The Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain. Peace negotiations began in Ghent, Belgium, starting in August of 1814. The Americans peace commissioners were John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Albert Gallatin, James A. Bayard, Sr., and Jonathan Russell. After four months of talks, the treaty was signed on December 24, 1814. The Senate unanimously ratified the Treaty of Ghent on February 16, 1815. On the surface, it may seem that the War of 1812 was just pointless bloodshed spattered on the pages of human history. After all, according to the final Treaty of Ghent, all relations and borders were supposed to return to status quo ante bellum, or pre-war, status. Look beyond the legalism and into the practical effects of the war, however, and one will find significant attitudinal changes in the United States after the conflict, ushering in what most historians consider the “Era of Good Feelings” in the decade following the war. The biggest American casualty of the war was the Federalist Party, the first political party that had arisen in the United States. A party of bankers and businessmen, the Federalists' steady opposition to the war doomed them in the eyes of the American public. Their vociferous opposition to the commencement of the war, and their subsequent contemplation of outright secession at the "Hartford Convention," angered many Americans, who viewed the Federalists as “un-patriotic.” The Federalists had principally represented men of means and wealth, with the bulk of their membership in the Northeast. With the end of the war the party all but ceased to exist, and many of its former members rallied to new party banners, namely Republican and Whig, where they formed the political base for centralization, protectionism, and, eventually, abolitionism, in the latter half of the 19th century. When the war ended, Americans seized on the various successes of the Army and Navy and celebrated the fact that the relatively young United States had gone toe to toe with the greatest military machine in the world, fighting them mostly to a draw. The huge victory scored by Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, in addition to the multiple successes of America’s greatest frigate, the USS Constitution, proved to be reason enough to promote the American image at home and abroad. Partisan rancor, which had reached a fever pitch during the immolation of the Federalists, waned considerably in the years following the war, prompting people to dub their times "the Era of Good Feelings." The party of Thomas Jefferson gained ascendancy, undoubtedly helped by the loss of the Federalists, and propounded a happy vision of a nation of free farmers. This peaceful domestic policy became married to an expansionist foreign policy. The 1819 Adams-Onis Treaty led to the American purchase of Florida from Spain. In 1823, the Monroe Doctrine essentially told European powers that the Western Hemisphere was off limits to European expansion. It also helped put the United States on a course of internal expansion. By staying out of European affairs the United States expected, and demanded, the same treatment in kind. This could not have happened had the War of 1812 not ended the way it did. The election of Andrew Jackson as the seventh President ushered in the age of the “common man.” Jackson was the de facto hero of the common man and his policies as president reflected that fact. The election of Jackson in 1828 is also notable because of the shift in American political demographics. Suffrage became more widespread, as property requirements to vote were dropped by the states, resulting in a huge surge in the number of eligible voters. This shift was also perceptible in the arts and letters as American painters began to focus on American themes in their works. This is perhaps best represented by the work of Missouri painter George Caleb Bingham, who celebrated the common man on his canvas. Generals and politicians fell by the wayside as subject matter. Instead the new American was the fur trader, the horse trader, the “jolly” flat boatman who plied the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. Bingham’s singular work, "The County Election" celebrates American democracy in a way never before celebrated. With bottles and ballots in their hands, Bingham’s heroes are the everyday white men who made the machine of American politics turn. In 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered his speech, “The American Scholar,” which was later published as an essay. Oliver Wendell Holmes believed that “The American Scholar” was the United States' intellectual Declaration of Independence. In his speech, Emerson urged Americans to look not to Europe for their models but to themselves and to American landscapes for inspiration. In 1841, Emerson published the essay "On Self-Reliance," which echoed the themes of “The American Scholar,” but had a lasting impact on the American creed of the worth of hard work and one’s own labor. Emerson’s pen and thinking were built on the evidence of American significance provided by the War of 1812. While the self-reliant common man rose to a zenith, the same could not be said for the American Indian tribes of the frontier. With the end of the War of 1812, the Native Americans could no longer count on Great Britain to shield them from the flood of white settlers headed west. Settlers came in droves by the Erie Canal or through the Cumberland Gap. The next seventy-five years saw a rapid decline in the Native Americans' way of life, even for those tribes like the Cherokee or Choctaw that tried to adapt white ways of living. Manifest Destiny ruled the day. In the years after the War of 1812, new states north and south entered the Union. At the same time, America’s economic engine was fueled by King Cotton. Alas, King Cotton could not have become the behemoth it did without the institution of race-based slavery. While many Americans could boast of great progress in the years after the War of 1812, most notably in the shaping of American politics, art, and military tradition, the issue of slavery continued to divide the nation and the true meaning of the United States could not be borne out until after the great bloodletting of the Civil War. Further Reading:
