decision making. he seemed to only deal with decisions only after they had gotten out of hand and it was further. on the matters of war time policy, the standard criticism that's made of madison that he spent too much time pursuing the wrong strategies after the warl of 1812. what this means specifically is that when the americans invaded canada, the united states attacked all the wrong places in canada. british power in north america wrested on their control of montreal, québec. all of this is true enough. it cannot be denied but i think that situation did not arise from an affect of understanding of the strategic requirements of the victory. in almost every year of the war, it was clearly understood that montreal was the first and most

important target for the americans to get control of. after that they could then move on eastwards to québec and maritimes. the campaigns in the regions west of montreal were made either in response to the need to devote more resources to local defense, particularly against hostile indians on the northwest frontier of the united states, or they are undertaken as preliminaries to advances on places of much greater strategic significance. the problem was that many of these failed and in their failures, they created new difficulties that required a different attention and resources before further advances could be made. the result was that the united states became bogged down in a series of small conflicts that did not develop according to any coherent strategy of how the larger war might be won.

now if that's the case, the problem with the american war effort was not so much an affective strategy as the inability to develop sufficient military power to surmount the other obstacles to exist. what were the other obstacles to success and how far can madison be held personally responsible for them? most of them center around three factors. cts in the united in relation to that is an overreliance on untrained militia forces and the third one is the inability of the united states to cope with the lonl gic problems of invading canada to the north. now it has always been said and already been mentioned today that the united states army was too small to take canada.

most estimates of its size by the end of the war sort of reckon it was little more than 30,000 men strong. however, a statistical analysis of the registers of enlistment and surviving military records from the period suggest that there were probably something near about 48,000 men in the united states army by the end of the war. that's a fairly significant difference. it's about 15,000 men. on top of that you've got to consider that in terms of man power, the united states had an advantage over canada of about 15 to 1 in terms of its adult population. you put all of that together and you'd think surely the united defeat the relatively few in canada but it was not. so the question arises as to why not? one reason is that after the

failures of the first six months of the war, political pressures on the administration required to distribute a great many regular troops around the coast after the failures of the war, there is the possibility that the united states is going to have to deal with more mobile british forces as they increasingly do in 1813 and 1814. that left fairly comparative troops for offensive operations against canada. even at the height of the war in 5÷úh:÷ summer of 1814, the unit states could take no more than 4,000 regular troops into canada. although the army fought quite credibly in 1814, there certainly weren't enough men to dispose of the british positions

whi , now, what we say about the quality of these troops, how well were they trained? well, they were scarcely trained at all. now, i want to be careful about what i'm saying here. i'm not saying that the army received no training. it did receive training of various sorts at a fairly rudimentary level. the real problem was that the army had no uniform system for training men. in fact the united states army employed three quite incompatible matters of trying to train men throughout the war. this created enormous difficulties for generals in higher offices who had to then try and meld men trained in different ways into a unified force that could then meet an enemy that was trained in a unified and single way. after the military conventions

that operated at the time, trained troops would always beat untrained troops. it was proven in the war of 1812. not until january of 1815 that thousand addreto address the problem of how do we train the army. the war has one month to run in january of 1815. so is the president responsible for this? should madison have sorted out this problem and sort of said we need to train the army in a better way. you might say he did. you might say, well, this is a sort of problem that the secretary of war should sort out. that's supposed to have the expertise. there's no evidence that anybody in the war department either james monroe or armstrong had the lightest idea that this was

a problem during the war. it was to take officers like winfield scott who learned the hard way by nitty-gritty harsh experience about what it took to train men underarms. above all to teach them not to run from the enemy as they did at the battle of bladensberg. now because of that, all of these defects in the army, it was always necessary to supplement its numbers with militia. if the regular army was not very wa far worse in the state militias. the federal government had the international servants under spes ficified conditions but ha authorities to impose uniformed methods or training on them. those matters were left to the states. basically the states did nothing about it in the early 19th century despite the fact the

president and secretary of war said we have a problem. congress refused. as a result, the worstqm0dm fia occurred in the war of 1812 are always associated with defects in the militia. i will give you two quick examples. one is the battle of october of 1812 when the new york state militia refused to cross over the niagra river to reinforce american regular troops who had actually managed to gain a toe hold on theçk,q canadian shore the niagra river. they refused that the constitution did not oblige them to serve outside the boundaries of new york state. the other instance-ufb of courss the battle of bladesberg in militias and others simply fled from a british army who was only about 2/3rds of its size.

