March 27, 2026 • 10 mins
The War of 1812 between the U.S. and the British Empire ended in a stalemate, but it established the U.S. as an independent nation and economic power -- and allowed Americans to colonize the West. Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/war-1812.htm
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Vogelbaum here. The War of eighteen twelve doesn't loom as
large in the United States consciousness as some other conflicts,
but it was an important one in that it basically
settled the matter of the American Revolution once and for all.
(00:23):
Just a quarter century after the Revolutionary War, Americans brashly
took on the British Empire in a rematch, partly to
resolve lingering grievances, but also with the ambitious aim of
seizing Canada, and instead came perilously close to a catastrophic
defeat that would have endangered the very future of the
United States. But the Americans, despite suffering the indignity of
(00:48):
having invaders torched their capital city, managed to fight the
British to a stalemate. The conflict ended with a peace
treaty in which the US didn't have to give up
any territory and retained the ability to expand westward, and
the British had to accept the US as a truly
separate nation and trading power. For the article, this episode
(01:10):
is based on How Stuff Works, spoke by email with
Willard Stern Randall a Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Scholar and
History at Champlain College. Randall said the Revolution only assured
political independence, it did not guarantee the economic survival of
the United States. After the Treaty of Paris was signed
(01:30):
in September of seventeen eighty three to end the Revolutionary War,
relations between the US and the British Empire remained tense,
with the British viewing Americans as commercial rivals. In the
early eighteen hundreds, the United States grievances crystallized into several
main points. A first was freedom to trade. The US
(01:51):
became caught up in the war between the British and
Napoleon's French Empire, with each power trying to restrict the
US from trading with the other. Eventually, the French relented,
but the British wouldn't. Randall said. The US wanted to
stay in neutral country so we could trade with anybody,
but the British did not believe in neutrality. Second, the
(02:15):
US was angered by the Royal Navy's practice of impressment,
that is, boarding American merchant ships and seizing sailors who
claimed were British deserters. The fledgling nations saw impressment as
assigned that the British didn't respect the US as an equal,
but instead as a former colony that it could bully.
To add to the insult, the British also didn't respect
(02:37):
the right of sailors to give up being British subjects
and choose US citizenship. And third, the British supported the
Native Americans who were resisting US expansion along the western frontier,
in part to protect British interests in the fur trade
from American intervention. In addition to settling those differences with
(02:58):
an armed conflict, the United States also saw an opportunity
to seize Canada from the British. This was not a
new concept. It had first surfaced during the Revolutionary War,
when Benedict Arnold helped lead an unsuccessful invasion of Canada
in seventeen seventy five to seventeen seventy six. Unfortunately, the
lesson of that debacle hadn't sunk in. One vociferous advocate
(03:22):
of a Canadian invasion was then former President Thomas Jefferson,
who proclaimed that taking the lightly defended British colonial possession
quote will be a mere matter of marching with all
of these issues in mind, Congress passed a declaration of
war against the British in June of eighteen twelve, which
President James Madison quickly signed into law. But while the
(03:46):
US had plenty of kutzpah to take on the British,
it was woefully underprepared from a military standpoint. Randall said,
we had three thousand soldiers and they had two hundred
and fifty thousand. In Europe alone, we had twenty ships,
they had nine hundred. On top of all that, the
timing of the US declaring war, which came about a
(04:09):
week before Napoleon launched an invasion of Russia, enraged the British.
Randall said, the British felt we had stabbed them in
the back. On land, things went badly for the US
pretty quickly. General William Hull's initial foray into Canada in
June of eighteen twelve failed and he withdrew to Detroit,
where he soon found himself under siege by the British
(04:31):
and their Native American allies under the leadership of Dacumsa.
