Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Why did the British burn down the White House during the War of 1812?

I'm doing a persuasive paper on the War of 1812. I'm a war hawk (for the war) and I need some ideas on how to say why we should go to war with Britain because they burned down the White house. Thanks for helping!|||You have a major problem with your argument. The Burning of the White House was not a cause of the war. It happened during the war in 1814.





As for the burning of the White House, the Brits did it for 2 reasons...



1) There was no one to stop them. The US Army was in shambles. (While the Navy performed brilliantly, the Army was an embarrassment against the Brits, but that's another story)



2) Retribution....Earlier in the war, the US Army, in one of their rare victories against the Brits, attacked and conquered the town of York in Ontario. (Now called Toronto) Unfortunately, the US Army after their victory, went and burned the town down. So the Brits chose to return the favor. The White House wasn't the only Govt building burned down. The US Capitol, the Library of Congress, and the US Treasury, were also burned down.|||Retribution for the burning of York earlier in the war had nothing to do with it, and was just a pretext.





The British war strategy was to force US into a negotiated peace by crippling its economy. One part of the strategy was a naval blockade; the other was a series of destructive raids on economic targets.Standing general orders for British forces in 1814 were "to destroy and lay waste such towns and districts... as you may find assailable."





It wasn't just the White House that was burned;the Capitol,the Library of Congress, and the Treasury building were also set alight,as these were political and economic targets. Private property military facilities were left entirely alone, further indications that the target of the raid was government buildings.





The reason for burning the White House was political and economic,not mere revenge.|||They did it because they could. The British were still trying to exercise control over their former colonies and they treated the Americans as though they were wayward children. Burning down the White House had great significance to us, but to them is was likened to a parent withholding a misbehaving child's favorite toy.|||You need to read the following web page, we had already declared war on Britain in 1812, the White House was burned in 1814...........http://www.sparknotes.com/history/americ鈥?/a>

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