As tall ships and fireworks mark the bicentennial of the War of 1812, the conflict that gave Perry County its name by way of the naval hero Oliver Hazard Perry, it’s worth asking a simple question:

Why don’t we remember that war very well?

The War of 1812 is certainly covered in high school, but it tends to fade into the background, a complicated and murky episode between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. There’s a sense of, “Oh, another war with Great Britain? Didn’t we already do that to death?”

Most people, if they think of it at all, remember the War of 1812 for a great trauma, the sacking of our Nation’s Capital by a British expeditionary force (a calamity that has lost some of its horror in certain circles these days); and a moment of surging national pride, the repulsion of the British navy during the Battle of Baltimore, which led to the composition of a poem by Francis Scott Key titled “Defense of Ft. McHenry,” or, as it was later known, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

As for the reasons our fledgling country entered the war in the first place, the nature of the war itself, and its lasting impact on American life, there’s typically a haze in the mind, the kind of space you get when too many facts have been hastily memorized for an exam, only to be replaced by more important things like sports trivia and commercial jingles.

Viewed outside of a classroom, though, and from an adult perspective, the War of 1812 is interesting for a number of reasons. It was America’s first war of choice, not only in the sense that it was the first war declared by Congress, but also in the way that it was galvanized not by an invasion or some other existential threat, but rather by a combination of national pride and territorial ambition.

First, national pride. Because Washington was burned and Baltimore bombarded, most of our national memory is focused on the British invasion. It’s easy to forget that the British weren’t the initial aggressors. The United States declared war on Great Britain, not the other way around.

In fact, war with its former colony was the last thing the British Empire had in mind, since it was locked in total war with Napoleon. The mighty British navy was committed to a complete embargo on France.

This led directly to two of America’s key grievances. As a neutral nation, we felt we had the right to trade with France. The British preferred to remain our sole trading partner in the region, a position they were willing to enforce by any means necessary. And because their navy was stretched so thin, they embarked on a policy of snatching any former British subject they came across on the high seas, and impressing him into service.

The United States viewed the policy of impressment as a violation of national sovereignty. These former British subjects were now naturalized American citizens. Not to mention the fact that more than a few native-born Americans were caught in the wide net the British were casting across the Atlantic.

As for territorial ambition, some politicians, including Thomas Jefferson, thought that we might take advantage of Great Britain’s distraction to finally march on our peaceful brothers to the north and claim the prize of Canada.

The expulsion of the Crown’s interests from the continent was an enticing prospect, especially in light of the alliance Great Britain had formed with a great Indian leader named Tecumseh. Armed by the British, and fired by a vision of beating back the White Man from the Western Frontier, Tecumseh was causing all sorts of headaches in the Northwest Territory, a vast expanse encompassing today’s Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota.

While U.S. forces did win some significant battles in the course of the war, including Oliver Perry’s decisive victory over a British fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie, and Andrew Jackson’s rout of a British army in the Battle of New Orleans, there was no clear-cut victor by December of 1814, when hostilities were officially ended by the Treaty of Ghent. The treaty essentially restored relations between the U.S. and Great Britain to the status quo ante bellum. From that perspective, the war hadn’t changed much at all.

But a great deal had changed on American soil. The defeat of Tecumseh and the break-up of his Indian confederation in the North, and the destruction of native resistance in the South, signaled the end of an era. There was no more talk of an independent Indian nation in the Midwest. Instead, the Northwest Territory was opened to White settlement. General Jackson, who had been so successful in his military campaign against the native peoples of the southeast, would continue and intensify the eradication effort as president.

There would be no annexation of Canada, either. To this day, Canadians remember the War of 1812 with tremendous national pride as the time their overreaching neighbor to the south was chased back across the border, never to threaten them again.

Lastly, the war had a kind of calming effect on our national politics. The hyper-partisan era leading up to 1812 gave way to a time of accommodation and unity, the so-called Era of Good Feelings.

In the end, the American people remembered the victories, not the embarrassments, a pattern that continues to this day.

This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 21 June 2012

For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com