War of 1812

This page refers to the war between the United States of America and Great Britain. For Napoleon's 1812 Invasion of Russia, see Napoleon's invasion of Russia. The War of 1812 was fought between the United States and United Kingdom from 1812 to 1815, on land in North America and at sea around the world. Although the United States was officially at war with Great Britain, more than half of the British forces were made up of Canadian militia. Additionally, many North American Indian peoples (today most often called "Native Americans" in the United States and "First Nations" in Canada) fought on both sides of the war for reasons of their own. In the Northwest Territory, the War was, in a sense, a continuation of Tecumseh's War after his defeat in the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. The war formally began on June 18, 1812 with the U.S. declaration of war. The United States launched invasions of the Canadian provinces in 1812 and 1813, but the borders were successfully defended by British and North American Indian forces. The United States gained the upper hand in the North American Indian part of war with victories at the Battle of the Thames in October 1813 and the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in March 1814, but by this time the United Kingdom had successfully concluded the Napoleonic wars and the British were finally able to divert more resources to North America. British invasions of American territory resulted in the burning of Washington, D.C. and the capture of part of the District of Maine, but the British counteroffensive was turned back at Lake Champlain, Baltimore, and New Orleans. The Treaty of Ghent (ratified in 1815) restored the status quo ante bellum between the combatants. Although the War of 1812 ended as a stalemate and is often only dimly remembered, it had many effects on the futures of those involved. The war created a greater sense of nationalism in both Canada and the United States. The successful defense of the Canadian provinces against American invasion ultimately ensured the survival of Canada as a distinct nation, and the end of the war marked the decline of a longstanding desire of many Americans to see the British Empire expelled entirely from North America. Peace between the United States and British North America also meant that North American Indians could no longer use conflicts between the two powers to defend native lands against the expansion of white settlement.

Origins of the War of 1812

The war was a result of two major causes: a dispute over repeated violations of American sovereignty by Great Britain, and American expansionism, a desire by some Americans to expand their territory and population by conquering Great Britain's Canadian colonies. The British Canadian colonies were lightly populated and poorly defended compared to the crowded American states to their south, and many of the settlers were Americans by birth and believed to remain sympathetic to the United States. Some Americans argued that the majority of the population in the British colonies would rise up and greet an American invading army as liberators, and that, as Thomas Jefferson suggested in 1812, "the acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us the experience for the attack on Halifax, the next and final expulsion of England from the American continent." The belief that the United States was destined to control all of the North American continent would later gain the name Manifest Destiny, but that term was not yet in use at the time of the war. Meanwhile, the United States had grievances against Great Britain for sovereignty violations in three areas: # Britain's refusal to surrender western forts promised to the United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the American War of Independence, together with allegations that Britain was arming North American Indians fighting against them on the western frontier; # The stopping of American ships by the Royal Navy on the high seas to search for deserters, and the impressment of seamen who had been born as British subjects but later naturalized as American citizens; and # The trade embargos by France and Britain during the Napoleonic Wars, which resulted in the seizing of hundreds of American merchant ships. In 1795 the Jay Treaty with Britain and the Treaty of Greenville with the North American Indians temporarily resolved the conflict on the western frontier; however, the Monroe-Pinkney Treaty of 1806 dealt only with trade, not impressment, and was not ratified by the United States Congress. Continuing embargos and the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair of 1807 (which resulted in the deaths of three American seamen under attack by a British ship) further aggravated tensions between the two countries. In 1811, in the United States House of Representatives, a loose political faction called the War Hawks, under the leadership of speaker Henry Clay, began agitating for a declaration of war against Britain, both as a response to the grievances and as an opportunity to acquire the British Canadian colonies. After a speech by President James Madison to Congress on June 18 1812, Congress voted to declare war.

Course of the war

Although the outbreak of the war had been preceded by years of angry diplomatic dispute, neither side was ready for war when it came. The United Kingdom was still hard pressed by the Napoleonic Wars, and was compelled to retain the greater part of her forces and her best crews in European waters. The total number of British troops present in Canada in July 1812 was officially stated to be 5,004 and consisted primarily of Canadians. During the war, successes against Napoleon left the United Kingdom free to send an overwhelming force of ships to American waters. The United States was unready to prosecute a war. In 1812 the regular army consisted of fewer than 12,000 men. Congress authorized the expansion of the army to 35,000 men, but the service was voluntary and unpopular, and there was an almost total lack of trained and experienced officers. The militia, called in to aid the regulars, objected to serving outside their home states, were not amenable to discipline and, as a rule, performed poorly in the presence of the enemy. The war was conducted in four theatres of operations: #The Atlantic Ocean #The Great Lakes and the Canadian frontier #The coast of the United States #The Southern States

Operations on the ocean

Since the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, Britain had been the world's preeminent naval power. In 1812, the Royal Navy had ninety-seven vessels in American waters. Of these, eleven were ships of the line and thirty-four were frigates. In contrast, the United States Navy, which was not yet twenty years old, had only twenty-two commissioned vessels, the largest of which were frigates, though a number of the American ships were 44-gun frigates and very heavily built compared to the usual British 38-gun frigates. The strategy of the British was to protect its own merchant shipping to and from Canada, and enforce a blockade of major American ports to restrict American trade. Due to their numerical inferiority, the Americans aimed to cause disruption through hit-and-run tactics, such as the capture of prizes and only engaging Royal Navy vessels under favourable circumstances. The Americans experienced much early success. On June 21 1812, three days after the formal declaration of war, two small squadrons left New York. The ships included the frigate USS President and the sloop USS Hornet under Commodore John Rodgers (who had general command), and the frigates USS United States and USS Congress, with the brig USS Argus under Captain Stephen Decatur. Two days later, the Hornet gave chase to the British frigate HMS Belvidera. Belvidera eventually escaped to Halifax, after discarding all unnecessary cargo overboard. The Hornet returned to Boston, Massachusetts by August 31. Meanwhile, the USS Constitution, commanded by Captain Isaac Hull, sailed from the Chesapeake on July 12 without orders so as to avoid being blockaded. On July 17 a British squadron gave chase. The Constitution evaded its pursuers after two days, and later retired at Boston. On August 19 the Constitution engaged the British frigate HMS Guerriere. After a thirty five-minute battle, the Guerriere had been dismasted and captured, and was later burned. On October 25 the USS United States, commanded by Captain Decatur, captured the British frigate HMS Macedonian, which he carried back to port. At the close of the month, the Constitution sailed south under the command of Captain William Bainbridge. On December 20, off Bahia, Brazil, it met the British frigate HMS Java, which was carrying General Hislop, the governor of Bombay, to India. After a battle lasting three hours, the Java struck her colours and was burned after being judged unsalvageable. In January 1813, the American frigate USS Essex, under the command of Captain David Porter, sailed into the Pacific in an attempt to harass British shipping. Many British whaling ships carried letters of marque allowing them to prey on American whalers, nearly destroying the industry. The Essex challenged this practice. She inflicted an estimated $3,000,000 damage on British interests before she was captured off Valparaiso, Chile, by the British frigate HMS Phoebe and the sloop HMS Cherub on March 28, 1814. In all of these actions, except the one in which the Essex was taken, the Americans had the advantage of greater size and heavier guns. Despite the greater experience in naval combat of the British, a large proportion of their seamen had been impressed. This contrasted with the Americans who were all volunteers, which may have given the Americans an edge in morale and seamanship. The capture of three British frigates was a blow to the British and stimulated them to greater exertions. More vessels were deployed on the American seaboard and the blockade tightened. On June 1, 1813, the frigate USS Chesapeake was captured by the British frigate HMS Shannon as it attempted to leave Boston Harbor. This somewhat offset the blow to morale caused by previous disasters. The blockade of American ports had tightened to the extent that the United States ships found it increasingly difficult to sail without meeting forces of superior strength. Because of this the Royal Navy was able to transport British Army troops to American shores, paving the way for their attack on Washington D.C. which became known as the burning of Washington, D.C. in 1814. The operations of American privateers were extensive. They continued until the close of the war and were only partially affected by the strict enforcement of convoy by the Royal Navy. An example of the audacity of the American cruisers was the capture of the American sloop USS Argus at St David's Head in Wales by the more heavily armed British sloop HMS Pelican, on August 14, 1813.

