situating the war of 1812 in our national narrative
TRANSCRIPT
Situating the War of 1812 in our National Narrative
Ends and Beginnings:
The War of 1812 marked the end of. . . .
I. Ends
. . . final chapter in the 75 year battle for the Ohio River and Lower Great Lakes.
Maps of Great Lake Indians
Source: Pictorial History of Michigan: The Early Years, George S. May, 1967
Post-War Michigan Cessions
Source: Atlas of Michigan, ed. Lawrence M. Sommers, 1977.
Preservation of republicanism and Republicanism.
. . . . end of the American Revolutionary Era.
The War of 1812 served as the beginning of . . . .
II. Beginnings
Commercial Conventions (1816,
1818)
Rush Bagot agreement (1818).
Less problematic borders.
. . .of eventual peaceful détente with Britain.
. . Territorial Expansion
By 1803: Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio
By 1821: Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, Maine, and Missouri
New States Added 14 Vermont March 4, 1791
15 Kentucky June 1, 1792
16 Tennessee June 1, 1796
17 Ohio March 1, 1803
18 Louisiana April 30, 1812
19 Indiana December 11, 1816
20 Mississippi December 10, 1817
21 Illinois December 3, 1818
22 Alabama December 14, 1819
23 Maine March 15, 1820
24 Missouri August 10, 1821
25 Arkansas June 15, 1836
26 Michigan Jan 26, 1837
27 Florida March 3, 1845
28 Texas December 29, 1845
29 Iowa December 28, 1846
30 Wisconsin May 29, 1848
31 California September 9, 1850
. . .. of Indian Removal
. . . a more nation-centered political economy.
Critics of the American System
. . . . a fierce debate over slavery.
Recent BooksAlan Taylor, The Slave War of 1812, forthcoming.
Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South, Harvard, 2007.
Matthew Mason, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic, 2008.
John Hammond and Mason, eds. The Politics of Bondage and Freedom in the New American Nation, Virginia, 2011
III. War and Slavery
The story of freedom and slavery inverted. Bartlet Shanklyn
3,500 Chesapeake slaves “stole” themselves to British forces.
Free black population restricted.
The South and the federal government: a complicated relationship.
The Wartime South
Cotton and Slavery, 1811-1821
Spread of Plantation Slavery
Spread of Cotton
Federalists fight back. Early Northern
emancipation laws (1776-1807) bearing fruit, even accelerated.Emancipation Acts:
New York, 1817; Pennsylvania 1815; Ohio, 1817
American Colonization Society founded 1817
Growth in free black population in North
The Post-War North
Unknown artist and place, Probably New England, c. 1815-1825
National Debates Fugitive Slave Act of 1818—failed.
Slave Trade Acts of 1819, 1820Piracy
Missouri Controversy, 1819-1821
See: Robert Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and its Aftermath, North Carolina Press, 2007.
The Politics of Slavery
The Domestic Slave Trade
African Americans in the NavyEstimated 15 to 20% of enlisted men in U.S.
navyOthers on Privateers and Merchant Marine
Post 1820s, tainted with “freedom.”
Denmark Vesey, 1822
African American Seamen
Battle to make slavery safe in the Union
Negro Seamen’s Acts
Nullification
1830s: anti-abolition mobs
Southern Response
The Slave’s Friend, 1839
American nationalism made manifest culturally and to an extent politically, but also sews the seeds for future sectional conflict.
Increased security—especially after 1819—and the expansion it allows generates concern while empowering different regions to more assuredly stake their claim to being the “true America.”
Transportation Revolution and Growing national market creates more trade but also political tensions, culminates in nullification crisis
War opens lands for cotton and slavery’s expansion, ensuring its vibrancy and pointing the way towards what we might see as American’s “Third Civil War,” and easily its bloodiest.
Long Term Ironies of the War