#84 America's Forgotten War: The War of 1812 w/ Don Hickey
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2018
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The War of 1812 isn't an event most of us get excited about. The conflict between the US and Great Britain lasted almost 3 years, but like a lot of sequels, it didn't live up to the original. When the war was over, little had changed for either country's place in the world, and most of the grievances that began the war remained unsettled. So aside from the burning of the White House and Congress, the rise of Andrew Jackson as an American icon, the writing of the national anthem, and the demise of the first American political party system, not a lot happened. In this episode, Bob and Ben speak with Don Hickey of Wayne State College to talk about the war of 1812, its impact on the US, and why so few people today remember such a significant moment in American history.
Dr. Don Hickey is Professor of History at Wayne State College. Called "the Dean of 1812 scholarship" by The New Yorker, he has written 10 books and over a hundred articles on the War of 1812, including The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, Bicentennial Edition (University of Illinois Press, 2012).
For more on this and any other episode of The Road to Now, visit our website: www.theroadtonow.com.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Bob Crawford and as always joined by Dr. Ben Sawyer. |
| 0:25.2 | Ben, we made a new best friend this week. |
| 0:29.6 | Yes, we did. |
| 0:30.5 | Yes, we did. |
| 0:31.3 | We're always making new best friends and they keep getting better. |
| 0:34.8 | When you're interviewing a historian and they mention Mark Cheatham's name in high regard, |
| 0:43.5 | not knowing that you know Mark Cheatham and you love Mark Cheatham and there's this mutual respect |
| 0:48.5 | going on, you just know I want to hang out with this guy as much as possible. |
| 0:53.8 | I may move to Nebraska so I can hang out |
| 0:56.0 | with Don Hickey. Hang out that Don Hickey on the campus of Wayne State College where he is a |
| 1:00.7 | professor of history, an expert on the War of 1812. And his Mark Cheatham story is great. And as you'll |
| 1:07.1 | hear, it speaks to the value of making sure that what you write is reviewed |
| 1:12.4 | by other experts because even the most rigorous researchers, we miss things sometimes. |
| 1:18.1 | You know, Don Hickey is, today's episode is about the War of 1812. |
| 1:22.5 | And the New Yorker called Don Hickey the dean of 1812 historians. |
| 1:29.9 | His book, The War of 1812, A Forgotten Conflict, was recently published in a second updated |
| 1:35.4 | edition for the bicentennial of the War of 1812. |
| 1:39.3 | He has written some amazing things, and he really, this war, and if you're thinking right |
| 1:43.6 | now, the War of 1812, we don't know much about it. Yeah, and if you're thinking right now the war of |
| 1:44.2 | 1812 we don't know much about it yeah that's the point it's it's the war of 1812 a forgotten |
| 1:49.0 | conflict but there's so much value in it it's a war that makes Andrew Jackson a hero |
| 1:54.1 | it's a war that brings down the the political party of Alexander hamilton the federalist party |
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