yes? >> thank you for a superb presentation. >> thank you. >> clifford from warrenton, virginia. i question the effectiveness of a 1,000 broadside circulation to a population that cannot read by reality, the effectiveness of their inability to read. and i also question the notion that white virginians, marylanders, would discuss the circulation of this broadside to their enslaved people. can you address that? >> yes, i can. two very good questions. one is, there is much greater literacy among the slaves in this period of time than i think we've recognized. this is probably the peak period for literacy among enslaved people. a couple of reasons. one is, it's not illegal yet to teach slaves to read and write in virginia. that will become illegal in

1832 in the wake of nat turner's revolt. until then, there's an actual fair amount of teaching slaves to read and write, particularly artisans and house slaves. the other thing is, this is also a period in which the vast majority of enslaved people in the chesapeake have become christians, and they're usually methodist or baptist and their class leaders or teachers would like many of them to be able to read the bible. so there's much more literacy than we have bargained on, and you don't need everybody to be able to read it. if there's one group of 50 who can read, he can read it to everybody else. the other thing is that people in america are lousy at keeping secrets. they are the world's worst people at keeping secrets and this comes back to bite them all time in the war of 1812. you get officers in the front line writing letters about how

terrible their troops are and they're not prepared and they're sick and they get published in the newspapers of that time. people talk about stuff. they can't stop themselves from talking. so we live in a society now where we've been conditioned for the last three generations to try to keep secrets militarily, and our government has become better and better at trying to keep these secrets. so it can be hard for us to understand this time where people were just blabbing away about everything. and we get this notion that black people and white people live in separate worlds. at that time, they didn't. and you'll get these virginians who will frankly say, we have an internal enemy and they are waiting on our tables, they are working in the fields next to us and they are hanging on everything we say and anything we say is being reported to the enemy. >> thank you very much. >> you're welcome. thank you for the questions.

yes, ralph? >> why didn't the british -- [ inaudible ] why didn't that keep going? >> okay. well, this goes to the points that andrew makes. the british don't want to be in this war. you know, sometimes these naval officers work up these real good fantasies about how great it would be to break up the united states and really stick it to the americans. but that's never the official policy of their government at home. their policy at home is, let's get out of this war as soon as we can. so they want to inflict pain on the united states but not with a goal really at the official government level of breaking up the united states, but of just getting them to give in and make a peace treaty as quickly as possible. so if we compare -- you know, at the peak, the colonial marines is a unit in the chesapeake of 360 men. you're not going to topple slavery with 360 men.

in the union force that would end up toppling slavery had 360,000 black troops. it's a whole other scale of things. and that's because the union's goal was not to try to negotiate a solution. it was to crush the south. and they realized the only way they could crush the confederacy was to enlist thousands of african-americans to help them do it. and the british never get to that point because the war goals are so much more limited for the british and at the end of the day, what do the british want? they want the united states to go back to being their number one trading partner in the world. they want to be able to resume business and that's not going to be so good if you've totally destroyed the slave system in the united states. so the goal of the policy is to inflict pain on the united states, get them to give in and then go back to a more peaceful and trading relationship that is profitable to british manufacturers again. yes? >> i'm doing research on the

slaves get on board the potomac squadron that came up the potomac river after the burn in washington. and the ship logs -- the british ship logs show they picked up slaves on several occasions and even trained some of the slaves on board the decks in small arms in preparation for fighting the americans. and i've looked at the depositions that you've looked at so well described in your book. in these same depositions by the landowners that are filed after the war and give these wonderful stories about how the slaves got to the british, they seem to be -- you can tell the landowners or the neighbors are making a big point on whether or not they went on their own accord or were forcibly taken. so i would like for you to speak about that. >> yeah. so slave masters don't like to

see these escapes as a referendum on their conduct as masters because they like to believe that they've actually treated their enslaved people, in their view, well. and so they preferred to believe that the british have come in and forced people away or -- but sometimes you find out what this force means, and it means they come in and they've told the slaves that they'll have a better life if they'll go away with them. and from the perspective of masters in the chesapeake, these are just lies. that they're not going to have a better life with the british. so the overwhelming majority of people in virginia and maryland do not believe that the british are at all sincere in what they're doing and that these slaves are going to end up ruing the day they ran away from their masters. now, there's abundant evidence that this is not true.

and there are a handful of slaves who do choose to go back to their masters at the end of the war. you can number them on the fingers of a hand. whereas you've got over 3,000 that prefer to stay with the british. and it's also untrue, it's a canard that just lives on and that the british sold at least some of them into renewed slavery during the war of 1812, and there is zero evidence that this happened. yes? peter. >> does a slave revolt have any effect on the military operations of the americans? >> yes, very much so. particularly on the ability to muster militia. so the united states has a major manpower problem of its own, which is it doesn't have enough men to invade canada properly. and they're sending almost all

of their regular troops to invade canada which leaves the defense of the coast overwhelmingly to state militias who are not trained and equipped or motivated for this job in any prolonged way, but they're out there month after month obliged to serve in harsh conditions with inadequate equipment and food and a lot of them are being pulled in from the piedmont to the tidewater and they don't like it, and one of the things that they keep coming up with why they shouldn't have to go down to norfolk and die of malaria, which is the number one killer of american troops in the chesapeake is malaria at norfolk which is a graveyard for these militiamen. the reason they come up with is, the slaves are probably going to rise up and revolt if the

militias pulled out of piedmont and went to the coast. the irony is, by all measures of violence, such as arson, poisoning, murdering of masters, even running away in the piedmont goes way down during the war. because there are so many militiamen marching back and forth on these roads that actually the slaveholders in piedmont are in more secure control than they were in peacetime. the reverse is true in tidewater where enslaved people can see the british warships, they can hear the british warships because coburn very thoughtfully has his band playing as they go up and down. coburn liked to call attention to himself. he also liked to call attention because he knew that if -- that enslaved people would come the night after they heard this warship loudly moving up and down let's say the rappahannock. >> were the slaves who escaped

house servants and artisans or were they -- which is what i would expect. >> there's a broad occupational range that slaves have in the chesapeake, and every occupation they have including field hand is very well represented. what i did find was that the number who were artisans or house slaves, they are disproportionately represented among the runaways. what that means is, i am not saying they were a majority. because a majority are probably field hands as was a majority of the enslaved population. but the proportion of those who run away who are artisans and house slaves is larger than the proportion of the enslaved population. and we find the same pattern in the civil war. that the people who are -- who feel most aggrieved by slavery are those who have a little more education, a little higher

skill, and are much clearer that their ambitions are being stifled. and the british are presenting an opportunity for freedom, what freedom means to a lot of former slaves is the opportunity to finally get the worth of their skill and to be able to hold their families together. and this is appealing across the board but the people who kind of work up the courage to make the attempt are disproportionately artisans and this shocks the hell out of their masters thinking, these are the people we've been best to, and they should be most loyal to us, and they're not. we get the same kind of rhetoric come out of slaveholders in the civil war when they are shocked their own house slaves would betray them. okay. thank you very much. [ applause ]

here are some highlights for this coming weekend. today live at 10:00 a.m. on c-span, the nebraska supreme court will hear oral argument on the keystone xl pipeline. saturday on the communicators, former fcc commissioners. with campaign 2014 gearing up, watch the latest debates on c-span. sunday at noon, kay hagan and tom tillised in from the california governor's race, democratic incumbent jerry brown and republican nominee neil kashkari. tonight at 8:00, author john yoo shares his opinion on law. and saturday on book tv's afterwards, mike gonzalez and how he thinks republicans can make gains for the hispanic vote at 10:00 p.m. eastern. and on in depth, our three-hour

conversation withi your phone calls with mary francis berry. tonight an american history tv, authors and historians talk about the burning of washington during the war of 1812. saturday on real america, the building of the hoover dam and sunday night at 8:00, the anniversary of president gerald ford's pardon of richard nixon. find our television schedule at c-span.org and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us at 202-626-3400. send us a tweet at #c123 or e-mail us at comments@c-span.org. like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. our coverage of the symposium continues with university of virginia historian john stagg.

