In attacking New Orleans, Cochrane's hope was to prevent US ships from entering
and exiting the Mississippi River, cutting off America's most important inland
transportation and shipping route. Cochrane also wanted to attack New Orleans
because it had a vast stockpile of valuable goods like sugar and tobacco that
had been piling up over the years of embargo.
The American navy at New Orleans was a particularly haphazard, ramshackle
mixture, which gave Cochrane an initial advantage with his rested, repaired
fleet. Also, although Jackson was and is remembered as an American military
hero, his command was far from perfect. Blunders abounded, including his foolish
decision to keep his forces in West Florida, leaving New Orleans undefended, for
such a long time. After winning the battle of New Orleans, Jackson became a
national hero and his popularity eventually propelled to the presidency.
However, his victory in New Orleans owed as much to luck as to sound strategy.
The death of Ross and the slowness with which Packenham arrived to command his
troops greatly aided Jackson, as did the very geography of the New Orleans
region. In terms of the popularity his victory generated, Jackson also lucked
out: though the Battle of New Orleans was fought after the signing of the Treaty
of Ghent, because news of the victory swept the US before news of the treaty,
many Americans assumed Jackson's victory ended the war.
In reality, as important as the War of 1812 seemed in the United States, on the
world scale it was a mere shadow compared with the far vaster Napoleonic
Wars. In many ways the War of 1812 can
and should be
considered as an outgrowth of the conflict in Europe. Regardless, the war
certainly meant a lot to the young American nation, which dubbed the War of 1812
the "Second War for American Independence." Many hyper-patriotic Americans went
so far as to announce that the War of 1812 had announced the United States' role
as a world power. Although there was much to be proud of in the war, this was
far from the case. The US had started a war and then barely defended itself,
allowing Washington to be looted and burned in the process. However, the War of
1812 was a start. Fending off Britain did allow the US to focus on internal
growth and consolidation during a near century of isolationism in which the US
was for the most part left alone by the other powers of the world.
And while the War of 1812 was neither the military triumph Americans often
painted, nor an announcement of global power, the American exaggeration of the
war does stand testament to one of the war's effects: a dramatic increase in
American nationalism. In the aftermath of the war, schools replaced British
textbooks with American, the Bank of the United States was resuscitated (1816),
and artists began to produce a distinctly "American" literature. Politically,
Henry Clay's visionary "American System" called for linking the nation into a
single marketplace by building a transportation infrastructure of railroads.
The tremendous period of the American nineteenth century, with its isolationism,
incredible industrialization, westward expansion, increasing sectionalism,
secession and Civil War, all resulting, ultimately, in America's ascension to
the world stage, can be seen as emerging from the seeds planted in the War of
1812.
