Civil War of 1812

American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies

By: Alan Taylor

Narrated by: Andrew Garman

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor tells the riveting story of a war that redefined North America. In a world of double identities, slippery allegiances, and porous borders, the leaders of the American Republic and the British Empire struggled to control their own diverse peoples. Taylor’s vivid narrative of an often brutal—sometimes farcical—war reveals much about the tangled origins of the United States and Canada.

©2010 Alan Taylor (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC

How My Country Came To Be.

If you could sum up Civil War of 1812 in three words, what would they be?

Interesting Educational Local

What did you like best about this story?

The story explained so much about the area that I live in and how it came to be.

Any additional comments?

I found the narrator, Andrew Garman, to have a tone of voice and presentation manner which held my interest and made it difficult to stop listening. Thank You.

Please be honest with you terminology

The book is very detailed and well researched. I have one very large problem. The party of Jefferson, Madison and Moroe was the Democratic Republican Party. Yes it was referred to as the Republican Party, however somewhere in the preface the author should have stated this fact. US History is very poorly taught now, as opposed to when I was in school and college. It would be more than likely that some readers who have an incomplete understanding of US history will think that the "Republican " Party to which the author refers to here is the same as the Republican Party of Lincoln. That's a problem.

Why Canada is not part of the United States

People may not remember but early Americans expected Canada to join the revolution. Thus the two times the U.S. Invaded Canada -- during the Revolution and the War of 1812 -- to liberate Canada from British rule. Canada declined to be liberated, expelling American forces both times. Taylor's topic is the confusing northern front in the 1812 war: A time when American loyalists filled much of North Canada, the British longed to prove their own ethical and military superiority over the greedy, hypocritical Americans,
Federalists feared the Jeffersonian hostility to commerce and the British, and Republicans longed to demonstrate the power of a citizen militia and purge the crypto-Tories of the Federalist party and Canada. By the end of the war, Canadians had built a new shared civic identity as not Americans and America had embraced the ideal of free, white manhood. Taylor is a fine writer who held my interest over the many chapters. The narrator speaks fluently and well. He also does aan amazibg job with names and words from the many different languages of the participants. I also strongly recomend The Enemy Within, the companion book which examines the war's southern front.

Complete history of The War of 1812

If you could sum up Civil War of 1812 in three words, what would they be?

Many details

What did you like best about this story?

I feel I have heard the complete story. I think I was a little mislead in school.

Any additional comments?

There are many details. Probably more than I wanted to know but at least I know what really happened.

The futile and brutal War of 1812: the promised glory and land gains were never achieved and America was almost lost forever.

This is, as they say, the other side of the story no one ever hears about. Few people know anything about this mis-named and mis-dated episode in early American history, but those who do know something about it usually think it primarily was provoked by the British who were taking sailors off American ships, they went too far by burning down the White House, but we ended it in Baltimore Harbor with bombs bursting in air and the Battle of New Orleans. But that, as it turns out, is only a fraction of the story and it’s terribly misleading or wrong. Turns out, as you’ll read in this excellent and fabulously researched book, that most of the military action, brutality, suffering and deaths occurred at what is now the Canadian-US Border by untrained American militia sent to slaughter by incompetent and corrupt generals. Many who suffered most were innocent civilians on both sides who just wanted to farm in peace. The British were successful overall because they were highly skilled in employing the Indian Tribes to fight most effectively for them but in the end, abandoned them. Warning: the Indian attacks were not pretty and you will wonder how the folks in Washington (which really WAS a swamp back then) ever managed to portray it as a glorious victory in history books. Not this one.