Chapter 12

The United States entered the War of 1812 badly divided and poorly prepared. The regular army was small and scattered, and an early three-pronged invasion of Canada ended in humiliating failure.

At sea, however, American frigates surprised the world. The USS Constitution — nicknamed "Old Ironsides" — and other vessels won a string of single-ship duels against the mighty Royal Navy, lifting American morale even as the British blockade tightened.

Ultimately Britain's overwhelming naval power bottled up American shipping, but the early victories became a lasting source of national pride.

Control of the Great Lakes proved decisive. In 1813 Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry built a fleet on Lake Erie and defeated the British squadron, reporting, "We have met the enemy and they are ours."

Perry's victory forced a British retreat and enabled General William Henry Harrison to win the Battle of the Thames, where the great Shawnee leader Tecumseh — who had allied with the British — was killed, shattering Native resistance in the Northwest.

In the South, Andrew Jackson crushed the British-supported Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, opening vast new lands to white settlement.

In 1814 a British force landed in the Chesapeake, brushed aside the militia, and burned Washington, D.C., including the Capitol and the White House. But the British assault on Baltimore was stopped at Fort McHenry, inspiring Francis Scott Key to write "The Star-Spangled Banner."

The war's most famous battle came after peace had already been signed. In January 1815, unaware of the treaty, Andrew Jackson's ragtag force won a stunning victory at the Battle of New Orleans, inflicting enormous British casualties.

The triumph made Jackson a national hero and gave Americans the sense that they had "won" the war, even though the fighting had settled almost nothing on the battlefield.

Weary of war, both sides agreed to the Treaty of Ghent on Christmas Eve, 1814. It was essentially an armistice: it restored the prewar boundaries (status quo ante bellum) and settled none of the original issues, but it ended the fighting.

Meanwhile, bitter New England Federalists — who had opposed the war and its damage to their commerce — met secretly at the Hartford Convention in 1814–1815. They demanded constitutional amendments to protect New England's declining influence, and a few extremists whispered of secession.

Their timing could not have been worse: news of the Treaty of Ghent and Jackson's victory at New Orleans arrived just afterward, making the Federalists look unpatriotic. The episode helped destroy the Federalist party for good.

The war unleashed a surge of nationalism. Americans took new pride in their army and navy, and a rising generation of leaders promoted a stronger, more self-sufficient nation.

Henry Clay championed the American System, a plan built on three pillars: a protective Tariff of 1816 to shield new factories, a Second Bank of the United States (chartered in 1816) to provide a stable currency, and federally funded internal improvements — roads and canals — to bind the nation together.

The war had also spurred American manufacturing, since the British blockade had cut off imports and forced Americans to make their own goods.

With the Federalists in ruins, James Monroe won the presidency in 1816 and was nearly unopposed in 1820. His years in office were dubbed the "Era of Good Feelings," a time of apparent one-party harmony and national confidence.

The label was partly misleading. Deep tensions over slavery, tariffs, and the sale of public lands simmered beneath the surface.

The good feelings were jolted by the Panic of 1819, the nation's first major financial crisis, which brought bank failures, unemployment, and foreclosures — and left many westerners bitter toward the Bank of the United States.

In 1819 Missouri applied for statehood as a slave state, which would have upset the balance of eleven free and eleven slave states in the Senate. The bitter debate frightened the aging Thomas Jefferson like "a fire bell in the night."

Henry Clay engineered the Missouri Compromise of 1820: Missouri entered as a slave state, Maine entered as a free state to preserve the balance, and slavery was banned north of the 36°30′ line in the rest of the Louisiana territory.

The compromise held the Union together for a generation, but it revealed the explosive power of the slavery question that would eventually tear the nation apart.