Creating Legacies: Narratives

The American Battlefield Protection Program helps to identify and preserve important battlefield sites connected to the War of 1812 and other armed conflicts fought on American soil to benefit future generations of citizens and scholars discovering their lessons.

On the scale of war as waged in Europe during the age of Napoleon, the War of 1812 was a minor affair. In 1812, as Napoleon was invading Russia with a half million men, the United States was trying to conquer Canada with forces numbering about one-tenth of a percent of the Grande Armee's size. While individual European battles counted casualties in the tens of thousands, about 6,000 Americans were killed or wounded during the entire War of 1812.

If the War of 1812 played a more important role in American public memory, it would likely have earned a less generic name. The war is the only one in American history designated simply by the year of its commencement, and for nearly a hundred years after it ended in 1815, its name hardly even qualified as a proper noun. Historian Matthew Dennis examines the legacies of the War of 1812 and the space it occupies in American memory.

Artifacts and historic sites that have survived from the War of 1812 will always be threatened by natural processes of destruction. It is the National Park Service's mission to care for these resources so that they will endure for future generations to experience and interpret for themselves. This is accomplished through a network of support and partnerships as well as the utilization of new and innovative preservation technologies.

The War of 1812, Canadian historian Charles Stacey once remarked, is "one of those episodes in history that make everybody happy, because everybody interprets it in his own way." Canadian historian Donald Graves explores this interpretation, and how the War of 1812 exists in Canadian memory.

Historian Doug Kiel explores the dramatic changes to Indian Country following the War of 1812. If Native aspirations were to maintain their land base and relative autonomy, then the war was most of all a loss for Native peoples throughout eastern North America.