Marines

Photo Information

Repulse of the Highlanders, New Orleans, Jan. 8 1815, by Charles H. Waterhouse, depicts the U.S. Marines fighting from behind the breastwork while members of the 93rd (Sutherland Highland) Regiment attack during the War of 1812's decisive Battle of New Orleans.

Photo by Marine Corps Art Collection

The War of 1812 and the Battle of New Orleans

8 Jan 2015 | David M. White Marine Corps Base Quantico

Although its events inspired one of the nation’s most famous patriotic songs, the War of 1812 is a relatively little-known war in American history. Despite its complicated causes and outcomes, the conflict helped establish the credibility of the young United States among other nations. It fostered a strong sense of national pride among the American people, and those patriotic feelings are reflected and preserved in the song we know today as the U.S. national anthem.

Britain’s defeat at the 1781 Battle of Yorktown marked the conclusion of the American Revolution and the beginning of new challenges for a new nation. Not even three decades after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, which formalized Britain’s recognition of the United States of America, the two countries were again in conflict. Resentment for Britain’s interference with American international trade, combined with American expansionist visions, led Congress to declare war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812.

In the early stages of the war, the American navy scored victories in the Atlantic and on Lake Erie while Britain concentrated its military efforts on its ongoing war with France. But with the defeat of Emperor Napoléon’s armies in April 1814, Britain turned its full attention to the war against an ill-prepared United States.

Angered by British interference with American trade, the young United States was intent on reaffirming its recently won independence. Instead, a series of defeats left Americans anxious and demoralized. They were stunned when, on Aug. 24, 1814, British troops marched into Washington, D.C., and set the Capitol building and White House ablaze.

America’s future seemed more uncertain than ever as the British set their sights on Baltimore, a vital seaport. On Sept. 13, 1814, British warships began firing bombs and rockets on Fort McHenry, which protected the city’s harbor. The bombardment continued for 25 hours while the nation awaited news of Baltimore’s fate.

By the “dawn’s early light” of Sept. 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key, who was aboard a ship several miles distant, could just make out an American flag waving above Fort McHenry. British ships were withdrawing from Baltimore, and Key realized that the United States had survived the battle and stopped the enemy advance. Moved by the sight, he wrote a song celebrating “that star-spangled banner” as a symbol of America’s triumph and endurance.

By 1814, the war was in full force. Just as Britain's strength redoubled following the defeat of Napoleon, fortune turned in American favor. Several high-profile British losses came in 1814, as peace was being negotiated. One of the most astounding American victories of the war, the Battle of New Orleans, came just weeks before the peace treaty arrived in Washington to be ratified. Fatigued and stalemated, both British subjects and American citizens were happy to see the war end.

Britain’s failed attempt to capture Mobile, Alabama, in September 1814 convinced Gen. Andrew Jackson that his opponents planned to further intensify military pressure along the Gulf Coast region. Doing so would relieve pressure from the Canadian front, and might snatch additional territory that could be used as a bargaining chip in the unfinished peace talks at Ghent. 

Correctly predicting that Britain’s next target was the strategically vital port city of New Orleans, Jackson quickly dispatched his forces. In December 1814 Jackson arrived in New Orleans to shore up the city’s defenses against an anticipated British invasion. He encountered a civilian population with its morale in shambles. Some were resigned to defeat; others in a state of panic; still others ambivalent about the possibility of invasion. In part to address flagging civilian will, Jackson declared martial law. It was the first such declaration in United States history. Jackson proclaimed “those who are not for us are against us, and will be dealt with accordingly.”

Arriving in the city on Dec. 1, 1814, Jackson had ample time to prepare his defenses along the waterway. Those preparations paid off for the Americans. The main battle on Jan. 8 was a calamitous defeat for the British and a lopsided victory for the Americans. Though outnumbered more than 2-to-1, the Americans nonetheless inflicted nearly 2,500 casualties (including 386 killed) while suffering only 55 deaths of their own. It seemed like the kind of smashing victory that could decide the war.

