War of 1812: Win, Loss, or Draw for America?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

In terms of territorial gain, it was obviously a draw. The U.S. didn't get Canada; Britain didn't get their Indian Republic in the West. Essentially, it preserved the status quo.

If we're talking about national morale, however, it was quite clearly a victory for the US. Like the Mexican War and the Spanish-American War, the real effect of the War of 1812 was to foster patriotic feeling at home. Regardless of whether they actually won, Americans thought they won, and that sense of victory fueled one of the great nationalist periods of American History. It's no coincidence that the War of 1812 was directly followed by the Era of Good Feeling.

(NOTE: I don't know a lot about how Brits/ Canadians felt about the war, so it's possible that you could call this a win/win conflict in terms of national morale.)

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

It's worth noting that the British had suffered some pretty serious military setbacks in 1814, the Battles of Plattsburgh and New Orleans being the most significant. While the burning of Washington and the raids in the surrounding area were humiliating, the British lost any tactical advantage those victories might have brought them from withdrawing from the area immediately afterwards. Then, of course, Ft. McHenry happened, and that was the end of that. Meanwhile, their attempt to seize control of Lake Champlain failed miserably, and we all know how New Orleans turned out. It's possible that the British could have won a decisive victory, but doing so would have required starting from scratch in the Spring of 1815. Even then, it's hard to imagine a scenario where the British do any better than during the early years of the War of Independence, and if the campaigns of 1776 and 1777 weren't enough to finish the US, the odds of doing so in 1815 are grim.

There is one possibility for the British to gain the upper hand in the peace settlements, though: the Hartford Convention. As things actually turned out, news of the New England secession movement reach most Americans' ears at the same time that the peace treaty was coming home from Europe, and the convention was discredited. Had the war still been raging at the time, however, it seems possible that a serious move to dismember the Union might have developed. A desperate President Madison might then be pressured into making some territorial concessions to the British, possibly in the form of a Western Indian republic.

That will all fall apart, however, if the US wins a major military victory in the Spring or Summer of 1815. A second British route at Lake Champlain (or at any number of possible targets) would have just as much dampening effect on the anti-war movement as the peace treaty did, erasing Britain's advantage. Ultimately, it's possible for Britain to have won decisively, but I don't think that at the end of 1814 they had the overwhelming advantage that some seem to be suggesting.