1812, The War That Forged A Nation by Walter R. Borneman and Union 1812, The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence by A.J. Langguth

The War of 1812 is not generally considered an important war except notice the subtitles of these two books.  The significantly insignificant War of 1812 both solidified the gains of the Revolutionary War and unified a young nation!  It also gave us our national anthem, many national heroes and such memorable phrases as Don’t Give Up the Ship! Tippecanoe and Tyler, too! and We have met the enemy and they are ours!  Any student of American history benefits tremendously by knowing the origins and outcome of this war. As for knowing all the battles, I must admit that my head spun as one after another was fought, usually botched and lost or, less often, won in an unexpected show of strength, by the Americans.    

A portent of the war was the skirmish between the American Chesapeake vs. the British Leopard fought in 1807 off the coast of Virginia when the British attempted to board the Chesapeake to search for British deserters.  When the captain of the Chesapeake defied the British, they pounded his ship and carried off four sailors, three of whom were actually Americans!  The captain of the Chesapeake, Barron, surrendered, to his later humiliation, but the incident alerted Americans to the real and present danger of the British impressing American soldiers.  

The origins of the war, then, were British impressment of sailors, British trade restrictions, the fact of the British continuing to occupy forts along the Canadian border which they were supposed to have vacated per the 1783 Treaty of Paris and, lastly,  Indian attacks fomented by both British and French against the Americans.  President James Madison declared war June 18, 1812 with the approval of Congress.

The outcome of the war was worked out in Ghent, Belgium.  The Treaty of Ghent was signed on Christmas Eve of 1814, with the Battle of New Orleans on the brink of being fought.  The terms of the Treaty were underwhelming.  Each side resumed control of the territories occupied before the war.  No terms were set on impressment, one of the major causes of the war!  All Indian lands were to be restored to their various tribes. 

The war was fought on various fronts.  I found it easiest to think in terms of five fronts but this was a simplification solely for my convenience. First, in the Northwest Theater, the Battle of Tippecanoe fought in 1811 in the Northwest Territory was a precursor to the War of 1812.  William Henry Harrison, former governor of the Indiana Territory and later the president of the nation for one month, was in command.  It was a win for the Americans in the sense that they put an end to Shawnee Chief Tecumseh’s attempts to form an Indian nation.  At the same time, the battle aroused such antipathy towards Americans on the part of the Indians that Tecumseh and his tribes became allies of the British once war was declared just seven months later.   

In the Northeast there were two sea battles of consequence, the first being the U.S.S. Constitution (Old Ironsides) vs. the British Guerriere.  This battle was fought in the early months of the war and was an American victory.  The other battle was in July 1813 when Captain James Lawrence, commanding the Chesapeake took on the British Shannon. Lawrence, though fatally wounded, gave out his famous admonition, Don’t give up the ship!  Fight her till she sinks!  The Americans lost but Lawrence’s words served as an American rallying cry in subsequent battles of this war.

To the north was the Canadian Theater which I lumped together with the Northern Frontier including control of the Great Lakes and the area around Lake Champlain. The string of battles fought here was seemingly endless. The descriptions of battle strategy and troop location were beyond my grasp such that I had to take notes (not included here) to follow who went where and when. They were the battles of Detroit, York, Lake Erie and Fort Niagara to name a few.  Some noteworthies of this theater who come to mind were Oliver Perry, Winfield Scott and Zebulon Pike. 

The mid-Atlantic or Chesapeake Theater includes the Battle of Bladensburg, the vengeful burning of the White House and the bombarding of Fort McHenry outside of Baltimore, this last being the only time the Americans emerged at all victorious in this theater. I must add that it was gratifying to at last understand exactly why Francis Scott Key (or Frank Key as one author kept calling him) was sitting on a ship in the harbor and continually checking for the flag amid the rockets’ red glare!  Dolly Madison gets a cameo appearance here for saving George Washington’s portrait from peril when the Brits set fire to the White House.  She was whisked from the scene by carriage just in the nick of time.

The campaign to the South was basically the Battle of New Orleans, the crowning American victory that gave General Andrew Jackson his entrée to the national stage. This included the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (seemed to be mostly a case of fightin’ injuns) where Sam Houston and Andrew Jackson first met up.  Then Jackson and his Tennessee militia fought with gusto to defeat the arrogant British.  The date of the battle is January 8, 1815, some two weeks after peace had been declared in Ghent.  

