The War of 1812 is referred to in the press as "America's forgotten war" and for good measure - the United States got their butts kicked. As Ross mentioned the conflict was wide ranging and included the British invading Washington DC and being led by a General who was ironically named Ross.... Robert Ross. The British invasion of Washington included setting fire to many public buildings including the White House and the Capital building which were both largely destroyed.

As an interesting note, historically speaking the invasion, sacking and burning of a nation's capital city almost always means the war is lost for the invaded nation. When Paris fell in WWII so did France... same with Warsaw in Poland. The Germans went straight for London during the Blitz. The Wehrmacht headed straight for Moscow. More recently US forces crossed the border from Kuwait into Iraq and made a direct route for Baghdad. Same with Kabul. When North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam after America's withdrawal from the war they headed straight for Saigon. Fair enough... US B-52s had pummeled Hanoi.

So losing a capital city usually means "game over" but somehow America survived that but in every regard we got our asses handed to us by the British in the War of 1812 and after the war was over America could only breath a sigh of relief, start rebuilding and ponder, "What were we thinking?".

the good thing about it is history prove these words "What were we thinking?" and they surely developed them self as a super power.

Madison did not want the war but the New England States pushed for it. They were losing more and more sailors to indentured service aboard British ships.

I think that the war was lost when they failed to take Ft. McHenry.

The battle in New Orleans was after the peace treaty was agreed to in Ghent, as was mentioned earlier.

That battle wasn't won by us so much as it was lost by them. Poor co-ordination, communications, and just bad luck for the Brits (the lost of most their high ranking officers didn't help much either) cost them many 1000's of troops that day.

The 3 pronged attack failed because the right flank failed to advance after gaining the upper hand and the left flank's crossing of the river was a snafu since the current took the troops too far south.

This left the main column alone and they were decimated by fire from behind a wall.

It ended up being the biggest lop-sided victory (or loss, depending on what side of the Atlantic you are on) of the war.

The route taken by the British as they advanced toward New Orleans is such a bog - a legitimate quagmire to say the least. Now the problem for the British was there was NO good, solid land to march upon New Orleans. I can't imagine early 19th century troops would have been properly equipped to traverse those marshes and swamps of the Mississippi delta and then over take well fortified positions placed by peoples all too familiar with the land. US forces were well aware of what the Brits had to get through to face them in a contest of arms and played on it to the hilt.

I think I'm gonna have to find a good book on the battle and read up on it again as it's been quite some time since I've done so.

Man that really sounds interesting! Let us know what you find out I for one would like to some stampless covers from the battle. I wonder if they exist?

I had no idea such a site existed... Battle Of New Orleans dot org

The webmaster seems to have covered his bases on info that's for sure!