American Goals
There were several immediate stated causes for the U.S. declaration of war. First, a series of trade restrictions introduced by Britain to impede American trade with France, a country with which Britain was at war; the U.S. contested these restrictions as illegal under international law. Second, the impressment (forced recruitment) of U.S. citizens into the Royal Navy. Third, the alleged British military support for American Indians who were offering armed resistance to the United States. An unstated but powerful motivation for the Americans was the need to uphold national honor in the face of British insults (such as the Chesapeake affair.) There also may have been an American desire to annex Canada.
Read more about this topic: Origins Of The War Of 1812
Famous quotes containing the words american and/or goals:
“During the late war [the American Revolution] I had an infallible rule for deciding what [Great Britain] would do on every occasion. It was, to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly do, and I can say with truth that I was never deceived.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Our ego ideal is precious to us because it repairs a loss of our earlier childhood, the loss of our image of self as perfect and whole, the loss of a major portion of our infantile, limitless, ain’t-I-wonderful narcissism which we had to give up in the face of compelling reality. Modified and reshaped into ethical goals and moral standards and a vision of what at our finest we might be, our dream of perfection lives on—our lost narcissism lives on—in our ego ideal.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)