ealabor said:
Also that miltia defeated the British expeditionary force at New Orleans.. 5000 milita vs 11000 Brit regulars, so whats the excuse there?
Your fleet also got stuffed by our frigates, which resulted in your side issuing orders for your navy not to engage our frigates, unless they outnumbered our ships
This is because the construction of our ships were superior to yours. Your cannon rounds had a tendancy to bounce off our frigate's hulls. This is a result of construction when used with southern live oak.
It wasn't about territorial gains, it was about telling the Brits to **** off when it came to taking our sailors, and a few other policies. Any territorial gains would have been secondary, and not the objective, which was achieved.
Regarding the waffle about militia and regulars, American regular troops outnumbered British regular troops until the last year of the War. American militia bought American forces to aound half a million, eight times British forces.
New Orleans was an arch cock up, It hardly needs explaining. Armies lose battles. The USA lost most of their battles in the first year of the revolution, but still won, the previous battles mean little. Orleans was lost because the British attack was led by an incompetent against a well entrenched force led by someone with reasonable military knowledge.
Regarding the fleet, the type of construction probably did affect the outcome, America had new 'super' frigates, with thicker hulls and more guns that most of the British ships in the area (Britain had in 1811 started making hulls along the same French design, but almost all ships in the Americas were old or captured craft, the better ships being reserved for service in Europe).
Finally,
It WAS about territorial gains. Jefferson was in favour of either annexing or forming a second republic in Canada, and Franklin had previously (during the Paris peace conference) tried to get Canada to join the congress. Launching three successive invasions of Canada can hardly be seen as a coincidence, and impressment seems a cause for diplomacy not war (especially considerin it was almost entirely British citizens being impressed from off American ships).
America was a particularly virulent imperial power, don't forget that after America won it's independence the USA consisted of only the states of the eastern seaboard, everything else was nicked off the various Indian tribes, Mexico, Spain and Canada making the American empire smaller only than the British, French and Spanish empires.