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Samantha Taney November 8, 2006
Mrs. Geller American History
Chapter 11
James Madison and the Second War for Independence
Madison: Dupe of Napoleon
- James Madison took the presidential oath on March 4, 1809
- The Non-Intercourse of 1809 limed substitute for the embargo aimed solely at Britain and France would expire in about a year
- Desparately attempting to uphold American rights, Congress adopted in 1810 a bargaining measure Known as Macon’s Bill No. 2, which permitted American trade with all the world, it dangled an attractive lure. If either England or France repealed her commercial restrictions. America would store non-importation against the non-repealing nation.
- Madison formally announced in November 1810 that France had complied with the terms on Macon’s Bill No. 2, and that non-importation would consequently be re-established against Britain
War Whoops Arouse the War Hawks
- The twelfth Congress has swept the older “submission men” and was had replaced them with young hotheads, chiefly from the South and West, and they were on fire for a new war with the old enemy.
- Shawnee two brothers, Tecumseh and the Prophet, knew that if this onrushing tide were ever to be stopped, that time had come. They began to weld together a far-flung confederacy of all the tribes east of the Mississippi.
- Militant War Hawks finally engineered a declaration of war in June 1812.
- Congressmen from the pro-British maritime and commercial centers of New England, as well as from the Middle Atlantic States, almost solidly opposed hostilities. Thus the West and Southwest, most landlocked, presented the seafronting East with a war for a free sea that the East vehemently resented.
Britain or Napoleon: A Choice of Foes
- American should have declared war on both France and England, but to declare waron France would avail nothing for she was not vulnerable. America had no border in common with her and hence could not come to grips with Napoleon’s armies. But a victorious war with England, aside from avenging grievances, would be profitable as well as patriotic.
American Allies of the Napoleonic Anti-Christ
- New England damned the declaration of war for free sea, also because violations of American rights were an old story, and New England was federalist in sympathy with Old England.
- Federalists condemned the war of 1812 because they opposed the acquisition of Canada.
Unpreparedness and the Abortive Invasion of Canada
- The War of 1812 easily ranks as the America’s worst-fought major war because of the widespread disunity mainly.