canal all the way up the west coast to washington state and then back home. so she visited 76 different ports, over 4.5 million people got to see "constitution" in their home port during this time when our nation so needed something to be proud of. in this exhibit, we follow "constitution" through her first 200 years of service, from 1797 to 1997. in 1997 when she celebrated her 200th birthday, she sailed for the first time in 116 years. we have a wonderful image of "constitution" under sail here. it was off the coast of massachusetts and off the coast of marblehead and you can see the same way when she sailed into battle against "guerrier" a simple sail configuration. you can see the old and new navy here with the blue angels flying overhead. so they mark "constitution's"

birthday in 1997. aboard constitution the captain was michael beck, but the first lieutenant, our executive officer was claire bloom, the first female officer onboard constitution. so she would wear an 1812-style uniform which we have in our case here and because it was the modern navy, while she would have a lieutenant epaulet on the left shoulder but she would also have a navy purse. they said claire, we really need that once you leave "constitution." it's fun to tell the current story of "constitution" as well as her history. it's all a part of the story and now "constitution" has women as a regular part of her crew. you can watch this or other american artifacts programs at any time by visiting our website, cspan.org/history. watch american artifacts every sunday at 8:00 a.m., 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 3.

you're watching american history tv, where this july 4th, we're marking the bicentennial of the war of 1812. up next, we hear from nicole eustace. for the next half hour she talks about her book, "1812, war and the passions of patriotism" and answers questions from callers. >> joining us in the studio here at american history tv, for the war of 1812, nicole eustace, a history professor at new york university and the author of "1812, the war and the passion of patriotism." thanks for joining us today. >> thank you so much for having me, bill. it aps pleasure to be here. >> you write in the book that the war needs to be considered as much a cultural event as much as a military event. what do you mean by that? >> one of the things that's quite fascinating about this war that makes it truly significant in american history is that it's the first war which was formally declared through a

constitutional process. in the history of the united states and depending how you define it in the history of modern democracies period, and that makes it fascinating to think about if the public has a say in this war, because there is a president who is elected and this is a democracy and he's answerable to the public, let's think about how you debate the meaning of the war and how public opinion is shaped and what's the culture that surrounds patriotism in this period. >> that term, passions of patriotism, what does that mean to you? >> if you think about it, the definition of patriotism is love of country but what does that really mean? what does it mean to love country? what are the emotions that are underneath patriotism? in the era of 1812 people were very interested in passion and they were interested in passion for two reasons.

they thought passions were what really kind of stirred the soul and what really motivated people to take action, to take forceful action. so if you were going to be an effective patriot you had to be a passionate patriot. at the same time the war of 1812 was very controversial particularly at its inception. ultimately it became quite popular but it was controversial at the outset. it was very much opposed by federalists, and federalists latched on to this idea of passion in the sense of passion as a source of sinfulness, of selfishness, and even of sexual sin. they turned to the bible and turned to james 4 in the bible and federalists, ministers who opposed the war repeatedly turned to james 4 from whenst come these wars and fightings among you and come they not from

lusts which wore in your members. so federalists agreed that passions were a source of war and a source of patriotism but for this this was very much a negative. you had two kind of warring views of the passions. one as a source of effective action and true patriotism and the other as a source of selfishness and sin and this set up the cultural debate that surroundeded the war. >> nicole eustace is our guest, a professor of new york university. her book "the war of 1812 and the passions of patriotism." we take your calls for the next half hour. dan is joining us from springfield, missouri. go ahead. >> caller: good morning. the question is regarding patriotism, each of the areas that the war happened, the great lakes area, along coasts with the "constitution" and south with jackson, each of them had

their own regional problems, whether it be the indians and whether it be the suppression of soldiers and whether it be the back. they all had their own individual means of support and fighting for their cause of what patriotism is to maintain a consolidation or to support their own area and their own cause. there wasn't a -- my question is i guess is was there any one united thing that created patriotism outside of these three areas and their own individual problems that existed? >> that's a fascinating question. and you're quite right that the nation was very divided at this time. according to political parties and according to different geographic sections that had different security problems and different economic challenges and so there really was a problem of how to unite the country around a patriotic project and that's part of what makes it so interesting to study the war and to study patriotism