Operations on the Great Lakes and Canadian border

Invasions of Canada, 1812

1813 While they had expected little from their tiny navy, the American people had assumed that Canada could be easily overrun. Former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson dismissively referred to the conquest of Canada as "a matter of marching." However, in the opening stages of the conflict, British military experience prevailed over inexperienced American commanders. Geography dictated that operations would take place in the West principally around Lake Erie, near the Niagara River between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and near Saint Lawrence River area and Lake Champlain. This would be the focus of the three pronged attacks by the Americans in 1812. Although cutting the St. Lawrence River through the capture of Montreal and Quebec would make Britain's hold in Canada unsustainable, operations in the West began first due to the general popularity of war with the British there. The British scored an important early success, when their detachment at Saint Joseph Island on Lake Huron learned of the declaration of war before the nearby American garrison at the important trading post at Mackinac Island in Michigan did. A scratch force landed on the island on July 17 1812 and mounted a gun overlooking the fort. The Americans, taken by surprise, surrendered. This early victory encouraged the Indians, and large numbers of them moved to help the British at Amherstburg. The American Brigadier General William Hull had invaded Canada on July 12 1812 from Detroit, with an army mainly composed of militiamen, but turned back after his supply lines were threatened in the Battles of Brownstown and Monguagon. British Major General Isaac Brock sent false correspondence and allowed it to be captured by the Americans, saying they required only 5,000 Native warriors to capture Detroit. Hull was deathly afraid of North American Indians and some tribes' practice of scalping. Hull surrendered at Detroit on August 16. Brock promptly transferred himself to the eastern end of Lake Erie, where the American General Stephen Van Rensselaer was attempting a second invasion. Brock fell in action on October 13 at the Battle of Queenston Heights, where the Americans were defeated largely because the militia refused to reinforce the regulars, citing Constitutional reasons. While the professionalism of the American forces would improve by the war's end, British leadership suffered after Brock's death. A final attempt in 1812 by the American General Henry Dearborn to advance north from Lake Champlain failed ingloriously when his militia too refused to advance beyond American territory. In contrast to the American militia, the Canadian militia performed well. French-Canadians, who found the anti-Catholic stance of most of the United States troublesome, and United Empire Loyalists, who had fought for the Crown during the American Revolutionary War and had settled primarily in Upper Canada, strongly opposed the American invasion. However, a large segment of Upper Canada's population were recent settlers from the United States who had no such loyalties to the Crown, but American forces found, to their dismay, that most of the colony took up arms against them.

American Northwest, 1813

After Hull's surrender, General William Henry Harrison was given command of the American Army of the Northwest. He set out to retake Detroit, which was now defended by Colonel Henry Procter in conjunction with Tecumseh. A detachment of Harrison's army was defeated at Frenchtown along the River Raisin on 22 January 1813. Procter left the prisoners in custody of a few North American Indians, who then proceeded to execute perhaps as many as sixty American prisoners, an event which became known as the "River Raisin Massacre." The defeat ended Harrison's campaign against Detroit, and the phrase "Remember the River Raisin!" became a rallying cry for the Americans. 1813 after the Battle of Lake Erie began with what would become one of the most famous sentences in American military history: "We have met the enemy and they are ours." This 1865 painting by William H. Powell shows Perry transferring to a different ship during the battle.]] In May 1813, Procter and Tecumseh set siege to Fort Meigs in northern Ohio. American reinforcements arriving during the siege were defeated by the Indians, but the fort held out. Indians began to withdraw, forcing Procter and Tecumseh to return to Canada. A second offensive against Fort Meigs also failed in July. In an attempt to improve Indian morale, Procter and Tecumseh attempted to storm Fort Stephenson, a small American post on the Sandusky River, only to be repulsed with serious losses, marking the end of the Ohio campaign. On Lake Erie, the American commander Captain Oliver Hazard Perry fought the Battle of Lake Erie on September 10, 1813. His decisive victory ensured American control of the lake, improved American morale after a series of defeats, and compelled the British to fall back from Detroit. This paved the way for General Harrison to launch another invasion of Canada, which culminated in the U.S. victory at the Battle of the Thames on October 5, 1813, in which Tecumseh was killed. Tecumseh's death effectively ended the North American Indian alliance with the British in the Detroit region. The Americans would control Detroit and Amherstburg for the duration of the war.

The Niagara Frontier, 1813

Because of the difficulties of land communications, control of the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence River corridor was crucial, and so both sides spent the winter of 1812-13 building ships. The Americans, who had far greater shipbuilding facilities than the Canadians, nevertheless had not taken advantage of this before the war, and had fallen behind. On April 27, 1813, American forces attacked and burned York (now called Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada, including the Parliament Buildings. However, Kingston was strategically more valuable, and vital to British supply and communications along the St. Lawrence. Without control of Kingston, the American navy could not effectively control Lake Ontario or sever the British supply line from Quebec. On May 27, 1813 an American amphibious force from Lake Ontario assaulted Fort George on the northern end of the River Niagara and captured it without serious losses. The retreating British forces were not pursued, however, until they had largely escaped and organized a counter-offensive against the advancing Americans at the Battle of Stony Creek on June 5. On June 24, with the help of advance warning by Loyalist Laura Secord, another American force was bluffed into surrender by a much smaller British and Indian force at the Battle of Beaver Dams, marking the end of the American offensive into Central Canada. On Lake Ontario, Sir James Lucas Yeo took command on 15 May 1813 and created a more mobile though less powerful force than the Americans under Isaac Chauncey. An early attack on Sackett's Harbour by Yeo and Governor General Sir George Prevost was repulsed. Three naval engagements in August and September led to no decisive result. By 1814 Yeo had constructed the HMS St. Lawrence, a first-rate ship of the line of 102 guns which gave him superiority, and the British became masters of Lake Ontario. The burning by the American General McClure, on December 10, 1813, of Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake), led to British retaliation and similar destruction at Buffalo, on December 30, 1813.

