War Of 1812

War of 1812 CANADA

Lasted from 1812 to 1814

Battle between USA and Canada and the UK with Canada and the UK being on the same side.

The USA decided to attack after the British started to push high taxes and treating the native born usa citizens harshly and they thought that attacking Canada would be easy and would hurt the British so on 18th of June 1812 President Madison signed a declaration of war against Canada and England.

USA decided to attack Upper Canada. Upper Canada.

About 1,600 British regulars, formed mostly from the 41st Regiment of Foot and detachments from other units, defended Upper Canada. However, the badly outnumbered British were in fact better prepared than the Americans knew. The 41st Regiment of British regulars had been reinforced by a number of militia units (although their loyalty and reliability was uncertain). The Provincial Marine controlled Lake Ontario. Much of the preparation was thanks to the foresight of Major-General Sir Isaac Brock, administrator of Upper Canada. Brock had a thorough grasp of the challenges of the upcoming conflict and had been preparing for five years, reinforcing fortifications, training militia units and, perhaps most important, developing alliances with the First Nations.

THE BRITISH ATTACK

Like most commanders, Brock was dissatisfied by lack of troops he had. But he didn’t want to wait for the USA to attack he thought that a bold military attack would stir up the population and get the first nations on his side.

He sent orders to the commanding officer of Fort St. Joseph on Lake Huron to capture a key American post at Michilimackinac Island on 17 July. The force of 46 British soldiers and 400 Aboriginal warriors captured the fort quickly and without bloodshed.

American force under General William Hull had crossed from Detroit into Canada, forcing Brock to quickly march his men from the town of York to counter the invasion. When he arrived at the British fort at Amherstburg, Brock found that the American invasion force had already withdrawn to Detroit. With the great Shawnee chief Tecumseh at his side, he boldly demanded that Hull surrender Detroit, which the hapless general did on 16 August, in effect giving the British control of Michigan territory and the Upper Mississippi.

Campaigns in Upper Canada

At this point Thomas Jefferson's remark that the capture of Canada was "a mere matter of marching" returned to haunt Washington. Having lost one army at Detroit, the Americans lost another at Queenston Heights (13 October 1812) after their militia refused to cross into Canada, citing the constitutional guarantee that it would not have to fight on foreign soil. (However, during the engagement Brock was killed – a significant loss to the British and Canadian cause.)

A new American army under William Henry Harrison struggled up from Kentucky to try to retake Detroit. One wing was so badly mauled at Frenchtown (22 January 1813) by a force of British, Canadians and First Nations under Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Procter that further attempts at invasion that winters were abandoned. The only Americans in Canada were prisoners of war.

With the death of Brock the strategy of the British was to play passively and let the enemy make mistakes Governor Sir George Prevost husbanded his thin forces carefully, keeping a strong garrison at Québec and sending reinforcements to Upper Canada only when additional troops arrived from overseas.

1813

As the campaign of 1813 started USA was able to hold York (Toronto) briefly, they then went and seized fort Georg, while this is the time of the war that the British lost the most the USA army failed to push there advantage.

They gave the British to recover and prepare. The British then regained control in a fierce battle.

They then lost again three weeks later at Beaver Dams, where some 600 men were captured by the first nations. The British had been warned of the attack by Luara Secord.

Finally the Americans left Fort George on December 10^th and they burnt down the town of Newark as they left which led the British to a brutal retaliation at Buffalo. Which continued until Washington itself was burned by the British the following August.

 They then had several sessions of lake battles where the USA fleets beat the British badly.

The USA also attacked Lower Canada, where the USA had a huge advantage of outnumbering the Canadian forces 10-1.

But a miscellaneous force of British regulars, Voltigeurs, militia, and First Nations harassed the advancing Americans and turned the invasion back at Châteauguay (25–26 October 1813) under Lieutenant-Colonel Charles de Salaberry, and at Crysler's Farm (near Cornwall, ON) on 11 November 1813, under Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Wanton Morrison.

Invading the United States

On the Atlantic front, Nova Scotia’s Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Sherbrooke, led a force from Halifax into Maine, capturing Castine on 1 September 1814. By the middle of September, British forces held much of the Maine coast, which was returned to the US only with the signing of the peace treaty in December 1814. The most formidable effort by the British in 1814 was the invasion of northern New York, in which Governor Prevost led 11,000 British veterans of the Napoleonic Wars to Plattsburgh on Lake Champlain. However, Prevost was hesitant to attack — he was no Brock — and the defeat of the British fleet in Plattsburgh Bay by the American commodore, Thomas Macdonough, on 11 September led Prevost to withdraw his troops.

The Treaty of Ghent

Prevost’s decision to withdraw from American territory affected peace negotiations in Ghent, which had begun in August 1814. Had Prevost’s invasion succeeded, much of upper New York State might be Canadian today. However, his withdrawal forced the British peace negotiators at Ghent to lower their demands and accept the status quo. When the treaty was signed on Christmas Eve 1814, all conquests were to be restored and disputes over boundaries were deferred to joint commissions.

Hostilities continued after the peace treaty was signed, however. The last battle of the war is often cited as the Battle of New Orleans (8 January 1815), but British and American forces also clashed on 11 February 1815 at Fort Bowyer on Mobile Bay. A number of naval engagements also followed the signing of the treaty, including the final battle of the war, between the US sloop Peacock and East India cruiser Nautilus in the Indian Ocean, four-and-a-half months after the peace treaty was signed.