United States and Great Britain was signed on 30 November 1782. An armistice became effective on 20 January 1783, when France and Spain signed separate preliminary articles with Great Britain. Congress accepted the preliminary treaty on 11 April 1783. The war came to an official close with the Peace of Paris on 3 September 1783, on which date the preliminary treaties were signed all around as definitive treaties

CAUSES. The origins of the War of 1812 can be found in the British seizure of American ships and cargoes, the impressment of American seamen by the British Navy, and problems on the American frontier.

In 1803 there began a new and crucial phase of the Napoleonic Wars, in which both France and England declared blockades and adopted policies whereby neutral shipping was subject to search and seizure. As a result, many outrages were committed against American shiping. England was the chief offender because its Navy had greater command of the sea. The administrations of Jefferson and Madison attempted to keep out of the war by restricting American trade; but the various embargo and nonintercourse acts succeeded only in bringing economic ruin to parts of the country, particularly New England, and the nation became sharply divided on the issue. In the Northwest and the lower Ohio valley anti-British feeling was particularly strong, since the frontiersmen blamed the British for aiding and inciting Indians to attack American settlements. Political powers was shifting westward, and ambitious political leaders felt that they must align themselves with the "War Hawks," who believed that the only solution of the Indian problem was to drive the British from Canada. On 1 June 1812 President Madison requested Congress to declare war against England. The House, dividing along sectional lines, voted for war on 4 June. The Senate voted its approval by a margin of only six votes on 18 June 1812, the date which marks the official beginning of the war. A British announcement on 16 June that the blockade would be relaxed so far as

of peace. In the Anglo-American treaty, Great Britain recognized the United States as a sovereign nation, and the two countries came to agreement on a wide variety of matters, such as boundaries and fishing rights. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Henry Laurens were the negotiators for the United States; Richard Oswald was the principal negotiator for Great Britain.

OF 1812

the American shipping was concerned arrived in America too late to avert the war.

TROOPS INVOLVED. American Forces. At the outbreak of war the United States had a population of about 7,700,000. The strength of the Regular Army (July 1812) was 6,686 officers and enlisted men, not counting an estimated 5,000 recruits enlisted for additional forces which had been authorized by Congress in January 1812. Peak strength of the Regular Army during the war was achieved in September 1814, when a total of 38,186 officers and enlisted men (including 124 USMA Cadets) were in service. In the course of the war a total of about 530,000 Regular Army, militia, and volunteer forces were furnished, but this figure includes duplications for the large number of men who served two or more times. Probably as many as 450,000 militiamen saw active service, although not more than half of them took part in the fighting. The total number of casualties suffered by the Americans is not known. Battle deaths accounted for in available records total 1,950, but the actual number was undoubtedly much greater.

The American Navy at the beginning of the war consisted of 20 vessels: 3 large 44-gun frigates, 3 smaller 38-gun frigates, and 14 others. They mounted an aggregate of slightly more than 500 guns. In addition, 62 small gunboats were in commission, but they were of little value in the war. A large but unknown number of American privateers preyed on enemy shipping.

British and Canadian Forces. The British had from 90,000 to 100,000 men under arms in 1812, and could draw reinforcements from a population of

18,000,000; but England was at war with France, and only about 7,000 British and Canadian Regulars were stationed in Canada in June of 1812. Two additional battalions arrived in Quebec during the summer of 1812, and part of one Canadian regiment in New Brunswick was transferred to the theater of operations late in the war. When hostilities in Europe ended, England immediately transferred thousands of veterans to Canada, where British strength rose to about 16,000 by the late summer of 1814.

Canada, with a total population of about half a million white inhabitants, was able to put only about 10,000 militiamen in the field during the war. Indians constituted a sizeable addition to Canadian strength. The peak of their participation was in the autumn of 1813, when perhaps as many as 3,500 Indians were on the warpath in cooperation with the Canadians.

In 1812 the British Navy was the most powerful in the world. It consisted of more than 600 fighting ships, of which over 100 were large ships of the line mounting 60 or more guns. But the bulk of the fleet was involved in the war against the French, and three months after the United States declared war England had only 11 ships of the line, 34 frigates, and about an equal number of smaller vessels in the western Atlantic.