The Saint Lawrence and Lower Canada

1813 The Americans made little attempt to bar the Saint Lawrence to British traffic at the point where it was also the frontier between Canada and the United States. British supplies and reinforcements were able to move to Upper Canada with little difficulty. Early in 1813, there was a series of raids and counter-raids between Prescott in Canada and Ogdensburg on the American side of the river. On February 21, Sir George Prevost passed through Prescott with reinforcements for Upper Canada. When he left the next day, the reinforcements attacked and looted Ogdensburg. For the rest of the year, Ogdensburg had no American garrison and the British freely obtained goods there. Late in 1813, after much argument, the Americans made two thrusts against Montreal. The plan eventually agreed upon was for Major-General Wade Hampton to march north from Lake Champlain and join with a force under General James Wilkinson which would sail from Sacket's Harbour on Lake Ontario and descend the Saint Lawrence. Hampton was delayed by bad roads and supply problems. On October 25, his 4,000-strong force was defeated at the Chateauguay River by Charles de Salaberry's force of less than 500 French-Canadian Voltigeurs and Mohawks. Wilkinson's force of 8,000 sailed on October 17 but was also held up by bad weather. After learning that Hampton had been checked, Wilkinson heard that a British force under Captain William Mulcaster was pursuing him, and by November 10 he was forced to land near Morrisburg, Ontario, about 150 kilometers from Montreal. On November 11, Wilkinson's rearguard attacked a British force of 800 under Colonel Joseph Morrison at Crysler's Farm, and was repulsed with heavy losses. Wilkinson subsequently retreated back to the US after learning that Hampton was unable to renew his advance.

Niagara Campaign, Battle of Lake Champlain, 1814

By 1814, American generals, including Major Generals Jacob Brown and Winfield Scott, had drastically improved the fighting abilities and discipline of the army. Their renewed attack on the Niagara peninsula quickly captured Fort Erie. Winfield Scott then gained a decisive victory over an equal British force at the Battle of Chippewa on July 5. An attempt to advance further ended with a hard-fought drawn battle at Lundy's Lane on July 25. The Americans withdrew but withstood a prolonged Siege of Fort Erie. The British raised the siege, but lack of provisions forced the Americans to retreat across the Niagara. Meanwhile, veteran British troops no longer needed in Europe began arriving in North America. Governor-General Sir George Prevost now had enough men to launch an offensive into the United States. He hoped to gain a significant victory in order to give Britain bargaining power in the ongoing peace negotiations. However, his invasion was repulsed by the naval Battle of Lake Champlain in Plattsburgh Bay on September 11 1814 which gave the Americans control of Lake Champlain. Theodore Roosevelt termed it the greatest naval battle of the war.

The West, 1814

Little of note took place on Lake Huron in 1813, but the American victory on Lake Erie cut off the British from their supplies. During the winter, a Canadian party under Lieutenant Colonel Robert Macdouall established a new supply line from York to Nottawasaga Bay on Georgian Bay. When he arrived at Michilimackinac with reinforcements, he sent an expedition to recapture the trading post of Prairie du Chien in the far West. In 1814, the Americans sent a force of six vessels from Detroit to recapture Fort Mackinac. A mixed force of regulars and volunteers from the militia landed on the island on July 4. They did not attempt to achieve surprise, and while marching to attack the fort, were ambushed by Indians and forced to re-embark. The Americans now discovered the new base at Nottawasaga Bay, and on August 13, they destroyed its fortifications and a schooner there. They then returned to Detroit, leaving two gunboats to blockade Michilimackinac. On September 4, these gunboats were taken unawares and captured by boarding parties from canoes and small boats. These prizes now re-established the supply line from Nottawasaga Bay. The British garrison at Prairie du Chien also fought off an attack by Major Zachary Taylor. In this distant theatre, the British retained the upper hand till the end of the war.

The American coast

When the war began, the British naval forces had some difficulty in blockading the whole coast, and they were also preoccupied in their pursuit of American privateers. The British government, having need of American foodstuffs for its army in Spain, was willing to benefit from the willingness of the New Englanders to trade with them, and so no blockade of New England was at first attempted. The Delaware and Chesapeake were declared in a state of blockade on December 26, 1812. This was extended to the whole coast south of Narragansett by November 1813, and to the whole American coast on May 31, 1814. In the meantime much illicit trade was carried on by collusive captures arranged between American traders and British officers. American ships were fraudulently transferred to neutral flags. Eventually the United States government was driven to issue orders for the purpose of stopping illicit trading. This only helped to further ruin the commerce of the country. The overpowering strength of the British fleet enabled it to occupy the Chesapeake, and to attack and destroy numerous docks and harbors.

Chesapeake campaign, The Star-Spangled Banner

The best known of these destructive raids was the burning of public buildings, including the White House, in Washington by Admiral Sir George Cockburn and General Robert Ross. The expedition was carried out between August 19 and August 29, 1814. On the 24th, the inexperienced American militia who had collected at Bladensburg, Maryland to protect the capital were soundly defeated, opening the route to Washington. President James Madison was forced to flee to Virginia, and American morale was reduced to an all-time low. The British viewed their actions as fair retaliation for the Americans' burning of York (later renamed Toronto) in 1813. Having destroyed Washington's public buildings, the British army next moved to capture Baltimore, a busy port and a key base for American privateers. The subsequent Battle of Baltimore began with a British landing at North Point, but the attack was repulsed. The British also attempted to attack Baltimore by sea on September 13, but were unable to reduce Fort McHenry at the entrance to Baltimore Harbor. The defense of the fort inspired the American lawyer Francis Scott Key to write a poem that would eventually supply the lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner," the national anthem of the United States.

