now, how do we know this? we know this because of an editorial in the administration newspaper. oh, sorry. okay. all right. i wasn't looking behind me. yes. onwards and upwards. yes, how do we know this? because an editorial in the newspaper, the national intelligence, the newspaper that coburn trashed when he burned washington in 1814, it said as much. and we know from a surviving fragment of the diary of the paper, joseph gales, that madison had dictated the contents of that editorial to the editor.

so what that means is that as early as the spring of 1811, madison was considering very seriously the need to go to war with great britain. and this is seven months before the 12th congress and the war hawks even meet in washington. they would continue with these policies for as long as it took r took for them to end this abomination of the affairs of europe. now, this was 1811. in 1811, nobody was predicting that napoleon bonaparte would be gone. you might have made that

prediction after 1812 and 1813, but in 1811, nobody was kournting kourn counting on napoleon going away any time soon. he decided he had no other option than to prepare for war against great britain. it took this decision weeks and weeks before congress knew what policies that might have to pass judgment.

maybe its spoke man worked its way through committees and votes and the house of representatives as congress prepared for war in the first six months of november -- late after november of 1811. but the primary movement is not congress. it's president madison itself. now, madison continued to try and shake policy throughout the war of 1812. admittedly, the answer is a rather mixed one.

now, rather the senate administration supports in the senate could often be out renewed with aerntiadministrati governments. the result was that the administration did not get what it wanted or it didn't get it in a sufficiently, timely manner. this could be demonstrated in a number of ways. i'll give an example. one is the decision to expand the size of the american army in the first six months of 1812. the other example is all the debates over how you financed the war in the second half of 1814. when the war is going extremely badly with the united states.

to put it simply, the expanded army was a bureaucratic nightmare. that the war department never got full control over. nobody in this room should tell congress this. we do not want to encourage bad behavior on the part of the national legislators any time in the near future. but that's what did happen towards the end of the war.

he had an opportunity to e collect. he did not use patronage in government contracts. he did not, as we might imagine johnson doing, go up to a congressman by his vote and say son, i need your vote. seeing how possible it is in fact at this point in american history. but the problem is not that madison did not try to influence what congress did, he did try to influence what congress did within the means that were unvailed to him at that time. he didn't have much control over the outcomes that he sought. let's move to another equation. how did madison manage his

cabinet as the organ of the administration during the war. to summarize, from 1809 and 1817, which is madison's tenure at the white house, madison had two secretaries of state, three attorneys general, four secretaries of the treasure and four secretaries of war. >> madison's first secretary of

war had very few ideas about strategy or tactics. he was fworsed out at the year of 1812 and his replacement was originally james monroe who could handle the details of the war department and, of course, as monroe comes back into the war department after the british burned the public buildings in washington in august of 1814, but much of what monroe did was designed to position himself to

become president in 1817. enarkting in that way, he fuelled a bitter feud with the secretary of war who ark which youly held the war for most of 1813 and 1814. the problem was armstrong wanted to be president in 1814. the problem was they never lost an opportunity to undercut each other. this was sort of a pattern of misconduct, this behavior, if you like, that culminated when the british attacked washington. on that occasion, some of you will note that armstrong declined to participate in the arrangement of him for the capital while monroe has been accused of medaling with the organization of the troops at the battle of blatansburg that probably facilitated the british advance on washington.

and i feel most americans feel madison should have stopped this. but madison did not firearmstrong or monroe. and he seemed to be too willing to tolerate colleagues who were clearly self serving. the question is why? he was not confrontational in style. he liked to avoid pleasantness, if he possibly could. but the real problem was madison had most difficulty getting anyone to serve in the cabinet at all.

he was just trying to get somebody. he had far more refusals. now, too few politicians thought that a cabinet position was entailed. now, let's say the affairs are reactive rather than the proactive quality to much of madison's decision-making. and he often appeared only when they have gotten out of hand and it was impossible to ignore any further. now, in the matters of wartime policy, he spent too much time pursuing the wrong strategies after 1812. now, what this means specifically is when the

americans invaded canada, the united states attacked in canada. the british power in north america rested on that control of montreal, quebec and maritime promises. all of this is true enough. i think it was pretty well understood that montreal was the first topic to get control of. after all that time, they moved eastwards. the campaigns in the regions with montreal were made either in response to the need to devote local defense, particularly against hostile

indians on the northwest frontier of the united states. the problem was that many of these agreements failed and in their failures, they created new authorities that required attention and resources. the result was that the united states became bogged down that did not develop according to any coherent strategy of how the larger war might be won. now, 23 that's the case, the problem of the american war effort was not so much of an effective strategy as the inability to develop sufficient military power to surmount the other obstacle's success. so, moving on, what were these obstacles to success? and how far could madison be

held responsible for. the third one was to cope with the existing problems to the north. now, its's already been mentioned today that the annex was too small to take canada. it was only a little war, 30,000 men strong. however, a statistical analysis of the registers in the surviving military equals to the period, suggest that they were probably somewhere near about

