Warfare and Logistics along the US-Canadian Border during the War of 1812 by Christopher D. Dishman (review)

Reviewed by: Warfare and Logistics along the US-Canadian Border during the War of 1812 by Christopher D. Dishman Samuel J. Watson (bio) Warfare and Logistics along the US-Canadian Border during the War of 1812 By Christopher D. Dishman. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2022. 334 pages. $39.95 hardcover. The War of 1812 has been interpreted in a surprising variety of ways, largely depending, of course, on an author's perspective. Although classically, or popularly, seen as an American defeat, the last half-century of scholarship has recognized decisive U.S. victories against Native Americans in the Northwest and Southwest. And the United States did win many of its battles in 1814 (and even a few in 1813), suggesting that experience did improve its generals, troop training, and tactical performance. Yet the United States did not achieve the strategic objectives set out by President Madison: to seize Canada (meaning the St. Lawrence Valley and present-day western Ontario, along the shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie) as a bargaining chip to trade for British concessions that would protect American sailors and trade from impressment and seizure. Westerners were delighted by the defeat of Tecumseh and the Red Stick Creeks, but the defense of Baltimore and Lake Champlain might not have been enough to salve the sting of a burned capitol, had it not been for another western victory at New Orleans. The U.S. government recognized the deficiencies of its war effort by rechartering the Bank of the United States and imposing a tariff on foreign manufactured goods in 1816, by retaining and continuing to build several very large warships, by developing plans for a new system of coastal fortifications to build on the success of Fort McHenry, and by instituting a military reform effort that included new standard operating procedures, tactical standardization, and a new emphasis on military education, which would make West Point the commissioning source for almost all new officers during the 1820s. Among the most important reforms was the retention of a disproportionately large cadre of experienced logisticians—quartermasters, ordnance officers, purchasing officers, and engineers—who would survey new military roads along the frontiers. Christopher Dishman's new book helps explain why. Although most of Warfare and Logistics along the US-Canadian Border is a narrative of military battles, campaigns, and strategy, Dishman provides the fullest account of logistics available, and he does so for both sides and for both navies and armies. There are some surprising absences in his sources: he does not cite Richard Barbuto's work—neither Niagara 1814 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000) nor New York's War of 1812 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021)—; nor does he cite the U.S. Army's official history of the Quartermaster Department, by Erna Risch; the biographies of Winfield Scott, by Timothy Johnson and Allan Peskin; or the major works on the U.S. Army before the War of 1812, by Richard Kohn, Theodore Crackel, [End Page 208] and James R. Jacobs. Dishman cites J. C. A. Stagg's books, but not his important articles on the officers and soldiers of the U.S. Army. Yet most of these lacunae can be forgiven, for Dishman provides both a very clear, highly detailed, and smoothly written operational narrative and comprehensive context for logistics along the Canadian border. Warfare and Logistics along the US-Canadian Border is not a technical analysis of logistics, for which many readers will probably be grateful. Many of Dishman's points about logistics will be familiar: due to the limited local population density and agricultural surplus, most supplies had to be sent from outside the region, through limited road networks on both sides of the border, making supplies costly, often scarce, and slow to arrive. Dishman moves quickly from mobilization to war, with a limited analysis of the strategic level of logistics and the financing of the war; here Max M. Edling, A Hercules in the Cradle: War, Money, and the American State, 1783–1867 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014) would have been a valuable resource. Dishman's conclusions, that the United States had the advantage in shipbuilding on the Great Lakes due to a greater...

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