We are now going to explain the War of 1812 to you. Why not?
We didn’t think we’d find ourselves here, either. But on Wednesday, CNN reported that the 206-year-old war figured prominently in a discussion between U.S. President
Donald Trump and Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau of
Canada on May 25. According to CNN’s unnamed sources, Trump asked Trudeau, “Didn’t you guys burn down the
White House?”
The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. then confirmed the CNN report. The Times has not independently confirmed the remarks.
It’s unclear if the president was trying to make a joke during what was, reportedly, a tense call about his decision to impose steep tariffs on metals imported from Canada, Mexico and the European Union.
Any lesson on the War of 1812 probably isn’t the most vivid memory people have from their high school history classes, so its details may be fuzzy to many. And with the war suddenly in the news and the butt of jokes on social media, they might fairly wonder: Well, did Canada burn down the White House?
No, Canada did not burn down the White House during the War of 1812, which was fought with
Britain over maritime rights. What is now Canada was not yet a country in 1812, but rather British colonies.
Canada didn’t become a nation until 1867, long after British troops did, in fact, burn down the White House in 1814. The fire gutted the president’s house along with several other crucial structures in Washington, which was still a relatively small town when the seat of government moved there 14 years earlier.
“The inferno was so great that the glow in the night sky was seen from 50 miles away,” the White House Historical Association wrote.
So you can’t really pin that on Canada, considering that Canada didn’t exist. But it is a bit more complicated than that.
The
United States did invade the colonies that later became Canada and were, at the time, controlled by the British. Ask some people in Canada and they would very much feel it was their war, marked by American aggression.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper, Trudeau’s Conservative predecessor, made a point of extensively commemorating the war at its 200-year anniversary, spending millions in 2012 on events, advertising and exhibitions.
“Two hundred years ago, the United States invaded our territory,” a narrator ominously said in one government ad. “But we defended our land; we stood side by side and won the fight for Canada.”
Other Canadians were bewildered by Harper’s focus on the war, as many Canadians are just as unfamiliar with the war as Americans. The United States couldn’t muster much interest in remembering the war; legislation in New York to plan events was vetoed in 2009, 2010 and 2011 because of tight finances and a $1.4 million (U.S.) price tag.
Some people might think the War of 1812 inspired the famous “1812 Overture” by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It didn’t.
It did, however, spawn another noted piece of musical history that has been in the news lately: The Star-Spangled Banner. Francis Scott Key composed the words as the British bombarded Fort McHenry in Baltimore from warships, according to the White House Historical Association.
The sides came to a peace agreement in 1814, when neither side cared to continue fighting.