the third problem i mentioned was logistic problems. that is always been seen as a very serious problem. by deciding to attack canada, the united states had a committed itself to an offensive war that was to be waged over a frontier that was over a thousand miles in length and required it to supply it to downs and cities that were well to the rear of the military frontier. demographic and geographical realities of the northern frontier. basically thexiqn÷ population i too sparse to have an army live off the country. you can't throw an army up there and say feed yourself and march on the british. it was much more complicated than that. the problem was the united states had very rudimentary supply agencies in the early 19th century.

jefferson had abolished a good many of them in 1802. many of them had to be re-created from scratch after the war of 1812 during the war itself so it's not terribly surprising that there were enormous unefficiencies aniré1ñ problems in getting these supply agencies up and running and to do their job in the proper manner. now all of these factors you will find have been discussed at great length in books on the war of 1812. x÷ some sort of broader perspective in order to understand why the war of 1812 was so unsatisfactory. we mine as well consider a question that very few historians have offered to ask themselves and that is how did madison think about these problems? did he ever address any of them in his correspondence? well, for the war years, the

result is rather disappointing not put downsa:] in writing ve much about his reactions of the events of the war itself beyond saying of course that he was disappointed that the war was not going entire lly according plan. but there are some letters as mentioned from madison's retirement years in which he does reflect on thedja problem that he encountered during the war of 1812. i want to say something about those letters now. they date from the month of february 1827, and madison was responding to questions he had received from two people who were thinking of writing history of the war of 1812. now the first point to make about these letters is that no where does madison take the blame for anything that went wrong. in that respect he was90qy enti

unrepentant about every decision he made during the war. he said well, why do we have to go to war. he said well, it was the british's fault. they are to blame. if they had been more reasonable even by the matter of only a few weeks in 1812, there would have been no need for a war at all. the british were to blame. in response to the charge that was put to him that his administration failed to address the nation, he said well, was congress ees fault. if they'd given me the lawi izs the shape and:cqx time, he said think we would have seen a very different picture. on top of that madison said, perhaps he shouldn't have said canada if you look at it along a historical perspective is a very difficult and hazardous enterprise. experiences he had

during the seven years war and what the americans had vi during the opening years of the revolutionary war when two american armies had failed to take and hold québec in the opening months of the american revolution. madison summed up this in the following way. i quote, the difficulties were explained quote by the forests we penetrated, the savages to be encountered and the likes and other waters to be passed in order to reach a distant theater where the adversary was at home in the midst of all of his resources for defense, closed quote. madison also listed two other factors that he considered to be of paramount importance. one has already been alluded to in previous talks. that was the failure of napoleons invasion of russia of 1812. this was a subject that caused

enormous controversy at the time and has continued to cause some controversy since. 1827, madison admitted something  admitted during the war itself and that was that he expected napoleon that defeat the russians and take them out the war. he says had napoleon been successful in the war of 1812, it would be -- this is his words, a fair calculation, closed quote that great british and its european allies would have been so fully employed to deal with the consequences of a french victory that great britain would be virtually unable to defend canada at all. under those circumstances, madison said, the british would have had no choice and i quote, again, but to listen to our reasonable terms of reconciliation. closed quote. the other factor that madison went on at great length about was the poor quality of american

generals during the war. if you read any history of the longest and dreeriest catalogs of people+. wellñ we might say well, after all he had signed the commissions for most of the generals and had a role in selecting them but when we look at this letter of the war closely, we see that madison is not so much intent on blaming all the generals as he was in faulting one general in particular. that general was brigadier general william hold who was supposed to have commenced the war in the summer of 1812 by invading upper canadaláññ from american town of detroit.