Together they fooled Hull into thinking that they had a
much larger force, and in August of eighteen twelve, Hull surrendered,
a humiliating defeat. A second US attack on Canada in
October of eighteen twelve led to another disastrous defeat in
the Battle of Queenston Heights, in which three hundred Americans
(04:54):
were killed and almost a thousand were taken prisoner. The
US did better on the water. The USS Constitution, later
nicknamed Old Ironsides, pursued and defeated the British HMS Guerriere
off the coast of Nova Scotia in August of eighteen twelve,
damaging the British ship so badly that, after its captain surrendered,
it had to be sunk. The British, who had been
(05:16):
confident of their naval superiority, were stunned. But even greater
losses were inflicted by the large US force of privateers,
ships owned by American businessmen, to whom Congress gave the
authority to wage a for profit war on the British navy.
Over the course of the war, the privateers captured some
one thousand, five hundred British ships. Blockade runners daringly did
(05:41):
their best to keep the US economy going, slipping through
the British naval vessels in fog storms and the dark
of night to transport flower, tobacco, and cotton. After Napoleon
was defeated and forced into exile in the spring of
eighteen fourteen, the British could afford to send more troops
across the Atlantic, and the ruation got scary for the US.
(06:02):
In August of that year, a British force invaded Maryland
and then marched on Washington, d c. The invaders ate
food and drank wine from the table of President Madison
before setting fire to the White House and numerous other
public buildings. The arson was in retaliation for a similarly
brutal American sacking of York now Toronto in Ontario, but
(06:25):
British Rear Admiral George Cockburn, who orchestrated it, later had
his official portrait painted with Washington burning in the background.
Randall said, nobody imagined the British would try to destroy
our capital. Most Americans didn't know what we had done
in Canada, and Madison and his cabinet were clueless about war.
They didn't even try to defend Washington. However, another British target, Baltimore,
(06:52):
a home port to many privateer vessels, was much better prepared.
A Fort McHenry, which protected the harbor, was stood an
intense twenty five hour long attack in mid September by
British warships, which eventually had to withdraw. That victory inspired
Francis Scott Key, who was on a ship several miles away,
to compose a song, the Star Spangled Banner, to celebrate
(07:15):
the American resistance. Meanwhile, an attempt to invade New York
that September was thwarted in the Battle of Lake Champlain,
where US naval forces defeated British ships that put an
end to a British strategy of driving a wedge into
the middle of the US, an attempt to take back
northern New England as a British possession. That defeat was
(07:39):
so decisive that the British commander who had defeated Napoleon,
Arthur Willisley, the Duke of Wellington, concluded that the war
was unwinnable and declined to take over command of British
forces in the US. Randall said it was Wellington who said,
get out of there. You can't win it unless you
control the lakes, and they couldn't. The bottom line was
(07:59):
that England was broke. The ministry didn't want to go
to Parliament again and say we need more money to
continue fighting in America. The taxpayers wouldn't go for it.
In the peace talks that were already underway, British negotiators
abandoned their hardball territorial demands and started looking for a
quick way out. They even abandoned a key demand for
(08:21):
creation of a sanctuary for their Native American allies in
the American Midwest, which would have made it difficult for
the US to expand westward. If the US had been
forced to grant that concession, it might have remained a
small country along North America's eastern seaboard. In December of
eighteen fourteen, the signing of the Treaty of Ghent ended
(08:42):
the war, but being that it was signed in Ghent, Belgium,
and instantaneous electronic communication didn't exist in those days, word
didn't get back to North America soon enough to stop
British troops from attacking New Orleans in January of eighteen fifteen.
They were by General Andrew Jackson's forces in a short
(09:02):
but brutal battle. They killed two thousand British soldiers in
less than thirty minutes. A. Randall said, Jackson had hundreds
of trained frontier marksmen. They killed off the British officers
from the commanding general all the way down. The British
soldiers who weren't killed were trying to hide under the bodies.
(09:23):
The bloody victory had no effect on the war's outcome,
but it made Jackson into a legend and eventually helped
him get elected as president. The war, in which some
twenty two hundred and sixty American service members lost their lives,
ended in a stalemate, but surviving it was a larger
victory for the United States, which was then able to
(09:44):
grow into a world power. Today's episode is based on
the article The War of eighteen twelve. The White House
Burns and the Star Spangled Banner is born on houstuffworks
dot Com. Written by Patrick J. Higer. Brain Stuff is
production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and
is produced by Tyler Klain. But four more podcasts my
(10:06):
heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Vogelbaum here. The War of eighteen twelve doesn't loom as
large in the United States consciousness as some other conflicts,
but it was an important one in that it basically
settled the matter of the American Revolution once and for all.