The American South

As one historian wrote: :We speak of the War of 1812, but in truth there were two wars. The war between the Americans and the British ended with the treaty of Ghent. The war between the Big Knives [American frontiersmen] and the Indians began at Tippecanoe, and arguably did not run its course until the last Red Sticks were defeated in the Florida swamps in 1818. In March of 1814, General Andrew Jackson led a force of Tennessee militia, Cherokee warriors, and U.S. regulars southward to attack the Creek tribes, led by Chief Menawa. While some of the Creeks had been British allies in the past, the fighting was related to control of Creek land in Alabama rather than the British-American conflict. On March 26, Jackson and General John Coffee fought the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend, killing 800 of 1,000 Creeks at a cost of 49 killed and 154 wounded of approximately 2,000 American and Cherokee forces. Jackson pursued the surviving Creeks to Wetumpka, near present-day Montgomery, Alabama, where they surrendered. :For a more detailed discussion, see the article Creek War.
The Treaty of Ghent and the Battle of New Orleans
Creek War Jackson's forces moved to New Orleans, Louisiana in November 1814. Between December 1814 and January 1815, he defended the city against a force led by Major-General Sir Edward Pakenham, who was killed in an assault on January 8 1815. The Battle of New Orleans was hailed as a great victory in the United States, making Andrew Jackson a national hero, eventually propelling him to the presidency. Meanwhile, diplomats in Ghent, Belgium signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, paving the way for the official end of the war. News of the treaty had not reached New Orleans, because of the slow nature of international communications. On February 17, 1815, President Madison signed the American ratification of the Treaty of Ghent, and the treaty was proclaimed the following day. By the terms of the treaty, all land captured by either side was returned to the previous owner, the Americans received fishing rights in the gulf of the St. Lawrence River, and all outstanding debts and property taken was to be returned or paid for in full. Later that year, John Quincy Adams complained that British naval commanders had violated the terms of the treaty by not returning American slaves captured during the war, since the British did not recognize slaves as property [http://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/document_glc.php?glc_num=GLC3626]
Consequences
The Treaty of Ghent established the status quo ante bellum; there were no territorial concessions made by either side. Relations between the United States and Britain would remain peaceful, if not entirely tranquil, throughout the nineteenth century. Border adjustments between the United States and British Canada would be made in the Treaty of 1818. (A border dispute between the state of Maine and the province of New Brunswick was settled in the bloodless Aroostook War in the 1830s.) The issue of impressing American seamen was made moot when the Royal Navy subsequently stopped impressment after the defeat of Napoleon. This war was also the first and only time since the American Revolution that the US capital was invaded and occupied.
Effects on the United States
The United States did gain a measure of international respect for managing to withstand the British Empire. The morale of the citizens was high because they had fought one of the great military powers of the world and managed to survive, which increased feelings of nationalism; the war has often been called the "Second War of Independence." The war also contributed to the demise of the Federalist Party, which had opposed the war. A significant military development was the increased emphasis by General Winfield Scott on improved professionalism in the U.S. Army officer corps, and in particular, the training of officers at the United States Military Academy ("West Point"). This new professionalism would become apparent during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). In a related development, the Army Corps of Engineers (which at that time controlled West Point), began building fortifications around New Orleans, as a response to the British attack on the city during the war. This effort then grew into numerous civil river works, especially in the 1840s and 1850s under General Pierre Beauregard. The Corps continues to be the authority over Mississippi (and other) river works to this day. The War of 1812 had a dramatic effect on the manufacturing capabilities of the United States. The British blockade of the American coast created a shortage of cotton cloth in the United States, leading to the creation of a cotton-manufacturing industry, beginning at Waltham, Massachusetts by Francis Cabot Lowell. The Southwestern campaign led to increasing contact and conflict with the Seminole tribes in Florida. The subsequent Seminole Wars eventually lead to American annexation of Florida in 1819.
Effects on Canada
The War of 1812 had little impact in Great Britain and was generally forgotten, since it was considered to be insignificant when compared to the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo on 18 June 1815. However, this was not the case in Canada, where the war had been a matter of national survival. The war united the French-speaking and English-speaking colonies against a common enemy and some pride of being largely successful in repulsing the invaders, giving many inhabitants a sense of nationhood as well as a sense of loyalty to Britain. At the beginning of the War of 1812 it is estimated that perhaps one third of the inhabitants of Upper Canada were American born. Some were United Empire Loyalists but others had simply come for low-cost land and had little loyalty to the British Crown. For instance, Laura Secord was originally an American immigrant to Upper Canada, but did not hesitate to make her arduous trek to warn the British forces of a pending attack by her former country. In fact, a primary reason Canadians remember the war is because they managed to repulse the American invaders and maintain their borders against poor odds; a conclusion many Canadians consider a victory in its own way. This nationalistic sentiment also caused a great deal of suspicion of American ideas like democracy and republicanism which would frustrate political reform in Upper and Lower Canada until the Rebellions of 1837. However, the War of 1812 also started the process that ultimately led to Canadian Confederation in 1867. Although later events such as the rebellions and the Fenian raids of the 1860s were more directly pivotal, Canadian historian Pierre Berton has written that if the War of 1812 had never happened Canada would be part of the United States today, as more and more American settlers would have arrived, and Canadian nationalism would never have developed. As a story of national will, and of successful resistance of American influence, the War of 1812 still resonates amongst many Canadians as a nationalistic myth in the early part of the 21st century. A related idea that developed out of the war was that Canadian militiamen had performed admirably while the British officers were largely ineffective. Jack Granatstein has termed this the "Militia Myth", and he feels it has had a deep impact on Canadian military thinking, which placed more stress on a citizen's militia than a professional standing army — the U.S. suffered from a similar Frontiersman Myth at the start of the war, believing falsely that individual initiative and marksmanship could be effective against a well-disciplined British battle line. Granatstein feels that the militia was not particularly effective in the war and that any military success the British Empire had was by British regular forces and through British dominion over the sea (Isaac Brock, for example, was reluctant even to trust the militia with muskets); likewise, the U.S. army won most of its land victories late in the war, only after it trained its troops to fight in disciplined lines like the British and other European armies. During the war, British officers constantly worried that the Americans would block the St. Lawrence River, which is narrow and forms a large part of the border with the U.S. If the U.S. military had done so, there would have been no British supply route for Upper Canada (where most of the land battles took place), and British forces would likely have had to withdraw or surrender all western British territory within a few months. British officers' dispatches after the war show astonishment that the Americans never took such a simple step, but the British were not willing to count on the enemy making the same mistake a second time; as a result, Britain commissioned the Rideau Canal, an expensive project connecting Kingston on Lake Ontario to the Ottawa River, providing an alternate supply route bypassing the part of the St. Lawrence River along the U.S. border. The settlement at the northeastern end of the canal, where it joins the Ottawa River, later became the city of Ottawa, Canada's fourth-largest city and its capital (placed inland to protect it from U.S. invasion).
See also

- Tecumseh's War
- Creek War
- Military history of Canada
- Military history of the United Kingdom
- Military history of the United States
- Indian Wars in the United States
- Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes
References

- Allen, Robert S. "His Majesty's Indian Allies: Native Peoples, the British Crown, and the War of 1812" in The Michigan Historical Review, 14:2 (Fall 1988), pp 1-24.
- Benn, Carl. The Iroquois in the War of 1812. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. ISBN 0802043216 (hardcover); ISBN 0802081452 (paperback).
- Berton, Pierre. The Invasion of Canada. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1980. ISBN 0316092169.
- ———. Flames Across the Border. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1981. ISBN 0316092177
- Carter-Edwards, Dennis. "The War of 1812 Along the Detroit Frontier: A Canadian Perspective," in The Michigan Historical Review, 13:2 (Fall 1987), pp. 25-50.
- Elting, John R. Amateurs, To Arms! A Military History of the War of 1812. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 1991. ISBN 0945575084 (hardcover); ISBN 0306806533 (1995 Da Capo Press paperback).
- Hickey, Donald. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1989. ISBN 0252016130 (hardcover); ISBN 0252060598 (1990 paperback).
- Horsman, Reginald. The Causes of the War of 1812. New York: A.S. Barnes, 1962. ISBN 0374939608 (1972 printing); ISBN 0498040879 (2000 printing).
- ———. "On to Canada: Manifest Destiny and United States Strategy in the War of 1812" in The Michigan Historical Review, 13:2 (Fall 1987), pp. 1-24.
- Roosevelt, Theodore. The Naval War of 1812. Da Capo Press, 1999. ISBN 0306809109 (paperback), [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9104 eText] at Project Gutenberg.
- Sugden, John. Tecumseh: A Life. New York: Holt, 1997. ISBN 0805041389 (hardcover); ISBN 0805061215 (1999 paperback).
- Morris Zaslow (ed), The Defended Border. Macmillan of Canada, 1964. ISBN 0770512429
-
External links

