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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (146595)	10/3/2004 1:39:47 PM
From: marcos	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Without US slaver/warhawk greed for canadian land there would have been no war on Canada in 1812 .... land-grabbing was the main purpose of the US attacks, and impressment of sailors was no more than a pretext for invasion, used loudly and transparently in warhawk rhetoric .... this is quite widely recognised, Tim, you might consider reading up on the period ... here's one little detail your rah-rah 'history' probably didn't tell you in school - at the peace of Ghent the US negotiators dropped all pretense of concern with impressment, and no mention of the practice appears in any clause of the treaty ..... check it out - yale.edu [check out article 10 too if you like, another example of slaver hypocrisy - note that the warhawk Clay is one of the signers, lol] Some more reading, this guy is presumably a US national but has not been sucked in by the warhawk/slaver guff - du.edu 'As for what you generously just term "harrasment" of sailors' I used not the term 'harassment' but rather 'impressment', which is what the practice was called at the time .... the french were impressing sailors as well, you know, and so were the yanqui pirates - navies were rough outfits in those days, rum sodomy and the lash, scurvy and sinking and shipwreck etc .... impressment formed in no way a genuine casus belli for any party, however, it was a rather petty concern until it was found conveniently useful in promotion of the slaver/warhawk agenda Two other concerns were irritating the warhawks at this time - 1. Whitehall was honouring to some extent its word given in the proclamation of 1763, to protect indian nations from invasion pressure beyond the atlantic watershed ... and only 'to some extent', there weren't much available for military resources due to the struggle against Napoleon, in most cases assistance was symbolic only, or simply trade ..... the slaver/warhawk faction however, presented this as british incitement of indian invasion - as if the iroquois were not defending their own land! 2. Considerable support for secession from the US was arising among federalist new englanders - especially new englanders with interests in shipping, who would be most hurt by war and blockades .... new englanders supplied the RN with almost all of its provisions for the entire war, btw .... anti-slaver/warhawk sentiment among new englanders alarmed the slaver/warhawks of course, just as it does today, and they cranked up a war to forestall its effects .... and while they lost the grab at Canada, they did succeed in suppressing dissent within the US - the federalist party pretty much dies out from around this time, and there pass many years before abolitionists gain considerable power, enough years to accomodate the taking of half of México and all the indian nations right to the Pacific For canadians it forms part of our core identity that less than half a million of us were able to defend ourselves against a nation with fourteen times the population, with the help of regulars in some battles but not in others - at Chateauguay there were no regulars, they were pure voltigeurs canadiens de souche ... here's a verse from one of our anthems - At Queenston Heights and Lundy's Lane our brave fathers side by side for Freedom's home and loved ones dear firmly stood and nobly died And so our rights which they maintained we swear to yield them never Our watchword evermore shall be The Maple Leaf Forever