ABSTRACT
The theme of American offensive defeat has been a pervasive and enduring one in military historiography of the War of 1812, for American armed forces failed to accomplish their overriding strategic mission of conquering British North America. Friction-or things going wrong-occurs in all wars. For the Americans in the War of 1812, however, administrative malfunctioning, complicated by the fog of war, made it all the more difficult to cope with. Americans were attempting to wage an offensive war on a thousand mile frontier, directing and supplying it from coastal towns several hundred miles away during the pre-industrial, pre-railroad, pre-telegraph era. The dual nature of the office held out the possibility of successfully coordinating strategy and logistics, but unfortunately for the Americans there were certain statutory and structural weaknesses in the command and administrative system which hampered the secretary in performing his dual role.
