At the beginning of the War of 1812, the American government wanted to invade Canada and expand U.S. territory. This paragraph jumped out from the pages of Paul Johnson’s book, The Birth of the Modern.
Johnson writes, “Washington believed that the French Canadians were an oppressed and occupied people, who identified with Britain’s grand enemy, France, and would welcome the invading American forces as liberators. Nothing could have been more mistaken. The French Canadians were ultraconservative Roman Catholics, who had detested the atheistic French Revolution and regarded Bonaparte as a usurper and a madman. They wanted a Bourbon Restoration in France, which was also the aim of British war policy. The Quebec Act of 1775, much criticized in Britain at the time, had proved a wise act of liberal statesmanship. It gave the French community wide cultural, religious and political privileges, enabling them to maintain their Frenchness. They knew that as a state within the union, they could not hope for such a deal from the U.S. federal government. In fact they saw America as an ideologically committed state, wedded to Republicanism and militant Protestantism, both of which they detested. The war had actually strengthened their links to the British, and they viewed an American invasion with dread.”
American foreign policy has been static since 1812. Washington views itself as a liberator. The politicians and the bureaucrats never understand the thinking of the people whom they are planning to “liberate.” Washington just blunders in.