Your average American likely remembers nothing about their history class so asking an average American if it was a US victory is meaningless.

Also it's not accurate to say the British got everything they wanted from the war. The Americans got the British to stop the impressment and harassment at sea, which is why the Americans declared the war to begin with. I think the British would have preferred not having the war at all in the first place since they had bigger issues with their own war with France.

maire• 7 years ago

I am also American and I also learned it was a stalemate. The most significant battle of the war was was fought two weeks after the war ended!

American historians think that the British complied with the meager settlement of Ghent because of the battle of New Orleans.

We did get a nifty song out of it.

csdreamer7• 7 years ago

Ditto, it was taught as a stalemate.

I don't remember if they taught the White House was burnt down in my history books.

I remember reading a article much later about someone from the US Patent Office begging the British Army not to burn down the Patent Office due to all inventions and history recorded there. They didn't, and that is my strongest recollection.

anoncake• 7 years ago

the US got everything it went into the war looking for
they too got everything they went into the war looking for

Did they even try trading beforehand? Going to war when there isn't a conflict of interests in the first place is particularly stupid.

dentemple3• 7 years ago

The U.S. wanted Britain to stop kidnapping American sailors for its own war against France.

I'd say there was a major conflict of interest there.

dentemple3• 7 years ago

It's certainly not taught as a US victory, at least in Pennsylvania. It was taught as a stalemate at best, with a final battle at the end that gave Andrew Jackson an impressive victory.

dwheeler• 7 years ago

I was taught (in the USA) that in the end nothing substantial changed (i.e., it was essentially a stalemate). I think that is more or less true.

ergothus• 7 years ago

I was taught ( in the US - Pennsylvania) that the US lost just about everything - in fact, the only victory was the Battle of New Orleans (?) that was actually fought AFTER the war was over but before word had reached the Americas. Plus there's that whole burning of the capital.

That said, it wasn't taught as a loss that we should learn any lesson from. Much like the Revolutionary War, it was just "oh heck, those crazy Brits vs the indomitable American spirit again!" If we weren't good allies of the British today, I wonder what the teaching would be like...

ZanyProgrammer• 7 years ago

The US didn’t lose any territory.

eloff3• 7 years ago

I can attest it's taught as a victory in Canada. Actually we're pretty proud of it, it was really the first time all of Canada, both French and English and native fought as one. The US was the aggressor, albiet not unprovoked, so we can also rightly be proud of defending our country successfully. Had it happened after the civil war with the much larger battle hardened union army - the outcome would have been very different (and pretty much anytime since.)

diego_moita• 7 years ago

The Americans also captured York (now Toronto) and burned several government buildings there, an act the British reciprocated the following year (1814) in Washington, D.C.

The Canadian version sounds better: "Yeah! We burned down the White House!".

grecy• 7 years ago

It's amazing how many Americas have no clue the White House was burned down by an invading army.

Interesting what the US history books choose to leave out.

giancarlostoro• 7 years ago

Did they? I remember studying about that in Elementary school. Maybe most people forget history from Elementary school I suppose? We went over the Civil War and the World Wars for quite a while in Elementary school.

braythwayt• 7 years ago

Contrary to popular legend in Canada, the White House was not painted white in the aftermath of the fire. But it’s amazing how much was destroyed, including the entire Library of Congress:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington

lambdasquirrel• 7 years ago

The history books I read in school didn't leave it out. But they did leave out the impetus (i.e. American troops burning down civilian buildings in Canada).

throwaway36272• 7 years ago

It is because they aren't subscribed to The History Guy on YT. ;)

jowday• 7 years ago

Wasn't left out of the history books I read.

craftyguy• 7 years ago

I learned about this while in school in the southern US. I doubt it's a case of 'US history books choos[ing] to leave out' and more a case of US students failing to recall details that have little/no impact on current events (unless you confuse rhetoric with current events, I guess)

maerF0x0• 7 years ago

And they've been overcompensating since

lacampbell3• 7 years ago

If only the US had won, then all those canadian programmers in Vancouver and Toronto wouldn't have to migrate to get a decent paying job.

dentemple3• 7 years ago

There's nothing stopping Canadian companies from paying the same wages as American companies.

eloff3• 7 years ago

There's one thing stopping them, not enough Canadian programmers are willing to vote with their feet. So the supply is too high in the labor market.

I do my part, whenever a recruiter contacts me on linked-in for a domestic position, I reply thanks but I don't work for Canadian companies.

astrodust2• 7 years ago

The VC market isn't as overheated as it is in San Francisco.

"There's nothing stopping New York companies from paying the same wages as..."

dang• 7 years ago

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

lacampbell3• 7 years ago

It was a joke, lighten up!

realo• 7 years ago

French Canadian here...

My impression on the 1812 war is that if the French had won the 1759 Battle of Quebec ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Plains_of_Abraha... ) then they would likely have lost to the Americans in 1812 ... There would be no Canada today.

