Both sides then celebrated victory by forgetting their losses and by betraying the First Nations peoples. After fighting each other to a standstill, the Americans and the British concluded that they could safely share the continent along a border that favoured the United States at the expense of Canadians and First Nations.
In that environment, many soldiers panicked as they fought their own vivid imaginations, which cast First Nations as bloodthirsty savages. 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. And dissident Americans flirted with secession while aiding the British as smugglers and spies. Serving in both armies, Irish immigrants battled one another, reaping charges of rebellion and treason. The border divided Americans former Loyalists and Patriots who fought on both sides in the new war, as did First Nations peoples defending their homelands. 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. Soldiers, immigrants, settlers, and First Nations fought in a northern borderland to determine the fate of a continent. During the early nineteenth century, the British and Americans renewed their struggle over the legacy of the American Revolution.
In The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies, this well-researched and clearly written book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor tells the riveting story of a war that redefined North America.
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