hull enkoutered canada in augusf 1812 and withdrew about two weeks later and surrendered to a smaller force of british and indian allies. for this he was court martialed and sentenced to death. madison actually reprieved the death sentence though not the verdict of the court. hull argued in his defense that he had good reasons for his decision. basically he did not trust his army to do the job. he assumed that they would fail in advance. he said that if he had trained to invade canada and failed and the brishish counter attack all the women and children in the town of detroit. now madison was not very sympathetic toward hull when he fought about back this episode in 1827 nor have most historians since 1812 been very sympathetic towards hull.

madison said hull's experience and knowledge should have lived him to take greater risks for a victory than he did. and he wrote, i quote, what a contrast would be the success so easy at the outset of the war. a triumphant army would have seizes upper canada and the importance command of lake eerie would have fallen to us. the indians would have been neutral or submissive to our will. the general will of the country would have been kindled into enthusiasm and enlistents would have been accelerates. volunteers would have stepped forward and doubled in confidence. the intrigues of the suspected would have been smothered in their embryo state. in short what madison was claiming here was that the united states never recovered from the opening defeat of the

war. that the impact of this set back was so serious that it hampered all other aspects of the prosecution of the war. this is at least an arguable case that presumably historians are going to continue to argue about. that was how5

qualification after qualification to the judgment and within excess of qualification. now, two verdicts might be one is to throw up their hands and despair and say if the problems of waging a war of 1812 was so difficult than the real eror madison made was the war at all. the nation was in no condition to wage the war and risked the republic by doing so. you might say this is true enough. the evidence of the war would seem to back up that sort of judgment. i would simply point out at this juncture that that answer would have left madison with no solution to the problems the nation was facing in the year of 1811 as he was making the

critical decisions. the other point we might make about this is that we really lack appropriate yardsticks to measure madison's performance in the nation's history. today all success drawsyp heavi on the presidencies of the abraham lincoln and roosevelt. centu century, george washington's role as a revolutionary war general isn't really an appropriate analogy for us to use here. early 19th century americans, madison included, held deeply engrained fears about the potential abuse of executive power in times of war. the way they saw it, it was a short road to monarchy and tyranny. furthermore to the extent that madison and his contemporaries did think about the nature of executive power, they did not believe it was the role of the

president either literally or metaphorically to rally the troops either in the army or among the public at large. wage. madison had seen john adams try to do something very similar at the end of the 1790s. out of his mind and had fark@>e exceeded the executive power of that time. these concerns led madison to act with greater restraint during÷qn1 the war. now that might seem to be a fairly bleak picture but the picture need not so bleak with all of these failures that historians talk about, there were some successes and

achievements. if the united states did not decisively win the military contest. it did not lose the war either. the british cannot and should not claim that because the americans did not achieve their stated war aims that the british or kcanadians simply won the wa. by the summer, the british had ste staked out some fairly large claims that they might advance against the united states. there was talk about altering the boundaries of the united britain has control of the great lakes, things like that. the point to make about all of this is that in 1814, the britishkív armies failed to delr the goods. the british army failed despite the fact that they managed in the course of this failure. when the terms of the treaty

came out, it was the british who felt that they had lost something and the americans had felt that they had won something. the british were somewhat embarrassed that they had not incisii ininsignificant military power of the united states. this is why many historians have decided the war of 1812 was merely a draw. i don't find that term entirely satisfactory. a draw to me implies that two fairly evenly matched forces failed to achieve success in a conquest. the united states and great british were not evenly matched after 1812. there are notable a symmetries on both sides which in fact made it very difficult for either to press on conclusively. the war ended not so much as a

was born in the inability to find ways to continue the conflict. had it come to that point in the end of 1814, both eventually would have settled for a peace to restore the status quo. we might even qualify that verdict a little further. nobody won we might say but that does not mean there were no losers in the war. all historians agree that the real losers in the war of 1812 were the indian peoples. a good many of whom fought on the side the british but a significant number also fought on the side of the united states. americans tend to forget that some indians fought for the americans during the war of 1812. regardless of their choices, all indian participants in the war lost very heavily. they suffered

