WI: Britain decisively won the war of 1812

TFSmith121

Banned
Minor point - all three times the British actually TRIED

Minor point - all three times the British actually TRIED to mount an organized joint offensive into US territory (beyond border raids on the Niagara or Detroit rivers, for example) they were defeated.
  • At Plattsburgh/Lake Champlain, under Prevost and Downie (KIA), they didn't even engage the US army under Macomb because of their defeat on the Lake by MacDonough's squadron;
  • At Baltimore/Hampstead Hill, under Cochrane and Ross (KIA), the RN was repulsed at Fort McHenry (Armistead) and Ross's army (sans Ross, who was KIA at North Point) attacked the US army (Smith) at Hampstead Hill and was repulsed;
  • At New Orleans, under Cochrane and Pakenham (KIA), the British attacked and were, obviously, defeated by Jackson's army, and the RN, equally obviously, could not run the city's defenses on the river.
So again, just to review, that's 0 for 3, and (notably) three of five British commanding officers KIA.

The British had no real successes in combined arms operations in the US in 1812-15; as much of a propaganda victory as Bladensburg/Washington was, the reality is that Washington was an administrative capital, nothing more. It was not a commercial/industrial center like Baltimore or New Orleans.

The British could not "win" the Revolutionary War (decisively or in any other way) in 1775-83; how, exactly could they "win" in 1812-15, when the US is - inargubly - more cohesive, with much a larger population (7.2 million in 1810, compared with 2.8 million in 1780), and significantly wealthier than it was almost four decades earlier?

And, by the way, after two decades straight (practically) of economically exhausting warfare against the French, and, of course, from 3,000 miles away - and in, as UT says - the age of sail?

This is up there with ZEELOWE, folks.

Best,
 
The Battle of Bladensburg was a decisive British victory and larger in scale than the Battle of Baltimore so Britain didn't do that badly. Obviously everyone agrees that there was no way Britain would even attempt to completely occupy the USA, not least because no one in London wanted to occupy the entire area.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Actually there were more troops both sides at

The Battle of Bladensburg was a decisive British victory and larger in scale than the Battle of Baltimore so Britain didn't do that badly. Obviously everyone agrees that there was no way Britain would even attempt to completely occupy the USA, not least because no one in London wanted to occupy the entire area.

Baltimore (North Point, Hampstead Hill, and Fort McHenry) than there were at Washington/Bladensburg.

And again, Bladensburg accomplished pretty close to nothing in terms of diminishing the US ability to resist Britain; if anything, it helped rally troops for the defense of Baltimore, which was, after all, the richest city on the Chesapeake and the objective of Cochrane and Ross.

Washington was not Paris or London, in terms of being a commercial or manufacturing center or even a significant port like London. The attack on Washington, honestly, shows the limits of British strategic thinking when it came to war with the US in the Nineteenth Century. The Americans had not surrendered when the British occupied New York, Philadelphia, or Boston at different times during the Revolution, all of which were more importantly economically in the 1700s than Washington was in the 1800s. Why Cochrane, Ross, or anyone else thought it would achieve anything significant in 1814 seems pretty questionable.

Certainly reinforces the reality that the British could not win a "decisive" victory in 1812-15, however...

Best,
 
They'd take the Great Lakes and probably the Michigan peninsula, and a favorable Maine border. Not much else, even if they could, and their capability to really hurt the United States was limited. Any scenarios where the British manage to block off American expansion westward are extremely farfetched and don't match up with British goals at the time anyway.
 
British strategy in the War of 1812 was to get the war over and done with as quickly as possible, at a minimal cost and without conceding anything important (like Canada). Burning Washington while militarily irrelevant mattered in terms of prestige and morale and helped drive the US to the negotiating table and in that sense was a massive success.
 
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