The defeat of the forces of Tecumseh and the "Prophet" is the main reason I think that the 1812 war was an "advantageous" standstill for the Americans. By comparison, the British accomplished
zero positive goals in the war, only succeeding negatively (the failure of the American offensive in Canada). The partial success (and ultimate failure) of the extended raid on the Chesapeake says nothing about the UK's ability to "one-nation" anybody at all; the utter failure of the general offensive that was signally unable to push past Plattsburgh, New Orleans, or Baltimore says a great deal more.
You kinda have to laugh at our resident North African's halfhearted attempts to pay us back in kind, since he clearly doesn't even have a most basic understanding of the circumstances of the ACW (a single colonel, later brevet brigadier general, is totally representative of the officer corps on either side of the conflict, yeah) or the Plains Wars (one defeat = all the conflicts, clearly).
Were all civil wars during the 19th century as organized as the American one?
Look at China. I'm not totally sure what you mean by "as organized", but the Taiping war and the series of rebellions against Qing rule across the empire were fairly messy.
I wasn't going to agree with Dachs (this question has to involve the unanswerable hypothetical scenario where both sides have to deal with the same issues of distance), but I'm sympathetic to an early date. In 1812, our army was disfunctional, but that has to do with many reasons (mostly a crappy officer corp and an over-reliance on militia). Also, budget cutbacks during the Jefferson administration prevented our navy from being first class (if we had several Ship of the Lines, our better equipped, better manned vessels could probably last very well one on one against any British vessel).
If the US Army was in some ways dysfunctional in the earlier wars,
so too were its enemies. If we are comparing to European enemies, we can't simply take account of the brilliant successes of, for instance, the British at Plassey and the Plains of Abraham, or the Prussians at Leuthen and Roßbach. British commanders and troops committed plenty of stupid boners throughout the same time period (the early rebellion was particularly full of these, but Minden was a victory achieved in spite of certain British commanders, not because of them), and Friedrich's supposedly invincible armies got beat up plenty, for instance at Zorndorf and Maxen.
So, sure, the Americans made plenty of mistakes and had some institutional holes. Absolutely.
But so did everybody else. That's kind of the whole point.
I think that comparing the American and British militaries, at the very least, on the basis of them attempting to accomplish the very missions they were supposed to accomplish, in wars that pitted them against each other, is a fairly reasonable thing to do.
---
It'd be nice if my comment about the US Army in 1865 had been met with more than just "ehhh I doubt it"s and "but but but the war wasn't fought against a LEGITIMATE enemy"s (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean). How, exactly, was the Confederate army any less of a serious foe than the French or Austrian armies? Surely it was at least superior to the extemporized Chinese forces that so badly mauled the Anglo-French forces that attacked the Dagu forts in 1859, or superior to the minuscule, badly supplied, badly equipped, badly trained, and badly officered Danish army that fought German federal forces in 1864?
