1812

Cover

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Contents

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Preface: Emotion, Persuasion, and the Meaning of War

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pp. ix-xvii

When John Blake White’s younger brother James announced that he planned to enlist in the U.S. Army in the spring of 1814, the elder White reacted with dismay. To his journal, he confided his “grief and . . .

Chapter 1 Celebrating Love, Liberty, and Progeny: United Staes, Circa 1811

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pp. 1-35

Hezekiah Niles nurtured a visceral antagonism toward the British. The founder and editor of the Niles Weekly Register, who began publishing out of Baltimore in 1811, claimed that, back during the . . .

Chapter 2 Failures of Feeling as National Disasters: Detroit, August 1812

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pp. 36-75

When the men first saw a blue-and-red-striped marquee tent rising in the American camp on the Detroit River, “a singular structure never before seen in this army,” many may have shrugged it off as just one more . . .

Chapter 3 Romantic Stories of Republican Conquest on the Great Lakes: Lake Erie, September 1813

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pp. 76-117

The sky was blue, the wind was light, and the air was clear on the bright September noon in 1813 when Captain Oliver Perry sailed to victory against the British on Lake Erie. In an initial hard-fought encounter lasting . . .

Chapter 4 Demographic Strategies and the Defeat of Tecumseh: Moraviantown, Canada, October 1813

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pp. 118-167

The progress of war can be tracked on a map or tabulated in body counts. When General William Henry Harrison’s troops confronted the British forces of General Henry Proctor on the River Thames in Upper Canada . . .

Chapter 5 Liberty, Slavery, and the Burning of the Capital: Washington, D.C., August 1814

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pp. 168-210

Philadelphia physician Jesse Torrey traveled to Washington, D.C., in December 1815 to witness history. Torrey had arrived at the seat of the national government in time to observe the start of a new session of Congress. . . .

Conclusion: Ardor and Triumph: New Orleans, January 1815

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pp. 211-235

After the many disasters, surrenders, defeats, desertions, and general embarrassments that the United States endured in the War of 1812, the tide of history finally reversed itself on the Mississippi River, a few miles south of . . .

Notes

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pp. 237-298

Index

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pp. 299-311

Acknowledgments

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pp. 313-315

Iam very grateful to the scholars and institutions that have helped advance this project. For fellowship support and for great encouragement, many thanks to the American Antiquarian Society, especially Paul J. Erickson and . . .