48,000 in the u.s. army by the end of the war. that's a fairly significant difference. on to have op that, you've got to consider that in terms of manpower, the united states had afternoon an valid tang of canada of about 15 to 1. you put all of that together and you think they would be able to compete. but it was not. one reason is that after the failures of the first six months of the war, political pressures of the administration required a great regular troops around the coast was 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.

that left few troops available against canada. even at the height of the war, the united states could take no more than 4,000 regular troops in canada and the irn vagss here. there simply weren't enough men. now, what do we say about the quality of these troop sns well, they were scarcely trained. i want to be careful what i'm saying here. i don't want to say that the army received no training.

it did receive training of various faults. the united states army employed three compatible efforts. this created enormous difficulties. and under the military operations at the time, training troops would always be untrained troops. it is, in fact, not until january 1815, that britain convened to address the problem on how to address the army.

but january of 1815, the war has one month to run. so is the president responsible for this? you might say that he did, but you might say that this is a sort of problem that the secretary of war can sort out. but there's no evidence that anyone in the war department had the slightest idea that this was a problem.

and and if the regular army was not very well trained, the situation was far worse. the federal government had the authority to call the international service under specified conditions. but it had no authority. those matters were left to the states. and, basically, the states did not about it. despite the fact that presidents and secretaries of war said we have a problem here. as a result, they're all associated. one is the battle of queenstown heights in october of 1812 when

the new york state militia refuse today cross over to reenforce american regular troops who had managed to gain a toe hold on the river. a crew of local militia and others were only about two-thirds of its size. the third problem i mentioned was logistic problems. that has always been seen as a very serious problem in the american war. now, besides -- by deciding to attack canada, the united states had committed itself to an offensive war that was to be waged over a frontier that was

over 1,000 miles in lejt and required it to survi from towns and cities. you just couldn'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 a very rudimentary supply. as a result, many had to be created from scratch. so it's not terribly surprising. there were enormous inefficiencies and problems in getting these supply agencies up and running and to do their job.

i think we need to place them in some sort of broader perspective on why the war of 18 the 12 was so unsatisfactory. he was disappointed that the war was not going entirely to plan. but there are some leaders, as

kat mentioned, that madison does reflect on the problems that he encountered during the war of 1812. i wanted to say something about those leaders now. they date from the mort of february. madison was responding to questions of two people. you would think that he was writing from history of the war of 1812. now, the first point is that nowhere does madison take the blame. in that respect, he was entirely unrefuted about the decision he made. he said well, why do we have to go to war? he said, well, it was the british fault. they're to blame. if they would have been more

manageable, there wouldn't have a need for a war. he said, well, it was congress's fault. if they had given me the laws that i wanted in the shape and in the time that i wanted them, i think we would see a very different picture. on top of that, madison said it's a very difficult enterprise. what he's referring to here is experiences the british had during the seven years war. and which the americans itself had encountered when two american armies had failed to take and hold quebec. madison summed this up in the following way. the difficulties were explained

by the forests, savages to be encounted and the likes and other waters to be passed. madison also listed two other factor that is he considered to be paramount. one has already be eluded to the previous talks. and that was the failure of russia in 1812. this was a subject that caused enormous controversy at the time. and he said had napoleon been

successful, it would be a fair calculation. that great brit table and its allies had been employed with the consequences of the french victory that fraet britain would be virtually unable to defend. and under those circumstances, the british would have said they have no choice. but to listen to our reasonable terns. testimony other factor was the longest and dreariest catalog that is you can read. now, we might say when it

becomes ill for madison to complain about the generals i when we looked 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 supposed to invade canada from detroit. then he withdrew about two weeks later. for this, he was court marshalled and sentenced to death. madison actually reprieved the death sentence, though not the verk of the court.

basically, he did not trust his army to do the job. the result would be a massacre of all women and children in the town of detroit. now, madison was not very sim e sympathetic towards holland when he fought back about this. most historians since have been very sympathetic. now, he did and then i quote, what contrast would be the success so easily at the out set of the war. a triumphant army and hastened at the points below.

