The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies »

Born and raised in Maine, Alan Taylor teaches American and Canadian history at the University of California, Davis. His books include The Divided Ground, Writing Early American History, American Colonies, and William Cooper’s Town, which won the Bancroft and Pulitzer prizes for American history. He also serves as a contributing editor to The New Republic.

In this deeply researched and clearly written book, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Alan Taylor tells the riveting story of a war that redefined North America. During the early nineteenth century, Britons and Americans renewed their struggle over the legacy of the American Revolution. Soldiers, immigrants, settlers, and Indians fought in a northern borderland to determine the fate of a continent. Would revolutionary republicanism sweep the British from Canada? Or would the British empire contain, divide, and ruin the shaky American republic?

In a world of double identities, slippery allegiances, and porous boundaries, the leaders of the republic and of the empire struggled to control their own diverse peoples. The border divided Americans—former Loyalists and Patriots—who fought on both sides in the new war, as did native peoples defending their homelands. Serving in both armies, Irish immigrants battled one another, reaping charges of rebellion and treason. And dissident Americans flirted with secession while aiding the British as smugglers and spies.

During the war, both sides struggled to sustain armies in a northern land of immense forests, vast lakes, and stark seasonal swings in the weather. In that environment, many soldiers panicked as they fought their own vivid imaginations, which cast Indians as bloodthirsty savages. After fighting each other to a standstill, the Americans and the British concluded that they could safely share the continent along a border that favored the United States at the expense of Canadians and Indians. Both sides then celebrated victory by forgetting their losses and by betraying the native peoples.

A vivid narrative of an often brutal (and sometimes comic) war that reveals much about the tangled origins of the United States and Canada.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Scholars frequently portray the war as a draw between Britain and the United States; each side of course thinks that it won. But to Taylor, bragging rights are less interesting than ethnicity and allegiance: the war was a pastiche of loyalties and rivalries between Americans, Canadians, Irish, American Indians, slaves, and Britons. In a bold rhetorical move, Taylor recasts a frequently overlooked conflict not merely as pivotal to the development of the United States, but as a "civil war" for the North American continent.

Introduction 3

Chapter One Loyalists 15

Chapter Two Simcoe 45

Chapter Three United Irishmen 75

Chapter Four Deserters 101

Chapter Five Blood 125

Chapter Six Invasions 147

Chapter Seven Crossings 175

Chapter Eight Scalps 203

Chapter Nine Flames 235

Chapter Ten Northern Lights 269

Chapter Eleven Traitors 295

Chapter Twelve Soldiers 319

Chapter Thirteen Prisoners 353

Chapter Fourteen Honor 381

Chapter Fifteen Peace 409

Chapter Sixteen Aliens 441

Notes 459

Bibliography 571

Acknowledgments 601

Index 605