What exactly was the War of 1812 even about?

Americans thought they could take Britain on and 'free' Canada just because Britain was busy fighting Napoleon.

They couldn't.

America trying to wave its cock about only to have half of it torn off basically.

Brits thought they could impress our nationals into their service and after 2 years we got a stalemate and called it off.

The UK was impressing US sailors into their naval war. Invading Canada was the only way the US could fight back.

>>2378993
>What exactly was the War of 1812 even about?

Which one?

>>2379014
>>2379034
>t. AmerifatPatriot1776

File: war_of_1812_map.jpg (101KB, 447x398px) Image search: [Google]

101KB, 447x398px

>>2378993
Morale for the republic in the USA was very low, people still felt like they were only alive because the larger European empires were too busy to wipe them out. USA had a chronic shortage of capital and was still one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere. The divide between Americans who supported France and Americans who supported Britain in the war was growing. With Britain offhandedly impressing US sailors it was confirming all the worst fears of the budding American nationalists. They felt like nobody would ever respect them as a country. At a time when nationalism was becoming omnipresent in politics US was fighting to prove that its independence wasn't a fluke.

To make matters worse Jefferson had dismantled the Army during his time as president, so when Madison declared the war on Britain there was nothing to fight it with. Prior to the battle of New Orleans US had put nigh unbelievable incompetence on display in every single land campaign of the war. Only the US navy managed to perform respectably up until that time. With Washington burnt to the ground, and the US at the point of bankruptcy, those who had never supported the war in the first place had plenty of political ammunition.

People in New England during the war generally had been pro-Britain, and relied on British trade for their livelihoods. Many of them saw the war as the southern aristocracy unjustly forcing them into a conflict nobody wanted and using their economy as a weapon. Disillusion with the idea of the union was so extreme many wanted to secede, and some even wanted to rejoin the British Empire. The war as as much about internal divisions in US politics as anything.

>>2378993
A lot of little things.

1. British impressment of sailors to serve in the RN in the Napoleonic Wars.

2. British support for Native Americans in a de facto state of war with US citizens.

3. British desire to create a Native American buffer state under Tecumseh.

4. American political problems. The Democratic-Republican Party which was rabidly pro-slavery, pro-expansionism, and anti-Britain. It used the above three facts to push conflict. The war had basically zero support among the Federalists, New England even threatened to secede in the middle of it.

File: Anyone has seen Britain They said they would help.png (199KB, 322x1082px) Image search: [Google]

199KB, 322x1082px

Americans thought Britain was heavily involved in the fighting against Napoleon.

It wasnt.

>>2379150
>Americans thought Britain was heavily involved in the fighting against Napoleon.
>What is the Peninsular War

>>2378993
britain was trying to bring tyranny back to america for the strength of their evil empire so we JUSTLY invaded canada to FREE them

>>2379185
>replying to butthurt ouiaboos

>>2379185
A secondary theater that barely mattered in the grand scheme of the war

>>2379499
>"It was [the Spanish war] that overthrew me. All my disasters can be traced back to this fatal knot"

>>2379185
just brits and frenchs razing the peninsula