1ldisportionately in the number casualties they incurred and as the price of peace in 1814 and 1815, they were forced to cede large areas of land to the united states. these land successions particularly in the gulf coast and regions to the south of the great lakes ensured that the united states was going to dominate in the future. i say that because this is an outcome that could not inñ have been taken for granted in 1811. in hindsight it21!h&ooks sort o inevitable but the fact we shouldn't read history from behind. it was not as inevitable as we might like to think. those outcomes to the war of 1812 set the stage for future american expansion across the continent until by the time we get to 1848, there was no doubt that the united states is the

supreme power on the north american continent and that the survival of great britain's kol kne , colonies will be on american good will and tolerance of the british. influence of those be felt well into the late 19th century. he did this while at the same time trying to preserve his vision of what sort of nation the united states should be and he did not use the emergence of war to bring about changes in tñ form of its government. the war of 1812 was one of the few wars in the nation's history that was fought without any restrictions on the civil liberties of its critics or other people in the nation. that was a decision that madison was determined to uphold.

he did not as i've alreadyjeñzv mentioned want to see a repetition of the policies of the alien saidition acts that6ç adams had resorted to so this is a rather tangled picture admittedly but in the complicated nature of these developments, there were some successes. i think madison probably should be given credit for some of them. thank you very much. [ applause ]f:kñ the floor is open. >> do you recognize mr. mud or

am i speaking out of turn. >> if you want to, you can. yes, sir. >> okay. >> given the fact that the congress did declare a war. given the fact that madison did not like to grap lb lapells or campaign why do historians make him the only president who is given soul ole ownership of a w >> well. i'm not sure i would agree with the premise. people said pretty b$"÷uncharit things about the war in the 18 foer 40s. i think it's inconceivable that there would ever be a war with  time had he not insisted on it for his own reasons but i think to come back to the premise of your question, the question is that madison seems to be a convenient

scapegoat. he's where he can locate all blame because we have in fact realistic expectations of what a president might have accomplished at that point in the nation's history. we say well, lincoln, roosevelt is what it takes to be a successful commander in chief in time of war but i think no president could have operated that way in the early 19th century. institutional and other developments had just not taken place in american political development at that time i think to have made that possible for a president to do that. so the war of 1812 is a mess. how do we explain the mess? historians have done. it's what critics at the time did when they wish to criticize the war and all that seems to be going wrong with

histofstory like that. >> thank you. if my memoryg]ñ there's a provision in the treaty of gent, i think the last provision that talks about a promise to deal with the indian issue and native-american issue and slavery. why was that put in there and whatever happened? >> in both cases affectively nothing. to give you the short answer first. the provision relating to the slave trade is that theó[&/ br inserted that in the treaty and were trying toqxfu make the uni states -- the united states undertook to take more active steps in the suppression of the atlantic slave trade which -- british was the only nation in the world that was seriously interested in doing even though the united states also abolished the atlantic trade in 1808. the british put it in. the americans agreed to sign thf

treaty with that in it. but the americans were very bad in enforcing that. they did not really cooperate with the british in the suppression of the trade. one of the worst offenders was john adams. who signed the treaty of gent who was the principle american think john adams wouldl4buç enf the suppression of the atlantic slave trade when he was president a few years later. one reason was that it would have allowed british naval vessels to stop american merchant american and slafrs on the coast of africa and say let me see your cargo and manifests. this was too much8h÷ñpjfú. john quincy adams was going to be one of the last american presidents. he was a very considerable

anni anglophobe in his own right. the other is an agreement that the united states and british would undertake to restore the indians toñoaá the status that had enjoyed in the year 1811, the year before the war broke out. now the british insisted on this. even though we know as they were doing this they were in the process of about throwing their indian allies to the wind just as they had in fact had done at the conclusion of the american revolutionary war in 1782, 1783. the british put there was largely a face saving device because at the beginning of the negotiations, the british had insisted on the establishment of this indian buffer state that professor lambert had preferred to earlier. that went no where.

