Why am I so curious about the War of 1812? My book on the conflicts adjacent events in Florida comes out tomorrow.

The War of 1812 (which actually ran from 1812-1815 in its declared form) has always fascinated me. The conflict which for whatever reason was consistently glossed over or taught as an incidental event to me in High School and College became an object of my fascination as I discovered what a big deal it was in Canada and how it was taught in Britain as an adjacent conflict to the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. 

The war and its adjacent conflicts which we discuss in this book were critical to shaping the future of the North American continent. The US would continue marching westward and eventually conquer Florida. Native Americans would be pushed further and further west or onto reservations. Canada would continue to be part of the British Empire and American designs on it would realistically cease. The Spanish would become more and more marginal as players in North America while new heroes that would shape the domestic politics of the United States for decades emerged. 

This war was the formative war for both the United States and Canada. American nationalism was largely born out of the war and became a force that attempted to unite the country in the decades that followed the Treaty of Ghent in 1814. Meanwhile, the southern US was able to expand slavery south into Florida as well as west into Arkansas and Missouri as a result of the aftermath of the war: developments that would sow the seeds for the disunion of the 1850’s and eventual Civil War in the 1860’s. 

As the study of both American and Florida history evolves, new points of emphasis are emerging. The desire of the southern United States to expand slavery as well as the nation’s general vision of manifest destiny led directly to a constant desire for the US or individual Americans to intervene in Florida. It’s often forgotten that East Florida, which stayed loyal to the British crown was invaded three times by the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and that the period after the war culminating in the era this book covers was fraught with US attempts to conquer Florida.