this is a little more than an hour. >> let me introduce john stagg. he has edited so far 20 of these critical volumes of madison's personal correspondence. and we'd like another 20, john if you think you could fit that in. because of the work of john and his team, we have much more complete understanding of madison and the context of his life and really we cannot have done our work of montpelier without this incredible research. today he's going to illuminate the untrickacies of madison's presidency, including factors as the perpetsually fluctsuating cabinet and madison's later life refluctuations on his thoughts about the war. so please join me now in welcoming our colleague and our mentor, dr. john stagg.

>> thank you, cathy, for the words of welcome, and i would like to add my thanks to those of our previous speakers to the organizers of the conference today. as the bicentennial of the war approached, i found myself wondering, what is the federal government and washington going to do about the bicentennial war of 1812? it was entirely predictable that the great state of maryland would have a party, particularly in 2014 because the great state of maryland thinks it has a

franchise on the star-spangled banner and the nation's flag. i'm glad to say that we are doing something here today. and, as i say, i'm grateful to the conference organizers for that. let me start with some very general remarks about the nature of james madison's historical reputation. for the first half of the 20th century, i think, madison's standing was not high. the main reason for that was the war of 1812, which i don't think i need to belabor here at the moment. one of the most frustrating and unpopular wars ever waged by the united states. but there was also the impression that madison was really just a pale clone of thomas jefferson. the story didn't have a very

clear sense of madison as a distinctive personality in his own right. he stood too much in the shadow of jefferson. there's also another factor that historians bore in mind. that was madison at a certain point in his life, contributed not insignificantly to theories of nullification that drove the nation towards civil war in 1861. remember the virginia and kentucky resolutions of 1798. that was held against madison by national historians a long time ago. so if you looked at these rankings of presidents in order of their greatness exercises which american historians love to carry out, you'd find that madison was always in the bottom half of the class. now he wasn't right down there with people like ulysses s. grant or buchanan. he was not thought of very

highly. he was sort of best -- slightly inferior -- well, some strange things happened since then. madison's reputation has been rising. if you look at current presidential rankings, you'll see now that madison is ahead of 44 presidents to date. madison is now in the top 20. he's not way down there like he was before. recently, i saw a poll that said madison was number six. now, i'm not quite sure how to explain this. i'm just going to ask you to take my word for it at the moment. in fact, such a poll does exist. i want to say something about how we might explain this. i say this without self-reverence or flattery. i think it does owe something to

the appearance of modern founding father's editions in the second half of the 19th century. we now have a much clearer idea than previous generations of what madison contributed to the establishment of the american republic and how he might be compared to his contemporaries. on that process, i think madison has generally come to fare pretty well. he's emerged as an extensive figure. it might also owe something to the phenomenon sometimes referred to as founding sheik. whereas madison has germly had this image burnished on the wall of his contemporaries. i might even be tempted to suspect that as we've become more dissatisfied with our presidents since the 1960s, there is more competition for places at the bottom rankings. this may have had the effect of pushing up the standing of

presidents from the very distinct past. however, it does remain a problem with the war of 1812. even in the year of the bicentennial, americans are embarrassed by this war. they are confused about what happened and they are rather uncertain about whether the troops -- in any way. the campaign of this war was by and large a military fiasco and is by no means clear that the united states was the victim. at best, many historians say, the nation managed a muddled war. so i think it's something of a paradox. the historical reputation of the present rising, in the war of 1812, has not.

so i want to say more about that paradox in the next few moments. if you take almost any book on the war of 1812, and there are a great many books on the war of 1812 from the past two centuries of the event, it's easy to pull out half a dozen factors or problems which contribute to its unsatisfactory progress and rather ambiguous outcomes. some historians have linked this directly to madison. they say it's a fault of his political decisions and a result of his political style. others can be described as problems which madison as president had to contend with but he didn't do a very good job of overcoming. so what can we say about madison himself? most serious charge that is leveled against madison is that he did not want this war and that he was pushed into it by a

noisy faction of congressional war hawks who rested control of the national policy away from the executive branch. having lost that control over national policy, madison then compounded his difficulties by not providing sufficient direction and energy in his role as commander in chief. that problem was fundamental to any understanding of the war of 1812 and how we deal with it, i think, impacts how we assess any of the other factors that govern the course of the war. so our first question is, whose war was it? was it madisons or was it the war hawks? most historians, i think, still favor the war hawks. but i think this was a misplaced emphasis. the critical developments that placed the american republic on the final path to war occurred between march and july of 1811.

in march of 1811, madison learned that george had lapsed into what was going to be his final bout of sanity and it was assumed he'd have to -- he despised his father and his cabinet and his policies. it was assumed that he would replace his father's ministers with new ministers who might then modify the harsh infractions that had characterized british policy towards the united states up to that point. now madison read these reports and he sensed that there was a chance for a change in american relations. and to take advantage of that possibility, he brought into his cabinet james monroe

as secretary of state. there were a number of reasons why he did this. one reason was that monroe had previously served as the american minister in london and he had formed some personal relationships with some of these british politicians who were expected to become cabinet ministers in a reconstructed british ministry. now, this was a window of opportunity that pretty soon closed. he never changed his father's ministers despite what he felt about the man. for that reason, british policy towards the united states remained unchanged. now, admittedly the region did make a sort of conciliatory gesture to the united states by sending a new british minister to washington in the summer of 1811. madison knew that george iii's old ministers were not likely to ease up. now this prediction should come to pass, madison concluded he

woild have to adopt a much stronger policy or resistance towards great britain than he had done in the past. 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 administration newspaper, the "national intelligencer," 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 editor of that paper, joseph gales, that madison had dictated the contents of that editorial

to the editor of the "national intelligencer." 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. now the negotiations between monroe and the british minister over the summer of 1811 confirmed madison's worst suspicions. not only did the british have no intention of changing their policies, they also announced effectively that they would continue with these policies for as long as it took for them to+ end poland's domination 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 counting on napoleon going away any time soon. so in response to that fsxzs situation, madison at the end of july 1811 called the 12th congress into an early session. his reason for doing so was that he had decided he now had no other option but to prepare for a war against great britain. again, he took this decision weeks and weeks before the 12th congress met in washington before congressmen knew what policies they might have to pass judgment on. so how can we say that war hawks forced madison into a war he did not want? quite simply, we cannot say that and should not say that. it's one of these myths that's very hard to kill off, but it's simply not true. the role of the war hawks, in

fact, was very different. they were not the macons of american policy towards great britain. maybe its spokesmen worked its way through committees and votes in the house of representatives as congress prepared for war in the first six months after november 1811. but the prong mover of american policy here is not congress. it is president madison himself. now madison continued to try to shake policy throughout the war of 1812. so our next question is, how well did this work for him as a commander in chief? now there was an answer that's a rather mixed one. in most cases, the policies of the administration sought passed the house of representatives. they did not necessarily pass the senate. the reason for this is the senate is not controlled by a

simple majority of republican votes. rather, the senate -- the administration supporters in the senate could often be outmaneuvered by combinations of federalists and anti-administration republicans who didn't like james madison very much. the result was that the administration did not always get the legislation it wanted or it didn't get it in a sufficiently timely manner. and the differences between what the administration wanted and what the administration got did have an adverse effect on the implementation of policy throughout the war of 1812. this can be demonstrated in many different ways. i'll just give two quick examples. 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 that are how to finance 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. by the end of 1814, the united states is facing severe financial difficulties. congress cannot pass legislation in ways that solve those problems. the situation got so bad, i think somebody mentioned, by the end of 1814, the united states has, in fact, defaulted on the national debt. i should adhere, nobody in this room should tell congress this is happening. 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. now what would madison have done about this or could he have done?

