and. we recorded this interview at the organization of american historians meeting in milwaukee, wisconsin. it's just under 30 minutes. >> american history tv is at the annual meeting of the organization of american historians in milwaukee. and we are joined by professor allante lore from the university of california-davis and nicole eustace who teaches history at the new york university. thank you for being with us. you're here at the conference, the annual meeting, to talk about the war of 1812 and here with us to talk about the war of 1812. let's start, professor eustace, with a look at the country in 1812. what was the population size? >> the u.s. in 1812 was as they would have said at the time a young and rapidly expanding population. the population in 1812 was about

7.2 million people, and it had nearly doubled in the 20 years since the first census in 1790. a little bit less than doubled. so it's a rapidly growing population, and it's a population that is really focused on that as a source of national strength and personal pride. people are focused on having children, raising families, and needing land to farm to support those families. so that was kind of the overall situation in terms of the population. >> professor taylor, you've written a pulitzer prize-winning book about the war of 1812. both of you. you have a book coming out. we'll get to the that in a minute. the title of your book and title of your book you refer to war of 1812 as a civil war. so set the scene for us in 1812. what was the war about, and why do you call it a civil war?

>> well, i see it as a civil war because i see the american revolution as incomplete as of 1812. that the british and american peoples had not been distinguished in the way that they have now two centuries later. and americans had migrated into canada by the thousands, so that a majority of the population in upper dan were people born within the united states. and when american forces invade upper canada, their experience will be that of a civil war in that these people will divide and some of them will fight for the united states and some of them would fight against the united states and they would end up fighting against one another. >> why did u.s. forces invade canada? >> the united states was offended with the british empire for a couple of reasons. one is they were meddling with american shipping on the high seas, and then they were aligning with native peoples to the west, and the americans persuaded themselves that an invasion of canada would at the

very least break up the british alliance with the indian people because canada served as supply bases for native people living on the united states and the canadian side of the border. and they also believed that it would be the cheapest way to put pressure on the british, cheaper than building a proper navy. and for those two reasons they targeted canada for invasion in this war. >> the full title of your book is "civil war of 1812 american citizens, british suspects, irish rebels, and indian allies." "british suspects." they were certainly not part of the revolutionary war. >> actually, native people were a part of the revolutionary war. the british had great number of native allies in the revolution. the united states had some native allies. in many ways this is a continuation of that struggle.

>> professor eustace, is it fair to look at the war of 1812 as round two of the revolutionary war? >> i think in some important respects it was and in other respects it wasn't, but it was sort of spun that way. one of the first primary sources that i came across that got me really interested in looking at patriotism during the war, which is the focus of my research, was this fascinating book, the multipart title. the title was "the champions of freedom." it makes you think it's a war about freedom. next part of the title was "or the mysterious chief." the mysterious chief turns out to be an indian ghost. and the final part of the title is "romance of the 19th century

based on convenients of the war between united states and great britain that terminated in march of 1815." this title collects a lot of different ideas. it collects the idea it was a rematch and this was about a struggle for liberty between the united states and great britain which was one way of spinning the war. at the same time, it admits that there is this ghost haunting the war that although the declared foe is great britain as professor taylor outlined nicely, the actual sort of shadow foe or ghost foe were native americans whose land rights were being challenged all the time by this expanding u.s. population in need of greater farms. >> the title of your forthcoming book that you've brought a copy of, "1812 war of passion and passion of patriotism," was this war essential in sort of establishing what, i guess, would later be american patriotism? is that what you're referring to there? >> absolutely. one of the things that's fascinating about the war of 1812 is that it's the first time

in the united states history that war was ever formally declared by a constitutional process, and it's actually just about the first time that war was ever formally declared in a modern democracy. and so it provides an opportunity to really look at what patriotism means in a democracy where you have elected officials making policy but answerable to an electorate and to the broader public at large. so what really motivated me to do this book was thinking about what does it mean to be a patriot in 1812, and what does it mean to try to stimulate patrioti patriotism? they need to do it in 1812 in a way that's quite different from the revolutionary period when everything can proceed on a much more ad hoc basis and there's not going to be a presidential election in a few months into the revolution where there's actually president madison. president james madison was up for re-election, you know, in 1812, just months after the commencement of the war. and he is re-elected. and his secretary of state,

