9781422286012

Long-Running Disputes Lead to War

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By the spring of 1812, the United States was ready to go to war to defend its maritime rights and its independence. However, there were rumors that the situation in England had changed. English workers were rioting in Manchester and Birmingham. British factory owners had asked Parliament to repeal the hated Orders in Council that damaged America’s trade with Britain. If the rumors were true that England’s policy was about to change, there was no reason to go to war. Even the most vehe- ment of the War Hawks was willing to wait for the news. The Hornet docked in New York on May 19. Dispatches from the British Foreign Minister, Lord Castlereagh, reached Washington three days later. Eager to hear the news, people crowded into Secretary of State James Monroe’s office. Had England given the United States any reason to back off from the threat of war? The dispatches were a disappointment. Castlereagh’s instructions to the British minister in Washington offered no hope of a change in policy. In fact, he demanded an apology by the United States for its efforts to maintain trade with other European countries. America’s patience had come to an end. On June 1, President James Madison asked Congress for a declaration of war. Conflicts on the Western Border The War of 1812 had been brewing for a long time. At the end of the American Revolution in 1783, Benjamin Franklin had warned, “The War of Revolution has been won, but the War of Independence is still to be fought.” The Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War, had left many problems between the two countries unresolved. Americans still distrusted England. Britons resented the new country that had been formed at their expense, and lost no opportunity to mock the American way of life as uncivilized. Between 1783 and 1812, the presence of the British colony in Canada on the United States’s northern boundary was a constant source of con- flict between the two countries. Disputes over the border, the fur trade, and commercial fishing rights were frequent. Most important, American frontiersmen accused the British of supporting Native American uprisings in the Northwest Territory, which consisted of the modern states of