OVERALL STRATEGY. American strategy was to undertake a conquest of Canada immediately. England, deeply committed in Europe, could spare few troops or ships to assist the weak Canaddian forces. American enthusiasm for the war ran highest in the west where Canadian defenses were weakest. Therefore, the United States struck at Canada first across the Detroit and Niagara Rivers. Concurrently it sent out its small Navy and many privateers against British shipping. Very little planned strategy is evident in the pattern of conflict that ensued.

In the first phase of the war (June 1812 to early 1813), inept American leadership was largely responsible for failure in attempts to invade Canada, and the entire territory north and west

of the Ohio River fell under British control.

During the second phase (early 1813 to the beginning of 1814) the Americans won control of Lake Erie, but suffered reverses in a campaign against Montreal and on the Niagara frontier. In the South, American forces occupied the disputed territory of West Florida without opposition. The military situation there was complicated by Indian troubles.

In the third and final phase, England was free to send large numbers of military and naval forces to prosecute the war in America. They raided the coast almost at will and took the offensive in several quarters. At the same time the American forces, now better trained and experienced, were able to win several brilliant victories. The war ended without either side holding a marked advantage.

MAJOR BATTLES AND САМPAIGNS. Streamers have been awarded for only six named campaigns in the War of 1812. The streamer awarded for Canada (18 June 1813-17 February 1815), covers a number of campaigns in that country.

First Phase of the War. The first blows were struck in the Detroit area. Brig. Gen. William Hull, a Revolutionary War veteran, arrived at Fort Detroit on 5 July 1812 with 1,500 Ohio militiamen and 300 Regulars. Opposing Hull on the Detroit frontier was Maj. Gen. Isaac Brock's force of 150 British regulars, about 300 militiamen, and some 250 Indians. In all of Upper Canada Brock had available only about 1,600 regulars and about 800 militiamen.

In mid-July of 1812, Hull cautiously crossed the river into Canada, but remained near Fort Detroit, sending out raiding detachments but making no move to capture nearby Fort Malden. Learning that Brock had received reinforcements and that Fort Michilimackinac, an American post on the straits between Lakes Michigan and Huron, had fallen on 4 August, Hull withdrew to Fort Detroit. He was closely followed by Brock who, on 16

August 1812, led 700 British and Canadians and some 600 Indians across the river to launch an assault. On Brock's demand, Hull meekly surrendered his entire force.

At Fort Dearborn (near the present site of Chicago) the small American garrison evacuated the post on Hull's orders on 15 August and was promptly wiped out by a band of Indians, who then destroyed the fort. With the fall of the three forts, the entire territory north and west of the Ohio fell into enemy control.

Brock immediately transferred most of his forces to the Niagara frontier, where the Americans were concentrating for an invasion of Canada. By October, Maj. Gen. Stephen Van Rensselaer had collected about 2,300 militiamen at Lewiston; Brig. Gen. Alexander Smyth commanded 1,650 Regulars and 400 militiamen at Buffalo; and another 1.300 Regulars were at Fort Niagara.

On 13 October Van Rensselaer crossed the Niagara River with part of his force and attacked a British garrison of about 300 men at Queenston. The British soon received reinforcements which brought their strength to about 1,000. On the American side, a large part of the militia flatly refused to cross the river, and Smyth at Buffalo ignored requests for aid. Eventually the British destroyed the American force that had crossed, killing 90 and taking 925 prisoners with a loss of 14 killed, 77 wounded and 21 missing. Brock was killed in the engagement.

Van Rensselaer resigned. Smyth took over but did nothing, going into winter quarters in November. To the east a large American force under Maj. Gen. Henry Dearborn made a move from Albany toward Montreal in November, but turned back at the border and went into winter quarters at Plattsburg. In the west Brig. Gen. William H. Harrison moved in the autumn, with some 6,500 men, to retake Fort Detroit. About 1,000 men, an advance detachment of this force, were either killed or captured by a slightly larger force of Canadians and Indians in January, 1813. After this, Harrison built two fortsMeigs and Stephenson-at the western end of Lake Erie, where the remainder

of his force waited out the winter.

Second Phase of the War. In this phase, American objectives were to attack Canada across Lake Ontario and to recapture Fort Detroit.