james monroe, was then elected in 1816. but those elections were, in a very real sense, referendums on the civil war, and to win the election meant winning public opinion about the war. >> relatively speaking, it's a short war? >> yes. a little over two years. >> what was the end result? >> well, we may have different takes on that. >> i would love to hear them. >> the end result certainly is native peoples are devastated on both sides of the border. they will be dispossessed at a faster rate than ever before. i also think that the united states comes out of the war feeling much more secure than it did going into the war. and this is ironic because the united states' performance in the war was so poor. but at the very end of the war the performance is a whole lot better, in particular this very dramatic victory at new orleans, and they get a very favorable

peace treaty. americans come out of the war feeling much better about themselves and much more secure having british canada as a next door neighbor than they did in 1812 when they started the war. >> the outcome of the war, what is your take on that? >> it's actually very compatible, i think. i agree that the most important result of the war was that the position of native-americans was very much weakened and britain stopped functioning as an effective ally, imperial ally for native american groups and that was one of the profound results of the war. i also agree that the nation felt a lot of confidence after the war and that this is surprising, given the poor performance during the war and frankly given they didn't accomplish that much. it is a favorable peace treaty because britain abandoned the idea of creating a buffer state for indians, which they had promised they were going to negotiate. they completely abandoned that idea. so that was favorable for the united states. but most of the other issues of

the war were not addressed. they simply agreed to return to the status quo antebellum. so really not much had happened. >> domestically? >> diplomatically with the british directly, and yet people wind up confident and feeling great about the war. and that to me was really the fun and interesting puzzle that drove me to look at pate tromism and how you shape emotion and, therefore, feelings about the war. there's a newspaper in boston in 1817 that says we're now enjoying an era of good feelings, and that phrase was picked up and repeated immediately -- repeatedly in newspapers all around the country. i think it's really true that the nation did enter a period of good feelings and to figure out exactly how that came about is something that i think is analytically very interesting. >> you are participating in one of a couple conversations here. the 200th anniversary of the war of 1812.

do you think that the war is being properly commemorated or remembered across the country? >> well, it's not being much remembered or come mechl rated. states are not investing significant money in this other than maryland. we have states in financial distress and a federal government in financial distress, and it's just become more difficult for people to agree about what you do in a commemoration than was the case in the past. >> i think there's a lot of ambivalence exactly because no one has ever been sure exactly what the war was about, exactly what it accomplished, and therefore if there's something to celebrate or if there's something to critique, and there is an unwillingness to spend time thinking about it. >> what do you tell your students when they ask why should we -- why is the war of 1812 relevant today? >> well, thing it's relevant for a number of important reasons.

i think, first of all, the question of how you drum up pat trottism, how you get people emotionally involved in war is something that changes very much over time, but that's a process worth analyzing and looking at. i think also we can't really understand the history of the 19th seventry united states and of american expansionism over the entire continent without starting with the war of 1812 because of the fact that indians are so weakened by the end of the war. u.s. expansion really had already begun but it really starts to kind of snow ball after the war of 1812 so that for the next six years after the war, one by one you have six new states entering the union including states like alabama where the creek indians had been defeated during the war of 1812 but when we talk about the war of 1812 as something that was fought in naval battles against the british, we're not thinking about jackson fighting the creeks, but, in fact, that's a

really important element of this whole time period. >> so this was a war -- i mean in terms of territories "that was spread over a large portion of the american -- what was america at that time. >> well, and -- >> all the oceans of the world as well. >> exactly, yeah. what's interesting is that european powers had already recognized the united states legal right to this territory, but it was very much disputed by native-american nations that did not recognize this right, and that is why it can look from the outside as if the war changed nothing because the u.s. neither gained nor lost territory in term of claims and counterclaims with european empires. but it did gain effective control it would not have otherwise determined. >> well, the war clearly determines that the united states will be the dominant

power in north america, and the british accept that they will have to retreat within a confined border along the great lakes. whereas, before they had been projecting influence into the united states through native peoples. so also there is a mutual acceptance that it is better to co-exist rather than to engage in another war between the united states and british north america, what we now call canada and so something very positive does come out of the war in that sense. it's not another war between the british empire and the united states and there won't be another war waged in canada in which the united states is invading. >> we talked about the lack of commemoration here in the u.s. for the war of 1812. what about canada? >> well, it's in a very big way there. the canadian government is investing significant money in this, and it goes to a sense of patrioti patriotism, because they would like to have an american-style patriotism, the current government of canada, one which

celebrates military accomplishment, and that's a new definition of canadian patriotism that the current government is advancing. their one great opportunity for that is to commemorate the war of 1812. >> how's that going? >> well, it's a mixed bag because the current government in canada, the harper government, would very much like this to be an occasion to help to draw french speaking and englick-speaking canada together because they both fought to defend canada. against the american invasion. but francophones are not enthusiastic about commemorating the war of 1812. >> anything you want to add to the canadian comment, professor eustace? >> not a lot. the two of us have been corresponding with a similar set of colleagues. commemorations are active there and enthusiasm there particularly on the part of the government for staging reenactments and that sort of thing and it's being treated as a real bicentennial of the canadian nation in a way that it's not here.

