After years of trade restrictions, impressment of American merchant sailors, support and enticement of "savages" towards hostility, insults to our national honor on the high seas, America declared war with the United Kingdom of Great Britain. War was formally declared on June 18, 1812 and lasted for two-and-a-half years. The war was fought on three principle theaters. First and foremost at sea, American warships and privateers of each side attacked the other's merchant ships. Second, land and naval battles were fought along the American and Canadian boundaries. Finally, in the American South, there were large land battles between the allied Indians of Great Britain and American military regulars and volunteers.
James Madison, saw this as the "moment of truth" for America. In his final words during his 1812 address to congress he explained ...
"To have shrunk under such circumstances from manly resistance would have been a degradation blasting our best and proudest hopes; it would have struck us from the high rank where the virtuous struggles of our fathers had placed us, and have betrayed the magnificent legacy which we hold in trust for future generations. It would have acknowledged that on the element which forms three-fourth of the globe we inhabit, and where all independent nations have equal and common rights, the American people were not an independent people, but colonists and vassals.
It was at this moment and with such an alternative that war was chosen. The nation felt the necessity of it, and called for it. The appeal was accordingly made, in a just cause, to the Just and All-powerful Being who holds in His hand the chain of events and the destiny of nations.
It remains only that, faithful to ourselves, entangled in no connections with the views of other powers, and ever ready to accept peace from the hand of justice, we prosecute the war with united counsels and with the ample faculties of the nation, until peace be so obtained and as the only means under the Divine blessing of speedily obtaining it."
Shown in this picture is General Andrew Jackson in the battle of New Orleans. This battle was fought between December 24, 1814 through January 8, 1815 and was the final major battle of the War of 1812. Andrew Jackson came out as a hero and went on to be president 14 years later (1829).
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