When Europeans first came to the New World, the Spanish found vast amounts of gold and silver in Central and South America and each year sent a treasure ship back to Spain to fill the king’s coffers. The French and English hoped to find the same sort of treasures in North America but were sadly disappointed. But what they did find was a continent of boundless natural resources, including one as lucrative as Spanish gold, the peltries of the seemingly infinite number of beavers, deer, and buffalo.

The United States was less than four decades old when it declared war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812. Like the American Revolution that came before it and the terrible Civil War, which followed five decades later, the War of 1812 was largely fought on American soil, and homesteads, farms, and towns across this great land felt its wrath.

In March 1813, Czar Alexander I offered to mediate an end to the War of 1812, as the Czar wanted British attention and resources focused on defeating Napoleon and viewed the American war as simply a distraction. Russia, who enjoyed a prosperous trading relationship with the United States, was also feeling the economic pinch of the British blockade. Recognizing the war was not going well and costs were piling up on the financially strapped country, President Madison speedily accepted and sent Senator James Bayard of Delaware and Albert Gallatin, the former Treasury Secretary, to join John Quincy Adams, the American Minister to Russia, in St. Petersburg to begin negotiations.

The War of 1812 was arguably the most partisan war in our nation's history, with virtually all Federalists across the country opposing what they dubbed “Mr. Madison’s War” and all Republicans supporting it. This difference in sentiment was pronounced and led to many ugly confrontations such as the Baltimore riots of 1812. But nowhere was opposition to the war more strongly manifested than in New England, the last bastion of the Federalist party.

The Battle of New Orleans was really a series of four fights, three of which were already in the books: Jackson's surprise attack on December 23, the failed British assault on December 28, and the artillery duel on New Year's Day. But the one that has been taught to generations of Americans and is best remembered was the fatal attack by British General Sir Edward Pakenham on January 8, 1815.

With the British now on the doorsteps of New Orleans but the city's defenses incomplete and the army not yet assembled, it became apparent that General Andrew Jackson had badly miscalculated regarding British intentions and had wasted precious time with his assault on Pensacola and initial focus on Mobile. But Old Hickory remained undaunted and ordered all available forces to march post-haste to the city.

In a dispatch dated August 10, 1814, Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane was instructed by Lord Bathurst, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, to proceed to Jamaica and rendezvous with reinforcements coming from England to assist him in capturing New Orleans. With the death of Major General Robert Ross at North Point, the War Department in London gave the command of the land force for this new expedition to Major General Sir Edward Pakenham, a veteran of the Peninsula War and the brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington. And on November 26, Cochrane, Pakenham, and a British army of nearly 7,000 veterans sailed for New Orleans.

In 1812, the Creek, or Muskogee, Indians occupied much of today’s Alabama and southwest Georgia, roughly 300 square miles from the Tennessee River to the Gulf of Mexico. The Creeks enjoyed good relations with the United States largely due to a benevolent policy established by President George Washington to interpose the federal government between the Indians and land-hungry Georgians. But despite these restrictions, the federal government was helpless to prevent Americans from trespassing onto Creek lands.

Many Americans, especially those in the Deep South, had cast covetous eyes towards Florida since the Treaty of Paris in 1783 ended the American Revolution and Spain regained the territory. Not surprisingly, when war was declared on Great Britain in 1812, one of the main goals of Southerners and President James Madison was to use the war as a pretext for obtaining possession of Florida from a decaying Spanish empire. The most contentious portion was the present-day panhandle of Florida, lower Alabama, lower Mississippi, and eastern Louisiana, an area known as West Florida.

Francis Scott Key managed to become a prisoner of war due to the oddest circumstances. Doctor William Beanes was a 65-year-old physician from Upper Marlboro who had hosted General Robert Ross and Admiral George Cockburn one night on their advance towards Washington. But after playing host, Beanes helped capture several British stragglers as Ross's army was returning to the fleet. Upon learning of Beanes’ actions, Ross was furious at what he considered a breach of faith and sent a troop of British horsemen to take the good doctor into custody. Beanes was thrown into the brig aboard HMS Tonnant and there he remained as the British approached Baltimore.

