Making Waves

BRIAN: I’m sure a lot of you listeners are wondering why should I care about the War of 1812? And I got to admit I’ve been wondering that myself and thinking about it. But I always think better when I hear from Peter and Ed first. Peter.

PETER: Well, I’m the old guy from the 18th century looking forward into Ed’s 19th century. And I’ll say this to you. It’s the economy, stupid.

Until the War of 1812, we had a bunch of provincial economies that were oriented toward European markets. They sent exports, tobacco, rice, increasingly cotton, to overseas markets. And in effect they had nothing in common with each other because the great lanes of commerce were on the ocean.

Well, the War of 1812 changed all that because all of a sudden we didn’t have any choice about it. We weren’t going to be able to get things to market because the ocean was a nasty, dangerous place. You were going to have to deal with each other.

Northerners began to manufacture. They manufactured shoes that they could send south to the slaves and rough clothing and textiles. And here we had the emergence and the vision of Henry Clay of an American system that would tie the country together with common interests. People would make things for each other.

This would be the real bonds of union. And you might even say for the first time Americans begin to think of themselves as a people, not just a confederation or even a stronger federal union of people’s, but a people. And it was this integrative period that gives us the foundations of modern America, not the Constitution of 1787, not the Declaration of 1776, it was the Treaty of Ghent in 1814.

BRIAN: Wow. I knew I should have studied that treaty.

ED: That is good stuff, Peter. And it’s fortunate that my answer is not in direct contradiction to it. Now, what becomes the major export? What becomes the foundation of the American economy? You kind of referred to it.

PETER: Yep.

ED: Yep. And it’s cotton. And so in many ways the old South emerges from the War of 1812. Now, how could that be? Well, because most of what we think now as the old South was in fact occupied by American Indians as it had been for 10,000 years before this time.

But in the crucible of the war, Andrew Jackson rises up from Tennessee and leads soldiers down to fight against the Creeks who are occupying half of present day Alabama and large parts of Georgia. And he defeats them. And then he proceeds down to New Orleans where he fights the British and forever opens the mouth of the Mississippi to what’s going to become the heart of the slave and cotton empire.

Within a few decades, cotton produced by enslaved people will account for 80% of all American exports, which, of course, plants the seeds for another episode not only of BackStory but of American history when the country explodes as a result of the tensions unleashed by the War of 1812. So, Brian, Peter sees the beginnings of American nationalism. I see the beginnings of America’s great economy. What in the world could you possibly have for the 20th Century?

BRIAN: Ed, I see the United States Air Force.

ED: Did not see that coming, my friend.

PETER: Who would be looking up the way he’s looking up?

BRIAN: Now, I want to be clear for those listeners out there who are not quite sure when the airplane was invented, it was not in 1812. But let me explain how we get to the Air Force. The War of 1812 on the ground is either disastrous or comical depending on how many centuries you are removed from it.

And the reason it’s disastrous is our army is really just a patchwork of militias. They’re very locally oriented. And Jefferson and Madison might have thought that the army was just going to march into Canada. But you know what? Getting those militias to march past their state border was no easy thing.

Militarily, what we learn, what we take away from the War of 1812 is, hey, that Navy thing. You know, there were only 16 ships in the Navy. There were 600 in the British Navy. But we kicked their butts.

And one of the reasons we were so effective was we didn’t have a Massachusetts Navy or a Virginia Navy. The Navy was one of the few actual national entities. And those sailors, once they got out on sea, no matter where they came from, they came from all over, they kind of gelled. They kind of bonded.

And there was one more advantage that people saw after the war. You know, you didn’t have to quarter the Navy in New York City or Philadelphia. They weren’t prying into people’s businesses. They weren’t a very visible presence. This gets translated into some of the very reasons that the Air Force and air power became so effective after World War II. The Air Force became a key part of America’s approach to remaining strong, projecting power but not showing that kind of concentrated, threatening power that standing armies had always represented to the United States.