in the war and the creation of a unified patriotism is really one of the sort of central accomplishments of the war. by the end of the war you have a level of unity that you don't have at the beginning of the war. so over the course of the war you have militia from different states who aren't necessarily all that effective or all that committed to fighting, and all of that is going to be transformed by the end of the war, by the battle of new orleans, which is a huge success not really in strategic terms because it actually occurs after the signing of a peace treaty, but it's a cultural, it's a signal success because it's a moment when everyone performs the way they're supposed to and the challenges of unity and the challenges of commitment that had been there in the preceding

several years are kind of resolved in a nice way. >> before our next caller, just a quick snapshot of what the u.s. was like, the population and where was most of that concentrated? >> okay. at the beginning of the war with the u.s. thinks of itself as a young and growing nation and it very much is. the first national census was taken in 1790, and in 1790 the nation had 3.9 million people in it. by 1810 on the eve of the war, 20 years later it almost doubled to 7.2 million people. so this is a nation that's rising rapidly in terms of its population growth and it's a nation that is looking very explicitly to its rising population numbers as an index of its strength. it's telling individual people that they can really contribute to the nation by raising families, what one author called

rising families of free men and that's a very big part of patriotism in the nation in this period the formation of families but where this relates back directly to the caller's question about problems with commitment and problems with unity is that if you're telling people to serve the nation by starting families, well, the requirements of a good family man, staying home and protecting home and hearth, are different from the sacrifice that you have to engage in in order to serve in the military and serve the country at large, and in the early years of the war, when the country was largely reliant on volunteer militias that were locally based, local militiamen were quite committed to defending their home territories but were much more reluctant to cross state lines and to fight with the general army. and that's what was really overcome by the battle of new orleans, when the militias actually performed really wonderfully far from home, and

that was part of what was militarily but also a culturally transformative element of the battle of new orleans. >> as we go to the next caller, tom in knoxville, we want to thank the national portrait gallery in washington and also the maryland historical society in baltimore and of course live views of fort mchenry. tom in knoxville, tennessee, go ahead with your question. >> caller: yes. i enjoy your show. i've been watching it in the last hour, and i know in the first 30-minute segment, at fort mchenry there, the fellow said there was a deal that you could look up on the internet and vote whether you would have been for or against the war. i think in my recollection and whatnot of the war of 1812, i would have been for the war at that time and i still haven't changed my mind, but it seems to me like i've kind of gathered from the conversation earlier

was that most people are voting against the war. i just think that's a little farfetched at this time because hindsight of course is 20/20 and we can look back and see how much it did for the country as far as international acclaim and whatnot, prestige. i'd just like your comment on that. i know it's easy to talk about things that's already happened but i'm real curious to hear what you folks think about that. >> the war was quite controversial in its day. in fact, in the formal vote in congress, 100% of the federalists voted against the war. so some republicans also voted against it, but all federalists did, so it was a very politically divisive war at the beginning and the reasons for the declaration of war that were formally put on paper had to do with the british orders in council which had to do with

u.s. shipping rights and with the british policy of impressment which was the policy of boarding u.s. merchant vessels to search for british sailors that had obligations to serve in the british royal navy, which had the unintended or intended side effect of sometimes sweeping americans into the british nets, as it were, and impressing, forcing, american sailors into the british navy. so those were the stated reasons for the war. the orders in council were actually reversed before the british even really knew about the u.s. declaration of war. so that was removed right from the very beginning and the issue of impressment was not in any way addressed with the treaty that ended the war. the treaty of gent which simply returned all matters to the

status quo antebellum. in terms of evaluating the effectiveness of the war, if you're looking at relationships with britain, the war doesn't change that much. but the war does have important effects on american unity and american patriotism and it also has very significant effects on american power on the continent vis-a-vis native americans who are the often, kind of unspoken element in the war, battles with native americans were a crucial part of the war and the balance of power shifted pretty decisively in the direction of the united states at the expense, particularly of the creek in georgia and alabama and the shawnee in the great lakes region. so the war did accomplish a lot but not necessarily vis a vis britain. >> i remember one of your colleagues said this represented the largest displacement of native peoples to that point in

the u.s. >> that's absolutely right. in georgia and alabama, creeks ceded 22 million acres to andrew jackson in the midst of the war, and the shawnee confederacy was really shattered as a result of harrison's fighting in the great lakes region. and perhaps most importantly of all, as a result of the war, the british ceased to function as effective allies of native american nations. the british went to the treaty table at gent promising that they were going to insist on the creation of an indian buffer zone between the ohio river and the great lakes that would have been a state for indians, and they abandoned that pledge at the treaty table. and they never, ever again asked for something like that. so following the war, you have the opening of western

