• Read Part One here
The United States (US) government, only 23 years old, had declared war on the British Empire, beginning Mr. Madison’s War. This article continues the series about this war, showing that the largely agrarian US engaged in an imperialist war, lasting from June 18, 1812 until February 18, 1815, with an economically and commercially superior foe, the Royal Crown.
While some say that the war was the last act of decolonization for the US or a “second war” of independence, this is not true. It was more about “nine invasions of foreign sovereign territory,” fighting over expansion of trade, with the US growing into a “great and thriving nation of commerce,” making it one of the US’s early wars of empire. Thomas Jefferson himself made this abundantly clear. He argued that the acquisition of Canada would be “a mere matter of marching,” leading to “the final expulsion of England from the American continent,” stripping the British Empire of all of “her possessions on this continent.” Apart from this, there was one more element proving that the war was an expansionist one.
One of the first moves, apart from preparing an invasion of Canada, was an attempt to take over Florida from the Spanish, engineered by Madison’s advisers. Since the previous year, General George Matthews worked with five prominent inhabitants in Spanish East Florida: affluent planters John Houston McIntosh and George Flemming, wealthy military man Don…