- [http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Ghent.html Treaty of Ghent and related resources on the War of 1812 at the Library of Congress]
- [http://www.galafilm.com/1812/e/intro/index.html Galafilm's War of 1812 website]
- [http://home.earthlink.net/~gfeldmeth/chart.1812.html Key Events of the War of 1812]
- [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsj&fileName=005/llsj005.db&recNum=147&itemLink=D?hlaw:1:./temp/~ammem_TZ8T::%230050138&linkText=1 Journal of the Senate, June 1, 1812, with President Madison's war message to Congress]
- [http://www.jmu.edu/madison/center/main_pages/madison_archives/life/war1812/war1812.htm War of 1812 from the James Madison Center] of the James Madison University
- 1812 Category:History of Toronto ja:米英戦争

United States of America
:For alternative meanings, see the disambiguation page for US, USA, United States, or American. The United States of America is a federal democratic republic situated primarily in central North America. It comprises 50 states and one federal district, and has several territories. It is also referred to, with varying formality, as the United States, the U.S., the U.S.A., the States, or simply and most commonly, America. The official founding date of the United States is July 4, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress—representing thirteen British colonies—adopted the Declaration of Independence. However, the structure of the government was profoundly changed in 1788, when the states replaced the Articles of Confederation with the United States Constitution. The date on which each of the fifty states adopted the Constitution is typically regarded as the date that state "entered the Union" (became part of the United States). Since the mid-20th century, following World War II, the United States has emerged as a dominant global influence in economic, political, military, scientific, technological, and cultural affairs.
Geography and climate
The United States shares land borders with Canada (to the north) and Mexico (to the south), and territorial water boundaries with Canada, Russia, the Bahamas, and numerous smaller nations. It is otherwise bounded by the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea, in the west; the Arctic Ocean, in the northernmost areas; and the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea, in the eastern and southeastern areas. Forty-eight of the states are in the single region between Canada and Mexico; this group is referred to, with varying precision and formality, as the continental or contiguous United States, sometimes abbreviated CONUS, and as the Lower 48. Alaska, which is not included in the term contiguous United States, is at the northwestern end of North America, separated from the Lower 48 by Canada. The archipelago of Hawaii is in the Pacific Ocean. The capital city, Washington, District of Columbia is a federal district located on land donated by the state of Maryland. (Virginia also donated land, but it was returned in 1847.) The United States also has overseas territories with varying levels of independence and organization. When inland water is included in the total area, only Russia and Canada are larger than the United States; if inland water is excluded, China ranks third and the U.S. ranks fourth. The United States' total area is 3,718,711 square miles (9,631,418 km²), of which land makes up 3,537,438 square miles (9,161,923 km²) and water makes up 181,273 square miles (469,495 km²). The United States' landscape is one of the most varied among those of the world's nations: among its many features are temperate forestland and rolling hills, on the east coast; mangrove, in Florida; the Great Plains, in the center of the country; the Mississippi–Missouri river system; the Great Lakes, four of the five of which are shared with Canada; the Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains; deserts and temperate coastal zones, west of the Rocky Mountains; and temperate rain forests, in the Pacific northwest. Alaska's tundra, and the volcanic, tropical islands of Hawaii add to the geographic diversity. Hawaii The climate varies along with the landscape, from tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida to tundra in Alaska and atop some of the highest mountains. Most of the North and East experience a temperate continental climate, with warm summers and cold winters. Most of the South experiences a subtropical humid climate with mild winters and long, hot, humid summers. Rainfall decreases markedly from the humid forests of the Eastern Great Plains to the semi-arid shortgrass prairies on the high plains abutting the Rocky Mountains. Arid deserts, including the Mojave, extend through the lowlands and valleys of the southwest, from westernmost Texas to California and northward throughout much of Nevada. Some parts of California have a Mediterranean climate. Rainforests line the windward mountains of the Pacific Northwest from Oregon to Alaska.
History
American history started with the migration of people from Asia across the Bering land bridge approximately 12,000 years ago following large animals that they hunted into the Americas. These Native Americans left evidence of their presence in petroglyphs, burial mounds, and other artifacts. It is estimated that 2-9 million people lived in the territory now occupied by the U.S. before European contact, and the subsequent introduction of foreign diseases such as small pox that greatly diminished the native populations. Some advanced societies were the Anasazi of the southwest, who inhabited Chaco Canyon, and the Woodland Indians, who built Cahokia, located near present-day St Louis, a city with a population of 40,000 at its peak in AD 1200. Vikings first visited North America around 1000, but did not settle permanently. Following the discovery voyages of Christopher Columbus around 1492, other Europeans began to explore and settle there. During the 1500s and 1600s, the Spanish settled parts of the present-day Southwest and Florida, founding St. Augustine, Florida in 1565 and Santa Fe (in what is now New Mexico) in 1607. The first successful English settlement was at Jamestown, Virginia, also in 1607. Within the next two decades, several Dutch settlements, including New Amsterdam (the predecessor to New York City), were established in what are now the states of New York and New Jersey. In 1637, Sweden established a colony at Fort Christina (in what is now Delaware), but lost the settlement to the Dutch in 1655. This was followed by extensive British settlement of the east coast. The British colonists remained relatively undisturbed by their home country until after the French and Indian War, when France ceded Canada and the Great Lakes region to Britain. Britain then imposed taxes on the 13 colonies, widely regarded by the colonists as unfair because they were denied representation in the British Parliament. Tensions between Britain and the colonists increased, and the thirteen colonies eventually rebelled against British rule. British Parliament, George Washington (1789-1797).]] In 1776, the 13 colonies split from Great Britain and formed the United States, the world's first constitutional and democratic federal republic, after their Declaration of Independence of that year, and the Revolutionary War (1775 to 1783). The original political structure was a confederation in 1777, ratified in 1781 as the Articles of Confederation. After long debate, this was supplanted by the Constitution in 1789, forming a more centralized federal government. Prior to all these was the Albany Congress in 1754, in which a union was first seriously proposed. From early colonial times, there was a shortage of labor, which encouraged unfree labor, particularly indentured servitude and slavery. In the mid-19th century, a major division occurred in the United States over the issue of states' rights and the expansion of slavery. The northern states had become opposed to slavery, while the southern states saw it as necessary for the continued success of southern agriculture and wanted it expanded to the territories. Several federal laws were passed in an attempt to settle the dispute, including the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. The dispute reached a crisis in 1861, when seven southern states seceded¹ from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America, leading to the Civil War. Soon after the war began, four more southern states seceded. During the war, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, mandating the freedom of all slaves in states in rebellion, though full emancipation did not take place until after the end of the war in 1865, the dissolution of the Confederacy, and the Thirteenth Amendment took effect. The Civil War effectively ended the question of a state's right to secede, and is widely accepted as a major turning point after which the federal government became more powerful than state governments. Thirteenth Amendment). The title of the painting, from a 1726 poem by Bishop Berkeley, was a phrase often quoted in the era of Manifest Destiny, expressing a widely held belief that civilization had steadily moved westward throughout history. [http://americanart.si.edu/t2go/1lw/1931.6.1.html (more)] ]] During the 19th century, many new states were added to the original 13 as the nation expanded across the continent. Manifest Destiny was a philosophy that encouraged westward expansion in the United States. As the population of the Eastern states grew and as a steady increase of immigrants entered the country, settlers moved steadily westward across North America. In the process, the U.S. displaced most American Indian nations. This displacement of American Indians continues to be a matter of contention in the U.S. with many tribes attempting to assert their original claims to various lands. In some areas American Indian populations were reduced by foreign diseases contracted through contact with European settlers, and US settlers acquired those emptied lands. In other instances American Indians were removed from their traditional lands by force. Though some would say the U.S. was not a colonial power until the Spanish-American War when it acquired Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, the dominion exercised over land in North America the United States claimed is essentially colonial. The Philippines became independent in 1946. During this period, the nation also became an industrial power. This continued into the 20th century, which has been termed "the American Century" because of the nation's overriding influence on the world. The US became a center for innovation and technological development; major technologies that America either developed or was greatly involved in improving include the telephone, television, computer, the Internet, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, aviation, and aeronautics. In addition to the Civil War, another major traumatic experience for the nation was the Great Depression (1929 to 1939). The nation has also taken part in several major foreign wars, including World War I and World War II (in both of which the US later joined the Allies). During the Cold War, the US was a major player in the Korean War and Vietnam War, and, along with the Soviet Union, was considered one of the world's two "superpowers". With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US emerged as the world's leading economic and military power. Beginning in the 1990s, the United States became very involved in police actions and peacekeeping, including actions in Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia and Liberia, and the first Persian Gulf War driving Iraq out of Kuwait. After attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the United States and other allied nations found themselves involved in what has come to be called the "War on Terrorism," which has primarily encompassed military actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Government
Iraq of the United States.]]
Republic and suffrage
The United States is an example of a constitutional republic, with a government composed of and operating through a set of limited powers imposed by its design and enumerated in the United States Constitution. Specifically, the nation operates as a presidential democracy. There are three levels of government: federal, state, and local. Officials of each of these levels are either elected by eligible voters via secret ballot or appointed by other elected officials. Americans enjoy almost universal suffrage from the age of 18 regardless of race, sex, or wealth. There are some limits, however: felons are disenfranchised and in some states former felons are likewise. Furthermore, the national representation of territories and the federal district of Washington, DC in Congress is limited: residents of the District of Columbia are subject to federal laws and federal taxes but their only Congressional representative is a non-voting delegate.