the important command of lake erie had fallen to us. the indians could be neutral. in short, what madison was claiming here, that the united states never recovered from the opening defeat of the war. the impact was serious. that was how madison saw it at the time.

now, drawing this all together, that is that all the argument that is the hiss xx yans usually put forward to explain what went wrong in the war of 1812, can be opposite by other arguments that there were extenuating circumstances. other factors needed to be weighed in the balance. now, two verdicts might be reached in this point. one is to throw out their hands in despair and say with the problems of waging a successful war after 1812 were so difficult. around the real error madison

made was to have gone to war at all. the nation was in no condition to be waging war. with no solution to the problems the nation was facing as he understood them in the year 1811. today, all models for success in a presidency draw heavily on the presidencys of abraham lincoln and franklin roosevelt. but americans near the 19th

century lacked relevant specimens. george washington's role as a revolutionary war general isn't really appropriate. and that was first used here. early 19th century americans, madison held deeply engrained fears about the potential abuse of executive power in the time of war. the way they saw it, that was a short road to monarchy and tyranny. to the extent that madison did think about the power, they did not believe it was the role of the president to rally the troops or the public at large. other words, it wasn't the president's job to go out and campaign personally for the war he was trying to wage.

he thought madison was absolutely out of his mind. these concerns led madison to act with great restrarnt during the war, rather than listen to the dangers of going to excess. now, that might seem fitting, but the picture need not be so bleak. there were some successes and achievements. if the united states did not decisively win the military contest, it did not lose the war, either. and the british cannot and should not claim that because the americans did not achieve their state of war aims, that the americans won the war. by the summer of 1814, the

british, again, had staked out some fairly large claims that they might advance against the united states. we've heard talk of the indian butter state and there was talk to great britain having control of the great lakes and things like that. in 1814, the british armies failed to deliver the goods. when the treaty came out, it was the british who felt that they lost something and the americans felt that they had won something. the british were somewhat embarrassed that they had not been able to dispose of such a power of the united states more inclusively than they seem to have done. this is why many historians have

decided the war of 1812 was merely a draw. a draw, to me, implies that two evenly matched forces failed to reach a success. the united states and great britain were not evenly matched after 1812. there are notable asymmetries on both sides which, in fact, you may have heard that either are depressed advantages conclusively. the war then ended not so much as a draw, but a stalemate that was more of an inability of a conference to continue conflict. having come to that point, both eventually did settle for a piece that restored the status quo. and that peace was in 1814.

we might quantify that a little further. nobody won, but that does not mean that there were no losers. the real losers were the indian peoples. a good many of who fought on the side of the british. all indian partisans of the war lost. they suffered disproportionately. in 1814 and 1815, they were forced to see large areas of land to the united states. and these land sessions, particularly above the gulf coast and the regions to the south and the great lakes, ensured that the united states

was going to dominate the hartland of the american continent in 2 future. i say that because there is an out commonwealth of pennsylvania that could not necessarily have been taken for granted in 1811. but those outcomes, for the war of 1812, set the stage for future americans until the time we get to 1848, there is no doubt that the united states is the supreme power and that the survival of the great britain's canadian colonies is going to be a large matter of american goodwill or toleration for the british. now u madison presided over these developments that made a crucial role in shaping the development of the american nation state in the 19th

century. and the influence well well into the late 19th century. he did this part 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 of its government. the war of 1812, as historians would like to remind us, 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 of the nation. and that was a decision that madison was determined to uphold. he did not, as i've already mentioned, want to seek the policies of the alien sedition acts that president john adams had resorted to between 1698 and 1900 during the quasi war in france. so this is a rather tangled picture, admittedly.

but there were some successes. and i think madison probably should be given credit to some of them. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> given the fact that congress did declare war and the fact that johnson did not like to grab lapels or campaign, why is it that madison is the only president given sole ownership

of the war. >> well, i'm not quite sure i would agree with the premise. people said pretty uncharitable things in the 1840s. and i think it's inconceivable that there would ever have been a war at mexico had that time had not james k. polk had not insisted on it. but i think to come back to the preface, the answer would be that madison probably seems to be a convenient scapegoat. he's the repository where you can locate all blame. we, in fact, have unrealistic expectations of what a president might have accomplished at that point in the nation's history.

