C
Chris Lewis
But so did those states! Texas still does! ;-)
[That's not as sarcastic as it sounds. The US states considered themselves
far more autonomous then than they do now. The US couldn't raise an army -
legally they could, but, in reality, it was by the states.]
Well, it was only 2 days - that was hardly enough time for anyone
to do anything about it. Nobody on this side of the pond knew
anything about that for a few weeks.
They didn't lose any territory out of it - a draw on that basis.
But, let's step back and look at it strictly and simply from the perspective
of goals:
- The US started the war to redress certain wrongs, and invade/conquer Canada.
- Canada "reacted" to that threat, with the goal being to repell the invasion.
Then achievements:
- The "wrongs" were mostly moot, and the invasion failed.
- Canada repelled the invasion.
Depending on how you define things, that's either a win for us (we achieved
our goals), or a draw (we didn't make you lose territory).
In reality, it was a remarkably dumb war. If the timing had been better,
there'd have been no war. The war was a remarkable series of blunders,
sheer luck (freakish occurances during the naval battles), and several strokes
of absolute brilliance - ie: the taking of Detroit[*], the defence of Niagara,
and the most important one of all: the US capturing a draw at the treaty
of Ghent[+]. Without that, you'd have been screwed.
So you invade _us_. Makes sense, maybe.
[+]Ghent happened simply because Britain had just finished the war
with France, and were faced with the unpopularity of more years of heavy
taxation sending large numbers of just-released battle hardened troops to
North America.
Throughout the war, there were at most 3,000 British regulars
in Canada[=]. If Ghent hadn't happened, there would have
been 30,000 more on the way within months. But Britain was only
interested in finishing it - and didn't even know that we were
winning ground (again, that dang trans-atlantic communications lag).
Heck, nobody knew til weeks later that the war was over - the
Battle of New Orleans took place 2 weeks after the war was over.
[Which is just as well, because we screwed the pooch on that one.]
[*] An early implementation of psychological warfare. Ridiculously
small force gets their even smaller number of indians irregulars to
march back and forth making lots of noise just out of sight. The
American commander, remembering full well how pissed off the Indians
were about getting massacred during the American push west, figured
their only salvation was to surrender to the Brits and plead that
they be protected from the Indians. So he surrendered. Boy was he
embarrassed to find out that he had been surrendered to a mere handful
of troops/irregulars who were laughing themselves silly.
[=] During the first two years, the fighting on our side was
carried out almost exclusively by the British regulars and the Indians
they had helping them. It wasn't until the burning of towns in Niagara
that fighting the war became popular, and the British, French, and UEL
colonists pitched in too.