Federal government
The federal government is the national government, comprising the Legislative Branch (led by Congress), the Executive Branch (led by the President), and the Judicial Branch (led by the Supreme Court). These three branches were designed to apply checks and balances on each other. The Constitution limits the powers of the federal government to defense, foreign affairs, the issuing and management of currency, the management of trade and relations between the states, and the protection of human rights. In addition to these explicitly stated powers, the federal government—with the assistance of the Supreme Court—has gradually extended these powers into such areas as welfare and education, on the basis of the "necessary and proper" clause of the Constitution.
The Congress
necessary and proper The Congress of the United States is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, comprising the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Representatives consists of 435 members, each of whom represents a congressional district and serves for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population; in contrast, each state has two Senators, regardless of population. There are a total of 100 senators, who serve six-year terms. The powers of Congress are limited to those enumerated in the Constitution; all other powers are reserved to the states and the people. The Constitution also includes the necessary-and-proper clause, which grants Congress the power to "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers."
The President
necessary-and-proper clause At the top level of the executive branch is the President of the United States. The President and Vice-President are elected as 'running mates' for four-year terms by the Electoral College, for which each state, as well as the District of Columbia, is allocated a number of seats based on its representation (or ostensible representation, in the case of D. C.) in both houses of Congress (see U.S. Electoral College). The relationship between the President and the Congress reflects that between the English monarchy and parliament at the time of the framing of the United States Constitution. Congress can legislate to constrain the President's executive power, even with respect to his or her command of the armed forces; however, this power is used only very rarely—a notable example was the constraint placed on President Richard Nixon's strategy of bombing Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The President cannot directly propose legislation, and must rely on supporters in Congress to promote his or her legislative agenda. The President's signature is required to turn congressional bills into law; in this respect, the President has the power—only occasionally used—to veto congressional legislation. Congress can override a presidential veto with a two-thirds majority vote in both houses. The ultimate power of Congress over the President is that of impeachment or removal of the elected President through a House vote, a Senate trial, and a Senate vote. The threat of using this power has had major political ramifications in the cases of Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton. The President makes around 2,000 executive appointments, including members of the Cabinet and ambassadors, which must be approved by the Senate; the President can also issue executive orders and pardons, and has other Constitutional duties, among them the requirement to give a State of the Union address to Congress once a year. Although the President's constitutional role may appear to be constrained, in practice, the office carries enormous prestige that typically eclipses the power of Congress: the Presidency has justifiably been referred to as 'the most powerful office in the world'. The Vice President is first in the line of succession, and is the President of the Senate ex officio, with the ability to cast a tie-breaking vote. The members of the President's Cabinet are responsible for administering the various departments of state, including the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, and the State Department. These departments and department heads have considerable regulatory and political power, and it is they who are responsible for executing federal laws and regulations. George W. Bush is the 43rd President, currently serving his second term.
The Courts
George W. Bush The highest court is the Supreme Court, which consists of nine justices. The court deals with federal and constitutional matters, and can declare legislation made at any level of the government as unconstitutional, nullifying the law and creating precedent for future law and decisions. Below the Supreme Court are the courts of appeals, and below them in turn are the district courts, which are the general trial courts for federal law. Separate from, but not entirely independent of, this federal court system are the individual court systems of each state, each dealing with its own laws and having its own judicial rules and procedures. A case may be appealed from a state court to a federal court only if there is a federal question; the supreme court of each state is the final authority on the interpretation of that state's laws and constitution.
State and local governments
supreme court of each state. Note that Alaska and Hawaii are shown at different scales, and that the Aleutian Islands and the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are omitted from this map.]] The state governments have the greatest influence over people's daily lives. Each state has its own written constitution and has different laws. There are sometimes great differences in law and procedure between the different states, concerning issues such as property, crime, health, and education. The highest elected official of each state is the Governor. Each state also has an elected legislature (bicameral in every state except Nebraska), whose members represent the different parts of the state. Of note is the New Hampshire legislature, which is the third-largest legislative body in the English-speaking world, and has one representative for every 3,000 people. Each state maintains its own judiciary, with the lowest level typically being county courts, and culminating in each state supreme court, though sometimes named differently. In some states, supreme and lower court justices are elected by the people; in others, they are appointed, as they are in the federal system. The institutions that are responsible for local government are typically town, city, or county boards, making laws that affect their particular area. These laws concern issues such as traffic, the sale of alcohol, and keeping animals. The highest elected official of a town or city is usually the mayor. In New England, towns operate directly democratically, and in some states, such as Rhode Island and Connecticut, counties have little or no power, existing only as geographic distinctions. In other areas, county governments have more power, such as to collect taxes and maintain law enforcement agencies.
Political divisions
With the Declaration of Independence, the thirteen colonies proclaimed themselves to be nation states modeled after the European states of the time. Although considered as sovereigns initially, under the Articles of Confederation of 1781 they entered into a "Perpetual Union" and created a fully sovereign federal state, delegating certain powers to the national Congress, including the right to engage in diplomatic relations and to levy war, while each retaining their individual sovereignty, freedom and independence. But the national government proved too ineffective, so the administrative structure of the government was vastly reorganized with the United States Constitution of 1789. Under this new union, the continued status of the individual states as sovereign nation states fell into dispute in 1861, as several states attempted to secede from the union; in response, then-President Abraham Lincoln claimed that such secession was illegal, and the result was the American Civil War. Since the Union victory in 1865, the independent status of the individual states has not been broached again by any state, and the status of each state within the union has been deemed by mainstream officials and academics to be settled as being subordinate to the union as a whole. In subsequent years, the number of states grew steadily due to western expansion, the purchase of lands by the national government from other nation states, and the subdivision of existing states, resulting in the current total of 50. The states are generally divided into smaller administrative regions, including counties, cities and townships. The United States–Canadian border is the longest undefended political boundary in the world. The U.S. is divided into three distinct sections:
- the "continental United States," also known as "the Lower 48" and more accurately termed the conterminous, coterminous or contiguous United States
- Alaska, which is physically connected only to Canada
- the archipelago of Hawaii, in the central Pacific Ocean. The United States also holds several other territories, districts, and possessions, notably the federal district of the District of Columbia, which is the nation's capital, and several overseas insular areas, the most significant of which are American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands. The Palmyra Atoll is the United States' only incorporated territory; it is unorganized and uninhabited. The United States Navy has held a base at a portion of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 1898. The United States government possesses a lease to this land, which only mutual agreement or United States abandonment of the area can terminate. The present Cuban government of Fidel Castro disputes this arrangement, claiming Cuba was not truly sovereign at the time of the signing. The United States argues this point moot because Cuba apparently ratified the lease post-revolution, and with full sovereignty, when it cashed one rent check in accordance with the disputed treaty.
Foreign relations and military
sovereign] The immense military and economic dominance of the United States has made foreign relations an especially important topic in its politics, with considerable concern about the image of the United States throughout the world. Reactions towards the United States by other nationalities are often strong, ranging from uninhibited admiration and mimicking of all things American to anti-Americanism. US foreign policy has swung about several times over the course of its history between the poles of strict isolationism and imperialism and everywhere in between. Three of the nation's four military branches are administered by the Department of Defense: the Army, the Navy (including the Marine Corps), and the Air Force. The Coast Guard falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime, but is placed under the Department of the Navy in time of war. The combined United States armed forces consist of 1.4 million active duty personnel, along with several hundred thousand each in the Reserves and the National Guard. Military conscription ended in 1973. The United States Armed forces are considered to be the most powerful military (of any sort) on Earth and their force projection capabilities are unrivaled by any other nation. The 2005 defense budget amounted to $401.7 billion, which is an increase of 4% over 2004 and of 35% since 2001. Over 50% of that number is spent in research & development. (For comparison, in 2004 the European Union (considered as the second-largest military force) had a combined total of 1.6 million troops, and a defense budget of €160 billion, with less than 10% of that being spent on R&D.)
Largest cities
The United States has dozens of major cities, including 11 of the 55 global cities of all types — with three "alpha" global cities: New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The figures expressed below are for populations within city limits. A different ranking is evident when considering U.S. metro area populations, although the top three would be unchanged. Note that some cities not listed (such as Atlanta, Boston, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.) are still considered important on the basis of other factors and issues, including culture, economics, heritage, and politics. The twenty largest cities, based on the United States Census Bureau's 2004 estimates, are as follows:

