Who Won the War of 1812
Along the U.S.-Canadian Border, Skirmishes Persist Over War of 1812
200 Years Later, Both Sides Feel Like Winners; Dueling Celebrations at Forts
By ALISTAIR MACDONALD
FORT GEORGE, Ontario—As Canadian Dan Laroche, dressed as a British redcoat, fired a musket and regaled his audience here with tales of panicked American surrender, Marie DeVita, from Brooklyn, N.Y., turned to friends with a question: “Wait a minute, didn’t we win the War of 1812?”
Two hundred years ago Monday, the U.S. officially declared war on Britain, starting a two-year conflict that became known as the War of 1812. Two centuries on, skirmishes continue across the Niagara River here. The cause: who won the war.
Many Canadian children grow up learning their forebears triumphed after American aggressors tried and failed to invade what was then a British colony. For Americans, a fledging nation forced Britain to respect U.S. sovereignty, allowing it to focus on its expansion westward.
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Fort George once traded cannon fire across the Niagara River with Fort Niagara, N.Y. The American fort was captured and held by British-led forces from 1813 to the war’s end.
Now, staff members at Fort Niagara are preparing to repulse attacks of a different nature: Canadian triumphalism. Jason Buckley, a historical “interpreter” at Fort Niagara, describes the war to visitors as America’s “second war of independence.”
The War of 1812 is virtually forgotten. But Canadian and American officials are trying to drum up interest in the often-overlooked conflict, gearing up for its bicentennial this summer. WSJ’s Chip Cummins reports from Ontario, Canada.
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“There are people who get upset, who don’t want to listen,” said the 33-year old, who dresses up in period costume and guides visitors around the fort. Sometimes discussions get so tense, he has to change the subject. “Come, let me show you this musket,” he’ll say.
Mr. Laroche, an interpreter on the other side, has a different take: “Had things gone differently in this conflict, Canada would not exist today, and the bottom line is we are still here.”
The U.S. went to war to fight British trade restrictions and London’s impressments of U.S. sailors, part of its much-larger war with Napoleon. Britain also helped Native Americans fighting U.S. expansion. U.S. leaders, like ex-President Thomas Jefferson, were calling for the “final expulsion of England from the American continent.”
Sandwiched between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, the War of 1812 tends to get short shrift in the U.S. It’s even more obscure in Britain, overshadowed by the larger fight going on at the time with France.
Though the back and forth is mainly conducted in good humor, for some Canadians, the war is a seminal conflict and its commemoration an important event. Richard Merritt remembers being fed cookies and tales of Canadian heroics in 1812 by “elderly aunts” in Niagara-on-the-Lake, next to Fort George.
He has helped organize commemoration events such as one set for December, when images of flames will be projected onto buildings in Niagara-on-the-Lake to mark the city’s burning by retreating U.S. forces.
Dan Laroche
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“We don’t exactly have a burning hatred for Americans, but it is certainly something we do remember,” Mr. Merritt says.
Cross-border bickering has a long history. In the mid-1990s, American Robert Trumbull marched out in period costume of the 19th U.S. Infantry, to relive a battle fought nearby Fort George. He was greeted by boos from Canadian spectators.
“They were pretty agitated, and I thought, ‘that’s odd, we’re Americans and we are getting booed'” in Canada, says Mr. Trumbull, a real-estate broker.
Canadians have similar tales. Victor Suthren was the director of Ottawa’s Canadian War Museum when an agitated U.S. visitor pulled him aside to complain about a War of 1812 exhibition.
“You are saying you were victorious, and that is not true, we won,” Mr. Suthren remembers being told.
The now-retired Mr. Suthren sees it differently: “Had we really wanted to put all efforts into an attempt on North America, with the full power of the Royal Navy, it would have resulted in a severe punishment for the Americans.”
But for many Americans, there is no “we” about it.
“Canadians talk about the brave Canadians defending Canada, but when you look at the battles it was mainly British troops who fought,” says Mr. Trumbull. That is a grenade he plans to lob when facing off this year with Canadian re-enactors at commemorations planned on both sides of the border.
Last November, the wife of Fort Niagara’s executive director, American Catherine Emerson, inadvertently stepped into the breach when she gave a presentation, calling the 20-mile trek made by Canadian heroine Laura Secord, to warn British led forces of an impending U.S. attack, a “Sunday walk.” In front of local American lawmakers, she was comparing it to a 300-mile trek undertaken by Betsy Doyle, an American contemporary, who fled Fort Niagara after it fell to the British.
That landed Ms. Emerson in the cross hairs of the Canadian press. “Them’s fightin’ words,” the Ottawa Citizen wrote.
“I’m sitting here going, ‘what?’ I just wanted to tell the story,” she says.
Presentation boards inside a former Fort George barrack aim to tell the history from all perspectives. But as he read of America’s “overwhelming” numerical advantage and its “shameful retreat” from Fort George, Jim Auker, from Elkhart, Ind., thought: “There’s a dig.” The presentation’s conclusion: “The United States did not succeed in conquering Canada or achieve the ‘final expulsion of England from the American continent’.”
Across the Niagara River in the U.S., there is a different set of boards with a different take. There, it was a war in which U.S. Marine “musketry turned the tide” and ended when Britain “unable to break American resolve…sought a diplomatic solution, concluding with peace.”
At Fort George, a Canadian interpreter dressed as a private from Britain’s 41st Regiment of Foot, was taking questions from Ms. DeVita and her friends.
“It was a win for both sides,” he said, as the group debated in strong Brooklyn accents whether “draw” was the right word.
“I’m willing to accept that diplomacy,” Ms. DeVita said. “I’ve never seen them [Canadians] as an enemy, even if we did win.”
A version of this article appeared June 18, 2012, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Along the U.S.-Canadian Border, Skirmishes Persist Over War of 1812.