territories to the u.s. and you have the rapid integration of those territories right after the war. >> let's go back to our calls. david's in rochester, new york. hi, there. >> caller: hi, how are you. yes. i have a question about the hartford convention, and i know that there was a lot of federalists up there and there was a lot of smuggling going on across the border to canada and when the hartford convention people came to washington, do you think it was just a matter of bad timing because of the battle of new orleans, or did they ever really have a chance to secede from the union over the war of 1812? thank you. >> briefly, i think the idea of secession has been somewhat overblown historically. it probably was debated at hartford, but it was never really the truly sort of serious

goal of the federalists. federalists wanted to see an end to the war, and what you have to realize is that washington, d.c., was burnt to the ground in august of 1814 and the treaty of gent is signed december 24th of 1814 and the battle of new orleans happens january 8th of 1815. so at the moment the treaty of gent is signed the u.s. has gone to the treaty table with the capital in ashes and that's the negotiating stance that they have. so at the moment that the federalists are saying we have got to get out of this war, they have a pretty good reason for making that argument. things are looking pretty bleak and it's a huge kind of shot in the arm for the nation to have this terrific victory, where everything goes the way it should, everyone fights the way they should at new orleans, and this is part of why jackson

emerges as such a hero to the nation after the war. but in a sense, the federalist argument is an easier one to understand in november and december of 1814. >> where is gent? >> gent is in belgium. >> let's go to fredericksburg, virginia. deborah. hi there. >> caller: hi. i wanted to comment on what the gentleman had said. he said he would have voted for the war, and i would have, too. i don't really think at that time, people were, you know, i don't think there was a widespread amount of newspapers. people weren't so literal that they could read about what was going on in the nation and people now that are voting are not thinking about that --

they're not placing themselves in that time frame of 1812. and what it must have been like for the people. >> professor, you had written in your book also, to answer deborah's question, you had written that the proponents of the war appealed directly to the national ardor in their effort to rouse the populace. she talked about the newspapers. how did they appeal to that ardor? >> well, in fact, there were many, many newspapers, hundreds of newspapers across the country in this period. in the period of the early republic it's really when you have the first explosion of printing, of the press, and that's very exciting. some newspapers last only a few years and then they fold and die. others have runs that go on for decades but cheap printing is really emerging exactly in this period and that's part of what

makes the war of 1812 so interesting to look at in a cultural perspective, to look at what's being printed in the papers. because people are reading the papers. and ordinary people are really interested in getting involved in the war, so not only are there newspapers, but there's something that we don't have any more today, but you might think of as being almost like a facebook posting or a tweet and that's the broadside poster. people could make one-page posters that could be hung up in a tavern and read aloud in taverns or in other public meeting places and these posters could be anything from a news bulletin that just gives very kind of straight, factual information or very frequently, these posters could have songs and poems on them and a big part of popular culture in the war at this period is the creation of

patriotic songs and poems that could be printed on these broadside posters so you could tack a poster on the wall of the tavern, everyone can learn the words to the song and just about every major event of the war is kind of memorialized in a song. there are opposition songs. so there are very funny, satirical songs critiquing the war and critiquing battles and so ordinary people are actually very involved in debating the war through this medium of print culture. >> we've been looking at live pictures of fort mchenry. a couple of callers have mentioned the poll that's going on. that's at the fort mchenry website we referred to in a previous segment. take a look at the website. we're speaking with nicole eustace, a professor at new york university. and her book is "war of 1812." 15 minutes more with professor eustace. let's hear from jim in bel air, maryland. jim? >> caller: thank you very much

for taking my call. we're all so wrapped up in the celebration in baltimore, we're just about 24 miles from baltimore, but i wanted to relate a story if i might about the city of havre de grace which is in hartford county and whether or not miss eustace added any part into her book about the chesapeake bay and the admiral who came into the chesapeake bay in the upper part of the flats and stormed the city of havre de grace. british, of course, there's a wonderful story about the lighthouse keeper, commodore, john o'neal who was taken prisoner by the marines that left the admiral's flagship. they burned about 60% of havre de grace, leaving only about 40% standing. supposedly those of the elderly

or the infirmed were left standing. the episcopal church in town today has pock marks in the brick where you can see the musket balls had hit. but the story of matilda, who was commodore john o'neal's daughter, rode out to the flagship and commodore or admiral cogburn was so impressed by her ability to come out and want to get her father back, because he had been taken prisoner, that the admiral actually released her father to her, and in the historical museum in maryland, they have a small snuff box today that was tossed over the side to the young lady from admiral cogburn. it's just one of the many stories we in hartford county

