The War of 1812

By the early 1800s, Britain and France were at war in Europe, and both sides interfered with American shipping -- but Britain went further, seizing American sailors and forcing them into the British navy, a practice called impressment. In the Northwest Territory, the Shawnee leader Tecumseh built a confederacy of Native nations to resist American settlement, and Americans believed (with reason) that Britain was supplying and encouraging Tecumseh's resistance from Canada. A group of young congressmen nicknamed the "War Hawks," including Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, pushed hard for war, and Congress declared war on Britain in June 1812.

The war went poorly at first -- British troops even burned Washington, D.C. in August 1814 -- but a few moments turned it into a point of pride. In September 1814, the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor failed to take the fort, and the sight of the American flag still flying the next morning inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that became "The Star-Spangled Banner." The Treaty of Ghent officially ended the war in December 1814, restoring things mostly to how they had been before -- but news traveled slowly, and General Andrew Jackson won a huge, unnecessary victory at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815, after the treaty had already been signed. Tecumseh had been killed in battle in 1813, breaking the strength of his confederacy, and the war left Americans with a surge of national pride and confidence, while the Federalist Party, which had opposed the war, faded into irrelevance.