Thanks to marktwain for the courteous reply (post 46).
“...while I agree essentially with many of your statements, I take issue with a few factoids or at least their interpretation....
...Britain was occupied with concern about Napoleon.... ... I don’t know that UK was overly embroiled in fighting … ‘forming a Seventh Coalition which defeated him at the Battle of Waterloo in June’...
...We [USA] had virtually no navy and we might still have to back that up with amphibious forces, ... Foolish to try that move on the mother country …
...Baltimore was not merely a Ft. McHenry action. …” [OlLine Rebel, post 47]
The British were not concerned solely with direct attack on France. I summarized too tightly; they did spend more time, more cash, and more effort at putting together coalitions to oppose the French. I defer to OlLine Rebel on the number, sequence, and timing of coalitions.
Looking at those times from a remove of more than 200 years, I have come to believe that the British, and the motley collection of other nations that joined the Allies at various times, with varying fervor, for various reasons, I’ve come to the tentative conclusion that it was Revolutionary France that frightened them all; from 1793 until mid 1815 it was unending war. The pauses and the side-changing might seem significant to a mind obsessing over legalistic trivia, but they did not alter the strategic essentials.
Napoleon Buonaparte (who was a Corsican, not a Frenchman) merely gave opponents someone to focus on - and be further frightened of.
OlLine Rebel is entirely correct in emphasizing that the British raid launched against Baltimore in 1814 wasn’t aimed at Ft McHenry alone. And Baltimore wasn’t the only target. Not many of our fellow citizens are aware of that.
I’m not aware of any US warplans of 1812-1814 aimed at invading the British Isles. Whatever US strategy goals were then, that level of invasion does not appear to been entertained with any seriousness.
As a first-generation citizen descended from late-arriving English immigrants, born & reared in rural NY State, I find the conduct of New Yorkers and New Englanders during the War of 1812 to be not merely borderline treason, but moralizing hubris that was odious.
But it falls short of the hypocrisy Freepers love to pillory them for: the early years of the Republic were a time of great social dynamism, restlessness, and experimentation. The nature, purpose, mandates, and limitations of self-government were being invented as the citizenry felt their way along, into their own future and that of the nation. So it’s less than surprising that outlooks, goals, and moral precepts changed radically by the 1860s - more than once, in every state, and across regions.
What still seems less that honest is the moral superiority that Northerners generally, and New Englanders in particular, arrogated to themselves by the 1860s. They had become the nation’s moral arbiters: a position to which the appointed themselves.
“What still seems less that honest is the moral superiority that Northerners generally, and New Englanders in particular, arrogated to themselves by the 1860s. They had become the nation’s moral arbiters: a position to which the appointed themselves.”
NEers in particular. They think that because they “agitated” the Revolution they are the final say in what is really American.
Think about it. While I was steeped in history due to my history-loving mom (dad liked too, but mom was a degreed), if I had left it to the public schools AND general societal norms, I’d think the Pilgrims were the first English in the NA colonies and that the RevWar was fought mostly around New England, while somehow the Congress met in Philly.
They were good at starting things but not actually finishing. Including that VERY early, they took a “liberal” turn which basically betrayed the experiment.
BTW, I do think John Adams is due much more credit than he gets, even if he is a NEer.