The War of 1812 had only mixed support on both sides of the Atlantic. The British weren’t eager for another conflict, having fought Napoleon for the better part of the previous 20 years, but weren’t fond of American commercial support of the French either. The divisions in American sentiment about the war similarly split, oftentimes along geographic lines: New Englanders, particularly seafaring ones, were against it. Southerners and Westerners advocated for it, hoping that it would enhance the U.S.’s reputation abroad, open opportunities for its expansion, and protect American commercial interests against British restrictions. Read more below: Major causes of the war Native Americans had begun resisting settlement by white Americans before 1812. In 1808 the Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa began amassing an intertribal confederacy comprising indigenous groups around the Great Lakes and the Ohio River valley. In 1812 Tecumseh tightened his relationship with Britain, convincing white Americans that the British were inciting unrest among northwestern tribes. British and intertribal forces took Detroit in 1812 and won a number of other victories during the war, but Tecumseh was killed and his confederation was quashed after Detroit was retaken in 1813. Creek tribes continued to resist from 1813 onward, but they were suppressed by Andrew Jackson’s forces in 1814. Read more about Tecumseh. Read more about Tenskwatawa. Although neither Britain nor the U.S. was able to secure major concessions through the Treaty of Ghent, it nevertheless had important consequences for the future of North America. The withdrawal of British troops from the Northwest Territory and the defeat of the Creeks in the South opened the door for unbounded U.S. expansionism in both regions. The treaty also established measures that would help arbitrate future border disputes between the U.S. and Canada, perhaps one reason why the two countries have been able to peaceably share the longest unfortified border in the world ever since. Read more below: Final stages of the war and the aftermath Read about the Treaty of Ghent. War of 1812, (June 18, 1812–February 17, 1815), conflict fought between the United States and Great Britain over British violations of U.S. maritime rights. It ended with the exchange of ratifications of the Treaty of Ghent. The tensions that caused the War of 1812 arose from the French revolutionary (1792–99) and Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815). During this nearly constant conflict between France and Britain, American interests were injured by each of the two countries’ endeavours to block the United States from trading with the other. American shipping initially prospered from trade with the French and Spanish empires, although the British countered the U.S. claim that “free ships make free goods” with the belated enforcement of the so-called Rule of 1756 (trade not permitted in peacetime would not be allowed in wartime). The Royal Navy did enforce the act from 1793 to 1794, especially in the Caribbean Sea, before the signing of the Jay Treaty (November 19, 1794). Under the primary terms of the treaty, American maritime commerce was given trading privileges in England and the British East Indies, Britain agreed to evacuate forts still held in the Northwest Territory by June 1, 1796, and the Mississippi River was declared freely open to both countries. Although the treaty was ratified by both countries, it was highly unpopular in the United States and was one of the rallying points used by the pro-French Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, in wresting power from the pro-British Federalists, led by George Washington and John Adams. After Jefferson became president in 1801, relations with Britain slowly deteriorated, and systematic enforcement of the Rule of 1756 resumed after 1805. Compounding this troubling development, the decisive British naval victory at the Battle of Trafalgar (October 21, 1805) and efforts by the British to blockade French ports prompted the French emperor, Napoleon, to cut off Britain from European and American trade. The Berlin Decree (November 21, 1806) established Napoleon’s Continental System, which impinged on U.S. neutral rights by designating ships that visited British ports as enemy vessels. The British responded with Orders in Council (November 11, 1807) that required neutral ships to obtain licenses at English ports before trading with France or French colonies. In turn, France announced the Milan Decree (December 17, 1807), which strengthened the Berlin Decree by authorizing the capture of any neutral vessel that had submitted to search by the British. Consequently, American ships that obeyed Britain faced capture by the French in European ports, and if they complied with Napoleon’s Continental System, they could fall prey to the Royal Navy.
