Former President Thomas Jefferson’s claim that invading and taking Canada would be “a mere matter of marching” turned out not only to be horrific strategic advice, but also quite costly in blood and treasure. The American record in the War of 1812 was a poor one. Our national memory of the period is so cloudy and confused that this weekend we will repeatedly hear Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” a grand composition written by a Russian to celebrate his country’s victory over Napoleon, and think it was composed to celebrate our conflict with Great Britain and our “second independence.” It was a war that American popular history tells us the United States won, but historians are less enthusiastic about that claim. For the past three years the United States has been commemorating the bicentennial of the War of 1812.
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