|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: When you finished school, what idea had you about the War of 1812? I will
tell you what mine was. I thought we had gone to war because England was
stopping American ships and taking American sailors out of them for her
own service. I could refer to Perry's victory on Lake Erie and Jackson's
smashing of the British at New Orleans; the name of the frigate
Constitution sent thrills through me. And we had pounded old John Bull
and sent him to the right about a second time! Such was my glorious idea,
and there it stopped. Did you know much more than that about it when your
schooling was done? Did you know that our reasons for declaring war
against Great Britain in 1812 were not so strong as they had been three
and four years earlier? That during those years England had moderated her
|
