Ghent, Treaty of (1814)

The Treaty of Ghent between the United States and Great Britain ended the War of 1812 by restoring the status quo antebellum. On the one hand, that result disappointed many Americans who believed the country had important grievances against the British. On the other hand, since the war had been a near-disaster for the United States, a treaty that effectively declared the war a draw was a better result than might have been expected. Further, following the Treaty of Ghent, the British withdrew their support for the Native American nations in the U. S.-held Great Lakes territories. Removal of this support made the Great Lakes region—the Old Northwest—more open for non-Indian settlement.

War engulfed Europe in the early 19th century. On the fringes of this struggle, the United States tried to assert its neutrality and its right to trade with both sides in the European conflict. This failed as the European combatants, primarily the British and the French, each tried to block the other’s trade with the United States. The British went further, however, boarding American ships on the high seas and impressing (removing) any sailors who either had been members of the British navy or were former British subjects; the latter category included many American citizens, since the nation had gained its independence from England as recently as 1783. In one incident, aboard the USS Chesapeake, American citizens were killed as alleged deserters from the British navy. The United States also accused the British of encouraging Native Americans to resist U. S. authority and to attack settlers in the Great Lakes region. Each of these grievances—interference with trading rights, impressment, the Chesapeake incident, and the problems with the Native Americans—was featured in President James Madison’s war message to Congress in 1812.

Interestingly, although the United States had declared war on England, the nation did not become an ally of France but chose instead to enter and fight the war alone.

It was almost a fatal mistake. The Americans wrongly believed that they could easily conquer Canada; indeed, they expected the Canadians to welcome incorporation into the American nation. Instead, the Canadians fought successfully against the American invasion, though American forces did burn the Canadian capital city. The most notable American military successes before the end of the war came in naval battles on the Great Lakes and HARRisoN’s defeat of the Native Americans led by Tecumseh at the Battle OF the Thames. By summer 1814, Napoleon’s France had been defeated in Europe, and the British had turned their full attention to the war in North America. They tightened their blockade of the U. S. coast and invaded the Chesapeake area, capturing Washington, D. C., and burning the Capitol building and the president’s residence. Both sides were ready for peace, however, and in December 1814, negotiators concluded the Treaty of Ghent. Two weeks later (because of poor communications), the last battle of the War of 1812 occurred at New Orleans, where Andrew jACKSON repelled a British invasion force.

In fact, like the Battle of New Orleans, the war itself was perhaps unnecessary. Shortly after the American declaration of war, the British repealed their Parliamentary acts that had interfered with American trade, a change brought about by a depression and a change of government. Meanwhile, the war was deeply unpopular in certain parts of the United States, especially in New England, where merchants continued to trade with the British, and at the Hartford Convention, Connecticut hinted at the possible secession of New England from the Union. Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that negotiations to end the war started soon after it began; the two countries even maintained diplomatic relations throughout the war.

The war’s ebb and flow directly affected the negotiations. Early on, the Americans demanded that a peace treaty redress all their grievances involving trade, neutral rights, and especially impressment. By 1814, American negotiators had dropped the impressment issue and sought a treaty which merely restored the status quo antebellum. By then, however, the British were demanding more: territorial concessions in Maine, northern New York State, and the northern part of the future state of Minnesota; and an independent Native-American state in the Great Lakes region as a buffer between the United States and Canada. War weariness and the still-volatile situation in Europe soon led the British to drop their most extreme demands and accept the American idea of status quo antebellum.

For the United States, the Treaty of Ghent had advantages. The end of war in Europe—temporary, as it turned out—had removed the causes for interference with neutral trading rights and impressment. The treaty also restored to the United States the territories the British had occupied during the war. Further, it demilitarized the Great Lakes and established a lasting peace between the United States and the British in North America and in the world, laying the groundwork for later Anglo-American friendship. Finally, British abandonment of their Indian allies in the treaty, combined with the death of Tecumseh in 1813 and the consequent collapse of his dreams for an Indian confederation in the Old Northwest, largely ended the Native-American threat to white settlement in the Great Lakes region.

Though the United States failed in its primary objective of adding Canada to the Union, the Treaty of Ghent confirmed certain gains made during the War of 1812. In particular, American nationalism had been enhanced. New England sectionalists failed to disrupt the Union, and important symbols of American patriotism emerged from the war, including the “Star Spangled Banner” (written as FRANCIS Scott Key watched the British bombard but fail to invade Baltimore), “Uncle Sam” (a character based on a real person who helped get supplies to American troops), and the White House (painted to cover smoke damage from the fire that had burned it).

Further reading: Alexander De Conde, Growth to World Power (1700-1914), vol. 1. of A History of American Foreign Policy, 3d ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978); Bradford Perkins, The Creation of a Republican Empire, 1776-1865, vol. 1. of The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, ed. Warren I. Cohen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

—Russell L. Johnson