1. War of 1812

2. The British Threat
Between 1804 and 1807, British ships forced countries doing trade with France to ship cargoes through England and pay taxes.
The British navy attacked and took over American ships, forcing sailors to join the British forces.
In 1807, President Jefferson decided to embargo trade to Europe until they respected U.S. rights at sea.
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The episode which America’s hotter heads chose to take as a national insult took place on the morning of June 22nd at Hampton Roads, near the southern end of the Chesapeake Bay and only a few miles from Norfolk, Virginia. This was where Captain James Barron’s frigate Chesapeake patrolled, with a crew that included a number of British deserters from the H.M.S. Melampus. Two weeks earlier Admiral Berkeley, the British naval commander at Halifax, had sent out an order charging that these British subjects had “openly paraded the streets of Norfolk in sight of their officers, under the American flag, protected by the Magistrate of the town, and the recruiting officer belonging to the above mentioned frigate,” and ordering the first ship that encountered the Chesapeake to board her and search for deserters.[80]
That turned out to be the H.M.S. Leopard of fifty guns, whose Captain duly hailed the Chesapeake just before noon on the 22nd, and demanded the right to search the American vessel for the deserters; when the frigate’s captain, James Barron, refused, the Leopard fired on the unprepared Americans for about ten minutes, killing three sailors and severely wounding eighteen others. Eventually the Chesapeake was boarded and the deserters taken into custody.[81] This was the first time an American warship had been thus searched, and in the minds of many it constituted a casus belli; war fever swept the nation, stoked by strident editorials in the Democrat-Republican press.
The news of the Chesapeake’s capture reached John Randolph in Richmond on June 27th, 1807, the day after he and his fellow grand jurors had indicted Aaron Burr on treason charges; his initial reaction in a letter to Joseph Nicholson was to expect war as a matter of course: “I have tried to avert from my country a war which I foresaw must succeed the follies of , but I shall not be the less disposed to withdraw her from it or carry her through with honor.”[82] James Madison, too, was ready to begin hostilities, writing to Monroe on July 6th of what he saw as the national cry for war:
It pervades the whole community, is abolishing the distinctions of party; and, regarding only the indignity offered to the Sovereignty and flag of the Nation, and the blood of Citizens so wantonly and wickedly shed, demands, in the loudest tone, an honorable reparation.
The Leopard lets loose a broadside against the helpless
Chesapeake, as re-imagined in this 1897 drawing.

3. The British Threat
The embargo infuriated New Englanders, who considered secession.
By 1808, a new division had developed in the U.S. government between Easterners and Westerners (war hawks).
Easterners were older and more conservative, while the “war hawks” were younger and interested in returning the U.S. to its former glory.
The War Hawks in the Twelfth Congress were mostly young Republicans (later called Democratic-Republicans) who had been imbued with the ideals of the American Revolution as youths, and were primarily from southern and western states. (The American West then consisted of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, as well as territories in the Old Northwest, which did not yet have votes in Congress.) The War Hawks advocated going to war against Britain for a variety of reasons, mostly related to the interference of the Royal Navy in American shipping, which the War Hawks believed hurt the American economy and injured American prestige. War Hawks from the western states also believed that the British were instigating American Indians on the frontier to attack American settlements, and so the War Hawks called for an invasion of British Canada to punish Britain and end this threat.
John C. Calhoun
Henry Clay

4. The British Threat
The “war hawks” pushed for war with England and the natives in the west.
They feared a new movement among Indians lead by two Shawnee brothers, Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa.
The brothers sought to unite natives and return to their traditional lifestyle in an Indian state where they could preserve their culture.
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5. War of 1812 In June 1812, Congress declares war on England.
The U.S. attacks Canada in Niagara, Detroit and Lake Champlain, all fail.
Tecumseh joins the British.
By 1813, the U.S. rebounds and achieves victories over the British and natives.
The British pull back and leave Tecumseh’s troops unsupported. Many die, including Tecumseh.
Tecumseh (handout)- an Indian chief tried to unite the Native Americans to fight the US. Natives made many feats but were defeated in the Battle of Tippecanoe.
"My people wish for peace; the red men all wish for peace; but where the white people are, there is no peace for them, except it be on the bosom of our mother. Where today are the Pequot? Where today are the Narrangansett, the Mohican, the Pakanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man, as snow before a summer sun."
Shawnee Chief Tecumseh

6. War of 1812
The British attack and burn down Washington, D.C. in 1814, but Americans push them back.
In the South, Andrew Jackson leads troops on attacks on natives and British.
By many accounts, he thoroughly enjoyed Killing Indians, boasting about it often.
Some Cherokee and Choctaw fight for the U.S. side.

7. War of 1812
In 1815, Jackson leads troops at the Battle of New Orleans, killing over 2000 British troops and losing only 70.
The victory, though, came two weeks after the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war in a stalemate.
The war and its outcome helps develop nationalism.

8. Arrogant Worms
War of 1812
Arrogant Worms