But of course, this is just speculation.

war1025• 7 years ago

If the French had won something in 1759, it's entirely possible that the American Revolution in 1776 would never have happened or would have played out completely differently.

walshemj• 7 years ago

Well in 1812 the US army wasn't in good shape compared to the Armies on the continent.

vondur• 7 years ago

If there had never been the Seven Years war, the world would probably look a lot different. You can make an argument that the Seven Years war caused the American War of Independence, The French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution and the Wars of Spanish American independence.

est31• 7 years ago

See also plan red: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red

btilly3• 7 years ago

What I find amusing about both countries is that neither spends time on what was bloody obvious at the time. Namely that the reason why the US picked then to start a war was that Great Britain had their hands full with Napoleon.

Still the outcome was that Washington was burned to the ground, the US sued for peace, Great Britain granted it because the US had already proven to be ungovernable. However it was the last war where natives could fight open battles against the US, and with the decimation of the Iroquois the Western border was open. Also Andrew Jackson's victory in New Orleans (after the peace treaty was signed but before anyone knew about it) meant that the USA kept Louisiana rather than possibly giving it back to France.

So it was a net loss at the time, but set the stage for westward expansion.

Incidentally one of the things that the USA was upset about is now international law. Namely the pressing of US citizens into the British navy. But today if a US citizen visits a country that also considers him a citizen, and that country drafts him into the military, the USA has nothing to say about it.

vkou• 7 years ago

The US will also happily draft non-citizens.

https://www.sss.gov/About/History-And-Records/Non-Citizens-a...

kd5bjo3• 7 years ago

But today if a US citizen visits a country that also considers him a citizen, and that country drafts him into the military, the USA has nothing to say about it.

I imagine that they might have something to say about it if the other country considered all US citizens to also be citizens of that other country. It's been a long time since I got this in school, but I also seem to recall that they weren't conscripting US citizens visiting Britain, they were boarding US merchant ships at sea to conscript the sailors.

btilly3• 7 years ago

It was not all US citizens. It was ones who were also UK citizens by Great Britain's laws.

That said, there were a lot of problems with how impressment worked. But that was separate from the question of whether becoming an American citizen made someone no longer a British citizen.

kenned3• 7 years ago

Canadian here.. why do we keep seeing these stories about how the US invaded "canada"?

wasnt "Canada" created as part of the British North America Act (1867)?

Didnt canada do a big "150" thing in 2017?

The US invaded "british north america" in 1812.

The article is also mistaken when it talks about "canadians" defending British North America. They were british citizens.

8note• 7 years ago

Would you prefer Upper and Lower Canadians?

henntipular2• 7 years ago

As an upper Canadian, yes, those filthy lower Canadians.

mr_toad• 7 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_myth

goodcanadian• 7 years ago

Confederation occurred in 1867. That is often considered to be the birth of the country. However, the concept of Canada as a place existed prior to that. And, yes, it was inhabited by people who called themselves Canadian even if they were also British citizens (until 1939, if memory serves correctly).

mobilefriendly• 7 years ago

The US (well, the Continentals) invaded British Canada early during the Revolution for some of the same reasoning-- rally the ethnic French and deliver a blow to British North America. That effort failed as well.

dmurray• 7 years ago

There was a serious war going on at the time in Europe[0]. It featured the largest army of all time until then and almost a million casualties, compared to the 5,000 toll of this border skirmish. And incidentally inspired one of the best known classical music pieces.

If anything it's good that American kids don't learn of this trifle in school, allowing them more time to study the events that really shaped the modern world. Right?

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia

kd5bjo3• 7 years ago

Where I went to school (in the US, but there weren’t unified standards at the time), US and European history were taught separately, in alternate years. So we got both the war of 1812, and the Napoleonic Wars, but there was little to connect them to each other except for the dates.

nonstopnonsense• 7 years ago

Not sure if this will cause an uproar. An Indian by birth here. As I see it, this was just Britisher's fighting the other Britishers on land(s) that does not belong to them?

PS: I've not read the history of both the nations (yet to open the book 1491), but I do know what the Britisher's did to India.

ericmuyser• 7 years ago

I agree it mostly a British thing, but I say it was their land. Never in history has territory been invaded and capture and then partially given back to the people with special rights like it has in North America. I think native Indians should just be Canadian and that's it, none of this special rights seclusion bullshit. I never did get why we did it? I feel like it's not even helping or what most want, is it just a bad compromise at this point?

stunt• 7 years ago

The "Presidents of War" book touches this story from the U.S. prespective and with a little bit background information on US, UK relationship during that period.

sbmthakur• 7 years ago

After going through the comments, I landed on Burning of Washington entry on Wikipedia. Too bad that many people were killed but it makes for an interesting read:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington

The next foreign attack on Washington DC would be on 9/11.

U.S. Forces Failed to Conquer Canada 200 Years Ago (2012)

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