I don't know if the British even have a name for this little war. U.S. President James Madison led a divided nation into the fight; war proponents' motives were mixed. Though the Brits had conceded independence to their colonies 20 years previously, they acted entitled to interfere in U.S. seagoing commerce as part of their continent-wide struggle with Napoleonic France. Meanwhile, western settlers thought maybe British pre-occupation with Europe gave them a chance to seize Canada. The U.S. was economically and organizationally ill-prepared to fight the world's pre-eminent empire. Only British inattention limited U.S. losses to a few frontier skirmishes like the burning of Buffalo, the humiliating sack of the scarcely-built U.S. capital at Washington, and adoption of a grandiose, unsingable national anthem.
At first the frontier war provided an opportunity for entrepreneurship. But in June 1813, Gamaliel and his son Elijah drowned while seeking to deliver supplies to U.S. forces that had invaded Canada. So when it became apparent that the British and Indians were coming to sack Buffalo, Margaret St. John was a widow with 8 children. Most residents including most of the St. John children fled, but Mrs. St. John and a daughter and, across the road, a woman named Sarah Lovejoy, remained behind. Family accounts report that Mrs. Lovejoy tried to defend her property. The St. Johns saw Sarah Lovejoy struck down by an Indian with a hatchet.
Mrs. St. John appealed to a British officer to save her, a widow with many children, from the same fate and for whatever reason, her house remained the only one standing in the settlement after the sack. In the following days, as the settlers filtered back into the scene of desolation, Mrs. St. John was able to offer them shelter, setting up something like a boarding house. She and her children prospered. The young generation married successfully. When in 1825 the Erie Canal brought frontier Buffalo closer to the nation's centers of commerce, St. Johns became pillars of the community. Margaret St. John died at age 69 in 1847. She was my great, great, great grandmother, a relationship I find hard to imagine. There must be quite a few descendants.
On the occasion of this 200th anniversary, Patrick B. Kavanagh has been trying to inform contemporary western New Yorkers about the bloody history of the area.
When the United States blithely invades and bombs other people's countries, we show we've forgotten what war on our own turf means, I think.
Another forgotten war grinds on. I doubt if there are many Afghans who want the killing to continue.