Economy
The United States has the largest single-country economy in the world, with a per-capita gross domestic product of $40,100. In this market-oriented economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and the federal and state governments buy needed goods and services predominantly in the private marketplace. gross domestic product The largest industry of the U.S. is now service, which employs roughly three quarters of the U.S. work force. The United States has many natural resources, including oil and gas, metals, and such minerals as gold, soda ash, and zinc. In agriculture, the U.S. is a top producer of, among other crops, corn, soy beans, and wheat; the United States is a net exporter of food. The U.S. manufacturing sector produces goods such as, cars, airplanes, steel, and electronics, among many others. Economic activity varies greatly from one part of the country to another, with many industries being largely dependent on a certain city or region; New York City is the center of the American financial, publishing, broadcasting, and advertising industries; Silicon Valley is the country’s primary location for high-technology companies, while Los Angeles is the most important center for film production. The Midwest is known for its reliance on manufacturing and heavy industry, with Detroit, Michigan, serving as the center of the American automotive industry; the Great Plains are known as the "breadbasket" of America for their tremendous agricultural output; the intermountain region serves as a mining hub and natural gas resource; the Pacific Northwest for fish and timber, while Texas is largely associated with the oil industry; the Southeast is a major hub for both medical research and the textiles industry. Several countries continue to link their currency to the dollar or even use it as a currency (such as Ecuador), although this practice has subsided since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Many markets are also quoted in dollars, such as those of oil and gold. The dollar is also the predominant reserve currency in the world, and more than half of global reserves are in dollars. The largest trading partner of the United States is Canada (19%), followed by China (12%), Mexico (11%), and Japan (8%). More than 50% of total trade is with these four countries. In 2003, the United States was ranked as the third most visited tourist destination in the world; its 40,400,000 visitors ranked behind France's 75,000,000 and Spain's 52,500,000. Labor unions have existed since the 19th century, and grew large and powerful from the 1930s to the 1950s. See Labor history of the United States. Since 1970 they have shrunk in the private sector and now cover fewer than 8% of the workers. However union membership has grown rapidly in the public sector, especially among teachers, nurses, police, postal workers, and municipal clerks. There have been few strikes in recent years. The United States' imports exceed exports by 80%, leading to an annual trade deficit of $700,000,000,000, or 6% of gross domestic product. It is the largest debtor nation in the world, with total gross foreign debt of over $13,000,000,000,000 (2005 estimate); and it absorbs more than 50% of global savings annually. Since the 1980s, the U.S. has increased the use of neoliberal economic policies that reduce government intervention and reduce the size of the welfare state, backing away from the more interventionist Keynsian economic policies that had been in favor since the Great Depression. As a result, the United States provides fewer government-delivered social welfare services than most industrialized nations, choosing instead to keep its tax burden lower and relying more heavily on the free market and private charities. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have minimum wages higher than the national level ($5.15 per-hour), including the highest, Washington State at $7.35. Twenty-six states are the same as the federal level; two--Ohio and Kansas--are below; and six do not have state laws. America's wealth is relatively highly concentrated. The average C.E.O. earns 500 times the typical amount a worker grosses, this is up from 25 times in the late 1970s. In terms of wealth the top 1% of Americans own 40% of all assets and 50.1% of the country's income goes to the top twenty percent of households. Average wages for the majority of employees have been largely stagnating since the 1970s. America's poverty line defined as a family of four earning less than $19,157 is at 12.7% of the general population. Approximately one out of every five children in the United States grows up below the official poverty line. Among racial groups; African Americans have the lowest median income while Asians had the highest. Regionally, the southern states had the lowest median incomes while the West Coast and New England had the highest. The current Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan remarked that the U.S.’s growing income inequality since the 1970s is, "not the type of thing which a democratic society - a capitalist democratic society - can really accept without addressing."[http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0614/p01s03-usec.html?s=itm] However, Greenspan also noted, "...you can look at the system and say it's got a lot of problems to it, and sure it does. It always has. But you can't get around the fact that this is the most extraordinarily successful economy in history."
Transportation
Alan Greenspan ]] Because the United States is a relatively young nation, most of the development of U.S. cities has taken place since the invention of the automobile. To link its vast territory, the United States built a network of high-capacity, high-speed highways, of which the most important element is the Interstate Highway system, commissioned in the 1950s by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and modeled after the German Autobahn. The United States also has a transcontinental rail system, which is used for moving freight across the lower forty-eight states. Passenger rail service is provided by Amtrak, which serves forty-six of the lower forty-eight states. Many cities in the United States have extensive mass-transit systems. New York City operates one of the world's largest and most heavily used subway systems. The regional rail and bus networks that extend into Long Island, New Jersey, Upstate New York, and Connecticut are among the most heavily used in the world. Air travel is often preferred for destinations over 300 miles (500 kilometers) away. In terms of passengers, seventeen of the world's thirty busiest airports in 2004 were in the U.S., including the world's busiest, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport; in terms of cargo, in the same year, twelve of the world's thirty busiest airports were in the U.S., including the world's busiest, Memphis International Airport. There are several major seaports in the United States; the three busiest are the Port of Los Angeles, California; the Port of Long Beach, California; and the Port of New York and New Jersey. Others include Houston, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Miami, Florida; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco, California; Boston, Massachusetts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Seattle, Washington; plus, outside the contiguous forty-eight states, Anchorage, Alaska, and Honolulu, Hawaii.

