What Was Alexanderã¢â‚¬â„¢s Enduring Legacy to the Hellenistic World?
The Battle of Lake Erie, by William Henry Powell, 1873 / United States Senate
By Dr. James Thousand. Banner, Jr. / 06.23.2012
Visiting Scholar
The George Washington Academy
Over two hundred years ago today American naval vessels fired the opening shots in what we know as the War of 1812. Like all wars, this was a war filled with ironies and unintended consequences. It's also a war that'south hard to fit into the nation's triumphalist mythology.
For 1 affair, it was a misbegotten state of war. Lacking today'southward fast communications, Washington didn't larn until after the American declaration of state of war that the British had already repealed the offending trade restrictions that were a major U.S. pretext for taking up arms.
The war'south final battle, Andrew Jackson's celebrated victory at New Orleans in early on 1815, might also take been avoided with faster communications. The boxing took place two weeks later on negotiators had signed a peace agreement on Christmas eve 1814.
The final irony is that the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war, left things as they had been at the commencement. The U.South. gained nix concrete from 2 and half years of disharmonize and the loss of 15,000 American lives.
Nonetheless if the war is often derided or forgotten, its consequences lie all around us, rooted deep in American life.
What the British call "the America War" was part of the endmost phase of the global conflict that had raged across Europe and the world's oceans since 1793. The United States, trying to remain neutral, found itself caught between Great Britain and France and was injured by the policies of both. James Madison's administration took the U.S. into state of war confronting Britain principally because that nation's impressment of American seamen and raids on American commerce seemed a dire threat to the immature nation's existence and an affront to its accolade.
But the U.Due south. was unprepared for warfare. Ragtag American land forces rarely eked out battleground victories and never secured their major strategic aim: control of Canada and the St. Lawrence valley. Though American naval forces acquitted themselves better, bluish-h2o victories and successes on Lake Champlain and Lake Erie did little to modify the war'southward grade. Only skillful American affairs managed to pull peace out of stalemate. Though the Treaty of Ghent gained the Americans nothing, it did prevent the U.S. from losing any territory.
But what consequences, bated from peace, came from the conflict?
Sometimes called the Second War for American Independence, the State of war of 1812 conclusively established the permanent place of the United States among sovereign nations. In fact, as early every bit 1823, President James Monroe and Secretarial assistant of State John Quincy Adams felt confident plenty to warn off other nations from casting their eyes on whatsoever function of this hemisphere. With the Monroe Doctrine, the U.s. threw its protection¬ — and its indelible hegemony¬ — over an entire hemisphere. That would non have been possible before the U.S. had put an terminate to all threats to its own existence.
As important, with France and Britain no longer battling U.S. authority on the North American continent and American borders now secure, the United States entered a major new phase in its history: It was now gratuitous to spread westward, unmolested. That, however, proved a mixed approval. A new continental colossus came into existence, a Pacific as well equally Atlantic power. But and then did a smashing slave ability. The Cotton Kingdom of the lower South was secured by Jackson'due south victory. As slavery followed Americans s and westward into new territory, the weather for later ceremonious war took root.
Some other of the state of war's consequences: In one case peace had been secured and trade with the world regained in 1815, the nation's commercial and democratic energies were unleashed. "Jacksonian Republic" we call it. All adult white men gained the vote, landholding spread among white Americans, marketplace forces came to dominion the economy, and what we think of as the classic American mode of life emerged: ¬gratuitous, capitalistic, individualistic, self-interested.
Just as we know, wars accept blowbacks. This one was no exception. The War of 1812 reawakened long-held American designs on Canadian territory. Even so, paradoxically, just as the war made the United States proudly aware of itself as a nation, able for the second time to stand upwardly to the world's greatest maritime ability, it was considering of American wartime assaults on Canada that American purple ambitions n of the border were forever thwarted. This second war with Uk created what the War of Independence had not: Canadian nationalism and a sense of Canadian collective identity. The stable, ordered country that at present borders the U.s.a. came into existence partly considering of inept American invasions during the war.
Finally, the war broke the back of the remaining Indian confederations east of the Mississippi. The Iroquois in the north and the Creek people in the south both allied with Britain during the war, and for them the conflict was devastating. It put an finish to native power e of the Mississippi and laid the groundwork for Indian removal to western reservations. An era of Indian annihilation opened, an era whose results nosotros live with withal.
Looking for lessons in any detail war is a fool'due south errand. Merely looking for the remains of a war in a nation'due south society and civilisation is non. We may consign the State of war of 1812, like the Korean War and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to a category of inglorious conflicts of inconclusive results. But without the State of war of 1812, the history of Canada, the fate of American slaves and native Americans, even the nation's ability to stand gratis among the nations of the world would probably have taken different turns. The State of war of 1812 helped to grade the United states of america into the nation it is today.
Originally published by Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, from the history departments of The Ohio State University and Miami University, under a Creative Commons license.
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