Since the election of 1800 swept Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Democratic-Republicans into office, the Federalist Party had been in a steady decline. This loss of influence in national affairs was especially pronounced with Federalists in New England, who felt helpless to stop Republican anti-trade policies that were especially harmful to their region. Invitations for a convention in Hartford to discuss grievances were sent by Massachusetts Governor Caleb Strong, but only Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island dispatched official delegations, while Vermont and New Hampshire declined. The Hartford Convention was chaired by George Cabot and met from December 15, 1814, to January 5, 1815, in closed door sessions, which added to its intrigue.

After two weeks of fighting, General Edward Pakenham and his polished British veterans had gotten nowhere against General Andrew Jackson’s roughhewn American army. Unable to bear the shame of what they might say back in London if he retreated, General Pakenham decided to risk it all on one final assault. Pakenham ordered Colonel William Thornton to cross to the west side of the Mississippi to turn Jackson's flank, while another British column attacked the main line. Thornton’s role was key to the plan’s success, but due to countless issues, Thornton did not reach his destination until the outcome of the main battle had already been decided. Shortly after midnight on January 8, 1815, General John Keane and General Samuel Gibbs moved their divisions quietly forward to within several hundred yards of the American position. As morning dawned, nothing was heard from Thronton across the river. At this point, General Pakenham should have called off the attack and waited for another day, but he felt compelled to take his chances and gave the order to advance.

The British advance guard of 1,800 men led by General John Keane arrived undetected onto the Villere plantation the morning of December 23, 1814, a mere twelve miles from New Orleans. General Andrew Jackson, the American commander, was notified later that morning and his fighting blood was instantly up; two hours later, Jackson was on the road at the head of 2,000 men and an artillery battery of six-pounders. Jackson attacked the unsuspecting British encampment that night, with the fight descending into brutal hand-to-hand combat. Five days later, General Keane’s Redcoats attacked the American center, while General Samuel Gibbs led a detachment against the American left.

In November 1814, Admiral Alexander Cochrane, General Edward Pakenham, and a British army of 7,000 veterans sailed from Jamaica for New Orleans. Major General Andrew Jackson, commander of American forces, was convinced any attack on New Orleans must come through Mobile and decided to strengthen the defenses of Fort Bowyer, which guarded the entrance to Mobile Bay. When British ground forces attacked the fort on September 15, the Americans repulsed the attack and forced Nichols to retire to Pensacola. Jackson then decided to take the fight to the British and captured Pensacola, a Spanish possession, on November 7. Jackson finally left for New Orleans and arrived on December 2 to find a city ill-prepared to withstand an assault.

In 1812, the Creek, or Muskogee, Indians occupied much of today’s Alabama and southwest Georgia and enjoyed good relations with the United States. Its population was estimated at 20,000, a quarter of which were fighting age warriors. In early 1813, a civil war erupted between the Upper and Lower towns with warriors from the Upper towns taking up the “red stick,” or war club, against American settlers leading to the massacre of Fort Mims, while those in the Lower towns maintained their allegiance to the federal government. After months of fighting, led by General Andrew Jackson, the Battle of Horseshoe Bend was a crushing defeat that both avenged the massacre at Fort Mims and marked the end of Creek resistance. Jackson forced the remaining Creeks, many of whom had sided with the Americans during the war, to sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson, which appropriated to the federal government most of the Creek nation, over 23 million acres.

Ever since the Treaty of Paris in 1783 ended the American Revolution, Americans had wanted to add Spanish Florida to the United States to expand the country and gain easy access to the Gulf. When war was declared on Great Britain in 1812, President James Madison decided to end the controversy and simply seize all of Florida. In January 1813, General Andrew Jackson sent his infantry down the Cumberland River from Nashville on flatboats and dispatched Colonel John Coffee and a troop of cavalry by land to Natchez, the rendezvous point of the army. But the Senate, led by Senator Samuel Smith, refused to authorize the conquest, and Jackson was ordered to dismiss his army. Jackson was disappointed that his chance for martial glory was over, but another opportunity arose a few months later when a band of Creek Indians went on the warpath.