>> c-span is based in washington, and perhaps people in washington have a perspective of the war of 1812 as the war that burned the nation's capitol and certainly one of the dominant figures that comes out of the war is dolly madison. as a female historian looking at the war of 1812, what perspective do you bring on her and also just in general the role of women in the war of 1812? >> well, my perspective really comes out of social history and cust real history, which is history of ordinary people. not to say that dolly madison didn't create a heroic figure with the legend of the saving of the portrait, but i'm more interested in ordinary women's participation as pat trots. and what's really fascinating is that because there's all this belief that the population is the source of the strength of the nations, there's a lot of

wartime emphasis of women's roles as mothers. mothers and warriors go together serving the nation, kind of side by side. and there's a phenomenal amount of rhetoric both at the level of popular culture and at the level of high politics talking about how women's roles as the bearers of children will lend strength to the nation. so literally in 1813 when the war isn't going very well, thomas jefferson writes a letter to a friend, and he says, we will prevail because we have breeders enough, we have men enough to carry on population. and so a lot of women's role in this war is being seen as advancing the united states' ability to claim land through settlement. you need families to go and live on the land in order to realize the abstract claims that the u.s. is making to control that territory. >> how was the u.s. -- how was the u.s. able to muster forces enough to fight this war?

was it a popular call? >> the answer is they were not able to muster enough forces in this war. they struggled throughout the war. it's very difficult. >> because the war wasn't popular? >> well, it's also that the american people can make more money staying on their farms or running their own shops, and so the military pay was pretty low and the bonuses were pretty low until the last year of the war, and then they have a little more success in recruiting more soldiers for the war. then the news had just gotten out about what a miserable experience the soldiers were having at the front, that there was a great deal of disease and a great deal of suffering and hunger because the american war effort was so chaotic. and then there were a fair number of defeats. so for all of those reasons it was very difficult to recruit enough soldiers for this war, and the united states is able to mobilize forces that are significantly smaller than what they did in the revolution.

>> forces were smaller than the revolution. >> despite the fact that the population was significantly larger and it doubled. >> you mention about naval battles being fought all over the world. how far? where were some -- >> indian ocean, pacific ocean. >> we would have been fighting british forces? >> yes. yes. the united states had a small navy, but it had a very well designed ships, had a good officer corps, and had good sailors, and so they adopted a strategy of they're not going to directly confront the british navy where it's strongest. they'll spread through the world's oceans and raid the commerce of the british empire in order to inflict as much economic pain as possible. and that's why you see these ships all over the world's oceans. >> professor eustace, you mention the creeks in alabama. how else were the native groups, native tribes, used in the war of 1812? >> well, another major

confrontation with imdians during the war of 1812 was the battle of the thames, which is a battle that william henry henderson, whose glory from that battle and a prior one, the battle of tippy canoe helped propel him to the white house house in 1840. it brought him and tecumseh to the battle of the thames. it's battle for the united states and leads to the death of tecumseh and therefore to the shattering of the shawnee c confedera confederacy. so that's another kind of crucial turning point in the u.s. relations during the war. >> you talked about also the rapid expansion of the u.s., the seven states within several short years after the war. >> six, yeah. >> was that a specific program on the part of the federal forecast to expand or was it just the need for more land? >> well, it's both. and what's quite extraordinary

is how very self-conscious people were about thinking about how the rights and needs and desires of the individual could individual could reinforce the needs of the nation. so there is a petition, for example, in illinois, of people who want to move into the illinois territory and see illinois become a state, which it does become a state immediately after the war. and in the petition, people say we want to go because we want to be able to raise families. we will bring civilization, christianity and agriculture to the lands by moving on the to them. that's one of the the fascinating things about the rhetoric of patriotism during the war. it becomes the most important obligation of a member of the

nation. also the most fundamental right enjoyed by people. >> how were the veterans treated? were there benefits in later years? they do get land grants. you're quite right. that does help to accelerate western settlement. now the veterans don't always settle in the lands themselves, but they have the right to these lands and can settle them to other people who will go and settle in michigan and indiana and illinois. >> i want to go back to your book for a second, professor. the forthcoming book and reading about some of your work. you talk about the prominence of promotion in 18th century european religion and philosophy. explore that. what do you mean by that?