the british ministered told their negotiators at gent, drop that. we're not prepared to rupture the talks over that. so the british came up with this as a face saving formula for the purposes of diplomatic negotiations. the americans accepted it. probably neither side in gent in the extent to how bad the indians had been defeated and how badly they would suffer in terms of land sessions. for example, andrew jackson as he ended the creek war in the middle of 1814, took 23 million acres of land fromñrf÷ the cree indians. now under the terms of theói;-x treaty, you might think was supposed to go back. but the americans accepted because one they didn't think there was any realistic chance

of enforcing it and there wasn'÷ and the americans were not prepared to see8fñ the negotia break up over a point like that at that stage. that time, too. the result was it was pretty much a dead letter. nobody took any notice at least became president a few years lates later. >> thank >> the war 1812 is always thought to have been af or loss because the new englanders wrote most of the history books. >> yes. there's a certain amount of truth to that. >> the theory is one reason why we regard the war of 1812 as a failure is that new englanders t came to write most of the histories. that is true and of course the classic case in point is henrybr

adams. who was the son of president's great grandson the presidents s whofo wrote the classic historyf the united states inon this rint period.hiod. he waxed eedgy(d eloquent abou floors of these virginian presidents not that adams was simply sympathetic to the new ta áip r(t&háhp &hc% he suspected they were a little disloyal but that bias hasthat s entered i pét$e history. there weren't asúbk2v southerners writing as this were new englanders. so yes, there is a certain9? pt to that.p:dñc >>d÷&úñ madison faced a serioar attempt to remove the cede of government from the patomic yet i find little in madison's papers about the subject.n,zyjt

the point was it was going nowhere. but i did find some documentary evidence that it is not in madison's papers that madison let it be known that if that md billis passed, he would veto it. the source of that is not madison himself but it can be m

>> where would you say are the most serious kargts of the war of 1812? >> what were the most serious casualties in the war of 1812? well, i suppose we should say casualty in any war is the loss of life. so how many americans were killed in the war of 1812?war this is rather difficult to calculate. nobody sort of kept precise ca figures on this sort of thing. the estimate that's given is that aboutst 2.5 thousand americans who served in the regular army were killed or died of wounds. in other words they died as a

direct result of combat in the t war. i did some calculations, and i . found that in fact, about 10% o more of the army died of more o disease, sickness, and other causes that are not directly related to the battle.at are n they were simply a product of as very unhealthy nature of military camps, the inability op army commanders to provide decent sanitation, which disease, if it got into an army camp could go through and take e very heavy toll on life and substantially more men on the american side died as a result of disease and sickness than they ever did -- than the british did to them. there's a little bit of colateral damage that occurs when militia dies a result of t british raid as a result of whae we've been talking about.ab we might estimate that sort of p

sayer perhaps 15 or 15,000 americ, 16,000 americans died in one way or another as a result of the war of 18 twef12. the indians suffered a rather higher percentage of losses. pr we don't know precisely because weve don't have very good figurr for indian population. of course, the numbers that the indians that are operating frome a far smaller demographic base so the impact of heavy losses will be much greater proportionately on indians. so the indians lost a great many warriors, particularly but alsoo women and children from starvation as a result of the a war. that made it all the easier for americans after 1815 to remove f some of these people.ately

