General Brock was mortally wounded, but his redcoats won the
Battle of Queenston Heights. On a previous thread about the
Second Amendment, I promised to comment further on the notion
that the Framers had of a militia made up of a well-armed
citizenry. I got to thinking about it because of this column in
The Wall Street Journal on Friday. It’s purpose was to argue, on
that conflict’s bicentennial, that the War of 1812 was more
important than many people believe. It did so ably enough. An
excerpt: First, the war validated American independence. The new
republic had been buffeted between the two great powers of the
age. Great Britain had accepted the fact of American
independence only grudgingly… Thus historians have sometimes
called the War of 1812 the second war of American independence.
Second, it called into question the utopian approach to
international relations. As president, Thomas Jefferson had
rejected Federalist Party calls for a robust military
establishment. He argued that the U.S. could achieve its