he had the personal hold or clout over congressmen. he did not bargain for votes. he did not use patronage and government contracts as a way to get votes and he did not, we might imagine lyndon johnson doing, go up to a congressman, seize him and said son, i need your vote. i imagine that scenario is to see how impossible at this point in american history. the problem is, not that madison did not try to influence congress. he did try to influence what did within the means available to him at that time. the real difficulty is that the president didn't have very much effective power to get control over the outcomes that he sought. all right. let's move to another question. how did madison manage his

cabinet during the war? again, i think the answer is a rather mixed one. to summarize it simply, from 1809 and 1817, which is madison's tenure in the white house, madison had two secretaries of state, three attorneys general, four three secretaries of the navy, four secretaries of the treasury and four secretaries of the war. add all that together and you can see why any number of historians have said this man couldn't hold a cabinet together to save himself. this is a symptom of all things that went wrong in the war. i'm not going to review his entire history of madison relations with his cabinet. i'll just hit on the higher points. obviously, there are serious problems in the war department. that is a critical organ of government here. madison's first secretary of

war, a man named william eustice, it's very clear had very few ideas about strategy or tactics. he was largely a bureaucrat. the nature of the war office the way it was organized at this point, compelled him more or less to act as glorified quarter master general. -- he was forced out and his replacement was james monroe who could handle the details of the war department. and as monroe comes back into the war department after the british have burned the public buildings in washington in august 1814. but much of what monroe did when he was in the war department was

designed to position himself to become a president in 1817. and in acting in that way, he fueled a very bitter feud with the secretary of war, a man named john armstrong who actually held the war for most of 1813 and 1814. the problem was armstrong wanted to be president in 1817. as a consequence, neither armstrong nor monroe lost the opportunity to undercut each other throughout the war. 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 100% in the arrangement of the capitol while monroe has been accused of meddling with the organization of the troops at the battle of

bladensburg that probably facilitated the british advance on washington. i think all historians feel that madison somehow should have stopped this feud. either he should have clamped down firmly on them or he should have sat one or both of these people involved. but madison did not fire armstrong and he seemed to be too willing to tolerate colleagues who were clearly self-serving and very disputatious. the question is why? the only powerful problem i think lies in madison's personality. certainly, as has been mentioned, he was not confrontational in style. he liked to avoid unpleasantness, if he possibly could. but the real problem was that madison had most difficulty getting anyone to serve in the cabinet at all.

he went through rafts of candidates throughout the war just trying to get someone to serve on the job. he got far more refusals than acceptances. and the reality here is far too few politicians thought that a cabinet position was worth the sacrifices it entailed. madison usually had to settle for what he could get. and then he tended to retain them for as long as he possibly could. now that set of affairs is part of a reactive, rather than proactive quality to much of madison's decision-making. and he of the appeared to deal with problems only when they had gotten out of hand and it was impossible to ignore any further. now, in the matters of wartime policy, criticism is made of madison that 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 places in canada. the british power in north america rested on that control of montreal, quebec and maritime promises. but the americans, instead of going after these positions, fr fretted away their resources around lake erie. all this is true enough. it cannot be denied. i think that situation did not arise from the 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 move on eastwards to quebec 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 an 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 agreements failed and in their failures, they created new difficulties that required different attention and resources before more 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. if that's the case, the problem of the american war effort was not so much a defective strategy as the inability to develop sufficient military power to surmount the other obstacles to success. so, moving on, what were these other obstacles to success?

and how far could madison be held responsible for? most of them center around three factors. one is the defects in the u.s. army. second and related to that is an overreliance on untrained militia forces in the war and the third one was the inability of the united states to cope with the logistic problems of invading canada to the north. now it has always been said and has already been mentioned today that it was too small to take canada and most estimate that its size by the end of the war threatened it was only little more than 30,000 men strong. however, a statistical analysis of the registrars 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. it's about 15,000 men. on top of that, you have to consider in terms of manpower, the united states had an advantage over canada of about 15-1 in terms of the adult white male population. you put all of that together and you would think the united states would be able to defeat the relatively few forces 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 it distribute a great many troops around the coast. it was after the failures of the war that the united states wous again going to have to deal with more mobile british forces as

they increasingly do in 1813 and 1814. that left few troops available for offensive operations against canada. even at the height of the war, in the summer of 1814, the united states could take no more than 4,000 regular troops into canada and the invasion. and although the army fought quite credibly in 1814, there simply weren't enough men to dispose of the british positions on the peninsula or around the northern shores of lake ontario which will then permit the american army to advance eastward toward montreal. now, we turn to the matter, what we say about the quality of these troops. how well were they trained? they were scarcely trained at all. i want to be careful what i'm saying here. i'm not saying the army received

no training. it did receive training of various sorts. rudimentary level. the real problem was that the army had no uniform system of training men. in fact, the united states employed three quite imcompatible methods of trying to train men throughout the war of 1812. this created enormous difficulties for generals and higher offices who had to try to meld men trained in different ways into a unified force that was trained in a unified and single way. and under the military operations at the time, training troops would always beat untrained troops. it is, in fact, not until january 1815, that brigadier general wynnefield

scott addressed the problem of how to train the army, and what is the uniform method? but january of 1815, the war has one month to run. so is the president responsible for this? should madison have solved this problem? we said we need to train the army in a better way. you might say that he did, but you might say that this is a sort of problem that the secretary of war should sort out. that's supposed to be the expertise. but there's no evidence that anybody in the war department, or james monroe or john armstrong had the slightest idea that was a problem in the war. it was taic to officers like wynnefield scott who learned the hard way by nitty-gritty harsh experience what it took to train men under arms and, above all, to teach them not to run from

the enemy as they did in the battle of bladensburg. now because of all these defects in the army it was always necessary to supplement with militia. and and if the regular army was not very well trained, the situation was far worse than state militias. the federal government had the authority to call the militias into national service under specified conditions. but it had no authority to impose uniform methods of training. those methods were left to the states and basically, the states did nothing about it in the early 19th century. despite the fact that presidents and secretaries of war said we have a problem here. congress refused. as a result, the worst fiascos that occurred in the war of 1812 are always associated with defects in the militia. one is the battle of queenstown

