America’s second War of Independence.
In June 1812, President James Madison asked Congress to declare war on Great Britain. Madison and his supporters in Congress, known as the war hawks, had many complaints against the British. First, England had interfered with America’s trade on the high seas for nearly two decades. In an effort to stop all commerce with Napoleon, the British navy had captured hundreds of American ships. Equally important, many American sailors had been forcibly impressed into the Royal Navy. British officers boarded American ships at gunpoint and forcibly removed any sailors thought to be English citizens. Finally, Americans suspected the British army in Canada of helping the Shawnee chief Tecumseh organize his Indian confederation against the United States along the western frontier. Tecumseh had united dozens of tribes in his effort to stop America’s westward advance. He hoped that the British would help him win a separate Indian nation north of the Ohio River for all the tribes.
The opening year of the War of 1812 proved disastrous for the United States. The city of Detroit fell to the British and Indians, while the American invasion of Canada by way of upstate New York collapsed. But by 1813, the tide had turned in favor of the Americans. U.S. troops turned back an invading army of British and Indians led by Tecumseh at Fort Meigs along the Maumee River in Ohio by the summer of 1813. Oliver Hazard Perry’s fleet soundly defeated the British navy at Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie in September 1813. In October, Tecumseh lost the Battle of the Thames in western Ontario. Tecumseh died in the fighting, and Indian resistance in the northwest broke. Later in Alabama, Tecumseh’s last Indian allies met defeat in the brutal Creek War.
Despite these American victories, Great Britain launched a three-pronged attack against the United States in 1814. The first British army turned back at Plattsburgh on Lake Cham-plain in September 1814. The second army invaded Washington, D.C., and burned many government buildings including the White House. But the British met stiff opposition at Baltimore and retreated to the Caribbean to join the third army gathering for the attack on New Orleans. General Andrew Jackson soundly defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815.
As Americans celebrated the great victory at New Orleans, word arrived that the peace treaty ending the war had already been signed on Christmas Eve in 1814. Minister to Russia John Quincy Adams, Speaker of the House Henry Clay, and former secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin had worked tirelessly for nearly a year to prepare the Treaty of Ghent. At first, the British demanded a separate Indian state in the old northwest territory but finally agreed to return to the status quo before the war. Although the United States lost many battles in the War of 1812, the nation had finally won the respect of Great Britain. England would never again interfere with American trade on the high seas or help the Indians in their long war against the advancing Americans.
