War of 1812
Many Americans do not know what the War of 1812 was fought for, or what happened during the war. This section will not brief the entire war and it's causes, but the role and importance of the Great Lakes region during the war. Below is a brief video overview of the War of 1812 for some context:
The War of 1812 is seen by many as an unnecessary war, simply because once the Treaty of Ghent was signed in 1815, essentially everything went back to the prewar status quo. The series of squabbles and scuffles that made up the War of 1812 exemplified the Americans' lack of preparation for a war with a great world power like Britain. Americans, however, believed that they could overtake Canada and the Great Lakes easily, because they thought the French and Natives would accept the Americans over the British. The naval and military focuses of 1812-1813 were on the US-Canadian border, placing Mackinac Island and its surrounding territories at the center of the war (Hattendorf).
Above is a College Humor video that exemplifies modern Americans' lack of knowledge about the War of 1812? Who were we fighting? Why were we fighting? What did we gain after the war?
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Because the American forces wanted to overtake all of Canada, U.S. General William Hull, the territorial governor of Michigan, left the state in hopes of capturing Montreal, leaving Mackinac Island and other forts. This opened up the territory to the British enemy (Norton, et al). The British captured the island, and by 1812-1813, the enemy had control of nearly half of the Old Northwest territory (Norton, et al). Today at Fort Mackinac, there are animated and live reenactments of the British take over and canon firings, as is displayed in the short clip of an exhibit at Fort Mackinac below:
The race to gain control over the Great Lakes, which was the key in winning the Northwest, quickly turned into a shipbuilding race. With the Americans fighting the Royal British Navy, the largest and most powerful navy at the time, there was a lot of technological change that happened fairly rapidly. At the bloody battle of Put-in-Bay in 1813, the American Navy gained control of Lake Erie, though this did not lead to control of Lake Huron or Mackinac Island, which were still controlled by the British (Norton, et al).
In 1814, the main goal of the British military was to keep hold of the Canada and it's U.S. borders. An attack attempt by the Americans in early 1814 to take back Fort Mackinac failed. Later the American military went through Niagara Falls and captured Lake Erie, but could not sustain and advance a military holding in Michigan and the other Great Lakes, as the British Navy had a strong defensive control over Lake Huron (Hattendorf). The Treaty of Ghent, signed December 24, 1814, gave U.S. territories captured by the British back to the U.S., including Mackinac Island. Though there was not much that directly resulted from the war, the War of 1812 fueled trends that continue to influence American history today, such as industrial takeoff, the continuation of slavery, and westward expansion (Norton, et al). |