heights in october of 1812 when the new york state militia refused to cross over the niagara river to reinforce american regular troops who had managed to gain a toe hold on the canadian shore of the niagara river. niagefused on the ground, but the constitution did not oblige them to serve outside the boundaries of new york state. the battle of bladensburg, august 1814, when a very motley crew of local militia and others simply fled before a british army. it was 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 hobbling the american war effort. 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 length and required to supply from towns and cities in the frontier. demographic and geographic realities are more than frontier. basically the population was far too sparse. 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 very rudimentary supply agencies in the early 19th century. as a result, many had to be re-created from scratch after 1812 during the war itself. so it's not terribly surprising there were enormous efficiencies and -- inefficiencies and problems in getting these supply

agencies running and to do their job in a proper manner. now all these factors, you will find, have been discussed at great length in books on the war of 1812. i think we need to place them in some sort of broader perspective in order to understand why the war of 1812 was so unsatisfactory. very few historians ask themselves, how did madison think about these problems, and did he ever -- in his correspondence? for the war years, the result is rather disappointing in the sense that madison did not write down very much about his reactions to the offense of the war itself, beyond saying, of course, he was day poiisappointt the war was not going according

to plan. but there some are letters in which he does reflect an the problems that he encountered during the war of 1812. i wanted 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 ahistory of the war of 1812. the furst point to make about these letters is nowhere does madison take the blame for anything that went wrong. in that's respect, he was entirely unrepentant about every decision he made during the war. he said why do we have to go to war? well, it was the british fault. they are to blame. if the british would only be more reasonable, even by the matter of only a few weeks.

in response to the charge, it was put to him that his administration failed to press the nation for war adequately. he said, well it was congress' fault. if they had given me the laws i wanted in the shape and in the time i wanted them, i think we would have seen a very different picture. on top of that, madison said and perhaps he shouldn't have said this, by the way, invading canada, if you look at it from a historical perspective, it's a very difficult enterprise. and what he was referring to here was the experiences the british had during the seven years war and which the americans themselves had encountered in the opening years of the revolutionary war when two american armies failed to take and hold quebec in the opening months of the american revolution. madison summed it up in the following way. and i quote. the difficulties, quote, by the

forest we penetrated, savages to be encountered and the likes of what is to be parched in order to reach a distant theater dist where he was at home in the midst of all his for tress, closed quote. he also admitted two parparadox. one was the failure in 1812. this was one of extreme controversy and has continued to cause some controversy since. but 1927, madison admitted something he never openly admitted during the war itself, and that was that he expected napoleon to defeat the russians and take them out of the war. and he said that had napoleon

been successful in the war in 1812, it would be handled -- these are his words -- a fair calculation, closed quote. great britain and its european allies would have been employed dealing with the consequences of a french victory that great britain would virtually be unable to defend canada. under the 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 full quality of american generals during the war. if you read any history of the war of 1812, it's one of the longest and dreariest catalogs that people complained about and found countless excuses for not

doing what they were supposed to. we might say when it comes to matters that he complained about the generals, and had assigned most of them and had a role in selecting them, but when we look at this part of the war closely, we see madison is not so intent on blaming all the generals as he was in faulting one general in particular. and that general was brigadier general william holt who was supposed to invade the british in 1812 from detroit. howell entered canada in 1812 and then withdrew about two weeks later and surrendered to a small force of british allies. for this he was sentenced dead. madison made a death sentence.

howell 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, and if he said that he had tried to invade canada and failed and the british had counterattacked, the result woofb would have been a massacre of all the women and children. madison was not very sympathetic towards howell when he fought back about this. it was in 1927. and howell since -- madison had not been very sympathetic toward howell. he said his experience should have led him to take greater risks for a victory. then he wrote, and i quote, what contrast would be success at the outset of the war? they would have seized canada

and hastened to drown the armies at the points below that's going toward the atlantic ocean. the point of command for lake erie to have fallen with us would be neutral or submissive, the general will of the country would have been killed into enthusiasm and enlistments would have been accelerated, volunteers would have stepped forward with double confidence and alacrity and they would have been smothered in their embryo state, closed quote. in short, what madison was claiming here was that the united states never recovered in the opening defeat of the war, and that the impact of this setback was so serious that it hampered all other aspects of the prosecution of the war. this is at least an arguable case. there are presumed to be historians that will continue to argue about it, but that was how

madison saw it at the time. now, drawing this all together, what am i trying to say here? and that is that all of the arguments that historians usually put forward will explain what went wrong in the war of 1812 can be offset by other arguments in effect that there were extenuating circumstances of the factors that needed to be weighed in the balance of war any different or measured judgment can be made, both about the war itself and about madison's role as commander in chief. in other words, we can carry this process on endlessly in qualification after qualification. now, two verdicts might be reached from this point. one is to throw up our hands in despair and say, these are the problems of waging a successful

war after 1812. the real error madison made was to have gone to war at all. they were in no condition to have waged a war and it was better than sheer folly to risk the fate of doing so. you might say this is true enough. they seemed to back up that judgment. but that answer would have left madison with no solution to the problems the nation is facing as he understood them in the year 1811, which is when he was making the critical decisions. the other part that we might make of it is that we really lack appropriate yardsticks for madison at this point in american history. today all models for successful war of presidencies draw heavily

on the presidencies of franklin roosevelt and george washington. george washington's role as a revolutionary war general isn't really an appropriate analogy for us to use here, and early 19th century americans, madison included, held deeply engrained fears about the potential abuse of executive power in time of war. t the way they saw it, that was a shortened road to monarchy and tyran tyranny. they did think about the negative peril, they did not believe it was the role of the president, neither literally or metaphorically, to rally the troops among the army or among the public at large. in other words, it wasn't the president's job to go out and campaign personally for the war that he was trying to wage. madison had seen john adams try

to do something very similar at the end of the 1790s, and if you read madison's accordance about john adams, he thought john adams was absolutely out of his mind, and in fact he exceeded priorities of all executive p pallor at that time. these concerns led madison to act with greater restraint during the war rather than risk the dangers of going to excess. now, that might seem to be a fairly bleak picture, but the picture need not be so bleak, perhaps. with all these failures the historians talk about, there were some successes and achievements. they did not win the war, but they 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 the canadians simply won the

war. in the summer of 1814, the british negotiated fairly large claims that they might bounce against the united states. we've heard talk about altering the boundaries of the united states to make sure great britain has control of the great lakes, things like that. what we make about all this is in 1840, the british armies failed to deliver the goods f whatever the goals might have been. when the terms of the treaty came out, it was the british who felt they had lost something and the americans had failed, they had won something. the british was somewhat embarrassed for not being able to dispose of such insignificant military power of the united states than they seemed to have

done. 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 contest. but the united states and great brit an were n-- braitain were matched in the war of 1812. the war then ended not so much as a draw but of a stalemate that was borne of the inability of the confidence to find ways to continue conflict. had it come to that point as it did in 1814, both would have settled for a peace that restored the status quo, and that peace was signed christmas