we look and say lincoln, roosevelt. others have just not taken place to make that possible for a president to do that. so the war of 1812 was a mess. how do we explain the mess? well, blame it on madison. that's what a lot of historians have done. >> yes, thank you. if my memory serves me right, there is 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, effectively

nothing, to give you the short answer. >> they were trying to make -- the united states undertook to take more active steps in the suppression of the atlantic slave trade, which wouldn't, at this point, was the only nation in the world that was serious in doimpk. the british put it in, but the americans were bad at enforcing that. they did not really cooperate. one of the worst offenders was john quincy adams who signed the treaty of gent and do you think john quincy adams wouldn't force

the suppression when he was president a few years later? no. and why did he not do this? one reason was it would have required british -- or it would have allowed british naval vessels to have stopped american merchant men from the coast of africa and say let me see your cargoes. let me see your manifests. this was too much of the sorts. john quincy adams was one of the last american presidents. so that sort of became pretty much a dead letter. the other clause is an agreement that the united states and british would undertake to restore the indians to the status that they had enjoyed in the year 1811. the year before the war broke out.

the british insisted on this. they are in the process about throwing that indian allies to the wind just as they had done in the american revolutionary war. the british was largely a space-saving device. at the beginning of negotiations, the british had insisted on the establishment of this indian buffer state that professor lambert referred to earlier. that went nowhere. they said drop that. we're not here to rupture the talks of that.

probably neither side was really familiar with 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 took 23 million acres of land on the creek indians. under the terms of the treaty, that, you might think, was supposed to go back. but the americans accepted it. one, they didn't think there was any realistic chance of enforcing it. and there wasn't. and the americans were not prepared to receive the negotiations to break up over a point like that, at that stage. they wanted out of this war by that time, too. it was pretty much a dead letter. nobody took notice, least of all, andrew jackson when he

became president a few years later. >> thank you. >> the war of 1812 was always thought to be a disaster because -- >> could you repeat that? >> oh, sorry. the theory is that one reason why we regard the war of 1812 as a failure is that new englanders came to write most of the histories. and that's -- that is true and, of course, the classic case in point is henry adams, who, of course, was the son of presidents, grandson, great grandson of president who is wrote the classic history of the united states in this period.

he suspected that they're a little disloyal. but you're right. there weren't so many southern i recalls by the middle of the 19th century. so, yes, there's a certain point. >> madison atechbted to remove the seat from the government in potomac. i wonder if you could comment on that? >> the common council of the city of philadelphia did make it known that the federal government wanted to move back to philadelphia. this was debated quite some length for about three weeks, a month in congress.

madison appears to have been largely enactive or passive behind the scenes. what happened to the bill in congress that every time it went through another reading or thicks like that, the majorities were eroded to a point that was going nowhere. but i did find some documentary evidence. it's not in ma gill son's papers. if that bill passed, he would veto. the source of that is not madison itself, but it can be documented from the period. >> what would you say were the most serious casualties of the war of 1812? ? well, oh. what were the most serious casualties. in the war of 1812?

well, i suppose we should say off the bat, the most serious casualty is the loss of life. how many americans were killed in the war of 1812. this is rather difficult to calculate. nobody kent precise if i can yours on this sort of thing. they suffered -- they died as a direct result of combat in the war. i did some calculations. and i found that, in fact, about 10% more of the army died of disease, sickness and other causes that are not directly related to the battle. they were simply a product of the very unhealthy nature of military camps.

the ability of commanders to dissolve sanitation and these sort of things. they could go through and take a very and substantially more on the american side died as a result of disease, sickness, than they ever do in the british troops. there is collateral damage, of course, that occur when militia die as a result of british raids and this sort of thing that we're talking about. i would estimate to say perhaps 16,000 americans died one way or another as a result of the war of 1812. the indians were proportionately rather higher in losses. we don't know precisely, because we don't have very good figures for indian population.

of course, the numbers with the indians were a more demographic base. so the impact of heavy losses is going to be much greater proportionately on indians. the indians lost a great many warriors particularly. but also women and children from starvation as a result of the war. and that made it all the easier for americans after 1815 to remove some of these people. ship them to the west to ultimately end up in reservations out in indian territory out in oklahoma. this facilitated american expansion. on top of that, i suppose you can throw in property damages, the result of british raids, privateering, things like that. i just thought it was impossible to get a precise figure on that. the british captured a few

american merchants. but actually the americans captured a good many british merchants. i think it's impossible to put a figure on that. but if we say the human damage is necessarily the greatest damage that any war suffers. i don't think we can do much better than that, given our current state of knowledge. yes? >> a counterfactual speculation. if the british prevail at chawmat, does history get rewritten? >> the answer to that is no emphatically. this is a myth. particularly books about andrew jackson. they say jackson saved the nation at the battle of new orleans.

