1812: The War That United the United States

"1812: A Nation Emerges" now open, on display through January 27, 2013

Thirty years after the American Revolution, the former colonies were a disparate bunch, spread over much of a continent, unsettled, and divided by politics and fear. Sidney Hart, curator of the National Portrait Gallery’s new exhibition “1812: A Nation Emerges,” states, “In 1812, this is a very weak republic.”

In the exhibition catalog, Hart also notes, “With the exception of a few cities located in a narrow strip along the eastern seaboard, the new country was composed of farms and endless forests.” The War of 1812 would challenge and change the young nation in many ways and, in the end, bring that nation together.

Stories of valor and great battles were abundant after the war, and President James Madison’s wife, Dolley, was central to one of the most enduring tales. While taking Washington, the British laid waste to the city’s important buildings and set their sights on the White House. The exhibition’s assistant curator, Rachael Penman, describes the events that propelled the elegant first lady to the status of national hero:

On August 24, 1814, the citizens of Washington fled before an invading British army. After an easy victory against unprepared militia at Bladensburg, the British advanced into the city. Starting at the Capitol, the invaders, led by Major General Robert Ross, quickly set about burning the city’s public buildings. At the abandoned White House, the British found an elaborate dinner, left in haste as Dolley Madison had fled the house only hours before, after securing the legendary Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington.

Another spectacular moment in the war was recorded when forces under Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry achieved one of the great American naval victories at Lake Erie on September 10, 1813. His first ship, the Lawrence, was decimated by British fire, and Perry was forced to move his command to the Niagara.

Perry’s famous words to General William Henry Harrison are usually—but partially—remembered. “We have met the enemy and they are ours,” he wrote. However, the forgotten part of that statement was the codicil consisting of his list of captured vessels which were “two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.” The entire participating British fleet was taken that day, a stunning loss for the navy that had, only eight years earlier, come to dominate the earth’s oceans with Lord Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar.

Stories such as these produced a less tangible but significant result of the war—these tales and others were responsible for a surge in nationalistic spirit and an increase in the collective American myth. In his essay “Art and War: Truth and Myth,” Sidney Hart writes, “Even the mythical part of the narrative reflects the truth about the outcome of this war. Although far from an American triumph, the war should have by all odds been lost, and although the United States did not win, it certainly did not lose.”

The nation would rally around the myths that were wrought from the war’s battles, and for a short few decades, a united nation would grow under the flag described in Francis Scott Key’s Star-Spangled Banner—another episode of the war which would assume legendary status. 

The identity of the United States, in both historic and mythic forms, was crafted immensely during the War of 1812. And though the question of the ultimate victory yet remains in play to historians of today, Hart dismisses this as less important than how the war was perceived in its own day, noting, “For contemporary Americans, it did indeed seem that they had won the war.”

—Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery

Cited:
Hart, Sidney, and Penman, Rachel.  1812: A War Emerges (exhibition catalog).  Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2012.