1814. we might even qualify that verdict a little further. nobody won, but that doesn't mean there were no losers during the war. all historians agree that the real losers in the war of 1812 were the indian people, a good many of whom fought on the side of the british, but a significant number also fought on the side of the united states. americans tend to forget that they fought in the war of 1812. but regardless of their choices, all indian partisans in the war lost very heavily by disproportionately the number of casualties that occurred. they were forced to cede large areas of land to the united states. and these land sessions, particularly off the gulf coast and the regions to the south of

the great lakes ensured that the united states was going to dominate the heartland that the americans conquered in the future. i say that because this was an outcome that couldn't necessarily have been taken for granted in 1811. in hindsight, it was sort of evident that we should not read history from hindsight. the outcomes to the war of 1812 set the stage for future american extension across the continent until by the time we get to 1948, there is no doubt that the united states is the supreme power in the north american continent and the survivor of the great american colonies is going to be a large measure of good will and toleration. now, madison presided over these developments and would play a crucial role in shaping the

development of the american nation state in the 19th century. the influence of those developments fell well into the 19th century. he did this 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 the war to bring about changes in the nature or form of its government. the war of 1812, as historians like to remind us, was one of the few wars in the nation's history which was fought without any restrictions on the civil liberties of its critics for other people in 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 reputation of the acts that president john adams had resorted to between 1798 and 900 during the quasi war with the france. so this is a rather tangled

picture, admmittedladmittedly, complicated nature of these developments, there were some successes, and i think madison probably could be given credit for some of them. thank you very much. [applause] >> the floor is open. do i recognize mr. mudd or am i speaking out of turn? >> if you want to, you can, yes, sir. given the fact that the congress did declare a war, given the fact that madison did not like to grab lapels or campaign, why is it american historians make

madison the only president who is given sole ownership of a war? >> well, i'm not quite sure that i would agree with the premise. people said pretty unchartable things about something called the poltz war in the 1840s, and i think it's inconceivable that there would have been a war with mexico at that time a james k. polk not insisted on it for his own reasons. but i think to come back to the premise of your question, the answer probably is that madison seems to be a convenient scapegoat. he is a repository where you can locate all blame, in a sense. while 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, well, lincoln, roosevelt is what it takes to be a successful commander in chief in time with war. but i think no prison 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 prison to do that. so tif the war of 1812 is a mes, how do we explain the mess? well, blame it on madison. that's what a lot of historians have done. that's what critics at the time did when they wished to criticize the war and all that seemed to be going wrong with it. so we recycle stories through history like that. >> yes, thank you. if my memory -- >> oh, sorry. thank you. >> if my memory serves me right, there is a provision in the treat of gent, i think the last provision, that talks about a promise to deal with the indian issue, 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 first. the provision relating to the slave trade is that the british inserted that in the treaty, ask they we -- and they were trying to make the united states undertake to take more active steps in the suppression of the atlantic slave trade. which at this point was the only nation in the world that was seriously interested in doing, even though the united states also abolished the atlantic trade, i think, in 1808. the british put it in, the americans agreed to sign the 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 here was john quincy adams who signed the treaty of gent.

he was the principal american negotiator at gent, and do you think john quincy adams would enforce the suppression of the atlantic slave trade when he was imprisoned a few years later? no. and why did he not do this? one reason was it would have required -- it would have allowed british vessels, naval vessels, to have stopped american merchant men and slaves from the coast of africa and say, let me see your cargo, let me see your manifest. this was too much of the sort that smacked of the policies the british had engaged in the years before 1812, and john quincy adams was one of the last american prisoners. he was a very significant anglophobe in his own right, so that became pretty much a dead letter. the other clause you're referring to is an agreement that the united states and the british would undertake to restore the indians to the status they have 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 throwing their indian allies to the wind just as they, in fact, had done at the conclusion of the american revolutionary war in 1782 and 1783. the british put their -- it was largely a fight-saving device. at the beginning of negotiations, the british had insisted on the establishment of this indian buffer state that professor lambert had referred to earlier. now, that went nowhere. the british ministers told their associater at gent, drop that. we're not ready to be over that. so the british came up with this as a face-saving formula. for the negotiations, the

americans accepted it. probably neither side in gent in 1814 was really familiar with the extent to how badly 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 on the creek indians. now, under the terms of the treaty, that, you might think, was supposed to go back. but the americans accepted it because, one, they didn't think there was any realistic chance of enforcing it, and the americans were not prepared to see the negotiation 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 any notice of it, least of all andrew jackson when

he became president a few years later. >> thank you. >> yes. >> why is the war of 1812 always thought to have been a disaster or a loss? it's because the new englanders wrote most of the history books. >> yes, there is a certain amount of truth to that. 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 is true, and, of course, the classic case in point is henry adams, who, of course, was the son of presidents, great-grandson of presidents who wrote the classic history of the united states in this period. and he waxed eloquent about the floors of these virginian prisons, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. not that adams was particularly

sympathetic to the new englanders. he suspected they were a little disloyal. but you're right, that sort of bias has entered into the history. and there weren't so many southerners writing the history of the nation by the middle of the 19th century as there were new englanders. so yes, there is a certain point that -- yes. >> madison faced a serious attempt in congress to remove the seat of federal government from the potomac, yet i find very little in madison's papers about the subject. i wonder if you could comment to us about that. >> well, you're right, there is very little newspapers about it. the council of the city of philadelphia after the burning of washington did make it known to the administration that if the federal government wanted to move, they were welcome to move back to philadelphia, which, of course, is where they had been before 1800. and this was debated at quite

some length for about three weeks or a month in congress. madison appears to have been largely inactive or passive behind the scenes. what happened to the bill in congress that went through another reading and things like that, the majority was eroded. po nowhere. but i did find some documentary evidence that's not in madison's papers that madison let it be known that if that bill passed, he would be killed. the source for that is not madison himself, but it can be documented from the period. yes? >> 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 in any war is the loss of life. so how many americans were killed in the war of 1812? this is rather difficult to calculate, nobody kept precise figures on this sort of thing. the estimate is given at about 2,500 americans in the regular army that 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 battle. they were simply a product of the very unhealthy nature of

military camps, the inability of army commanders to provide decent sanitation and these sorts of things. if they got into an army camp, they could go through and take a very heavy toll on life. and substantially more men on the american side died as a result of disease, sickness, than they ever did from anything the british did to them. then, of course, there is a bit of collateral damage that occur when militia die as a result of british raids of the sort we've been talking about. we say approximately 15,000 to 16,000 americans died one way or another as a result of the war of 1812. the indians suffered, i think, proportionately a rather high percentage of losses. we don't know precisely because we don't have very good figures for indian population.

they are more guesses. but, of course, the numbers of the indians were operating from a far smaller demographic base. so the impact of heavy losses is going to be much greater proportionately on indians. so 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 america after 1815 to remove some of these people, ship them further west to go to reservations in oklahoma. this did facilitate american expansion across the continent. then on top of that, i suppose you can throw in property damages as a result of british raids, privateering seizures, things like that. i think it's probably impossible

to put a precise figure on that. the british kept a few records in the merchants period, but american propriety is also captured by a few british merchants. i think it's impossible to put a figure on that. but if we say human damage is necessary, the greatest damage that any war inflicts, that's what it looks like, i think, on the american side. i don't think we can do much better than that given our current state of knowledge. yes? >> i have sort of a counterfactual speculation. if the british prevail at shamet, does the treaty of gent get rewritten? >> the answer to that is no, emphatically. this is a myth that is perpetuated by books, particularly books about andrew jackson. i want to say jackson saved the

nation at the battle of new orleans. the answer why it is no, the chronology is quite straightforward. the treaty of gent was signed on the 24th of december, 1814. it was ratified -- according to the law of nations, a treaty cannot come into effect until both governments, the principals of the diplomats that have been doing the negotiation, have ratified it. the british government ratified the treaty of gent on the 28th of september before they sent it across the atlantic to see what sort of reception they made in washington. the battle of new orleans was fought on the 8th of january, 1815. the news of the battle didn't get to washington until late february 1815 when the war comes to an end. but the british, by rat fifying