But even with the threat of invasion checked, Jackson still refused to lift his order instituting martial law for months afterward. The open-ended order made many civilians uncomfortable. A Louisiana State senator expressed unease about the ongoing state of martial law in a March 3 newspaper article; Jackson promptly had the senator arrested. When a U.S. District Court Judge demanded that the senator be charged or released, Jackson not only refused and then ordered the judge jailed before banishing him from the city. (When Jackson eventually lifted martial law, the returned judge proceeded to charge him with contempt and levied a $1,000-dollar fine, which the “Hero of New Orleans” paid.) 

From a military perspective, Jackson’s decision to impose martial law made good sense, at least initially.  It facilitated a more dependable supply system for Jackson’s soldiers, curbed civilian spying, and helped maintain order and discipline among the panicked populace.

But Jackson’s refusal to lift the order for months after British forces no longer posed a threat exposed a more obstinate side of the general. That image would haunt him politically for years to come. And Jackson’s perceived heavy-handedness highlighted raised fundamental questions about civilians’ supremacy over the military and the challenge of safeguarding civil liberties in wartime.

Unbeknownst to anyone at New Orleans, however, was the fact that American and British diplomats had signed a peace treaty two weeks before the battle. However, the Treaty of Ghent would only go into effect – and officially end the war – if it was approved by the U.S. Congress and signed by the president. This occurred one month after the Battle of New Orleans. Thus the American victory ensured that the war would actually end when the treaty arrived.

The crude nature of communications in the 1800s meant that news traveled slowly, particularly across the ocean. Word of the American victory at New Orleans arrived in Washington first, and the offer to end the war on agreeable terms came some 10 days later. It was immediately approved by Congress and the president.

Jackson’s triumph thus came to be viewed as a turning point in the war, one that tipped the scales at Ghent in America’s favor. That was factually inaccurate; a treaty that could end the war had been signed some two weeks prior to the battle. Republicans and the partisan press saw no reason to repudiate this idea. However, had Americans lost possession of New Orleans during the time the treaty was in transit, the war may not have immediately ended. Long after the facts about timing came out, the Niles Register continued to proclaim that the Americans “did virtually dictate the treaty of Ghent.”

Though the truth was far murkier, envisioning the Battle of New Orleans as a strategic triumph served to erase from the national memory all the bungled disasters and domestic dissent of the past five years. The Americans’ lopsided success at New Orleans replaced all the reversals of the war with a more celebratory and uplifting national myth of unqualified victory.

On Feb. 16, 1815, the United States Senate unanimously voted to ratify the peace treaty presented to them by President James Madison. The Treaty of Ghent was formally exchanged with a British diplomat the next day, concluding the process. After nearly three years and many thousands dead, the War of 1812 was at last over. British, Canadian and American alike heaved a sigh of relief as this unpopular and costly war came to an end. Although the war was over, the road to peace was long, rocky, and lay ahead.

All parties involved in the War of 1812 were forced to make sacrifices in pursuit of peace. From land boundaries to trading rights, even negotiating one's own identity, the process of ending the War of 1812 was far more involved than the simple signing of a single treaty.

Although the War of 1812 ended with the stroke of a pen, its conclusion was much more elusive. Conflicts along the border between Canada and the United States persisted for years despite the treaty. Both sides claimed to have won the war, inspiring resentment in the other. From the Native American perspective, the war did not end, but simply evolved. With the Americans and Canadians no longer pitted against each other, Anglo-Native alliances largely dissolved, leaving Native American communities at the mercy of land-hungry expansionists. These conflicts would continue for generations, as settlers pushed tribal land ever westward. Many communities still today feel the impacts of these tensions.

This theme of international peace and friendship prevails as we remember the bicentennial of this conflict. It is in a way fitting that the War of 1812 has fallen into obscurity -- a testament to the lasting and permanent camaraderie forged by fire among the great nations of the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States of America.

Although the United States achieved few initial goals of the War of 1812 -- most notably the disastrous failed multiple attempts to invade Canada -- Americans still proclaimed with gusto the war to have been a successful profession of American military strength and sovereignty. But more tangibly, it shaped American perceptions of the vital role of a standing Army and Navy, unthinkable prospects just a generation prior.

Editor’s Note: Sources for this article include the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Historian and the U.S. National Park Service.








Marine Corps Base Quantico