16: The War of 1812, Part II

Having declared war at a time it was woefully unprepared to face the world’s most powerful country on the battlefield, the United States spent the first phase of the War of 1812—at least on land—lurching from disaster to disaster, with most efforts aimed at the theoretically achievable goal of conquering Canada. Unable at first even to feed or supply its troops competently, and with serious doubts about the objects of the war still lingering in the public mind and the halls of Congress, the administration of James Madison muddled through as best it could, buoyed slightly by a string of surprising naval victories. But in 1813, with a politically and physically weakened Madison reeling from an unexpectedly difficult re-election and a serious illness that almost killed him, two developments, one on the Native American frontier and the other in Europe, forever ended the chances of the U.S. taking Canada and would soon open a new and darker phase of the conflict.

Historian Sean Munger presents the mysterious War of 1812 from both a bird’s-eye and a ground-level view, trying to break through the imagery and mythology that’s grown up around the war to appreciate what it really meant at the time. In this episode you’ll meet a blundering general (William Hull) and an unexpectedly brilliant naval officer (Oliver Hazard Perry), you’ll learn why it was dangerous to drink a glass of water at the White House, and you’ll learn what a “Red Stick” is. Several colorful characters, from the cleverly duplicitous British General Isaac Brock to the gun-toting, Indian-hating, profusely bleeding Andrew Jackson, drift, blunder, sail or shoot our way into our story. This is the second of a three-part series on the war.

Note: in the episode I identify Oliver Hazard Perry as an admiral. He was actually a commodore.

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