ship them further west. did fac that this did facilitate american expansion acrossth the continent. on top of that, i'm sure you can throw in property damages. the result of british raids. i guess probably impossible to put a precise figure on that. the british captured a fair fewh americane merchants during the t period but the americans also da captured a good many british merchants. i think it's impossibleto to pua figure on that but if we say that human damage is necessary, the greatest damage that any war inflicts, that's what it looks c like on the american side.ink wc i don't think we can do much better than that given our current state of knowledge. >> yes. >> the question. sort of counter factual unterfa speculation, if the british

prevail at chalmet, does the treaty of gent get rewrite en. >> the answer to that is no. books want to say that jackson saved the nation. the answer is no. the chronology is quite straight forward. the treaty of gent was signed on the 24th of december, 1814. it was ratified and according to the law of nations, a treaty cannot come into affect until both governments, the principles of the diplomatics who have beeo doing the negotiation have ratified it. the british government ratified. the treaty of gent on the 28th of december, before they sent ie across the atlantic to see what sort of reception it made in t s

washington. the battle of new orleans was a foughtns on the 8th of january, 1815. the news of the battle and treaty didn't get into washington until early februaryd 1815 and then the war comes to an end. thome british by ratifying the h treaty have said to the americans we want this war to bv over. i under the international law, for the war to have continued after the british ratification, the e americans would have had -- that would have had to have been an american decision. nobody in washington in february of 1815 said we should throw ouo this treaty in order to carry out the war. that is a great myth that andrea jackson -- this is not so they that jackson's victory did not have consequences for american politics. would jackson have become president without that battle?ot

but no. the british had signalled quite clear that the b war was over that the americans were confronted with a choice. wei we agree with them. we don't agree with them.agree they chose to agree. >> in more recent years, the was has been referred to as the -- . america's second war for independence. could you comment on that? >> well, the word literary critics use is it's a trope.hi it's not a word i greatly like. but it emerges about the time oa the war itself. it emerges sort of, the first ,e books -- american books on the war of 1812, they start appe appearing as early as 1816. if you read those books, th particularly from 1816os throug to the civil war, they all taket this line that america -- the classic place you can find this

is a thousand page book.sand-pag a thousand pages, written by a d new york journalist. it's probably one of the most widely known 19th century and th sources on the history of the war. this is exactly the line that lawson takes. he says in 1783, we became free from great britain. not we did not become independent because the british did not respect our independence. the proof was the way they treated us during the napoleon wars. so when he gets the treaty of g gent, he writes afterwards, he says the british have given up. america finally becomes not onlt free but independent. behind that's the assumption behind tht notion that the warhe of 1812 w necessary to complete the independence that was supposedly won between 1766 and 1783.1783.

it's going to take another war to v vindicate and consolidate that independence. that's the dominate myth thatmyr runs through american historiese of the war for w much of the 19 century. it's still there in 20th century histories but 20th century accounts have added additional a layers ofti causation and complication as professional historians dug more into the au] records. [ applause ] athursday on cspan, a grig ulture committee hearing on improving meals in schools. here is a look. >> of course kids like nonwhole grains. yes, that's what they prefer.

they like sugar even more. you give a child a choice would you like to have sugar for lunch or fruit or vegetables they are going to pick sugar. it's what they like. their taste buds love it but we have to be the adults in the room. he just don't give kids the foods they want. you have to give them and teach them thousahow to eat well for whole lives. that takes leadership. determination. creativity. i love the fact that you told your school district kick three colors everyday. my children when i was teaching them about nutrition when they are four, five, six, that's how we did it. how many colors can you put on your plate? they loved that. because i fed my children steamed vegetables as children, they are only liked steam vegetables. they don't want butter on it or cream. they want steamed vegetables. they've been eating fruit at every meal since they were babies. my kids as a consequence because they are introes deuduced to he

foods at every meal they prefer healthy kids. a lot of these kids are not getting healthy kids at home. a typical meal will be a burger and fries. of course they prefer a burger and fries. that's what they've been fed since they were little. we have to do more. i feel that yes, to senator hovan, it is easy to like flexibility but let's not serve refined foods at lunch. let's actually push them to eat something healthy that makes them healthy and reach their full potential. when i kid is obese, he's doesn't reach his full potential. he can't concentrate. he's often made fun of. he has low self-eft esteeelf-es. he doesn't reach his full potential or her full potential. so i do not want to back off these nutrition standards. let's figure it out. we can figure it out.