Society

Demographics
Hawaii The mean center of the U.S. population continues to drift farther west and south. The fastest growing region is the western United States followed by the southern portion. According to Census 2000, the states that saw the greatest increases from 1990 were: Nevada (66.3%), Arizona (40%), Colorado (30.6%), Utah (29.6%), Idaho (28.5%), Georgia (26.4%), Florida (23.5%), Texas (22.8%), North Carolina (21.4%), and Washington (21.1%). [http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t2/tab03.pdf]
Ethnicity and race
:Main article: Racial demographics of the United States The United States is a very racially diverse country. According to the 2000 census, it has 31 ethnic groups with at least one million members each, and numerous others represented in smaller amounts. The majority of Americans descend from white European immigrants who arrived at the establishment of the first colonies (most after Reconstruction). This majority--69.1% in 2000--decreases each year, and is expected to become a plurality within a few decades. The most frequently stated European ancestries are German (15.2%), Irish (10.8%), English (8.7%), Italian (5.6%) and Scandinavian (3.7%). Many immigrants also hail from Slavic countries such as Poland and Russia. Other significant immigrant populations came from eastern and southern Europe and French Canada. Russia Hispanics from Mexico and South and Central America are the largest minority group in the country, comprising 12.5% of the population (2000 census). People of Mexican descent made up 7.3% of the population in the 2000 census, and this proportion is expected to increase significantly in the coming decades. About 12.3% (2000 census) of the American people are African Americans (Blacks). African Americans are spread throughout the country, but their presence is largest in the South. Asian Americans--including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders--are a third significant minority (3.7% of the population in 2000). Most Asian Americans are concentrated on the West Coast and Hawaii. The largest groups are immigrants or descendants of emigrants from the Philippines, China, India, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan. Indigenous peoples in the United States, such as American Indians and Inuit, make up 0.9% of the population (2000 census). About 35% live on Indian reservations.
Religion
Polls estimate that just under 80 percent of Americans are Christians of various denominations. The other 20 percent comprises other religions such as Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, other various faiths, and those without a specific religion. The United States is noteworthy among developed nations for its relatively high level of religiosity. According to a 2004 Gallup poll, about 44% of Americans attend a religious service at least once a week. However, this rate is not uniform across the country; attendance is more common in the Bible Belt—composed largely of Southern and Midwestern states—than in the Northeast and West Coast. In the Southern states, Baptists are the largest group, followed by Methodists; Roman Catholics are dominant in the Northeast and in large parts of the Midwest due to their being settled by descendants of Catholic immigrants from Europe (such as Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Poland) or other parts of North America (mainly Quebec and Puerto Rico). The rest of the country for the most part has a complex mixture of various Christian groups.
Education
West Coast's home at Monticello and the University of Virginia (library building shown above, and designed by Jefferson), the only collegiate campus on the list. Both sites are located in Charlottesville, Virginia.]] In the United States, education is a state, not federal, responsibility, and the laws and standards vary considerably. However, the federal government, through the Department of Education, is involved with funding of some programs and exerts some influence through its ability to control funding. In most states, all students must attend mandatory schooling starting with kindergarten, which children normally enter at age 5, and following through 12th grade, which is normally complete

Napoleon's Invasion of Russia

in Moscow were built to commemorate the Russian victory against Napoleon.]] The invasion of the Russian Empire led by Napoleon I of France in 1812 was a critical turning point in the Napoleonic wars. The campaign reduced the French and allied invasion forces to less than two percent of their initial strength. Its sustained role in Russian culture may be seen in Tolstoy's War and Peace and the Soviet identification between it and the German invasion of 1941-1945.

Nomenclature

Until 1941 it was known in Russia as the Patriotic War (Russian Отечественная война, Otechestvennaya Voyna); the Russian term Patriotic War of 1812 distinguishes it from the Great Patriotic War, the term the Soviets applied to their front in World War II. Also in Russian, it is occasionally referred to as the "War of 1812", offering some opportunity for confusion since in English that generally refers to the concurrent war, between the United Kingdom and the United States.

The Invasion

The Opposing Armies

United States) plotted on the lower graph for the return journey. -30°Réaumur = -37.5° Celsius]] In June 1812, Napoleon's Grande Armée of 691,500 men, the largest army assembled up to that point in European history, crossed the river Neman and headed towards Moscow. The Grande Armée was divided as follows:
- A central strike force of 250,000 under the emperor's personal command.
- Two other frontline armies under Eugène de Beauharnais (80,000 men) and Jérôme Bonaparte (70,000 men).
- Two detached corps under Jacques Macdonald (32,500 men) and Karl Schwarzenberg (34,000 Austrian troops).
- A reserve army of 225,000 troops. In addition 80,000 National Guards had been conscripted for full military service defending the imperial frontier of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. With these included total French imperial forces on the Russian border and in Russia came to some 771,500 men. This vast commitment of manpower severely strained the Empire - especially considering that there were a further 300,000 French troops fighting in Iberia and over 200,000 more in