the day after he signs the congressional declaration of war into law. and he says all the good people of the united states, as they love their country, should exert themselves. i want to know what does it really mean to love your country. what does that feel like? and it was the early part in my research that i came across the novel i already mentioned. the mysterious chief romance founded in the events of the war between the united states and great britain that terminated in march of 1850. and that book is to a modern reader hilarious. it is alternating chapters of a very straight forward accurate history.

alternating every chapt we are a sentimental seduction narrative. goes back and forth about fighting on the battlefield and then wrestling with his passions. and he is tempted by the seductress sofia. it's pretty sexy stuff. ultimately tw the guidance of the indiana ghost who tells him he that has to curtail his passion, he eventually gets control of himself and then he eventually marries katherine on what the author calls the alter of hymen on the day that the peace treaty is ratified, which is why the title is so significant. and so to our eyes, ridiculous

mixture of generas. this sexy seduction tale interwoven with straight up, very serious academic military history of the war. talking about patriotism as something you feel because you feel romantic love. you kneel the desire to settle down, to have children. that will motivate you to bear children or bear arms for the country. >> with a couple minutes left. i'll ask you both about how difficult it is to find original sources of material for your research for the works that you do both on the war of 1812 and specifically on 1812. >> they generate an enormous

amount of documentation. and the great thing nikki is doing is using this as a window into social and cultural history. so i don't think there's a shortage of sources. >> arizona allen just said, it's very easy. one of the reasons it's easy, in the moment of 1812, people started very self soshsly collecting documents. they wanted there to be a history of the war. it was founded by a fellow named isaiah thomas in 1812. specifically because he wanted to show all the the popular cultures surrounding the war. it was something i've been commissioned to do by isaiah thomas 200 years ago.

he collected all of these crazy novels and songs and broadside posters because he thought that this culture of the war should be preserved for history. and he started an archive that endorsed to this day to collect all that. >> historian nicole eustiss, thank you for joining us here on american history tv. >> thank you for having us. we will go through the digital histories with tommy, the executive director of the japanese american project. and jasmine alender from the university of wisconsin. what is the project that you've been working on? >> so it's a community nonprofit based in seattle. we collect the stories of

japanese american who are incarcerated in world war ii. the people in the camps, what we do is the survivors from that we do a videotaped interview. we their chose on the web. >> how many have you done. >> we now have about 650. we'll do another 50 or so this year. >> you're working on an oral history project as well. the march on milwaukee civil rights history project. what can you tell us about that? >> the march of milwaukee civil rights history proj is a digital archive. it's an archive of sources relating to mostly the struggle for open housing and school desegregation. it includes oral histories. it also includes video footage, news footage from a local tv station at a time. in your documents, both of you are relatively recent history. we're talking the civil rights

into the '50s and '60s in the case of the japanese heritage project of the 1940s or so. what are the biggest challenges in terms of finding original sources of material? >> well, we had, my university, the university of wisconsin in milwaukee, we have a lot of the documents already in our physical archives. the challenge is to make them more accessible and to give them a context so students in particular and beyond could learn more about their city and its history. >> tony -- >> well, in the same way, there are quite a bit of documents. and the government kept a lot of records. in places like the national archives, there are photographs, documents. and many we have scanned and put on our website also.

perhaps the hardest part, especially initially was to convince japanese-americans to be interviewed for this. there was a reluctance to share their story. some felt shame. even though they did nothing wrong, they felt something must have been wrong for them to be put in camps. so it took a while to encourage the interview. that was probably the toughest part. >> why are oral histories becoming so popular? you see them more often these days. we certainly on american history tv air a number of different oral histories. why are they becoming more and more popular, and why are they more important these days? >> i think one reason is if you wablt to get the experiences of every day people, those are often not recorded in more traditional sources that end up in archives. if you want to do a history of the japanese-american incarceration from the perspective of someone incarcerated. or if you want to do the history of milwaukee civil rights from somebody who was on the ground mar