41 Questions from Britannica’s Most Popular World History Quizzes This quiz collects 41 of the toughest questions from Britannica’s most popular quizzes on world history. If you want to ace it, you’ll need to know the history of the United States, some of the most famous people in history, what happened during World War II, and much more. The Royal Navy’s use of impressment to keep its ships fully crewed also provoked Americans. The British accosted American merchant ships to seize alleged Royal Navy deserters, carrying off thousands of U.S. citizens into the British navy. In 1807 the frigate H.M.S. Leopard fired on the U.S. Navy frigate Chesapeake and seized four sailors, three of them U.S. citizens. London eventually apologized for this incident, but it came close to causing war at the time. Jefferson, however, chose to exert economic pressure against Britain and France by pushing Congress in December 1807 to pass the Embargo Act, which forbade all export shipping from U.S. ports and most imports from Britain. The Embargo Act hurt Americans more than the British or French, however, causing many Americans to defy it. Just before Jefferson left office in 1809, Congress replaced the Embargo Act with the Non-Intercourse Act, which exclusively forbade trade with Great Britain and France. This measure also proved ineffective, and it was replaced by Macon’s Bill No. 2 (May 1, 1810) that resumed trade with all nations but stipulated that if either Britain or France dropped commercial restrictions, the United States would revive nonintercourse against the other. In August, Napoleon insinuated that he would exempt American shipping from the Berlin and Milan decrees. Although the British demonstrated that French restrictions continued, U.S. Pres. James Madison reinstated nonintercourse against Britain in November 1810, thereby moving one step closer to war. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Britain’s refusal to yield on neutral rights derived from more than the emergency of the European war. British manufacturing and shipping interests demanded that the Royal Navy promote and sustain British trade against Yankee competitors. The policy born of that attitude convinced many Americans that they were being consigned to a de facto colonial status. Britons, on the other hand, denounced American actions that effectively made the United States a participant in Napoleon’s Continental System. Tecumseh Events on the U.S. northwestern frontier fostered additional friction. Indian fears over American encroachment coincidentally became conspicuous as Anglo-American tensions grew. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa (The Prophet) attracted followers arising from this discontent and attempted to form an Indian confederation to counteract American expansion. Although Maj. Gen. Isaac Brock, the British commander of Upper Canada (modern Ontario), had orders to avoid worsening American frontier problems, American settlers blamed British intrigue for heightened tensions with Indians in the Northwest Territory. As war loomed, Brock sought to augment his meagre regular and Canadian militia forces with Indian allies, which was enough to confirm the worst fears of American settlers. Brock’s efforts were aided in the fall of 1811, when Indiana territorial governor William Henry Harrison fought the Battle of Tippecanoe and destroyed the Indian settlement at Prophet’s Town (near modern Battle Ground, Indiana). Harrison’s foray convinced most Indians in the Northwest Territory that their only hope of stemming further encroachments by American settlers lay with the British. American settlers, in turn, believed that Britain’s removal from Canada would end their Indian problems. Meanwhile, Canadians suspected that American expansionists were using Indian unrest as an excuse for a war of conquest. Under increasing pressure, Madison summoned the U.S. Congress into session in November 1811. Pro-war western and southern Republicans (War Hawks) assumed a vocal role, especially after Kentucky War Hawk Henry Clay was elected speaker of the House of Representatives. Madison sent a war message to the U.S. Congress on June 1, 1812, and signed the declaration of war on June 18, 1812. The vote seriously divided the House (79–49) and was gravely close in the Senate (19–13). Because seafaring New Englanders opposed the war, while westerners and southerners supported it, Federalists accused war advocates of expansionism under the ruse of protecting American maritime rights. Expansionism, however, was not as much a motive as was the desire to defend American honour. The United States attacked Canada because it was British, but no widespread aspiration existed to incorporate the region. The prospect of taking East and West Florida from Spain encouraged southern support for the war, but southerners, like westerners, were sensitive about the United States’s reputation in the world. Furthermore, British commercial restrictions hurt American farmers by barring their produce from Europe. Regions seemingly removed from maritime concerns held a material interest in protecting neutral shipping. “Free trade and sailors’ rights” was not an empty phrase for those Americans. The onset of war both surprised and chagrined the British government, especially because it was preoccupied with the fight against France. In addition, political changes in Britain had already moved the government to assume a conciliatory posture toward the United States. Prime Minister Spencer Perceval’s assassination on May 11, 1812, brought to power a more moderate Tory government under Lord Liverpool. British West Indies planters had been complaining for years about the interdiction of U.S. trade, and their growing influence, along with a deepening recession in Great Britain, convinced the Liverpool ministry that the Orders in Council were averse to British interests. On June 16, two days before the United States declared war, the Orders were suspended. Some have viewed the timing of this concession as a lost opportunity for peace because slow transatlantic communication meant a month’s delay in delivering the news to Washington. Yet, because Britain’s impressment policy remained in place and frontier Indian wars continued, in all likelihood the repeal of the Orders alone would not have prevented war. |
What did the Treaty that ended the War of 1812 lead to?
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