As word spread across the country of the burning of Washington, Americans forgot their differences and rallied around the flag as Americans always do in a crisis. The mood of the nation quickly changed from despair and anger at the Madison administration to indignation and anger at the British. The anti-administration Albany Register wrote, “This is no moment for recrimination... Let one voice and one spirit animate us all, the voice of our bleeding country and the spirit of our immortal ancestors.” Even Alexander Hanson's Federal Republican, which had suffered so severely in the Baltimore riots of 1812 declared, “The fight will now be for our country, not for a party.”

When war was declared on Great Britain in 1812, the vote in Congress clearly demonstrated that it was a partisan affair and not universally approved. While Republicans voted in favor of the measure, all Federalists opposed it, and each party had their own newspapers which broadcast their deeply partisan views.But this was largely a Republican controlled country at the time, and their papers were more numerous and more passionate in the tone and tenor of their articles. Many implied that violence was the approved solution for all those opposing the war with the National Intelligencer declaring “he that is not for us must be considered as against us and treated accordingly.”

Perhaps the most inexplicable mistake in the defense of Washington was to allow the British army for five days to march toward our nation's capital unopposed and risk the entire affair on a single battle, one which rested on the backs of untried militiamen against battle-hardened veterans, with the disastrous results that ensued. And now that the battle was over, another glaring omission became apparent; General William Winder had made no contingency plan if the battle went awry. Now left with few options, General Winder and Secretary of State James Monroe decided to abandon the city and set up a defensive line in Georgetown with whatever troops they could assemble.

As the sun rose on August 24, 1814, the few residents remaining in Washington must have felt assured that the city was safe if they had read the morning papers. The National Intelligencer stated, “We feel assured that the number and bravery of our men will afford complete protection to the city.” And that sentiment was echoed by the Georgetown Federal Republican, which wrote, “It is highly improbable that...the enemy would advance nearer to the capital.”

On August 17, the British flotilla ordered to Chesapeake Bay arrived off the mouth of the Patuxent River, fifty miles from Washington. With Congress adjourned and most of the well-to-do citizens away from the city to escape the smothering heat wave, there was little activity in the capital. Unfortunately, that lack of activity also extended to those responsible for defending Washington. But all that changed the next day when a messenger arrived with the long-dreaded news that the British invasion force was at hand.

The grand strategic plan of the British in 1814 was to attack up the Lake Champlain corridor and drive deep into New York State, splitting New England off from the rest of the country, a plan similar to the one they had envisioned during the American Revolution. Accordingly, 15,000 men were dispatched to the Canadian front, and, to distract the Americans and force them to divide their meager resources, the British also decided to make a diversionary movement in the Chesapeake Bay, and it was to that part of the country that a British fleet proceeded in early August.

In the spring of 1813, the British Admiralty initiated a push to wreak havoc in the Chesapeake Bay and gave command of an expedition to Admiral John Warren. Cautious by nature, Warren would prove to be a poor choice, but his second-in-command was a tough sailor named George Cockburn, a Royal Navy Captain who first entered the service at the age of nine and would eventually rise to be the First Sea Lord, the highest-ranking officer in the Royal Navy. More importantly, Cockburn was a man who relished the chance to chastise the Americans.

In 1812, President James Madison asked Congress to declare war on Great Britain over two maritime offenses that the American people found unacceptable: greatly restricted American commercial traffic and the impressment of our sailors. And around these transgressions was created a slogan that aptly summed up American demands, “Free Trade and Sailors Rights.” While the odious Orders in Council that restricted our trade were repealed a few days before war was declared by the United States, Great Britain steadfastly maintained its ancient right to impress any sailor who was a British citizen into its national navy.

The British blockade of the United States during the War of 1812 was both suffocating and irresistible, and the great preponderance of Royal Navy ships relative to American fighting vessels left America with few offensive options with which to strike back at the British. Although our frigates and other warships had been victorious in several single-ship combats in 1812, by the summer of 1814 nearly all had been captured or were blockaded within ports along the Atlantic Coast. But there was one offensive operation that the Americans pursued masterfully, and that was their broad attack on British commerce.

With Napoleon's abdication on April 6, 1814, not only was the British Army freed up to go to North America, but so too was the Royal Navy, which had been blockading much of the European coast for nearly a decade. But now that their main adversary had been vanquished, British warships were on their way to enforce a strict blockade of the American coastline and finally teach the upstart “Yankees” a lesson.