The Making of America (Volume 9) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE ARMY IN THE WAR OF 1812. BY FRANCIS W. SHEPARDSON. [Francis Wayland Shepardson, associate professor of American history, Chicago university; born Cheviot, Ohio, October 15, 1862; graduated from Denison university, 1882; instructor Young Ladies' institute, Granville, Ohio, 1883-7; editor Granville Times, 1887-90; graduate student Yale university, 1890-2; docent University of Chicago, 1892-3; university extension assistant in history, 1893-5; instructor in American history and secretary of the lecture-study department of the university extension division, 1895-7; acting recorder 1897-8; assistant professor American history, 1897-1901; secretary to the president, 1897-1904; dean of the senior colleges, 1904.] The second war between the United States and England, sometimes called the second war for independence, and usually referred to as the war of 1812, was a strange affair. The more carefully it is studied the more peculiar it appears. The factors entering into it were many and varied. There was the commercial greed of France and England and their rivalry in European politics; there was the ambition of Napoleon; there was the economic situation among the laboring classes of England; there were the differences of opinion in America, where the interests of the commercial element in the east came into conflict with the theories of the agricultural regions of the west; there were the wrongs of the Indians and the clamors of the border folk against them. Such were some of the elements which were to be reckoned with, and which shaped one feature of the war or another. It is a remarkable fact, too, that the principal avowed cause of the war was actually removed several days before the declaration of war, and another equally interesting fact, that what has been accepted as the...