(00:23):
Just a quarter century after the Revolutionary War, Americans brashly
took on the British Empire in a rematch, partly to
resolve lingering grievances, but also with the ambitious aim of
seizing Canada, and instead came perilously close to a catastrophic
defeat that would have endangered the very future of the
United States. But the Americans, despite suffering the indignity of
(00:48):
having invaders torched their capital city, managed to fight the
British to a stalemate. The conflict ended with a peace
treaty in which the US didn't have to give up
any territory and retained the ability to expand westward, and
the British had to accept the US as a truly
separate nation and trading power. For the article, this episode
(01:10):
is based on How Stuff Works, spoke by email with
Willard Stern Randall a Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Scholar and
History at Champlain College. Randall said the Revolution only assured
political independence, it did not guarantee the economic survival of
the United States. After the Treaty of Paris was signed
(01:30):
in September of seventeen eighty three to end the Revolutionary War,
relations between the US and the British Empire remained tense,
with the British viewing Americans as commercial rivals. In the
early eighteen hundreds, the United States grievances crystallized into several
main points. A first was freedom to trade. The US
(01:51):
became caught up in the war between the British and
Napoleon's French Empire, with each power trying to restrict the
US from trading with the other. Eventually, the French relented,
but the British wouldn't. Randall said. The US wanted to
stay in neutral country so we could trade with anybody,
but the British did not believe in neutrality. Second, the
(02:15):
US was angered by the Royal Navy's practice of impressment,
that is, boarding American merchant ships and seizing sailors who
claimed were British deserters. The fledgling nations saw impressment as
assigned that the British didn't respect the US as an equal,
but instead as a former colony that it could bully.
To add to the insult, the British also didn't respect
(02:37):
the right of sailors to give up being British subjects
and choose US citizenship. And third, the British supported the
Native Americans who were resisting US expansion along the western frontier,
in part to protect British interests in the fur trade
from American intervention. In addition to settling those differences with
(02:58):
an armed conflict, the United States also saw an opportunity
to seize Canada from the British. This was not a
new concept. It had first surfaced during the Revolutionary War,
when Benedict Arnold helped lead an unsuccessful invasion of Canada
in seventeen seventy five to seventeen seventy six. Unfortunately, the
lesson of that debacle hadn't sunk in. One vociferous advocate
(03:22):
of a Canadian invasion was then former President Thomas Jefferson,
who proclaimed that taking the lightly defended British colonial possession
quote will be a mere matter of marching with all
of these issues in mind, Congress passed a declaration of
war against the British in June of eighteen twelve, which
President James Madison quickly signed into law. But while the
(03:46):
US had plenty of kutzpah to take on the British,
it was woefully underprepared from a military standpoint. Randall said,
we had three thousand soldiers and they had two hundred
and fifty thousand. In Europe alone, we had twenty ships,
they had nine hundred. On top of all that, the
timing of the US declaring war, which came about a
(04:09):
week before Napoleon launched an invasion of Russia, enraged the British.
Randall said, the British felt we had stabbed them in
the back. On land, things went badly for the US
pretty quickly. General William Hull's initial foray into Canada in
June of eighteen twelve failed and he withdrew to Detroit,
where he soon found himself under siege by the British
(04:31):
and their Native American allies under the leadership of Dacumsa.
Together they fooled Hull into thinking that they had a
much larger force, and in August of eighteen twelve, Hull surrendered,
a humiliating defeat. A second US attack on Canada in
October of eighteen twelve led to another disastrous defeat in
the Battle of Queenston Heights, in which three hundred Americans
(04:54):
were killed and almost a thousand were taken prisoner. The
US did better on the water. The USS Constitution, later
nicknamed Old Ironsides, pursued and defeated the British HMS Guerriere
off the coast of Nova Scotia in August of eighteen twelve,
damaging the British ship so badly that, after its captain surrendered,
it had to be sunk. The British, who had been
(05:16):
confident of their naval superiority, were stunned. But even greater
losses were inflicted by the large US force of privateers,
ships owned by American businessmen, to whom Congress gave the
authority to wage a for profit war on the British navy.
