You have not been recognized as a subscriber to Indiana Magazine of History online. About 249 words from this article are provided below; about 435 words remain.
 		 
If you are a individual subscriber to Indiana Magazine of History, you may:
• login here if you have already registered for online access.
• Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.

If you are not a subscriber to Indiana Magazine of History, you can:
• subscribe here.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of Indiana Magazine of History.

Instititutions can:
• Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.
Reviewed by Andrew Cayton | Book Review | The Indiana Magazine of History, 104.3 | The History Cooperative
104.3  
Journals link Search link Partners link Information link
September, 2008
Previous
Next
The Indiana Magazine of History

Table of Contents
List journal issues
Home
Get a printer-friendly version of this page
 

Reviews

1812
War with America

By Jon Latimer
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. Pp. xiv, 637. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00.)

For almost two centuries, American historians have striven to invest the War of 1812 with enough significance to lift it out of the general obscurity in which it languishes. In the process, they tend to interpret the conflict as a consolidation of national independence, a follow-up to the War for Independence, and an opportunity for Americans to prove that their new republic was here to stay. Surely this is the most common theme in the stories that Americans told themselves about the War of 1812. The best-known tales relate the victories of Oliver Hazard Perry's hastily constructed flotilla on Lake Erie in September 1813 and Andrew Jackson's improvised defense of New Orleans in January 1815. This celebratory interpretation has always been problematic, however. It requires turning the ineptitude of the American government, as well as a string of military disasters that climaxed in the burning of the indifferently defended national capital in the late summer of 1814, into evidence of the enduring power of a democratic spirit that resides more in the will of its people than in its political institutions. Americans have worked hard to include the War of 1812 in a national narrative about the progress of American freedom. Now comes the experienced military historian Jon Latimer to suggest that in so doing scholars and the general public have missed the conflict's true significance. . . .
There are about 435 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.