War of 1812 personalized

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Ethusiasts re-enactskirmishes from the War of 1812 in Perth, Ont. (POSTMEDIA)

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The Civil War of 1812

American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies

By Alan Taylor

Knopf, 613 pages, $41

The subtitle is a clue to the unique approach the author, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian, takes to the War of 1812.

While Calfornia-based Alan Taylor more than adequately covers the military activity, he minimizes accounts of happenings on the battlefield and personalizes the various conflicts between the communities involved, mainly in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region.

He does provide the big picture, including the origins of the war, dating back to the American Revolution. As well, he outlines the long-term outcomes, as they unfold by the 1840s.

He probes well beyond the more predictable military framework. He explains with great clarity the uncertain border between imperial British North America and the republican United States.

He describes the tragedies that emerge when former friends and family members go to war against each other. One anecdote relates how a Canadian soldier killed an opponent only to discover that it was his own brother.

Unlike Euro-centred accounts, the aboriginals in this book have actual names, such as the Kickapoo hunter Akockis. Tecumseh the Shawnee warrior leader is only one of the more prominent aboriginal figures, upon whom the British greatly depended to defend Canadian borders.

Of course, the War of 1812 was a civil war, even though the United States had become politically separate from the British empire. The politicians in London could think of the war in North America as a means of restoring its once widespread and expanding territory in the so-called New World.

Politicians in Washington, on the other hand, could regard the war as a continuation, indeed a conclusion, of the war of independence. Conquest of the British territories north of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence could consolidate American power, even reduce the influence of the mighty British navy.

Even at the most serious stages of the war, movement of travellers and settlers continued through the "porous borders."

American forces launched attempts at invasion of the British colonies -- Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec) -- but north-south trade continued.

So did the smuggling. And if smugglers or deserters -- there were many of both -- were caught by either side, chances are they were soon exchanged. Neither of the adversaries had the means to confine, or feed, large numbers.

Taylor's research turns up all kinds of personal details about individual participants in the War of 1812. He graphically illustrates the incompetence of supposed leaders like Gen. William Hull, who almost singlehandedly set up the initial failure of the American invasion of Canada. He profiles many others, such as the land speculator Thomas Talbot, U.S President James Madison, and Canadian rebel William Lyon Mackenzie.

Taylor ponders the various ways in which the combatants, including the Iroquois and the so-called "late Loyalists," won or lost. Consistent with his manner of bringing out the human side, he details the story of William Hamilton Merritt and Catherine Prendergast.

The start of the war interrupted their engagement, as her family returned to the U.S., while he remained in Upper Canada, committed to its defence. When the hostilities concluded more or less in a stalemate, the young couple (barely into their 20s) were able to continue with their marriage plans.

If, Taylor notes, the amateurish American efforts at invading Canada had been better led and organized, British North America may have fallen under U.S. control. If the British, following up their influence in Europe upon the defeat of Napoleon, had diverted their military power across the Atlantic, the loosely framed U.S. republic may have become fragmented. New England, for example, may have separated.

Ron Kirbyson is a Winnipeg writer and teacher.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 30, 2010 H9