It is March 23rd. Welcome to Episode 82 of History in a Year. Today, the War of 1812 ends in a freezing Belgian city with an incredibly ironic piece of paper. By late 1814, both the United States and Great Britain are completely exhausted and practically bankrupt. We head across the Atlantic to witness the maddening peace negotiations at Ghent. We explore the hilarious, bitter rivalry between the American diplomats—the puritanical John Quincy Adams and the hard-partying War Hawk Henry Clay. Finally, we break down the terms of the treaty and discover how the United States managed to secure peace without actually fixing a single reason why they went to war in the first place!
STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is March 23rd. Welcome to Episode 82. Yesterday, we watched the American flag miraculously survive the 25-hour bombardment of Fort McHenry.
LEAH:
The British failed to take Baltimore, and the war was essentially deadlocked. Both sides were completely miserable.
STEPHEN:
The United States government was practically bankrupt. The British blockade had strangled the American economy, and New England was actually threatening to secede from the Union.
LEAH:
But Great Britain wasn’t doing much better. They had just spent twenty years and millions of pounds fighting Napoleon, and the British taxpayers were absolutely sick of paying for a pointless war in North America.
STEPHEN:
So, both sides agreed to send diplomats to a freezing, gloomy city in Belgium called Ghent to hammer out a peace treaty.
LEAH:
The American delegation was an absolute diplomatic dream team. But they were also a complete nightmare to manage, because they hated each other almost as much as they hated the British.
STEPHEN:
The team was led by two of the biggest personalities in American history.
LEAH:
First, you had John Quincy Adams. He was the son of the second President, and he was a brilliant, rigid, puritanical workaholic. He woke up at 4:00 AM every single day to read his Bible and study diplomatic texts.
STEPHEN:
On the exact opposite end of the spectrum, you had the ultimate War Hawk: Henry Clay.
LEAH:
Henry Clay was charismatic, loud, and loved to party. While Adams was waking up at 4:00 AM to read his Bible, Henry Clay was just getting back to the hotel after staying up all night playing cards, drinking wine, and smoking cigars.
STEPHEN:
Adams actually wrote in his diary that he could hear Clay’s poker games through the walls of the hotel, and he was deeply offended by Clay’s “loose morals.”
LEAH:
Fortunately, they had a third diplomat with them—Albert Gallatin, the former Secretary of the Treasury. Gallatin basically spent the entire trip acting as a babysitter, keeping Adams and Clay from strangling each other so they could actually focus on the British.
STEPHEN:
When the negotiations finally started in August 1814, the British walked into the room and made some absolutely outrageous demands.
LEAH:
They knew they had burned Washington D.C., so they thought they had the upper hand. They demanded that the United States give up a massive chunk of Maine to Canada.
STEPHEN:
And even worse, the British demanded the creation of a massive, independent Native American buffer state in the Ohio Valley. They wanted to permanently block the United States from expanding any further West.
LEAH:
John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay put their differences aside and flatly refused. They told the British they would pack their bags and go home before they ever gave up an inch of American territory.
STEPHEN:
The negotiations stalled for months. The British diplomats actually wrote back to London, asking the legendary British general, the Duke of Wellington, to come to America and take command of the war to force a surrender.
LEAH:
But the Duke of Wellington looked at the maps, looked at the British budget, and gave them some very blunt advice.
STEPHEN:
He said, “You have no right to demand any concession of territory… You cannot conquer them. Stop fighting and sign a treaty.”
LEAH:
So, the British backed down. And on Christmas Eve, 1814, both sides signed the Treaty of Ghent.
STEPHEN:
The terms of the treaty are some of the most ironic in military history. The Latin phrase for it is status quo ante bellum.
LEAH:
Which simply means: Everything goes back to exactly the way it was before the war started.
STEPHEN:
The British didn’t get their Native American buffer state. The Americans didn’t get to conquer Canada. All captured territory was returned.
LEAH:
But what about impressment? What about the British Navy kidnapping American sailors? That was the entire reason the War Hawks demanded this war in the first place!
STEPHEN:
The Treaty of Ghent doesn’t mention impressment a single time. It is completely ignored.
LEAH:
But there is a very practical reason for that. Because the Napoleonic Wars in Europe were over, the British Royal Navy was downsizing. They didn’t need thousands of extra sailors anymore, so they had naturally stopped kidnapping Americans anyway!
STEPHEN:
The United States had fought a brutal, three-year war, suffered the burning of its capital, and nearly bankrupted itself… to achieve absolutely nothing on paper.
LEAH:
But psychologically, the War of 1812 was a massive victory for America. They had stood toe-to-toe with the British Empire a second time and survived. The United States had finally secured its true independence.
STEPHEN:
The diplomats shook hands in Belgium, packed up the treaty, and put it on a fast ship heading for Washington D.C. for the President to sign.
LEAH:
But the ship had to cross the Atlantic Ocean. It was going to take weeks.
STEPHEN:
And while that piece of paper was slowly sailing across the ocean, the largest, bloodiest, and most famous battle of the entire war was about to explode on the Gulf Coast.
LEAH:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 83. The Battle of New Orleans. A massive British invasion fleet sails toward Louisiana. Standing in their way is a ragtag army of frontiersmen, free Black soldiers, and literal pirates, all commanded by the most ruthless general in America: Andrew Jackson.
STEPHEN:
I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.