The War of 1812 is not a topic I would re-visit though it has nothing to do with these books. There is something about the war that makes it a tedious subject.  Perhaps it has to do with a lot of action packed into a relatively short period of time, two years, and over a considerable geographic area including land, lakes, harbors and sea. 

These two books can be read in tandem and make a nice complement one to the other.  The Borneman book takes the chronological approach to telling history and gives us the events as they occur whereas the Langutth book uses more of a story-telling approach which gives an account of the war through the individuals who took center stage in the drama.

 

 

 

Leadership by Rudolph Giuliani

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani begins and ends his book with the terrorist attacks of 9/11 which occurred during his final year as mayor. Sandwiched in between are several hundred pages of Giuliani’s views on management and leadership.   

Like most of these books that public figures seem programmed to write after their term in office expires, Giuliani’s book is both self-referential and self-serving.  He re-caps in a favorable light his accomplishments during his eight years as mayor, but, to his credit, Giuliani has plenty to favorably highlight.  His leadership during the 9/11 disaster was truly exemplary as was the order he brought to the chaotic and crime-ridden New York City of the 90s.  This book is interesting reading for anyone, but especially for New Yorkers and certainly for those who lived in the city during the 9/11 attacks.  

The way that Giuliani turned around crime in NYC is legend, but true legend of course.  In this book, he describes in readable fashion how his administration employed George Kelling’s Broken Windows Policy along with Compstat, regular precinct meetings and quality of life arrests to begin what would be the remarkable restoration of New York City to safety and livability.  He describes how he bypassed the bureaucracy to rout the squeegee-men at the bridges and tunnels and engage the MTA in the fight against graffiti in the subway system.  

He made Times Square and Bryant Park walkable again. He lowered taxes, dealt with a spate of plane crashes that had taken off from JFK and reformed the city’s welfare system.  His account of his dealings with the city hospitals is informative.  He made extensive changes to the Child Welfare Administration, separating it from the HRA to make it an independent and better functioning agency under the name of the Administration for Children’s Services.  

This book, though not autobiography, does have a trace of the personal in it.  The mayor shares a little about his schooling, his parents and more than I cared to know about his prostate cancer.  He included that subject in the chapter on decision making, a bit contrived perhaps.  He wrote just a bit here and there about his children.  He had nothing to say about his second wife, Donna Hanover and surprisingly more to say about his relationship with Judith Nathan who became his third wife (they are now divorced or in the process thereof).  He makes copious references to baseball and his love of that sport and other pastimes.  His account of how he prepared himself for the mayoralty is good reading.  He includes also reflections on his years as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and his years in the Justice Department. This is personal autobiography only to the extent that Giuliani wants it to be which is not all that much.  

Entirely missing from this book was any discussion by Mayor Giuliani of the role that his Catholic faith may have played in his personal formation or his decisions as mayor.  He does mention some of the nuns and brothers in his Catholic school education.  He did consider the priesthood for a time.  But in the day-to-day challenges of running a large and complex city neither prayer, church nor faith are discussed.  Something must account for his strong sense of justice, fair play, sense of responsibility and right vs. wrong.  I would have thought it would be his Catholic background.    

Rudy Giuliani is a man with a keen intellect that he puts to constant use in order to unpack issues, resolve problems and get a job done.  He is not one given to brooding introspective reflection or soul-searching self-analysis.  He is a man of action who uses incisive reasoning and facts to address life’s challenges.   Giuliani is not the most charismatic of public figures in case you didn’t know.  In fact, he’s pretty low on the likeability factor.   As he himself says, as a prosecutor he wouldn’t be doing his job if people found him likeable.  (I paraphrase.)  Nor does Giuliani have physical attributes working to his advantage.  He lacks the towering presence of a reserved six-foot-tall George Washington.  He could not pull off appearing in native Cherokee dress in the streets of Washington, D.C. as Sam Houston did.  He does not have the classic good looks of a JFK and he even has that slight speech irregularity barely noticeable as it is.  

What he does have is steely determination and an abundance of brainpower and confidence.  It must be said that he has used these to advantage and achieved to an admirable degree.  His contributions to the city of New York are, alone, enough that he should occupy a well-deserved place as a notable public figure.