and havre de grace have about this incredible war of 1812. of course, havre de grace at one time was considered as possibly the capital of the united states and then it was moved. but i just -- i love what you all are doing today and cutting over to baltimore, fort mchenry, it's marvelous and thank you for so much in this book that you have shared with us today. i just wanted to share that little story of my hometown. >> we appreciate it, jim, calling from northeastern maryland. havre de grace. >> actually, havre de grace actually became, maybe i should say havre de grace, too french -- >> that's okay. i think a lot of people mispronounce it. >> havre de grace really became a rallying cry during the war of 1812 along with hampton, because it was a fairly dramatic moment of british aggression, and

hampton was a moment when supposedly there were atrocities committed against the women of the town, and this became a very important element of american propaganda. i mentioned at the beginning of the conversation that federalists were claiming that the war arose from base lusts and this was something that republicans really wanted to defend themselves against. they wanted to say we may be fighting from patriotic ardor but this is a very virtuous brand of passion that we're fighting from, and for them to accuse the british of sinful lusts became a very important element of anti-british propaganda. so remember hampton and havre de grace became a very significant element of american anti-british propaganda and you can see that in anything from very popular accounts of the war to official

political inquiry correspondence and even congressional inquiries into the conduct of the war. >> certainly for the british the rise of the u.s. population must have been a concern for them. you talked about the impressment of american sailors from american ships. what was happening in britain at at the time with their population? was it emigrating to the united states? >> what's interesting about the british, they had always been concerned about overpopulation. this is an island nation. it's got a pretty bounded land mass. they have been worried about having too many people, that's part of what starts the colonial project in the first place. in the era of 1812 there's a very famous population theorist by the name of thomas malfis and he thought that overpopulation was the problem facing england and facing the world in general, and that overpopulation was the cause of human suffering, the cause of starvation, the cause

of want. what's fascinating is that he felt not only britain needed to be careful about overpopulation, but thomas thought the united states' growing population which was such a source of pride for the new nation was a huge problem, because he understood in very direct terms that the growing european-descended population of the united states was encroaching on the land claims of indians, and he critiqued american population growth. he said it had to be questioned, quote, in a moral view because he said it would lead to the extermination of indians. so thomas is critiquing the rise of american population specifically because he sees it leads to a need for more land. and that's very provocative for americans who see their population as a real kind of source of strength compared to the british. so the irony then of course is that the british, when it comes to their navy, do want to have a

big population to draw from. and american patriots at the time really kind of enjoyed that irony, i think. >> let's hear from kansas next. we have jeff from topeka. welcome to the program. >> caller: yeah. thank you for my call. very interesting program. i was just curious when in 1812 they said in the earlier segment at fort mchenry, they said the united states was broke and i was wondering if the professor could explain maybe why or how the united states got revenue at that time of, you know, around 1812, if there was taxes or how we got revenue. and the other comment -- only other comment i have, it's no wonder the indian nations were upset with the united states or the white people, how we treated them. that's my comment and i'll hang up and listen. thank you.

>> okay, jeff. >> thank you very much. yeah, there were no federal taxes at that point, so most revenues were generated through tariff collections, and the united states did not have a large military at the beginning of the war of 1812. in fact, some historians think that when the u.s. declared war it was more or less a bluff, that they would declare war and the british would think we have our hands full with napoleon because at the beginning of the war of 1812, britain is fighting napoleon on the continent of europe and they're really not that concentrated on america, so some historians thought people in the united states thought they could just declare war and the british would say all right, we'll revise our impressment practices and that it might be a way to take canada, because that was an original goal of the war was to invade canada, and that the british might be too distracted to really do very much in north america.

so they don't have their finances organized to fight a war and that's part of the reason that the war goes so badly for so many years, is that there's no professional army and there's no organized funding. basically to finance the war, they just go into debt and the national debt nearly triples over the course of the war. goes from about $45 million before the war to about $127 million after. so how do they finance it? they finance it through debt. >> as we begin to wrap up here, how would you say that the war of 1812 shaped america's identity? >> i think part of what the war of 1812 did was say that anyone who serves the nation can be a patriot. one of our earlier callers said if she were alive in 1812, she would have voted for the war. i thought to myself if you were alive in 1812 you wouldn't have had the right to vote, because women didn't have the right to vote, but women did have the right to be part