The Ontario campaign was conducted by General Dearborn, who moved his men from Plattsburg, in the spring of 1813, to Sackett's Harbor at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, where Commodore Isaac Chauncey had assembled a fleet. About 1,700 men embarked on the ships and sailed to York (now Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada. York was defended by nearby Fort Toronto with a garrison of about 600 British under Maj. Gen. R. H. Sheaffe. Dearborn designated Brig. Gen. Zebulon Pike to lead the American assault force, which landed west of York unopposed on 27 April 1813 and, after a sharp fight, took Fort Toronto. As the Americans passed through the fort on the way to York a mine or powder magazine exploded, killing about 40 British and 100 Americans, including Pike. While occupying York the Americans looted the town and burned some of the public buildings, an outrage which the British later used to justify their depredations in the American capital.

At the eastern end of Lake Ontario a British force under Sir George Prevost sailed from Kingston on 27 May 1813 and attacked Sackett's Harbor, which Dearborn had left weakly defended. The Americans under Brig. Gen. Jacob Brown outfought the invaders, who retreated to their ships and sailed back to Kingston. Each side suffered about 250 casualties.

Meanwhile General Dearborn had recrossed the lake to Fort Niagara, and on 27 May invaded Canada with about 4,000 men. An amphibious assault conducted by Col. Winfield Scott and Comdr. Oliver Hazard Perry was successful in driving the outnumbered British from Fort George and Queenston. Dearborn failed to follow up his victory with an immediate and vigorous pursuit of the enemy; when he did advance, in June, he suffered two sharp reverses.

Successful offensive action in the Detroit area, as the campaign of 1812 had shown, depended upon first gaining control of Lake Erie. Commodore Perry solved this problem by winning a de

cisive victory over the British fleet at Put-in-Bay on 10 September 1813. Harrison then embarked his troops and sailed against Fort Malden. There the outnumbered British garrison of about 900 Regulars abandoned the fort and retreated eastward with about 2,000 Indians under Tecumseh. Harrison pursued with about 3,500 men, making contact with the British about 85 miles east of Fort Malden on the banks of the Thames River on 5 October 1813. Col. Richard M. Johnson's mounted Kentuckians opened the Battle of the Thames with a charge that routed the Indians. The British surrendered in droves, no more than 250 escaping death or capture. Tecumseh was killed, and the American victory shattered the Indian confederacy. For the rest of the war the Detroit area remained in American control.

Harrison promptly returned with his Regulars to the Niagara frontier, where American garrisons were being stripped of men to support a two-pronged drive on Montreal. This late autumn campaign ended in a fiasco. Brig. Gen. Wade Hampton drove north from Plattsburg with 4,000 men while Maj. Gen. James Wilkinson attacked down the St. Lawrence from Sackett's Harbor with 6,000 men; but the two commanders failed to cooperate with each other, and both forces withdrew ingloriously to Plattsburg after separate brushes with the enemy. Meanwhile, in December 1813, the British took advantage of the weakened state of American defenses on the Niagara frontier by recapturing Fort George and taking Fort Niagara. Bitterness of feeling between the two sides was demonstrated in the burning of Newark and part of Queenston by the Americans, and the retaliatory burning of Buffalo and Black Rock by the British.

During 1813 a new theater of the war opened in the South, where southern expansionists had designs on Florida, a Spanish possession, Spain's status as an ally of England presented an excuse to invade Florida, and Tennessee raised a force of 2,000 men under Andrew Jackson for this purpose. But Congress ruled that only the disputed territory of West Florida could be invaded, refused to entrust the venture

to the Tennesseans, and dispatched a force of Regulars who occupied Mobile unopposed in the early fall of 1813. Jackson energetically turned his attention to fighting a long campaign against the Creek Indians, who in the summer of 1813 had gone on the warpath in Alabama. (See First Creek Campaign, chapter 29.)

Third Phase of the War. Land operations began in March 1814 with a drive north from Plattsburg by Wilkinson with 4,000 men, but a very small enemy force stopped the drive eight miles within the Canadian border. As a result of this and earlier failures, a number of senior generals were replaced by younger and more energetic officers. In order to gain control of Lake Ontario, a plan was adopted in June 1814 under which Commodore Chauncey's fleet would challenge the British on the lake in coordination with a land attack on the Niagara peninsula. Accordingly, Maj. Gen. Jacob Brown captured Fort Erie and then advanced north on the Canadian side of the river with his force of 3,500 men. At the Chippewa River, 16 miles away, a smaller British force of 1,500 regulars, 300 militiamen, and 300 Indians under General Riall gathered to oppose the invasion.