the answer is no. the chronology is quite straightforward. the treaty of gent was signed on the 24th of december. , 1814. it was ratified -- and according to the war of nations, a treaty cannot come into effect until both governments, the principals who have been doing the negotiation, have ratified it. the british government ratified the treaty on the 28th, before they sent it across the atlantic, to see what sort of reception it would meet in washington. the battle of new orleans was fought on the 8th of january, 1813. the battle doesn't get to washington until early february, and then the war comes to an end. but the british by ratifying the treaty have said to the americans, we want this war to be over.

so under international law, if the war had continued after the british ratification, the americans -- that had to have been an american decision. and nobody in washington said we should throw out this treaty in order to carry on the war. that is a great myth that andrew jackson -- this is not to say that jackson did not have consequences for american politics. you know, would jackson have become president without that battle. but no, the british had signaled that the war was over. the americans were confronted with a choice. whether we agree with them or don't agree with them, they chose to agree. >> in more recent years, the war has been referred to as the america's second war for independence. could you comment on that? >> well, this is -- the literary

critics use it. it's not a word i greatly like. but it emerges about the time of the war itself. it emerges sort of -- you know, there are books on the war of 1812. they occur as early as 1816. and if you read those books, particularly from 1816 through to the civil war, they all take this line that america -- and a classic place you can find this is a 1,000-page book written by a new york journalist named watson. it's probably one of the most widely known 19th century sources on this war. this is exactly the line he takes. he said in 1783, we became free from great britain, but we did

not become independent because the british did not respect the independence. they did not respect our independence because of the way they treated us. benton actually interpreted it as a plot to reduce americans. if you get to the treaty afterwards, the british have given up, america finally becomes not only free, but independent. there is the assumption that the war of 1812 was necessary to complete the independence that was supposedly won between 1776 and 1783. it's going to take another war to consolidate that independence. and that's the myth that's run through american history for much of the 19th century. i'm still aware in the 20th century accounts that have added additional causation and

complication as professional historians add to the record. [ applause ] each week "american history tv's" american artifacts visits mums and historic places. british and american naval forces clashed for 2 1/2 hours in cumberland bay near plattsburgh, new york. it was a culmination of six days of navy and army conflict. we travel to plattsburgh where retired colonel author of the final invasion, the war of 1812's most decisive battle, takes us on a tour of the key locations to tell the story. >> pilot, joseph barron. ship, saratoga, september 11th, 1814, battle, plattsburgh, in

cumberland bay. you know, this is a battle that's lost to american history. it's the first 100th anniversary, he was known by everyone. this was a huge celebration. people knew how important the battle of plattsburgh was. but in the meantime, things have changed. that poem became the national anthem. baltimore is in the center of a populated area. and people have been tauct what took place there. and what took place there was very important. but it was a diversion. the real battle was up here. you see, if the british can take plattsburgh, there's no troops between here and washington, d.c. there's no americans -- the cavalry is not coming. and with plattsburgh gone, they can sneak down the lake, go onto p hudson and split the united states in half.

in the meantime, the treaty of talks are on. and this is a bargaining chip. if you can take plattsburgh, then you can redraw the northern border of the united states, wherever the british troop lines are at the time while the negotiations are going on. that's going to be the new northern border. what they had in mind, they didn't plan to take the united states again. this is not another revolution. what they planned was, they wanted a new northern border for the united states, not the 45th parallel, but the 43rd. they wanted the northern border of massachusetts to be the border of the northern united states. if you take that line, and you run it across the country, you take that parallel, you end up in buffalo. that means that the united states would have lost maine, vermont, new hampshire, and all of northern new york. that way, the british would have had control of the southern shore of the great lakes, and that's what they were after. but plattsburgh put a stop to that.

the british army is not in the united states, the british army is back in canada. and so when the treaty is signed on christmas eve, 1814, the status quo is what we see today. next, day two of a symposium marking the 200th anniversary of the burning of washington, d.c., during the war of 1812. first, donald hickey, author of "the war of 1812: a forgotten conflict." then, steve vogel, author of "through the perilous fight: the weeks that saved the nation." that's followed by holly shulman, at the university of virginia. and later, remarks