Origins Of The War Of 1812

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The United States declared war on Britain for a number of reasons.

Origins of
The War of 1812
Chesapeake–Leopard Affair
Orders in Council (1807)
Embargo Act of 1807
Non-Intercourse Act
Macon's Bill Number 2
Tecumseh's War
Henry letters
War Hawks
Rule of 1756
Monroe–Pinkney Treaty
Little Belt Affair

Trade tensions
In 1807, Britain introduced a series of traderestrictions to impede on-going American trade with France, with which Britain was at war. The U.S. contested these restrictions as illegal under international law.[3]

The British did not wish to allow the Americans to trade with France, regardless of their theoretical right as neutrals to do so. As author Reginald Horsman explains, "a large section of influential British opinion, both in thegovernment and in the country, thought that America presented a threat to British maritime supremacy."[4]

The American merchant marine had come close to doubling between 1802 and 1810, making it by far the largest neutral fleet. Britain was the largest trading partner, receiving 80% of all U.S. cotton and 50% of all other U.S. exports. The British public and press were resentful of the growingmercantile and commercial competition.[5] The United States' view was that Britain was in violation of a neutral nation's right to trade with others it saw fit.

Impressment
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy expanded to 175 ships of the line and 600 ships overall, requiring 140,000 sailors.[6] While the Royal Navy could man its ships with volunteers in peacetime, in war, it competed withmerchant shipping and privateers for a small pool of experienced sailors and turned to impressment when it was unable to man ships with volunteers alone. It was estimated that there were 11,000 naturalized sailors on US ships in 1805 and US Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin stated that 9,000 were born in Britain.[7] The Royal Navy went after them by intercepting and searching U.S. merchantships for deserters. Such actions, especially the Chesapeake–Leopard Affair, incensed the Americans. Americans saw impressment as a particular outrage, because it represented an infringement of the national sovereignty and a denial of America’s ability to naturalise foreigners.[8]

The United States believed that British deserters had a right to become United States citizens. Britain did notrecognise naturalised United States citizenship, so in addition to recovering deserters, it considered United States citizens born British liable for impressment. Exacerbating the situation was the widespread use of forged identity papers by sailors. This made it all the more difficult for the Royal Navy to distinguish Americans from non-Americans and led it to impress some Americans who had never beenBritish. (Some gained freedom on appeal.)[9] American anger at impressment grew when British frigates stationed themselves just outside U.S. harbors in U.S. territorial waters and searched ships for contraband and impressed men in view of U.S. shores.[10] "Free trade and sailors' rights" was a rallying cry for the United States throughout the conflict.

Indigenous raids
The Northwest Territoryhad been an area of contention between the Indian Nations and the United States since the passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787.[11] The British Empire had ceded the area to the United States in the Treaty of Paris (1783). The Indian Nations followed Tenskwatawa (the Shawnee Prophet and the brother of Tecumseh, who had a vision of purifying his society by expelling the "children of the EvilSpirit" (the American settlers).[12] Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh formed a confederation of numerous tribes to block American expansion. The British saw the Indian Nations as valuable allies and a buffer to its Canadian colonies and provided arms. Attacks on American settlers in the Northwest further aggravated tensions between Britain and the US.[13] The Confederation's raids hindered the expansion...
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