>> thursday a senate agriculture committee hearing on efforts to improve nutrition in school s meals. you can see it at 8:00 p.m. eastern on cspan. with live coverage of the u.s. house on cspan and the senate on cspan 2, here we compliment that coverage by showing you the most relevant congressional hearings and public affairs autoveevents and weekends we're home to cspantv, nations that tell our story. the civil war's 100th anniversary. american artifacts. history book shelf. with the best moan american history writers. the presidency, looking at the policy and leg assies of our nation's commanders in chief. lectures in history with top college professors delving into american's past and our new series, real america featuring

archival government and educational films through the 1930s and 17s. funded eed by your local cables satellite provider. >> coming up tonight on american history tv in prime time, day one of a symposium marking the 200th anniversary of the burning of washington d.c. and the war of 1812. first andrew lambert on the naval aspects the war. then catherine algel, author of a perfect union. dolly madison and the creation r of the american nation. madis that's followed by allen taylor talking about his book, the low civil war of 1812. c later, remarks by john stagg, editor of the james madison pera papers at the university of virginity. coming up, day one of an symposium on the british burning the washington and the war of

1812. hosted by the white house historical association.u.s. the u.s. capital historical society. next, andrew lambert, author of challenge, britain against in te america in the naval war of 181" 1812. this is 45 minutes. is my name is stuart mcloren. i'm the president of the white house historical association where we are privileged to convene today for this significant event.fica we're honorednt to have with us today, two members of the board of directors of the white house historical association, the honorable ann stock and mr. night kimplinger and mr. willia almon whose the curator of the t white house. this kmcommemorates one of herio

america's most overlooked extrao conflicts with the gatherinrdg these extraordinary scholars any experts in the history field. the next two days are sure to educate, inspire and enhance our understanding of the war of 1812. our mission echos the symposiumh goalos echoing the public on thu history of white house. we're so pleased to host this day and a half of symposium here at the associations david m. r r rubenstein center for the study of white house history.th this event could not be possiblp without the partnering and the f support of our cosponsored, the united states capital historica society, and james madison's mont peyer. we thank these two wonderful partners for being with us today and the contributions they've made to make this a successful event. we would also like rd to expend a special thanks to the kimart kir company who generously under

wrote a significant portion of . today's symposium. if you're with us tonight for s dinner, you will receive a speciallyp commissioned group fr them.we'r the association is grateful for the partnership that we've had for 34 years in the production of our white house christmas ornament. this began in 1981 and is a vern significant part of what we do given that the proceeds from the sale of this ornament go to support our work with the white house. please be sure to take a moment to visit our shop which is right behind the courtyard you today as well as online at www.white househistory.org finally, to our audience here at the white house historical association in and washington and those watching on cspan from across america, we w welcome you to hear those 14

prestigious centers share their work and guide us through one oo the most significant periods in. our nation's history. it is my pleasure to welcome the president and ceo of james madison's mont peyer to introduce our session one >> presenters. [ applause ] >> good afternoon. it is so wonderful to be here.il i also wanted to say that our board chair greg may joins us as well as many board members. i hope you get a chance to meet some of our leadership. we could not be more pleased than to have this opportunity to help sponsor this next two days i just love the title.ica america under fire. mr. madison's war and the burning of washington city. declaring war, congress and the president exercised powers thate were granted to them by the u.s. constitution and for our young n country, only threetr decades m removed from the firstfr war of

