The War of 1812 (18 page)

View of Buffalo Harbor, 1825. This frontier town, fully recovered
from its destruction during the war, was on the threshold of its
first major boom with the completion of the Erie Canal to
nearby Tonawanda.
[Courtesy of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.]

The Indians had been preparing to continue fighting, but most gave this up when the British withdrew. Representatives of the tribes in the old northwest began negotiating with the United States. Treaties meant to restore Indian-American relations to what they had been in 1811 were signed. But neither side could go back in time. Thousands more American pioneers were pushing westward into territory that the Indians regarded as their own. The Indians would continue to resist but much more weakly than before 1812; and they no longer had a European ally to help them.

In April 1816 the United States Congress passed a law forbidding trade between Indians within American territory and foreign traders. This meant the end of contacts between Canadian traders and Indians beyond the United States border. From then on, if Indians wanted manufactured goods they would have to get them from Americans. If they had furs to sell they would have to deal with American traders.
This development marked the end of a fur trade between Canadians and Indians south and west of the lakes that went back almost two hundred years. Such a change would have come about eventually, but the War of 1812 hastened it.

Most Indians in Canada continued to live peacefully on the lands they had held before the war. They had been vital to the defence of Canadian territory. Their loyalty and their contributions continued to be remembered, and many Indians still take pride in their ancestors' bravery during the War of 1812.

The shipbuilding contest on Lake Ontario had become a very large, expensive, and dangerous competition by the end of 1814. The two new ships started at Kingston that year were to be even more powerful than the Royal Navy's ocean-going vessels. The two big ships the Americans started would have been as powerful and even larger. They would have been the biggest warships in the world if they had been completed!

There were other plans both for shipbuilding and the development of naval bases. Dr. Dunlop wrote graphically about one proposal made at the end of 1814 and its consequences:

. . . it was proposed to build a large ship on Lake Huron . . . that would be able, from her size, and the weight of her metal, to cope with the small vessels that composed the American flotilla on Lake Erie. As there is a channel through Lake Saint Clair, and the Rivers Detroit and Saint Clair, by which she could pass from one lake into the other, an inlet, called Penetanguishene, was selected as the proper site of a new dockyard, and a better site could hardly have been selected . . . it was a narrow-mouthed, deep bay, with plenty of water for any size of craft, and a fine bold shore, easily defensible against any ships that could approach; but unluckily, Penetanguishene was in the woods, thirty miles from Lake Simcoe; and before a ship of the line could be built, a road must be cut, and stones broke along it.

. . . in the early part of December, I volunteered my services, and, as nobody else envied the job, they were accepted; and a company of the Canadian Fencibles, with about the same
number of militia, under the direction of Colonel Cockburn of the Quarter Master General's Department, was despatched up to the north, with instructions to have the road cut at all hazards.

Things went on pretty much the same till we had nearly completed our business; no labour had been spared in perfecting our work. Bridges had been thrown across streams in the depth of winter, when officers and men had to stand for hours up to the middle in ice-cold water; ravines had to be bridged when the logs had to be dragged out of swamps through four feet of snow. The month of March was far advanced when we promised ourselves a pleasant summer in the comfortable quarters that we meant to build for ourselves at Penetanguishene, when all our anticipations were set aside by the arrival of the appalling intelligence that peace had been concluded between his Majesty and the United States. This showed half pay staring us in the face; however, soldiers have nothing to do but obey — we were withdrawn — all the expenditure incurred went for nothing; we were marched to Toronto (then York,) and sent to join our respective regiments.
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It did not make sense in peacetime to try to keep up the tremendous pace of shipbuilding. The Americans suggested that both sides reduce their naval forces on the lakes to a minimum. In effect, neither side would maintain a navy there, only a few armed vessels to deal with smugglers or other lawbreakers. They argued that the best security for both Canada and the United States was to have no means of attacking each other on the lakes.

The British agreed to the American suggestion and negotiations followed during 1816. The treaty, reached in April 1817, is known as the Rush-Bagot Agreement after the men who signed it: Richard Rush, American acting Secretary of State, and Charles Bagot, British minister to Washington. The two countries agreed to have only two armed vessels on the lakes above Niagara Falls, one on Lake Ontario and one on Lake Champlain. These would be small vessels, each armed with one cannon. Immediately, both sides reduced their fleets.

Most of the British ships on Lake Ontario survived until the 1830s when they were either sold or sunk in the lake near Kingston. The United States vessels also were left to decay. The Rush-Bagot Agreement is still in force and undoubtedly has prevented clashes between Canada and the United States that might have led to wider conflicts.