Francis Scott Key’s inspiration for writing the Star-Spangled Banner came about due to the oddest circumstances. Doctor William Beanes, a 65-year-old physician, had been thrown into the brig aboard HMS Tonnant by British General Robert Ross for Beanes’ role in capturing some British stragglers during their advance on Washington. Key, a charming Georgetown lawyer, visited Ross on September 7 to plead for Beanes’ release. Although Key was successful, Admiral Alexander Cochrane refused to release Key and Beanes until after the Battle of Baltimore. Key was returned to his vessel roughly eight miles from Fort McHenry, and it was from this modest sloop that he followed the action with his spyglass. Throughout that long day and into the night, Key watched the bombardment with dreaded anticipation but, shortly after dawn on September 14, the morning sky brightened and the American flag became visible against the clouds.

After burning Washington on August 24, 1814, the next target for the British was Baltimore, with its tremendous ship building facilities. The British landed east of the city at North Point and General Samuel Smith, commander of the American forces, sent a brigade under General John Stricker to check their advance. On September 12, the British commenced their assault, but the American militiamen did not run as they had at the Battle of Bladensburg. For nearly two hours, they put up a stout defense before the British veterans drove them from the field. The next day, British Admiral Alexander Cochrane commenced a bombardment of Fort McHenry, which guarded Baltimore’s inner harbor. Shortly after midnight, the bombardment increased in intensity and, for the next three hours, the red glare of rockets and shells bursting over Fort McHenry provided an incredible sight.

Perhaps the most pro-Republican city in America in 1812 was Baltimore. Despite being in the minority, Alexander Hanson published a spirited Federalist newspaper called the Federal Republican, in which Hanson declared he would use “every constitutional argument and every legal means” to oppose the war recently declared by Republicans in Congress. His comments angered those who congregated in the local pubs, and on June 20, 1812, a mob tore down the building in which the Federal Republican was housed. For several weeks, violence against Federalists continued. Although the violence in Baltimore was the worst the country witnessed, Jeffersonian Republicans across the country shut down newspapers that dared criticize the war or the Madison administration.

Around 4 p.m. on August 24, 1814, First Lady Dolley Madison received a note from the president informing her that the Battle of Bladensburg was lost and to flee at once. As twilight descended on Washington, the British arrived on the outskirts of the city looking for a delegation to negotiate the surrender of the capital. But while waiting for city officials, someone fired at their party from an adjacent house, killing two men and shooting General Robert Ross’s horse out from under him. And with that, any spark of kindness that the British had considered was extinguished. The British first turned their attention to Capitol Hill, firing rockets into a pile of anything that could burn. Then they marched to the President’s House, setting fire to it, the State, War, and Navy department building, and finally what was left of the Washington Navy Yard. The Washington fires burned so brightly that the glow was visible in Baltimore forty miles away. 

On the morning of August 24, 1814, a scout brought word to President James Madison that the British were on their way to Bladensburg, ten miles from the nation’s capital. The American commander, General William Winder, ordered General Tobias Stansbury to deploy his brigade of Maryland militiamen just west of Bladensburg. By noon, the American army, some 7,000 men, had assembled on the field. However, shortly after General Stansbury had organized his lines, Secretary of State James Monroe arrived and made several changes without consulting Stansbury. General Robert Ross and lead elements of the British army arrived at Bladensburg early that afternoon. Without waiting for the rest of the army and artillery to arrive, Ross ordered Colonel William Thornton and his 85th Light Infantry regiment to attack and soon one militia unit after another took to its heels.

