Life and really we cannot have done our work without this incredible research. Today, hes going to illuminate for us the intricacies of madisons presidency and madisons later Life Reflections on his thoughts about the war. Please join me in welcoming our colleague and our mentor, dr. John stagg. [ applause ] thank you, katherine, for the wonderful welcome, and i would like to add my thanks to those of our previous speakers to the organizers of the conference today. As the bicentennial of the war approached, i found myself wondering, what is the federal government in washington going to do about the bicentennial war of 1812 . It was entirely predictable that the great state of maryland would have a party, particularly in 2014 because the great state of maryland thipnks it has a franchise on the starspangled banner. Im glad to say we are doing something here today, and as i say, im grateful for it. Let me start with some very general remarks about the nature of James Madisons historical
Punish the americans to entice americans to dessert from their duty. And so it is the desertion problem that is one of those things that nudges these naval officers to embrace blacks as essential allies in the chesapeake war. To perform more effectively, the british needed more men. Now, they have a second problem. They need better knowledge of the landscape. And hereto, the solution to their problem lies with runaway slaves pressing themselves on the british during growing numbers during 1813. Now, they are under pretty strict orders not to take in a significant number of refugees. These orders were renewed in march of 1813 by the british secretary of state forewarned the colonies. But despite these orders, black men, women, and children are stealing boats and they are rolling out to these warships and they are essentially calling the bluff of the British Naval commanders. And they are forcing those naval officers to make some hard decisions. Will they take in these men, women, and ch
1832 in the wake of nat turners revolt. Until then, theres an actual fair amount of teaching slaves to read and write, particularly artisans and house slaves. The other thing is, this is also a period in which the vast majority of enslaved people in the chesapeake have become christians, and theyre usually methodist or baptist and their class leaders or teachers would like many of them to be able to read the bible. So theres much more literacy than we have bargained on, and you dont need everybody to be able to read it. If theres one group of 50 who can read, he can read it to everybody else. The other thing is that people in america are lousy at keeping secrets. They are the worlds worst people at keeping secrets and this comes back to bite them all time in the war of 1812. You get officers in the front line writing letters about how terrible their troops are and theyre not prepared and theyre sick and they get published in the newspapers of that time. People talk about stuff. They ca
Ships up with goods that they think will sell in america, and its a huge armada of trade crosses the atlantic, and business booms against. Theres then an economic setback, but essential the United States is able to rebuild its economic activity. So peace is really good for peace its good for the economy, war is not. A lesson the british had learned many years before. Yes, have you seen in the called Public Record sorry. Have you seen in the Public Record office any orders to coburn and ross to burn the public buildings in washington . And the implications being retaliation, question mark. Thank you very much. This is one of the Great Questions about what happens in washington. Were coburn and ross operating under specific orders to do something as specific as burning the white house . Certainly there was a sense that after the occupation of what is now toronto and the destruction of the public buildings there, and in other parts on the niagara front where there had been crossborder des
It is my honor to introduce our guests dr. Jay Patrick Mullins associate professor of history and public history director at marquet chang associate professor of history at Sarah Lawrence college hi, patrick. Doctor eileen chang, associate professor of history at zahra lawrence college. Hi, i lean. And suzanne executive director of the surely uses house right here in boston in roxbury. Hi, suzie. Thank you all for joining us. I am so honored and delighted to have you all here. I want to get us started with a background on the loyalists. Can you give us a brief background on the people who identified as loyalists, whether lives looked like leading up to and during the revolution, and what happened to them after the war . Patrick, do you want to start us off on this . Sure and gina, thanks for having us. So, i see there have been kind of three basic categories of loyalists. There are people who really just wanted her main neutral in the war, but because they were trading in violation of