Despite disarmament, each side was concerned about security in case of another war. For example, the American Secretary of War, James Monroe, in February 1815, prepared a plan for an attack on Canada which would avoid the mistakes of the previous three years. His idea was to leave only militia on the Niagara and Detroit frontiers, while concentrating all the regulars that could be collected, along with about thirty thousand militia, against the St. Lawrence between Montreal and Kingston. The dynamic Major-General Brown would be in full command of the campaign. This very sensible plan from the American point of view put the emphasis where it should have gone from the beginning of the conflict.

For some years after the peace, military roads were constructed, one running east from Sackets Harbor and one west from Plattsburgh. However, forts were not kept up and Brown's idea of a fort on the American bank of the St. Lawrence (which could have seriously threatened movement up the river) was never put into effect.

On the Canadian side, the authorities continued to worry about security. One measure they took was to establish a naval base at Penetanguishene in 1818. Another was the building of the Rideau Canal, at a total cost of over a million pounds, the biggest and most expensive military work that the British government undertook in all of British North America. A third was fortifications at Kingston where the first Fort Henry was erected by 1820. It was later demolished and the present Fort Henry was finished twenty-eight years after the end of the war. The naval dockyard at Kingston lasted for several decades.

Both sides were dissatisfied with parts of the boundary between British North America and the United States. Three commissions, each consisting of an American and a British member, were set up in 1816 to try to settle all these problems. They reached agreement on most issues, and this helped to reduce the potential for future conflict.

The first line agreed upon was from the St. Lawrence to the western end of Lake Superior. Some of the major islands were given to the United States, others to Canada. This settled the boundary between the most heavily populated parts of the two countries, where problems were most likely to occur. The same commission could not agree on the boundary from Lake Superior to Lake of the Woods. That was not finally settled until the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842.

Map of Huronia showing highways as they appear in the mid- 1900s.
[Adapted from
The Establishments at Penetanguishene: Bastion of
the North 1814–1856,
by E.M. Jury (London, Ontario: The
University of Western Ontario, Museum of Indian Archaeology,
Bulletin No. 12, 1959), p. 55.]

The boundary along the 49th parallel from Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains was quickly decided, but the two sides disagreed on the line from the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean. They decided on joint occupation for ten years and, finally, an 1846 treaty established the 49th parallel as the boundary for this area as well. There was much argument about the boundary in Passamaquoddy Bay and between Maine, New Brunswick, and Lower Canada.

The British insisted on keeping Grand Manan Island, and in 1817 the Americans agreed in return for several other islands in the
bay. The boundary along the St. Croix River was not in dispute, but from its source to the St. Lawrence, each side had very different views. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty eventually decided this boundary.

The Treaty of Ghent had also left the fisheries issue for later negotiations, but before these were undertaken, trouble occurred along the east coast. British warships seized American vessels fishing within the coastal limits of British North America. For a while there was a danger that the Americans would respond with force. Realizing that to exclude American fishing vessels from these waters would require a large fleet and great expense, the British offered to compromise. The Americans accepted. In their turn, they recognized that they were unlikely to obtain everything they wanted without fighting Britain.

Negotiations proceeded slowly until 1818. In the agreement of that year, the Americans received the right to fish along the western and southern coasts of Newfoundland, around the Magdalen Islands, and along the Labrador coast. They could enter any bay to obtain wood and water, to shelter from a storm, or to repair damage.

The solution was not perfect, and there have since been many disputes between Canada and the United States over east coast fisheries. But the agreement of 1818 was a very important step towards the peaceful settlement of the problem.

By the 1820s, Britain and the United States had created a strong foundation for lasting peace between them. Much of the fear of renewed war had faded, and problems that could have caused armed clashes had been resolved. The war provided a lesson that the British and American governments appear to have learned: war between them would cause a great deal of death and destruction and neither side would win a total victory.

In the United States, the end of the conflict and the drawing of definite boundaries opened the way for massive population growth and territorial expansion. Roads, canals, and soon railways were being built. New towns and industries sprang up. Americans felt their country was strong, truly independent, and important. What Albert Gallatin, one of the American negotiators at Ghent, wrote in 1816 was indeed happening:

The war has been productive of evil and of good, but I think the good preponderates. . . . The war has renewed and reinstated the national feelings and character which the Revolution had given, and which were daily lessening. The people have now more general objects of attachment, with which their pride and political opinions are connected. They are more Americans; they feel and act more as a nation, and I hope that the permanency of the Union is thereby better secured.
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The war affected the lives of most Canadians, but very few enjoyed economic gains. When the war started, prices of goods and services rose. This benefited farmers who could grow more crops or who had horses and wagons for hire, as well as merchants who imported, shipped, and sold goods. Skilled workers received higher wages. But many farmers as well as townspeople experienced harder times because their living costs rose. For example, the price of a barrel of flour in Upper Canada went from about $7.50 in 1812 to $14.00 in 1814 and that would mean a considerable increase in the cost of bread, a basic food staple.
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People whose homes or farms were destroyed and the families of militiamen who had been killed or wounded suffered even more severely.