On August 18, 1814, a messenger arrived at the President’s House with news that the British were in the Patuxent River, fifty miles from Washington. As conflicting scouting reports filtered in, chaos reigned supreme in the capital. President James Madison ordered the militia to assemble but few responded to the call; Secretary of War John Armstrong continued to insist that Baltimore was the target; General William Winder, district commander, realized he was not up to the task and that the 15,000-man army he had been promised was no more than a dream. Secretary of State James Monroe rode to the front to scout out the British invaders. The next day, 4,500 Redcoats disembarked unopposed at the town of Benedict. While the British fleet under Admiral George Cockburn moved up the river in search of Commodore Joshua Barney and his flotilla of American gunboats, the British army under General Robert Ross marched on a road parallel to the river.

In August 1814, the British sent an expedition under Admiral Alexander Cochrane to the Chesapeake to resume its campaign in the bay. The British arrived with vengeance on their minds, hoping to retaliate for the burning by American forces of several Canadian towns including York, the capital of Upper Canada. Cochrane’s instructions to his commanders were to “act with the utmost hostility against the shores of the United States.” Meanwhile, Secretary of War John Armstrong had taken no measures to fortify the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. Although pressed by President James Madison to do so, Armstrong insisted that the British would never attack the city. Feeling desperate, Madison took matters into his own hands and called a cabinet meeting to address the problem. The result was the creation of the 10th Military District and a standby militia force of 15,000 men from neighboring states. 

In February 1813, Admiral John Warren led a flotilla into the Chesapeake Bay to enforce the British naval blockade and make the Americans feel the pain of war. The flotilla set fire to warehouses and ships in Frenchtown, Havre de Grace, Fredericktown and Georgetown, and destroyed the Principio Ironworks, one of the United States’ most important cannon foundries, before rejoining the fleet at Hampton Roads. In early June, Warren received reinforcements and sailed to the Elizabeth River to destroy the USS Constellation anchored five miles upstream at the Gosport Navy Yard near Norfolk. The entrance to the river was guarded by Craney Island and a contingent of 700 men. A strong artillery battery and a line of gunboats awaited the British.

Incurring the wrath of the Royal Navy during the War of 1812 was a desperate and dangerous business, and, during the war, nearly one-third of all privateers were captured. Besides losing a ship came the cost of losing the men, and by the end of the war, 20,000 Americans, mostly privateersmen, were prisoners of war. Many suffered deplorable conditions being housed on prison ships, while some were transferred to Dartmoor Prison in England and densely packed into solid stone buildings with nothing but a little straw thrown on the floor for their comfort. By the end of 1814, there were over 6,000 Americans at Dartmoor, making it the largest war prison for American captives until World War II. 

America’s relatively small navy left President James Madison few offensive options with which to strike the British. Consequently, his administration waged war against the very thing that Great Britain held most dear and attacked its merchant fleet from the West Indies to the English Channel. This fight was undertaken primarily by privateers, ships that were owned and equipped by private citizens but authorized by the government to plunder vessels from enemy nations. The most successful privateer ship was a two-masted schooner built for speed and agility but armed heavily 

enough to be a formidable fighter. Known as Baltimore Clippers, they could capture any merchant ship they wanted but were fast enough to escape from any ship they could not overpower.

The United States Navy enjoyed some remarkable successes at the start of the War of 1812, including winning all three single ship engagements with Royal Navy frigates. But in February 1813, the British began a blockade of the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, and Admiral John Warren, commander of the North American squadron, extended the blockade to all other ports except those in New England. As goods and crops piled up on wharves, local prices fell dramatically and merchants and farmers suffered financial hardships. Besides the American merchant fleet, national warships suffered as well, and, by the end of 1814, the US Navy had been essentially swept from the sea.

In August 1813, Captain David Porter aboard the USS Essex sailed for the Washington Islands, an archipelago 3,000 miles southwest of the Galapagos, to find more British whalers to capture and, more importantly, to repair the vessel far away from the Royal Navy. With his ships refitted, Porter sailed from Nukahiva and arrived at Valparaiso in February 1814, and five days later, Royal Navy ships HMS Phoebe and HMS Cherub arrived as well. Captain James Hillyer, commander of Phoebe, asked Porter to surrender to the stronger British squadron, but Porter would have none of it, replying, “You shall never take my ship without fighting for her.”