The Meaning of the Battle of New Orleans - Perspective, Context, and Who Really Won - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages Similarly, the pro-war Niles Weekly Register devoted only two paragraphs out of eighteen to the reasons for the war, spending all the rest of its space on the feasibility of the war and what they regarded as its certain success.
Indeed, the actual causes of the war were so muddy that they are not mentioned in the Declaration of War itself, which was introduced by John C. Calhoun, one of the leaders of the War Hawks.
The announced causes of the war were thus a hodge-podge of low-level complaints in international relations, anger at the high-handedness of various Royal Navy officers, and perhaps nostalgia for the experience of the then-rapidly-passing Revolutionary War generation. But underneath there were two perhaps more substantive issues: first, the British failure to accept that the former American colonies were actually now an independent, sovereign nation rather than a sort of obstreperous dependency; and second, the British denial of American hegemony on the continent, as demonstrated particularly by their maintaining friendly and supportive relations with the Indian nations. The Americans did not need (or seek) to sink the British navy, conquer the Empire for themselves, or burn London to the ground; their passive goal was to be treated by the British in the same way as a Frenchman or a Spaniard might be treated, and their active goal was to have a free hand in the conquest of Native Americans lands – to establish that the Native Americans could not demand or expect any alliance whatever with any European power. ...Download file to see next pagesRead More