independence the war of 1812 ofe tested many of the ideas in thet constitution and it called upond madison to abide by the limitations of powers that he had worked so hard to institutee as we commemorate the sobering i events of 1814, this panel will be shedding light on the new sh sk scholarships and oideas and outcomes of the war. fittingly we begin with the discussion of the british in the war. i am pleasedro to welcome mr. ti lambert. in addition to writing abouttit british strategy in technology, he's the author of an award winning volume on the war ittai titled, the challenge, british against america in the naval war of 1812. he was just honored with the anderson award. welco ifmi i have you help me join in

welcoming mr. lambert to the podium. [ applause ]u >> thank you very much for that extremely kind introduction. the award of a medal for writino a book about the war of 1812 isi somewhat ironic back home 't because in all k honesty we don know it happened. it's a great honor for me to be here today for which my thanks ghou to t go to the team at the white house historical association and all of those h who managed to p thisin splendid event together. it's important to take a look outside and see what everybody else isybod doing at the same t where this particular set of in events in this country fits into the bigger picture and really my job this afternoon is to situat the warsi of 1812 in world histo

and to put that relationship onh between britain and america in a the wider world. the war of 1812, posed serious problems for governments on both sides of the atlantic.in the u in the united states president james madison's decision for war split the country. f the federalist northeast opposed the conflict that would damage o their economicul interests. while the republicans senators south and west welcomed it as at opportunity to territorial expansion and the address of iss other significant internal issues. news of the war reached a british government which had recently been reconstructed. the prime minister had just been shot in the house of commons. his replacement lord liverpool was not thought to be destined n for a long term in office. in fact, he would last 15 yearsi as prime minister but nobody knew that at the time. he was not thought to be a great leader. an inspiring insfigure.e. he was not a man with a command of the rhetoric of parliament.o, or indeed, a great public

persona. he was not a heroic figure but he turned out to be a very good manager of a cabinet at a time when the british needed gement management because the king, th, last king of this country as well, george third was sliding into a permanent madness and his regent, his son, lady george the 4th made a very poor showing on the national let alone the w international stage. leader who was the solid, reliable and made good affective uses of the sources ae hand. the british were in the 10th year of a conflict with napoleon. the war hadthe broken out in e3 1803. the issues are many and varioust but the british had been waging war for a decade.they h they had managed no the to loseb partly because they live on an island. british ministered had little

reason of optimism inly early 12 that the war would end well. the last great british victory t had been the battle in 1805 and since then the british had hungs around the mountains of europe, annoyingng the french and hopin that the rest of europe would realize that being rule bid france was a bad idea. seen some europeans had seen this but not all of them. the british were not especially worried by the american declaration of war. afterall. the united states was then quite a smalitl country. it had relatively limited reso resources and it had no great representation for having a large and powerful army or indeed particularly large navy either. what theriti british were worri about was the additional strain on their already seriously overstretched resources. l i show this slide to show that r the louisiana purchase is ntry w transformational for the unitedh states.just w

it turns into country into what it looks like the rest of the continent not just west but north and south as well. the war between britain and america was of course a consequence between the anglo french war. it was their strategy of blocking legal europe with r the extreme measure d that's brough the clash with the united states. after the destruction of his navy, napoleon had instituted ae total economic wargy against britain to try and bankrupt thee british.b napoleon understood that the basis of british power was not men, armies or even fleets, it was trade and money. if napoleon could break the cony british economy, britain would surrender. hints continental system would harness the european continent t in a war against britain.

they would exude all british trade from europe on penalty of seize your and destruction.blo the british counter blaockade, the famous orders inco counsel f exactly the reverse, it cut europe off from the rest of thef world. the europeans had to fight a 12 year long war without any ew coffee. there were a few other things they missed as well.h the british counter blockade cut europe off from africa, asia and the americas and threatened america's economic development.o from 1803 to 1812, american shippers, merchants and traders had made a lot of money being the last neutral carrier, the , last country that could carry goods from the french west indies to europe through the british blockade. they were also trading with theh british. neither the british nor the am trench treated the americans particularly kindly.