Over the course of the war, the privateers captured some
one thousand, five hundred British ships. Blockade runners daringly did
(05:41):
their best to keep the US economy going, slipping through
the British naval vessels in fog storms and the dark
of night to transport flower, tobacco, and cotton. After Napoleon
was defeated and forced into exile in the spring of
eighteen fourteen, the British could afford to send more troops
across the Atlantic, and the ruation got scary for the US.
(06:02):
In August of that year, a British force invaded Maryland
and then marched on Washington, d c. The invaders ate
food and drank wine from the table of President Madison
before setting fire to the White House and numerous other
public buildings. The arson was in retaliation for a similarly
brutal American sacking of York now Toronto in Ontario, but
(06:25):
British Rear Admiral George Cockburn, who orchestrated it, later had
his official portrait painted with Washington burning in the background.
Randall said, nobody imagined the British would try to destroy
our capital. Most Americans didn't know what we had done
in Canada, and Madison and his cabinet were clueless about war.
They didn't even try to defend Washington. However, another British target, Baltimore,
(06:52):
a home port to many privateer vessels, was much better prepared.
A Fort McHenry, which protected the harbor, was stood an
intense twenty five hour long attack in mid September by
British warships, which eventually had to withdraw. That victory inspired
Francis Scott Key, who was on a ship several miles away,
to compose a song, the Star Spangled Banner, to celebrate
(07:15):
the American resistance. Meanwhile, an attempt to invade New York
that September was thwarted in the Battle of Lake Champlain,
where US naval forces defeated British ships that put an
end to a British strategy of driving a wedge into
the middle of the US, an attempt to take back
northern New England as a British possession. That defeat was
(07:39):
so decisive that the British commander who had defeated Napoleon,
Arthur Willisley, the Duke of Wellington, concluded that the war
was unwinnable and declined to take over command of British
forces in the US. Randall said it was Wellington who said,
get out of there. You can't win it unless you
control the lakes, and they couldn't. The bottom line was
(07:59):
that England was broke. The ministry didn't want to go
to Parliament again and say we need more money to
continue fighting in America. The taxpayers wouldn't go for it.
In the peace talks that were already underway, British negotiators
abandoned their hardball territorial demands and started looking for a
quick way out. They even abandoned a key demand for
(08:21):
creation of a sanctuary for their Native American allies in
the American Midwest, which would have made it difficult for
the US to expand westward. If the US had been
forced to grant that concession, it might have remained a
small country along North America's eastern seaboard. In December of
eighteen fourteen, the signing of the Treaty of Ghent ended
(08:42):
the war, but being that it was signed in Ghent, Belgium,
and instantaneous electronic communication didn't exist in those days, word
didn't get back to North America soon enough to stop
British troops from attacking New Orleans in January of eighteen fifteen.
They were by General Andrew Jackson's forces in a short
(09:02):
but brutal battle. They killed two thousand British soldiers in
less than thirty minutes. A. Randall said, Jackson had hundreds
of trained frontier marksmen. They killed off the British officers
from the commanding general all the way down. The British
soldiers who weren't killed were trying to hide under the bodies.
(09:23):
The bloody victory had no effect on the war's outcome,
but it made Jackson into a legend and eventually helped
him get elected as president. The war, in which some
twenty two hundred and sixty American service members lost their lives,
ended in a stalemate, but surviving it was a larger
victory for the United States, which was then able to
(09:44):
grow into a world power. Today's episode is based on
the article The War of eighteen twelve. The White House
Burns and the Star Spangled Banner is born on houstuffworks
dot Com. Written by Patrick J. Higer. Brain Stuff is
production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and
is produced by Tyler Klain. But four more podcasts my
(10:06):
heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
BrainStuff News
Host
Lauren Vogelbaum
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