The Inauspicious Naming of the ‘War of 1812’ and Gulf Theater

In mid-1848 the second Anglo-American war was finally given its name. On June 23 of that year, at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War (1846–48), the Daily Union of Washington DC ran an article titled “The Triumph of Truth.” The article outlined a recent report on U.S. Treasury expenditures in the war with Mexico and of the previous conflict, which used the term “war of 1812” for the first time. Up until the end of the Mexican War, the term most people used to describe it was the “late war,” and because the conflict beginning in 1846 with Mexico had become the most recent, the second war with the British required a name – as uninspiring and unromantic as it was. “The late war has done more to secure the permanence of our republican institutions,” President James Madison later stated to Congress in an 1815 annual message, “and to establish for us a character abroad, than its most zealous advocates and sanguine friends had hoped.”[1] 

Right: General William Henry Harrison leading his men at the Battle of Tippecanoe. American troops under the leadership of General William Henry Harrison fighting the Indian forces of The Prophet, Tenskwatawa (the brother of Tecumseh) in a forest. Tenskwatawa was part of Tecumseh's Indian confederation. Source: Library of Congress.

Similar to the American Revolution, nomenclature surrounding the North American conflicts between 1810 and 1821, and those who fought them, depends on perspective. Historians generally acquiesce to the designation “Patriot War” entailing the American filibusterers in Spanish East Florida between 1812 and 1814, noting that the period overlapped the Anglo-American conflict, making the War of 1812 much more dynamic and geographically encompassing. Madison’s annexation of West Florida by presidential decree in 1810, the secret act to acquire the Floridas by Congress January 15, 1811, and that body’s swift disavowal of a formal declaration of war against Spain shortly after a declaration was made against the British, June 18, 1812 – demonstrates that U.S. leadership may not have publicly confessed to warlike intentions against the Spanish. However, evidence of belligerence is strengthened by those actions, among others, and the enabling of hostile activities throughout the Gulf and into Mexican territory during their revolution. All of those movements centered around obtaining control over the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico and possibly even acquiring Texas. In sum, the War of 1812 was merely one theater of a larger ongoing continental conflict that included a weakened Spain, which experienced a violent revolution in Mexico beginning in 1810. Writing in 1926, the historian A.H. Phinney believed that the combined U.S. actions in Spanish Florida, including the public and unpublic efforts of U.S. authorities at the highest levels, amounted to what was essentially the “First Spanish-American War,” which he argued was “a better title for a story of the disturbance that occurred in Florida in 1812 than the one usually given to it, viz: The Patriot War.” Phinney elaborated:  

The so-called patriots were nearly all citizens of the United States from Georgia and Tennessee. They were supported by soldiers and gunboats of the United States. They were under the orders of an agent of the United States and were financed by the United States. That the events did not provoke a real war between Spain and this country is only explained by the fact that Spain had been drained of men and money by Napoleon and was then fighting to rid herself of a Bonaparte ruler.[2]

The ‘Late War’ Fallacy

It is often assumed that when Americans discussed the “late war” in the post-war era they were speaking exclusively about the Anglo-American conflict. However, differing geographical perspectives indicates that that was not the case, and there was no shortage of references among southerners and westerners who believed Spain was a co-belligerent. In March of 1818, one month before Argentina achieved its independence and before the Adams-Onís Treaty was finalized, Richard M. Johnson, who went on to serve as Vice President under Martin Van Buren, addressed the House of Representatives as a congressman from Kentucky on a motion by Speaker Henry Clay to send an official minister to the new South American republic. Johnson, like Clay, was a western ‘hawk’ who voted to declare war against the British in 1812 – an easy decision given his state’s reliance on the Mississippi River for commerce and widespread Anglophobia stemming from British assistance to native tribes in the region – which Johnson personally battled in 1813. In addition to advocating recognition of Argentina and lauding the “cause in which the Spanish [Argentine] patriots were engaged,” Johnson articulated views of the “late war” which were very much attune with western and southern perceptions:

North America has become an asylum, a place of refuge from the tyranny and usurpation of kings. …I conceive it my duty to enter into a detail of Spanish injuries and Spanish aggressions: the closing upon the commerce of the western country, the port of New-Orleans, in violation of treaty… in not keeping order and subjection within her territories the Seminole savages; her conduct in the late war, in permitting the British and the Indians to use the Floridas as a place of refuge, a rallying point for our enemies…[3]

Right: The Battle of Queenston Heights by eyewitness James B. Dennis, depicts the American landing on 13 October 1812. The village of Queenston is in the right foreground, with Queenston Heights behind. Lewiston is in the left foreground. Image Source: Wikipedia.

Despite the U.S. government’s official neutrality, most southerners and westerners like Johnson considered Great Britain’s ally Spain an enemy. In the spring of 1819, shortly after the U.S. acquired Florida and during a period historians have described as the “Era of Good Feelings,” President James Monroe toured the South to assess coastal defenses. In a public letter addressed to the city of Charleston, Monroe outlined his views of the new acquisition to “this great and growing empire, extending over half a continent,” and appealed to southerners. South Carolinian merchants had been affected by British impressment and commercial restrictions during the “late war,” but that state was not impacted by invasion as it had been during the Revolution. Monroe’s words were therefore more of a declaration of hegemony over the northern half of the Gulf than a post-war tour ameliorating wounds from a battle-stricken state. “It is under a strong sense of that duty,” he declared, “that in viewing the coast of the southern states” the addition of Florida “cannot fail to produce all the advantages to our Union”. Once the treaty was finalized, Monroe believed “our southern frontier may be considered, as essentially secure against aggressions and troubles of the kind, with which it has heretofore been visited” during the recent war.[4] Thus the term “aggressions” was commonly used to describe the Gulf theater of the “late war” because southerners believed the Spanish were responsible for unleashing Seminole attacks on American settlements. The same sentiment applied to Americans abutting Creek lands in Mississippi Territory (Alabama) and Georgia, and a general dislike among Americans of the Spanish.

Notes 

[1] “The Triumph of Truth.” Daily Union, Washington DC, June 23, 1848. See (Ibid): “Reply by the Undersigned Members of the Committee on Public Expenditures, to the Report of that Committee Reviewing the Financial Statements of the Secretary of the Treasury.”; “President’s Message” Intelligencer, & Weekly Advertiser, Lancaster, PA, Dec.16, 1815. This article, which has been slightly amended, is an excerpt from: Benjamin J. Swenson, America and Mexican War of Independence: Insurgents, Patriots, and Brethren in Arms, 1810 –1821 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2025).

[2] A.H. Phinney, “The First Spanish-American War,” The Florida Historical Society Quarterly 4, no. 3 (Jan. 1926), 114; Paul Kruse, “A Secret Agent in East Florida: General George Mathews and the Patriot War,” The Journal of Southern History 18, no. 2 (1952), 195. 3 U.S. Statute 471. For some discussion on nomenclature, see: Jaime E. Rodriguez O., “The Emancipation of America,” The American Historical Review 105, no. 1 (2000): 131–52.

[3] “Congressional Debate” Kentucky Gazette, Lexington, May 29, 1818. Speech dated March 26.

[4] “President’s Answer” Nashville Whig, and Tennessee Advertiser, May 22, 1819. Monroe’s letter from Charleston dated April 27, 1819.