On 5 July Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott's brigade, a part of Brown's command numbering about 1,300 men, moved to an open plain south of the Chippewa to stage a parade. Instead the Americans found themselves confronted by the British advancing in battle order across the plain. Scott had trained his men rigorously, and now at Chippewa (5 July 1814) they demonstrated the value of that training in a disciplined charge which broke the enemy line and drove the British survivors in retreat across the river before Brown could send reinforcements. Scott's casualties were 48 killed and 227 wounded; British losses were 137 killed and 304 wounded.

Brown advanced to Queenston, waited two weeks for Chauncey who failed to cooperate as planned, and then returned to the Chippewa with the intention of driving cross-country to the western end of Lake Ontario. As the Americans arrived at the Chippewa on

the night of 24-25 July 1814, they were unaware that British forces totaling about 2,000 men under General Riall were converging at the junction of Lundy's Lane and Queenston Road (very near the Falls), just three miles to the north. The next morning Scott's brigade moved north on Queenston Road and unexpectedly encountered the British concentration. Lundy's Lane (25 July 1814) was one of the most fiercely contested engagements of the war. With the arrival of British reinforcements the two sides were equally matched, with about 2,900 men each. At midnight Brown withdrew his exhausted troops across the Chippewa, and the British were too spent to follow. Casualties were 878 killed and wounded for the British and 854 for the Americans. Although the battle was a draw (with both sides claiming victory), the British had stopped the invansion of Canada.

After a few days the Americans withdrew to Fort Erie. The British laid siege to this fort until 21 September, when they abandoned the effort after suffering heavy casualties. Later, General Izard arrived with American reinforcements and advanced again to the Chippewa, but after a few skirmishes broke off the campaign for the winter. On 5 November he withrew all American troops from Canadian soil. During the summer of 1814 the British had occupied two towns in MaineCastine and Eastport. Political objectives were apparent in the case of Eastport, since that town was located in territory disputed by Maine and New Brunswick. No such objectives were evident in the Chesapeake Bay area, where British forays first took place in the spring of 1813 with the looting and burning of Hampton, Va., and Havrede-Grace, Md. It had been a different story at Craney's Island on 22 July 1813, when American militia defending Norfolk repulsed and inflicted heavy casualties on a much larger force of British raiders.

Early in August 1814 about 4,000 British led by Maj Gen. Robert Ross landed on the right bank of the Patuxent River. In the march on Washington, Ross easily defeated a mixed force of about 5,000 Americans at Bladens

burg (14 August 1814) that Brig. Gen. William H. Winder had hastily assembled to defend the capital. British losses were around 249 killed and wounded to an American loss of about 100 killed and wounded and another 100 captured. After dispersing the American force the British marched into Washington; burned the Capitol, the White House, and other public buildings; and then returned to their ships.

Next on schedule was Baltimore. where the British staged a combined land and sea attack on 13-14 September 1814. General Ross was killed in the land attack, which failed to break through the well-entrenched militia defenders. The British fleet also broke off the attempt after failing to reduce Fort McHenry (13 September 1814) in a bombardment that inspired Francis Scott Key to write "The StarSpangled Banner." (See "The National Anthem," chapter 21.)

Meanwhile, in the north, the British had already suffered an even more serious reverse than that at Baltimore. Sir George Prevost had invaded the United States, arriving before Plattsburg with about 11,000 men on 6 September 1814. There he waited almost a week for the arrival of his naval force. When it finally arrived, on 11 September, it was completely destroyed by Commodore Thomas Macdonough's fleet in the Battle of Lake Champlain. With his naval support gone, Prevost marched his force back to Canada, even though General Macomb's garrison at Plattsburg numbered only about 4,500 Americans.

Peace negotiations were under way by this time, and news of the British reverses helped the American peace commissioners to obtain satisfactory terms. The peace treaty was signed late in December, but news of this event arrived too late to halt operations at New Orleans (23 December 1814-8 January 1815). A British expedition had landed below New Orleans early in December and fought an indecisive engagement with American forces under Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson on the 23d of the month. Two days later Maj. Gen. Sir Edward Pakenham arrived to take command of the