the treaty, have said to the americans, we want this war to be over. so under international law, for the war to have continued after the british ratification, the americans -- that would have had to have been an american decision. and nobody in washington in february 1815 said we should throw out this treaty in order to carry on the war. but no, that is a great myth that andrew jackson -- this is not to say that jackson's victory did not have consequences for american politics. would jackson have overcome prison without that battle? but no, the british had signalled quietly that the war is over, but the americans were confronted with the choice. we agree with them, we don't agree with them. they chose to agree. yes? >> in more recent years, the war has been referred to as

america's second war for independence. can you comment on that? >> the word literary critics use is a trope. it's not a word that i greatly like. but it emerges about the time of the war itself. the first american books on the war of 1812, they start appearing as early as 1816. and if you read those books particularly from 1816 through the civil war, they all take this line, that america -- and the classiest place you'll find this is a thousand-page book written by new york journalist called binsonj. lawson. it's probably one of the most widely well known sources. he said in 1793, we became free from great britain, but we did

not become independent because the british did not respect our independence. the proof that they did not respect our independence was the way they treated us during the napoleonic wars. and binson actually called it a plot to reduce americans to colonial state again. so when he gets to the treaty of gent afterwards, he says, the british have given up. america finally becomes not only free but independent, unless they're behind the notion 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 vindicate and consolidate that independence. and that's the dominant myth that runs through american histories of the war for much of the 19th century. it's still there in the 20th

century. history's 20th century accounts have added traditional layers of complication as traditional historians dug more into the records. [applause] here is some highlights for this coming weekend. saturday at 6:30 p.m. on the communicators, former fcc commissioners robert kopps and robert mcdowell. with the election of 2014 coming up, watch debaters kay haguen and jerry brown. how republicans can make gains for the hispanic vote. and sunday at noon,

conversations on civil rights, mary francis berry. friday the building of the hoover dam, and sunday night the pardon of richard nixon. find our television schedule on cspan.org and let us know what you think about the programs you're watching. call us or send us a tweet, or e-mail us. join the cspan conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. with congress returning monday, here is a message to congress from one of this year's student span conversation winners. >> throughout the years, we have enkourcountered a handful of frs who struggle with physical disabilities. we have seen how they struggle

with emotions in their whole family. >> i ended up in the hospital after an episode, like an attack, sent me there. i went straight to being an inpatient. they diagnosed me there after five minutes or so of talking to me as bipolar and treated me for two weeks. i got out of the hospital and went from doctor to doctor looking for someone who would actually listen. it took me over a year to find a doctor who actually did listen. >> we strongly encourage congress to continue to provide funding for those who struggle with mental illness and continue to allocate resources and develop new programs for those who are in need. >> join us next wednesday during washington journal for the theme of the 2015 cspan student cam documentary competition. coming up, day one of a symposium on the british burning

of washington and the war of 1812, hosted by the white house historical association, the u.s. capitol historical society and james madison's montpelier. next, jonathan lambert, british america and the war of 1812. this is 45 minutes. my name is stuart mclauren, and i'm president of the white house historical association where we are privileged to convene today for this significant event. we're honored to have with us today two members of the board of directors of the white house historical association, the honorable ann stock and mr. knight kiplinger. we're also honored to have with us today mr. william allman, who is the curator of the white house. this symposium commemorates the bicentennial of one of america's

most critical outlooks. the next two days are sure to educate, inspire and enhance our understanding of the war of 1812. the white house historical association's mission echoes the symposium goal of echoing the public on the history of the white house. and we are so pleased to host this day and a half of symposium here at the association's david m. rubinstein center for the study of white house history. this event couldn't be possible without the partnering and the support of our co-sponsors, the united states capitol historical society and james madison's montpelier. we thank these two wonderful partners for being with us today and the contributions that they have made to make this a successful event. we would also like to extend a special word of thanks to the kim art company who generously

underwrote a specific portion of tonight's symposium, and if you're with us tonight at dinner, you'll receive a special gift from kim art made for this symposium. the association is grateful for the support and partnership we have had with kim art for 34 years in the production of our white house christmas ornament. this began in 1981 and is a very 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 across the courtyard behind you here today, as well as on line at www.whitehousehistory.org to obtain the 2014 white house christmas ornament which honors president warren g. harding. and then finally, to our audience here at the white house historical association of washington, and those watching on c-span across america, we welcome you to hear these 14

prestigious presenters, share their work and guide us through one of the most significant periods in our nation's history. to begin our very full afternoon program, it is my pleasure to introduce kim metcalf to introduce our session 1 presenters. [applause] >> good afternoon. it is so wonderful to be here. i also wanted to say that our board chair, the montpelier foundation chair greg may joins us along with board members. i hope you get a chance to meet some of our leadership. montpelier couldn't be more pleased than to have the honor of chairing the next few days. declaring war, congress and the president exercised powers that were granted to them by the u.s. constitution. and for our young country, only

three decades removed from the first war of independence, the war of 1812 tested many of the ideas in the constitution, and it called upon madison to abide by the limitations of powers that he had worked so hard to institute. so as we commemorate the sobering events of 1814, this panel will be shedding light on the new scholarship and ideas about the origins and the outcomes of the war. fittingly, i love the fact that we begin today with a discussion of the british context of the war. i am pleased to welcome to the podium dr. andrew lambert. he's a lofton professor of naval history at kings college, london. in addition to writing about british strategy and technology, he's the author of an award-winning 2012 volume on the war titled the challenge, britain against america in the naval war of 1812, and it was just honored with the anderson award. so if i could have you help me join in welcoming dr. lambert to

the podium. [applause] >> thank you very much for that extremely kind introduction. the award of a medal for writing a book about the war of 1812 is somewhat ironic back home, because -- [ laughter ] >> -- in all honesty, we don't know what happened. it's a great honor for me to be here today, which my thanks must go to the team of the white house historical association and all those who managed to put this splendid event together. it's important, i think, when viewing the great events of natural history to take a look outside and see what everybody else is doing at the same time where this particular set of events in this country fits into the bigger picture. and, really, my job this afternoon is to situate the war of 1812 in world history and to

put that in britain and the wider world. the war of 1812 posed serious problems for governments on both sides of the atlantic. in the united states, president madison's decision for war split the country. the federal northeast opposed a conflict that would damage their economic interests while the republicans south and west welcomed it as an opportunity for territorial expansion and the address of other significant internal issues. there was a war that was reconstructed. the prime minister had just been shot in the house of commons and his replacement had not been destined long term in office. in fact, he would last 15 years, but no one knew that at the time. he was not an inspiring figure, he was not a man in command of the rhetoric of parliament, 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 the time the british needed management because the king of this country, george iii, was sliding into permanent madness, and his regent, his son, george iv, made a showing on the national and international stage. we needed a leader who was solid, reliable and made good, effective use of the sources at hand, and he turned out to be that man. the british were in the tenth year of a conflict with napoleon bonaparte. the war had broken out in 1803, but the british had been waging war against them for a decade. they managed not to lose, partly because they live on an island. british ministers had little reason for optimism in early

