Abstract
At the 200-year point, it is perhaps time to reflect on what Gordon Wood in Empire of Liberty called “the strangest war in American history” 1 (p. 659). Was the War of 1812 a way for the United States to finally throw off the yoke of colonialism? Was the United States unavoidably drawn into the wider Franco–British conflict? Perhaps, the US goal was to break up a British and Indian alliance that threatened western settlers. Or, was the War of 1812 a poorly conceived invasion of Canada and an early misstep in America’s manifest destiny? Historians have argued each of these positions.
Howard Callaway’s annotated version of Alexander James Dallas’s Exposition on the Causes and Character of the War (1815) provides a forum for Armed Forces & Society to commemorate this strange and influential war. Callaway uncovers and makes more accessible a rich historical document—a document that explicates America’s justifications and grievances. In the introduction, Callaway carefully sets the stage by presenting the historical context and providing rich biographical detail into the life and works of Alexander James Dallas. Useful explanatory footnotes are embedded within the Exposition itself; these define key early nineteenth-century terms and provide geographic, historical, and technical information which give the document contemporary accessibility. In addition, Callaway provides three supplementary appendices—The Treaty of Paris 2 (1783), The Jay Treaty 3 (1794) and The Treaty of Ghent 4 (1815), and a timeline.
Jamaican born and educated in Great Britain, Alexander James Dallas 5 is seemingly an odd choice to write a semiofficial exposition on the causes and character of such a strange war. Dallas and his young family arrived in his new home just three months before the American War of Independence officially ended (1783). There he and his family thrived. He practiced law in Philadelphia and published extensively on legal matters including Supreme Court decisions. From 1790 to 1801, he served as Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In 1801, Jefferson appointed him a US District Attorney, where he stayed until 1814 when Madison appointed him the Secretary of the Treasury. In that position, he was deeply involved in developing and implementing policies to fund the war. This gave him a bird’s-eye view and an insider’s perspective.
Alexander James Dallas, considered a man of high character, wrote the Exposition just months after the British burned the presidential home and just before news of the signing of Treaty of Ghent 6 reached Washington. From a historical perspective, the young United States was a remote, backwater experiment which recently won its independence from the dominant global power. It was also a far-flung continental nation soon to be tied together by revolutions in telecommunication (telegraph) and transportation (railroads). Thus, there were strange occurrences like the Battle of New Orleans, which due to poor communications, occurred after the war was officially over.
As a scholar dedicated to the law, Dallas wrote the roughly eighty-page Exposition with an emphasis on the legal justifications for the war. He like Madison emphasized republican self-constraint and the importance of the rule of law. Dallas showed how both principles characterized US international relations and decision to go to war. The work is infused with terms such as public law, laws of civilized warfare, unlawful violence, unlawful blockade, laws of naturalization, and maritime law. Emphasis on law is meant to contrast sharply with the rationale which the British used to justify impressment.
Dallas’s work certainly adds strength to the argument that the War of 1812 was an extension of the War of Independence. He begins by referring to the British “accumulated wrongs, which marks the period . . . that elapsed between the peace of 1783 and the rupture of 1812” (p. 30). From Dallas’s perspective, Great Britain had never quite treated the United States as an independent nation. Dallas chronicles these wrongs with an emphasis on maritime abuses, particularly impressment of American seamen. “But the British claim, expanding with singular elasticity, was soon found to include a right to enter American vessels on the high seas, in order to search for and seize all British seamen; it next embraced the case of every British subject; and finally, in its practical enforcement, it has been extended to every mariner, who could not prove, upon the spot, that he was a citizen of the United States” (pp. 38-39). Perhaps more importantly, the British claim to impress these men “was not recorded in any positive code of the law of nations” (p. 39).
Dallas explicates how easily minor nations become entangled when world powers are at war. He documents how multiple attempts to preserve neutrality and peace for its citizens were met with frustrating disregard. Eventually, the scope and scale of the disregard became so great that the “American government was compelled to contemplate a resort to arms, as the only remaining course to be pursued, for its honor, its independence and its safety” (p. 75).
The Exposition begins as a historical rendition of British abuses. Once war is declared, Dallas shifts to examining the US conduct of the war. The War of 1812 is unique in that it took place on American and Canadian soil. It also included naval battles on sea, rivers, and lakes. Dallas focuses on, the unsavory British alliance with Native Americans (referred to by Dallas as savages). “It seemed to be a stipulation of the compact between the allies, that the British might imitate, but should not control, the ferocity of the savages. While the British troops behold without compunction, the tomahawk and the scalping knife, brandished against prisoners, old men and children and even against pregnant women and while they exultingly, accept the bloody scalps of the slaughtered Americans; the Indian exploits in battle, are recounted and applauded by the British general orders” (p. 96).
Dallas also examines how the Eastern seaboard was overrun and government buildings in Washington DC burned. “They set fire to the edifice, which the United States has erected for the residence of their chief magistrate, 7 and they set fire to the costly and extensive buildings, erected for the accommodation of the principal officers of the government, in the transactions of the public business.” Further they “consigned to the flames” treasured artwork in these buildings borrowed from Europe (p. 107).
Dallas concluded making it clear that his Exposition was designed to refute charges by the British Prince Regent that the United States was “the aggressor in the war” and that French councils had decided influence on the conduct of the American government (p. 111). Although few historians would now see the United States as a puppet of the French, the question of US aggression is not quite settled 200 years later. Callaway’s annotation of Dallas’s work is not meant to evenhandedly weigh the causes, actions, and consequences of this strange war. Rather, he has uncovered a primary source and historical treasure and made it more accessible to scholars of the early Republic. In this, he succeeded.