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Graeme Decarie, Canadian Historian
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Reasons why the U.S. could not win the War of 1812The War of 1812 was really several wars. And that was the fault of the Americans. They never quite figured out precisely what it was they were trying to do in this war. You had the war on the Atlantic seaboard against the British navy.You had a second war in which the important target would have been Quebec City. And that perhaps was the most important war. If the Americans had launched an attack that took Quebec, then they could effectively block the river, block all the British supplies. The British armies in the interior would have been absolutely helpless, and that would have been the war over. Montreal, of course, you could accomplish the same thing, but not quite as fully because you're not as far down river as Quebec. And the problem that Montreal had was this city couldn't be defended. No army has ever tried to defend Montreal. It's not - what you had to do with Montreal is to get an army out beyond the city to stop the Americans in the field before they could get as far as the city. Theoretically, that should have been absolutely impossible, but in fact it was done. Then you had the war of the Great Lakes which was essentially a war for the west. And for this whole area which was still largely open to settlement. And that was another target of the Americans. Their problem was they tried to fight these three wars at the same time, when, if they had concentrated on one of them, they probably would have won the war. |