1812 that the war would end well. the last great british victory had been the battle of trafalgar in 1805, and they had been hanging around annoying the french and realized that being with the french was a bad idea. the british were not especially worried about the american declaration of war. after all, the united states was then quite a small country, it had relatively limited resources, and it had no great reputation for allowing a powerful army or, indeed, a particularly large navy, either. what the british were worried about was the additional strain on their already serious overstretched resources. i show you this slide just to remind people that the louisiana purchase is transformational for the united states. it turns a country which really looks to the atlantic to one that really starts to look to the rest of the continent, not

just west but north and south as well. the war between great britain and america was a consequence of the french war. it was great britain's strategy of europe with extreme measures that brought on the clash with the united states. after the destruction of his navy at trafalgar, napoleon had instituted a total economic war against britain. his strategy was to exclude british trade from europe and to try to bankrupt the british. 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 british economy, britain would surrender. his continental system would harness the european continent in a war against britain. they would exclude all british trade from europe on penalty of

seizure and destruction. the british counter blockade, the famous orders in council, did the reverse. it cut europe off from the rest of the world, so the europeans had to fight a 12-year-long war without any coffee. there were a few other things they missed as well. the british counterblockade cut europe off from africa, asia and the americas, and fundamentally it threatened america's economic development. from 1803 to 1812, american shippers, merchants and traders had made a lot of money becoming the last neutral carrier, the country that could carry goods through the french indies to europe through the british blockade. they were also trading with the british, and neither the british or the french treated the americans particularly kindly. the british would arrest their ships and send them before a court.

napoleon simply burnt them. but the american government thought napoleon was less dangerous than the british, or indeed, less dangerous to their interests. the continental system, not this continent but the european continent, was beginning to destroy the economies of other european states. napoleon protected france from the economic war by asset stripping all of the conquered territories. the first country to rebel would be russia, with goods supplying the british market. inside the continental system from 1807 to 1811, russia saw its economy collapse. being part of napoleon's team was very bad for your business. in 1811, the czar of russia

thought it was -- they relied on selling goods to the british to pay their bills. so the czar decided that bankruptcy by death was only slightly better than being invaded by napoleon, but only slightly. so even as the war of 1812 was about to start, the cracks in napoleon became quite fundamental, but great britain had yet to see a future. in 1811, the arguments at sea became a high point between the president and the asian little belt. the little belt is a small one with a union flag. the case of mistaken identity according to martin bingham who commandeered the little belt, but the british were far too

busy doing other things. in 1811, 1812, napoleon is beginning to gear up for the invasion of russia. this will be the great campaign that will decide the outcome of the conflict in europe. mr. madison's war depends on the french winning. if russia collapses back into the continental system, napoleon is utterly dominant in europe, what possible hope do the british have of carrying on? they will have to make terms. it will be impossible then to negotiate with them on a range of issues. but the british wouldn't surrender to napoleon. little known to washington, they were fighting under spain and the duke of wellington, and the british had no money to fight a war with anybody else. indeed, during the war of 1812, the british military effort on land and sea was rarely more than 7% of their land and sea forces. they simply didn't have any more

to spare. this wasn't a case of choice, that was all there was. so in 1812 and 1813, british strategy is defensive and largely reactive. the americans had the initiative. they chose where to fight and how to fight. as we know, the united states opened the conflict with what should have been a three-pronged offensive to what is now canada, and a surge of warships and privateers into the atlantic to cut britain's economic lifelines. the american frontier became the main military theater, and for three years heavily outnumbered british regulars and native warriors defended the border. the british shifted some troops into the canadian theater, but they came from the west indies, not from europe. the british moved no soldiers from the european theater until after near the end of the napoleon conflict. as long as napoleon remained in power, british strategy would be defensive. the border did not move.

this was a long-running, but ultimately stalemated, conflict. this left the madison administration with an alternative strategy, the destruction of britain's trade and economy. a strategy that relied on privateering. they were too small to do this, they needed largely operated, licensed predators. the british response to the american declaration of war -- there is the canadian frontier -- was the appointment of john bolet, a diplomat, highly successful naval operator. he was sent to command the entire theater with powers to negotiate an armistice and an early return to the status quo. that was all britain wanted. are the americans serious about this war? are they not prepared to think

about this and just go back to business as usual? warren's job was to do everything but wage war until he knew the americans were absolutely determined on fighting. his command stretched from newfoundland to mexico, and he would be hampered by economic means, poor communications and very limited support from his home government. his defense of british shipping in the atlantic would determine the outcome of the war, but only after the americans had declared that they were desperately serious about waging it. only then could he turn defense into offense. imposing a devastating economic blockade that simply treated the united states as another part of napoleon's continental system, something to be blockaded and economically ruined. initially, shortage of ships and limited rules of engagement hampered warren's business. but even in late 1812, he began the difficult job of capturing

and incarcerating the american privateer fleet. as british ships filled with american sailors, the privateering effect would begin to fail. five months after the deck la declaration of war did warren learn of the conflict. he was set up with a convoy system to protect all the shipping trans iting from the new world to old in british ports. by this stage, over 150 british merchant ships had already been captured and more privateeers had been fitted out. there was money made in privateering. it was an attractive way to make money in 1812. the complexity of the state line sent him very few resources, and what they did send initially was

not of the same quality. they woke up when the united states navy won three shattering victories over the royal navy. these successes in the war of 1812 made the british government pay attention. here we see constitution in the wonderful picture which manages to show the key size of the battle. guerriere had two-thirds the crew. if the americans had lost the battle, he would have made a poor story indeed. but that's not the story that appeared in the newspapers. the british captain was both a blind and a fool. but the third ship captured put up a very credible fight against a far bigger american ship. the two defeats of the guerriere and the java were not exactly

advantageous. the british got their crew back, and one thing they were short of was sailors as we all know from the pre-war oppressment. so at the cost of winning some glory, the americans had ruined their mission. as alfred mahan said, these were strategically relevant histories, but they did provide the united states government, who had a lot to explain, with some very useful propaganda. the fact the republican administration made it all the more ironic that it was the navy that rode to their rescue. the british government be latedly ordered general reprizals in the united states in 1812, news that didn't reach the new world until the end of november. on november 21st, the british government proposed a strict and rigorous blockade on the

chesapeake bay of the delaware river. they knew who voted for war and who didn't. so if your congress voted for war, the british blockaded you and attacked you. if you didn't vote for war, the british left you alone. the british knew the best way was to divide and country, because britain is a very small country. we have no history of overwhelming anybody. furtmore, the ports were providing a war effort in spain in particular, the duke of wellington's army. the people of vermont fed all of british canada for the entire war. to their enormous profit, one has to understand. critically, the economic blockade was finally established on 21st february, 1813, eight months after the war had begun. there had been a golden eight

months in which it was possible to continue operating both peace and war at the same time. ultimately, this blockade would be the decisive strategy. it would break the american economy, it would bankrupt the state, and it would leave it unable to borrow money or raise credit internally or internationally. quite simply, the united states would run out of money, and as everybody knows, the cost of war is money, money and more money. and when you run out of that, you have to stop fighting. there is a constitution taking the java. this is, of course, by a british artist -- well, that's actually not quite as accurate as it might be. the java was a little bigger than that, but it looks like the constitution is shooting at a rogue boat. the decisive battle of 1812. you're all familiar with it. it's one of the great moments in world history, enough to write a

