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1 ChapterOne Introduction Pietro S. Nivola and Peter J. Kastor With no consensus of the two political parties, the government of the United States decides to go to war. The war of choice is waged on the assumption that it will be brief and decisive. There is little advance planning for how to pay for—and prevail in—an unexpectedly protracted and complicated military operation. Moreover, the war aims are not stable. They become ambitious. When the main casus belli recedes, others move to the fore. An invasion of a foreign country is attempted, and it is presumed that American soldiers will be greeted as liberators. Nasty surprises abound. Not only does discord grow in Congress, the executive suffers from factionalism, infighting, and, in some bureaus, gross incompetence. The war drags on. The upshot is, in reality, a stalemate—or at least an anticlimax—even though the president declares the mission accomplished. Historians will continue to wonder whether it was necessary and exactly what it accomplished. That scenario may sound familiar. Iraq comes to mind. America’s intervention there was controversial, unpaid for (at least through additional taxes instead of debt), and beset by unintended developments. It slogged on much longer than predicted. The stated goal of the expedition was to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, but when the existence of those weapons could not be confirmed, U.S. troops were ordered to invade the country anyway. Other objectives (first removing a regime, then stabilizing its replacement) now took precedence. Yet many Iraqis did not welcome their liberators, who were surprised by the anti-American reaction and 01-2414-8 ch1.indd 1 9/11/12 3:45 PM 2 / Pietro S. Nivola and Peter J. Kastor the tenacity of the insurgent movement that followed. It remains unclear whether the costly U.S. effort in Iraq will have paid off. But the general description in the opening sentences above is also a serviceable characterization of an earlier armed conflict—one that took place a couple of centuries ago and that most Americans now recall dimly, if at all: the War of 1812. Two centuries after it began, few Americans know much about the war; indeed, its bicentennial observance has gotten more attention in Canada than in the United States. Americans might recall that the national anthem was written during the War of 1812, or perhaps that the British invaded and burned much of the nation’s capital, or that Andrew Jackson led American troops to victory at New Orleans. But the causes and outcomes of the war have generally faded from memory. In its own time, however, the War of 1812, which followed nearly a generation of strife with foreign powers in North America, was a momentous event. It marked the first time that the United States made a formal declaration of war, and that dramatic step influenced the way that a generation of Americans conceived of their country and its role in the world. The War of 1812 had multiple roots, but first and foremost among them were the commercial disputes between the United States and Great Britain. In addition to imposing restrictions on American trade (a primary concern of U.S. policymakers), the British government, in a practice known as impressment, had continued to force sailors on American merchant ships to serve on warships of the Royal Navy. In 1812, the United States took up arms against Great Britain hoping that a military campaign on the Canadian border would force a change in British policy. In two years of bloody, mostly chaotic warfare, neither side triumphed. The conflict stretched far and wide, on both land and sea. American, British, and Indian forces clashed not only along the border with Canada but also in the Mississippi Valley, on the Gulf Coast, and in the Mid-Atlantic states. Meanwhile, the fledgling U.S. Navy sought to take the fight to the British on the Great Lakes, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and even the waters surrounding the British Isles. The British responded by deploying a large fleet to blockade the Eastern seaboard and eventually to launch the amphibious invasions near Washington and New Orleans. It was from one of those British ships that an American prisoner, Francis Scott Key, observed the bombardment of Fort McHenry, which guarded Baltimore’s harbor. Inspired by the tenacity of the U.S. defenders, Key wrote the poem that became the “The Star-Spangled Banner.” 01-2414-8 ch1.indd 2 9...

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