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I. OPPOSING CLAIMS
II. OPPOSING FORCES
III. 1812: OFF TO THE FRONT
IV. 1812: BROCK AT DETROIT AND QUEENSTON HEIGHTS
V. 1813: THE BEAVER DAMS, LAKE ERIE, AND CHATEAUGUAY
VI. 1814: LUNDY'S LANE, PLATTSBURG, AND THE GREAT BLOCKADE
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
CHAPTER I
OPPOSING CLAIMS
International disputes that end in war are not generally
questions of absolute right and wrong. They may quite as
well be questions of opposing rights. But, when there
are rights on both sides; it is usually found that the
side which takes the initiative is moved by its national
desires as well as by its claims of right.
This could hardly be better exemplified than by the vexed
questions which brought about the War of 1812. The British
were fighting for life and liberty against Napoleon.
Napoleon was fighting to master the whole of Europe. The
United States wished to make as much as possible out of
unrestricted trade with both belligerents. But Napoleon's
Berlin Decree forbade all intercourse whatever with the
British, while the British Orders-in-Council forbade all
intercourse whatever with Napoleon and his allies, except
on condition that the trade should first pass through
British ports. Between two such desperate antagonists
there was no safe place for an unarmed, independent,
'free-trading' neutral. Every one was forced to take
sides. The British being overwhelmingly strong at sea,
while the French were correspondingly strong on land,
American shipping was bound to suffer more from the
British than from the French. The French seized every
American vessel that infringed the Berlin Decree whenever
they could manage to do so. But the British seized so
many more for infringing the Orders-in-Council that the
Americans naturally began to take sides with the French.
Worse still, from the American point of view, was the
British Right of Search, which meant the right of searching
neutral merchant vessels either in British waters or on
the high seas for deserters from the Royal Navy. Every
other people whose navy could enforce it had always
claimed a similar right. But other peoples' rights had
never clashed with American interests in at all the same
way. What really roused the American government was not
the abstract Right of Search, but its enforcement at a
time when so many hands aboard American vessels were
British subjects evading service in their own Navy. The
American theory was that the flag covered the crew wherever
the ship might be. Such a theory might well have been
made a question for friendly debate and settlement at
any other time. But it was a new theory, advanced by a
new nation, whose peculiar and most disturbing entrance
on the international scene could not be suffered to upset
the accepted state of things during the stress of a
life-and-death war. Under existing circumstances the
British could not possibly give up their long-established
Right of Search without committing national suicide.
Neither could they relax their own blockade so long as
Napoleon maintained his. The Right of Search and the
double blockade of Europe thus became two vexed questions
which led straight to war.
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