the U.S. didn’t really win the war and the war wasn’t worth fighting in the first place. The U.S. gained none of the changes in British policy it set out to win, it failed to achieve its military objectives, and the war resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths and needless damage to the country’s commerce. The section of the country for which the war was supposedly being waged was largely opposed to the conflict, and there was even a movement that considered separating New England from the U.S. because of the degree of opposition to the war. The war was not only unnecessary, but it was also a losing fight that the U.S. chose to start by declaring war first. The only real victory that the U.S. had in the entire war came after the formal peace had already been negotiated. The U.S. went to war against Britain at a time when the latter was still embroiled in its conflict with Napoleon. The U.S. “won” only in the sense that it got itself into a war with a far more powerful Britain that was distracted by a much larger conflict, and so survived in much better shape than it otherwise would have.
