For people like me, who have got their flags and wars mixed up, I
think it should be pointed out that there may have been only one War of
1812, but there are four distinct versions of it—the American, the
British, the Canadian and the Native American. Moreover, among
Americans, the chief actors in the drama, there are multiple variations
of the versions, leading to widespread disagreement about the causes,
the meaning and even the outcome of the war.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, American commentators
painted the battles of 1812-15 as part of a glorious “second war for
independence.” As the 19th century progressed, this view changed into a
more general story about the “birth of American freedom” and the
founding of the Union. But even this note could not be sustained, and by
the end of the century, the historian Henry Adams was depicting the war
as an aimless exercise in blunder, arrogance and human folly. During
the 20th century, historians recast the war in national terms: as a
precondition for the entrenchment of Southern slavery, the jumping-off
point for the goal of Manifest Destiny and the opening salvos in the
race for industrial-capitalist supremacy. The tragic consequences of
1812 for the native nations also began to receive proper attention.
Whatever triumphs could be parsed from the war, it was now accepted that
none reached the Indian Confederation under Tecumseh. In this
postmodern narrative about American selfhood, the “enemy” in the
war—Britain—almost disappeared entirely.
Not surprisingly, the Canadian history of the war began with a
completely different set of heroes and villains. If the U.S. has its
Paul Revere, Canada has Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who lost his life
defending Upper Canada against the Americans, and Laura Secord, who
struggled through almost 20 miles of swampland in 1813 to warn British
and Canadian troops of an imminent attack. For Canadians, the war was,
and remains, the cornerstone of nationhood, brought about by unbridled
U.S. aggression. Although they acknowledge there were two theaters of
war—at sea and on land—it is the successful repulse of the ten U.S.
incursions between 1812 and 1814 that have received the most attention
