Name: 1812年戰爭--美國曆史速成班 #11 (The War of 1812 - Crash Course US History #11)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T05:21:27.000Z
Duration: 12 min 43 s
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Hi, I’m John Green. This is Crash Course U.S. history and today we’re gonna talk

about what America’s best at: War. (Libertage.)

Uh, Mr. Green, the United States has actually only declared war 5 times in the last 230

years. Oh, Me from the Past, you sniveling literalist.

Well, today we’re gonna talk about America’s first declared war, the War of 1812, so called

because historians are terrible at naming things.

I mean, they could’ve called it the Revolutionary War Part Deux, or the Canadian Cataclysm,

or the War to Facilitate Future Wars. But no. They just named it after the year

I know this disappoints the military historians among you, but as usual we’re gonna spend

more time talking about the causes and effects of the war than the actual, like, killing

parts, because ultimately it’s the ambiguity of the War of 1812 that makes it so interesting.

The reason most often given for the War of 1812 was the British impressment of American

sailors, whereby American sailors would be kidnapped and basically forced into British

servitude. This disrupted American shipping. It also

seems like a reasonably obvious violation of American sovereignty, but it’s a little

more complicated than that. First of all, there were many thousands of

British sailors working aboard American ships, so many of the sailors that the British captured

were in fact British —which gets to the larger point that citizenship

at the time was a pretty slippery concept, especially on the high seas, like papers were

often forged and many sailors identified their supposed American-ness through tattoos of,

like, Eagles and Flags. And there were several reasons why a British

sailor might want to become or pretend to be an American, including that the Brits at

the time were fighting Napoleon in what historians, in their infinite creativity, called the Napoleonic

Wars. And on that topic, Britain’s impressment

policy allowed them both to disrupt American shipping to France and to get new British

sailors to strengthen their war effort, which was annoying to the Americans on a couple

levels, especially the French loving Republicans, which is a phrase that you don’t hear very

often anymore. Another reason often given for the war was

America’s crazy conspiratorial Anglophobia. There was even a widespread rumor that British

agents were buying up Connecticut sheep in order to sabotage the textile industry! Lest

you worry that America’s fascination with conspiracy theories is new.

So those pushing for war were known as War Hawks, and the most famous among them was

Kentucky’s Henry Clay. They took the impressment of sailors as an

affront to American national honor, but they also complained that Britain’s actions were

an affront to free trade, by which they meant America’s ability to trade with Europeans

other than Great Britain. And, to be fair, the British WERE trying to

regulate American trade. They even passed the Orders in Council, which required American

ships to dock in Britain and pay tax before trading with other European nations.

Britain, we were an independent nation! You can’t do that kind of stuff. We have a special

relationship. It’s not that special. But the problem with saying this caused the

war is that the Orders had been in effect for 5 years before the war started AND they

were rescinded in 1812 before the U.S. declared war, although admittedly we didn’t know

about it because it didn’t reach us until after we declared war...there was no Twitter.

Another reason for the war was Canada. That’s right, Canada. Americans wanted you, Canada,

and who can blame them, with your excellent health care and your hockey and your first-rate

national anthem. Stan, this is fun, but enough with the #1812problems.

According to Virginia Congressman John Randolph “Agrarian cupidity, not maritime rights

urges the war. We have heard but one word … Canada!, Canada!, Canada!”

I’m not here to criticize you, John Randolph, but that’s actually three words.

Now, some historians disagree with this, but the relentless pursuit of new land certainly

fits in with the Jeffersonian model of an agrarian republic.

And there’s another factor that figured into America’s decision to go to war: expansion

into territory controlled by Native Americans. Oh it’s time for the Mystery Document? The

rules here are simple. I try to guess the author of the Mystery Document,

usually I’m wrong and I get shocked. Alright, let’s see what we’ve got here.

“You want, by your distinctions of Indian tribes, in allotting to each a particular

tract of land, to make them to war with each other. You never see an Indian come and endeavor

to make the white people do so.” It’s Tecumseh. DROP THE MIC. Is something

that I would do except that the mic is actually attached to my shirt, so...there’s no drama

in this. It’s clearly a Native American criticism

of white people. And I happen to know that that particular one comes from Tecumseh. And

I don’t get shocked today! So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that

Americans were continuing to push westward into territory where Indians were living.

I mean, this was a big reason for the Louisiana Purchase, after all.

By the beginning of the war, more than 400,000 settlers had moved into territories west of

the original 13 colonies, and they outnumbered American Indians by a significant margin.

Some Native groups responded with a measure of assimilation. Cherokees like John Ross

wanted to become more “civilized,” that is more white and farmer-y, and some of them

did even adopt such civilized practices as written languages, and slavery. The most civilized

practice of all. People are always like, “Why aren’t you

more celebratory of American history?” Well, why isn’t there more to celebrate?

But, other Indians wanted to resist. The best known of these were the aforementioned Tecumseh

and his brother Tenskwatawa – Stan, can you just put it on the screen? Yes, let’s

just enjoy looking at that. Right, that’s just for all you visual learners.

So he was also known as the Prophet because of his religious teachings (and also because

of the pronunciation issues). The Prophet encouraged Indians, especially

those living in and around the settlement of Prophetstown, to abandon the ways of the

whites, primarily in the form of alcohol and manufactured consumer goods.

So stop drinking alcohol and eating refined sugars. This guy sounds like my doctor.

Tecumseh was more militant, attempting to revive Neolin’s idea of pan-Indianism and

actively resisting white settlement. As he put it. “Sell a country, Why not sell the

air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for

the use of his children?” The Americans responded to this reasonable

criticism in the traditional manner: with guns.

William Henry Harrison destroyed the natives’ settlement at Prophetstown in what would become

known as the Battle of Tippecanoe. And he would later ride that fame all the

way to the presidency in 1840 and then spoiler alert he would give the longest inauguration

address ever, catch a cold, and die 40 days later.

Let that be a lesson to you, American politicians. Long speeches: fatal.

So, I’ve just painted a pretty negative picture of the Americans’ treatment of the

Indians, because it was awful, but I haven’t mentioned how this relates to the War of 1812.

The Americans were receiving reports that the British were encouraging Tecumseh, which

they probably were. And the important thing to remember here is

that the War of 1812, like the 7 Years War and the American Revolution, was also a war

against Indians, and as in those other two wars, the Indians were the biggest losers.

And not in the cool way of the Biggest Loser where, like, Trainer Bob helps you lose weight,

but in the really sad way where your entire civilization gets John C. Calhoun-ed.

So, the War of 1812 was the first time that the United States declared war on anybody.

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1812年戰爭--美國曆史速成班 #11 (The War of 1812 - Crash Course US History #11)

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