huge novel and bring down a great empire. more russians died than were killed in the battle of holiness on all sides. this really was a titanic clash of two employers and two vast armies funneling into 1812. the wars would not be fought by 200,000 men. in fact, it wouldn't be fought by 200,000 men all told. as 1813 began. his army was in full retreat. indeed, it was in full collapse. he had taken this country to war on the premise the french would win. now what was going to happen. this also took the pressure off br britain and reinforced naval fleets which had been keeping the baltic open for trade in the

past five years. those ships and key personnel were moved across to the administration. their best men, many of them proteges of nelson, which welcome to. furthermore, with the russian trade over, they didn't need to buy grain from the americans anymore. they had plenty of grain and it was closer to britain. by 2013, more roadblocks were necessary to blockade places. privateeers would not find it easy to protect overall. about the other nation of, picked out as one of the stars of the future by the great man

himself, he was sent over here very specifically, to take the offensive onto the american coast and, i quote, accelerate the return of peace. we know what he did. these reinforcements enabled warren to span the entire coast in 1813. this meant the threat to convoys was merely from privateers, so an escort of convoy was safe from american trepidation. by may of 1813, the economic blockade was biting, too. new york, the largest american port, producing one quarter of the nation's revenues, to customers' views, was closed. the revenue was drying out because most of the revenue came from selling. it was impossible to pay for the war, it had to be paid for by borrowing. a clear sign that something was

fundamentally wrong. the pressure of the block aidad and i quote, was immediately felt. the united states and were driven into new london by a british squadron, from whence they never emerged under the war was over, and then the "uss chesapeake" was captured by hms shannon. in a battle that lasted 11 minutes. the most brilliant, brave and heroic feat of either navy in the entire war. the fact that captain phillip broker, who won the battle, was an obsess of monomaniac meant that james lawrence, captain of the chesapeake, had picked the wrong enemy. against an ordinary fridayate he would have done well. with those three frigated removed from the list of ships at sea, the naval threat effectively evaporated. and by the end of the war, 6,500

privateer crew were locked up in south devon. we built it with the french, but ran out of the frenchmen, so we sent the americans there as well. the british still hoped the war would go away. they wanted the americans to say, we're sorry, we'll go back, it was on the table of day one, because that's what the peace treaty was, that's all the british wanted. in 1813, the shannon action got the british quite excited. here is the contemporary cartoon by george crookshank, rather summed up the view of the war. this was annoying and they rather wished it would go away. but 1813 was not about america. it was about napoleon. there was another great battle at leipzig. in september 1813, napoleon lost 17,000 men. the german empire collapsed, napoleon retreated into france, the writing was on the wall. for his entire. the british poured money and munitions into europe to defeat napoleon.

they did not send men or money to north america. british would have taken status quo ante at any time. they defended canada, but they didn't have any resources to do anything else. in 1813, the coburn raids closed down privateer bases, damaging the property of those who voted for war. at the end of 1813, the economic blockade was stretched all the way up to the edge of maine. new england was blockaded, too, this would promote sectional conflict, but british options were very limited. in the autumn of 1813, they had a chance to do something they had want to do do for 120 years, to captured northern belgium, the one place you can invade england from. they sent all the troops they could find to do this. they lost, it was embarrassing, they just didn't have the manpower to do anything serious in europe. europe was far more important than north america, so the idea

they had any offensive plans here is untrue. throughout the war, there would be more british troops defending the west indies than there were defending canada. the political power of the west indian planters and merchants was far greater. west indian commercial interests saw admiral warren replaced by vice admiral cochran nchts and he too will feature in the war. as peace approached in europe, the british foreign secretary lord castlewright told the europeans he would not discuss maritime rights at a peace conference. blockade, impressment, and he told americans the same thing. these were the bases of british power. britain is a sea power, not a land power, control of the sea says britain's strong arm. it maximized the strength of its navy.

and condemned him to a solitary conflict. once the americans had taken maritime belligerent rights off the agenda, peace could be discussed at gent. a town in belgium then occupied by british troops. they might as well have had the treaty in britain. is the americans resorted some interesting mechanisms to defeat the royal navy, but the british were not impressed. blow up my hell indeed, you may kid my -- says yankee doodle. not impressed. here is a german cartoon of the downfall of napoleon. he went to the emperor of world, to the emperor of elba. here is the main player in our story. this is the officially commissioned portrait. this is how he wished to be remembered. this isn't accidental. this is a man telling us about himself. he clearly thought this was one

of his more important events. as we know, the occupation of washington and the destruction of the public buildings was a major event, but more important, it sparked a run on the america banks, anybody who had any cash took it out of american banks and put it into canadian banks, which paid better and weren't defaulting. yet neither the destruction of washington or the defeat at plats burg had any serious effect on british policy. the british offered status quo ante, because they just wanted the war to go away. even after the downfall of napoleon, this was not a war they wished to fight. the peace treaty on 1814 rat gent was little more than a recognition of that fact. here is some of coburn's handiwork and here's some more of it. the battle of north point, an interesting event,

but far more important, the signing of the treaty of gent. by the time the treaty was signed, the united states was in default by 3 million pounds p. 15 million with an outstanding on interest payments. the national debt rose by 200%. little wonder that canada demands to end impressment. there would be two more battles, the battle of new orleans you all heard of, this is the one that's not in the textbooks. the british captured the sandy hook in another action in which both captains fought brilliantly, but the british captain was more brilliant. it's no accident that the headquarters of the navy in london is "hms president." it's a direct descendant. if you stop before you get to the bar, you will see four engravings of this battle.

this is the one the british remember. this is lord castleroy's map of 1812. this is what 1812 is all about, now interfering in the settlement of europe. the congress of vienna created a peaceful stable european state that was open for business. that was britain's war aim. in the whole course of 22 years, fighting the french, the british took from the rest of europe two very small islands, one in the mediterranean called malta, the other in the north sea. that is britain's entire access of european territory. they gave it all up for peace and stability. and then, of course, napoleon came back, but not for long. he was rapidly arrested by admiral sir henry hotham. the man who had run the blockade of new york for the previous two years. when the war's over, the republican party did what you normally do as a political organization, they declared it a great success.

the republican party's speech writers and newspaper men celebrated a great arch of victory. three frigate victory. sir walter scott, who understood how to create fabulous stories, realized what the americans were doing and rather regretted they hadn't been taught a more severe lesson, but he realized the british weren't prepared to fight a war for such nebulous objects sup as teaching lessons. and he also understands that the enduring legacy of 1812 would be not territory, not maritime belligerent rights, but a distinct american culture. the war of 1812 forced the united states to face up to itself and recognize that it wasn't part of something else.

it was of itself. it was a country that would have its own culture. it would paint its own ticket turs, it would create an american identity, and this war is the spark from which that emerged. the war drove america to acquire a distinctive new world identify, one that privileged landscapes scale and the westward opportunities off are over the narrow confines and dusty histories of europe. perhaps the was the conflict's most appropriate metaphor. thank you very much. we now have a short opportunity for questions and answers. i would be more than happy to do that. please.

>> how did american finances recover after the war? was the resumption of trade duties sufficient to refill the treasury? did we un-default on the loan? >> yeah. the economic problems of the united states were ended by the conclusion of peace. it opened up the international money markets to america. it also persuaded american financiers that there was something worth investing in. you've just seen the capital city trashed and the government fleeing. you don't believe this is this country is something you want to invest in. so the presumption of peace opens up the domestic taps. it also leads to a massive boom in trade. all of that trade that didn't happen from 1812 to 1815, it happens pretty much as soon as the war ends. news of peace in london prompts every merchant in the whole of the a