Butthurt guy whines about Canada's warship names

[Admiral Yi]

Goebbels had some moves.  I think a better comparison is to Hugo Chavez' trolling.

[Neil]

Come on.  Big ideas?  Expansionist?  Bloodthirsty?  Racialist?  Mass use of slavery?  They're not expactly the same, but the broad strokes are all there.

[Admiral Yi]

When the strokes are broad enough everyone is there.

[The Brain]

Goebbels was loyal, and loyalty is enough.

[Barrister]

The US wanted to conquer it for ideological reasons.

When you think of the early US, it's helpful to think of them as being like the Nazis.

I fully reject this statement.

What the US did was not unusual compared to other nations of the 19th century.  But that doesn't mean they weren't wars of conquest.

[Berkut]

The US wanted to conquer it for ideological reasons.

When you think of the early US, it's helpful to think of them as being like the Nazis.

I fully reject this statement.

What the US did was not unusual compared to other nations of the 19th century.  But that doesn't mean they weren't wars of conquest.

I believe the key term was "repeated wars of Conquest for the entire 19th century,". You really have to have a very serious axe to grind to describe US history in the 19th century in that manner.

[OttoVonBismarck]

And why would somebody want to debate you on this when you obviously have already made your mind up?

The professor I TA'd for at Texas State believed that annexation of Canada was a goal of the war, I buy the line that it was a bit of a fuzzy incredibly optimistic dream.  That many people let themselves dream we could win a glorious victory and with the liberated Canadians by our side throw the tyrannical British from North America, and more level headed and practical types went along with it at least to test the waters.

I mean this is a subject historians still debate.  So I am not sure it is something we can really come to a consensus about.

The fact though is that, regardless of our intentions, is the Canadians COULD have taken this opportunity to join the US but rejected it and went off on their own path.  That is the beginning of English-speaking Canada.

There is no debate that the actual Congressional records, and the words of guys like Henry Clay and Madison explicitly describe a strategy that relies on using Canada as a bargaining chip. I'm not really engaging in what you are, which is "speculation", I'm just repeating the facts as we know them. Is it possibly Madison and others would have decided to keep Canada if the invasion had gone well? Sure. It's also possible the New England states in a fit of anger at the Mid-Atlantic and Southern warmongering and animosity with Britain broke away and formed their own country. It's possible Texas becomes a dependency of Belgium or that William the Conqueror falls off his horse and dies on the way to Hastings. But that's just speculative, and cannot be derived from facts. The facts we do have only point to using Canada as a bargaining chip. Everything else is "well, I think this would have happened if this had happened."

Now, I don't doubt a professor at Texas State thought that annexation was a war goal. I might think any number of things if I was a professor at such an undistinguished school, but one of the books I linked to was written by Don Hickey who is considered the preeminent scholar of his generation on the War of 1812 who has won various awards and accolades for his War of 1812 research.

[Neil]

I guess we'll never know, since the US lost a number of battles and thus was unable to win the war.  Because of this, a Canadian guys would write 200 years later that Americans shouldn't be butthurt over the naming of Canadian ships after these battles, even though no Americans seem to be raging about that.  Ultimately, the War of 1812 will primarily be remembered by Canadians as the deliverance that allows us socialized medicine, and by the Americans not at all, except for people who are like to argue that they didn't really lose.

[Ed Anger]

I pat myself on the back for this thread.

[Admiral Yi]

It will continue to be remembered by Americans for kicking a lot of British ass, particularly at sea.

[PDH]

I think that the better troll is winning this thread.

[Barrister]

It will continue to be remembered by Americans for kicking a lot of British ass, particularly at sea.

If remembered at all in the US, it is for the Star Spangled Banner.

[Admiral Yi]

If remembered at all in the US, it is for the Star Spangled Banner.

My guess is only around 1/20 Americans could tell you when that was written.

[Neil]

Yeah, I suspect most Americans would guess that they're talking about the rebellion.

[jimmy olsen]

There is also little mechanism by which the United States could have annexed Canada. What legal form would Canada be converted to? Certainly not  States, in the War of 1812 era States were paramount, and if we brought Canada in as a State or cut it up into 1-2 States they'd be able to break away essentially immediately. Even fighting to keep them in would have been politically nigh-impossible in the 1810s-1820s.

We could have made them a territory, but there was no precedent for the United States creating a territory made up of settled, hostile Europeans. How would we have kept them under thumb? We had virtually no standing army even after 1812, the standing army we had raised was not signed up for life. They typically signed  short enlistments and the volunteers were primarily motivated by a desire to defend the national honor and fight against Britain (glory seeking was rampant--the War of 1812 required no conscription and had an excess of volunteers.) But when the task becomes "suppress revolts in Canada", those soldiers would not sign up for new enlistments to do that, they'd want back to their homes. The State militias in the other States certainly would not go to Canada to suppress rebellion.

... I see no real scenario where Madison actually thinks it could be a permanent acquisition. Not only was it militarily impossible it would have been politically unpopular.

There was plenty of modern Canadian territory we could have demanded had we won that was then uninhabited such as the Oregon territory and the territory controlled by the Hudson Bay company.