The War of 1812

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On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on England. The war lasted 2 years and 8 months and it killed up to 15,000 people. By 24 December, 1814, The Treaty of Ghent was signed and it was ratified by Parliament on 30 December 1814. By February 1815, The Treaty of Ghent was ratified by United States and it ended the war. There were various issues happened before the war and some of them were major causes.
Before 1805, it was a chaos in Europe. Britain was at war with France. For years, the wars had seen France lose most of its colonial empire. The Louisiana Territory was sold to United States of America and France was kicked out of North America. Also British threatened France to establish any colony outside Europe. Britain had the greatest industrial capacity in Europe and it has developed navy to build up considerable economic strength through trade. The British’s goal was to defeat France. It would require commercial blockade. According to a historian named Reginald Horsman from “The Causes of The War of 1812”, He said that it was necessary to have some restrictions on neutral commerce for England in that period, which was the same method that British defeated Napoleon. This affected the United States and this was the first of the causes of the war in 1812 because the United States saw that was a violation of neutral with both sides.
The second issue was impressment. It means that taking men into a navy by force and with or without notice. The British Royal Navy used it against America. In between 1803 and 1807, Britain seized more than 500 American ships and more than 300 of France. According to the Rule of 1756, it ruled that Britain would not trade with neutral nations who were also trading with the enemy. It also ru...

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... valuable land and interfere the relationship between the British and Native Indians. Finally, the last reason is that United States saw declaring the war of 1812 was the second war of independence. Based on these reasons, there is no wonder that the United States would declare war on the Britain.

Work Cited
Horsman, Reginald. The Causes of the War of 1812. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1962. Print.
" The Mariners' Museum : Birth of the U.S. Navy.” The Mariners' Museum, n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2014.
Davidson, James West. U.S. : A Narrative History. Vol. 1. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print.
Pratt, Julius W. History of United States Foreign Policy.N.p.: Prentice-Hall, 1955. Print.
Collins, James P. "Native Americans in the Antebellum U.S. Military." National Archives. Web. 25 Apr. 2014.
Brands, H. W. Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times. N.p.: Anchor, 2005. Print

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