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.