thank you dan thank you all for coming we have so few days that are selling this beautiful and grateful for giving some of them to come here when i was in high school and i was told about the war of eighteen twelve i was told three six it was caused by the british impressing american sailors how do you impress an american sailor i was told that the war between twelve was won by andrew jackson at the battle of new orleans but i was also told that that was after the peace treaty at ghent but nobody told me where that was so i was confused as recently as a few years ago for the bicentennial of the war of eighteen twelve we were told that the war of eighteen twelve was the second american war of independence well how do you have two wars of independence still confuse and when the teacher american history have a hard time finding a textbook that gives it much more than a few paragraphs sort of a hick up in history  one of my favorite textbooks well it was my favorite why i got to the war of eight hundred twelve had the duke of wellington dying before waterloo and after or before the battle of  i'm lost so what i did was decide to find out for myself what really happened and that's what i've been doing for the last six years it's a longer story because it was a longer struggle that lasted for half a century from the end of the french and indian wars and we talked we learned a lot about that in high school about a whole page about the french and indian wars but we helped the british throw out the french and they gave us the bill and they started taxing us they taxed everything and we didn't like that so we fought them and we defeated them in the war in the revolutionary war no they said in the revolution it made no distinction between the revolutionary war and the revolution well we had a peace treaty at the end of the revolutionary war that was in paris not to be confused with again everything seemed to happen over there and in the peace treaty we were assured we had complete independence but did we as i dug into this i found that we only had political what tanami but for fifty years what the founding fathers could never of imagined i think the struggle went on because we were not given the means of survival economic independence for those fifty years the british blockaded us taxed us collected customs set our rules for international trade refused our our new doctrine of naturalization our new doctrine of neutrality as if we were still colonists and i don't think the founding fathers saw that coming so there are some benchmarks along the way and i want to talk about them today first of all seventy ninety one were vermonters we know what happened in seventy ninety one don't we oh good i can go on  then well in seventy nine to you one right after vermont became a state the man who signed the papers and in fact who wrote most of them secretary of state thomas jefferson came here with james madison who had just written the bill of rights on vacation i was very happy to find that out of course the weather was awful they had never seen such black flies they had never seen such sudden he around memorial day we would call it what they found out over dinner that the british were building a fort on north here a while and and i this is almost ten years this is ten years after the end of the revolutionary war and the british were building a fork on lake champlain on north euro and they were stopping american ships and searching them and wanted capsized killing its crew so jefferson hurried back to the ten capital of philadelphia to confer with washington when i was seventeen ninety one but by then for almost ten years the british had blocked our trade and they they re invoked a law from the seventeenth fifties called the navigation act that said the only the english could sell goods to americans and only americans could sell to the british and use english ships english goods on english bottoms as have put it so supposedly we were not allowed to trade here in vermont across the border to canada course that never stopped us one third of americans of that time live by smuggling one third of the vermont not americans well maybe that was generally true too i think of john hancock and a few others who were smugglers but also the british had their allies spain and portugal banned us from commerce and their territories and their colonies so we were like a string of banana republics not allowed to trade with any of our neighbors shortly after jefferson and madison were here the french revolution came along and it divided the world into pro french or pro english that's what happened in america in american politics you're either pro english as was alexander hamilton and because of that george washington or you were pro french like jefferson and madison said so from the very beginning we've had political discord at the highest level but what the french revolution also did was send us our first refugee crisis you think nothing is changed twenty five thousand royalist refugees from france came to philadelphia and baltimore alone and there was a slave uprising in the caribbean which sent more to our coastal cities and so we had about fifty thousand french refugees in towns if you put baltimore and philadelphia together it wasn't seventy thousand people what you inject another twenty five thousand and it was a crisis and so you have a president john adams passing the alien and sedition laws which were to crack down not on aliens per se but on journalists you had the supreme court justices roaring around in their carriages reading newspapers and locking up the printers something politicians have wanted to do from time to time so you have some of the same crises already beginning but then both sides the french and the english decided to keep us from trading with their enemies the french seized four hundred of our ships in the caribbean the british would try to outdo them and eventually they would seize four hundred of our ships as if that weren't bad enough because we weren't colonies of england anymore they stopped paying back sheesh to the algerian pirates and so they began capturing our ships so we had our first crisis in that part of the world by eighteen hundred and that introduces us to the man they were going to be talking about next larry is he's already here thomas jefferson thomas jefferson was a pacifist who founded west point i mean how do we going to minds around this  he inherited our first navy from john adams and he used it to fight the  here's a view of tripoli harbor with the american navy circling tripoli attacking it here's the first american war hero since the revolution this is steve indicator because what decatur did was capture an algerian ship use it to board the philadelphia an american warship that had run aground and blow it up so the algerians good news this is our earliest diplomacy with the middle east well jefferson didn't let that go on he dismantled the navy replaced it with a coast guard made up of boats that had one gun and oars and work much use outside of a shallow harbor because he didn't believe that if you had a navy you could have world peace well the british saw us as pretty much base source a recruiting office for sailors for their navy fighting the polian in the napoleonic wars so you get this that word impressment we finally find out what it means that means we have british officers stopping american ships and coming aboard and picking out the sailors that they say were deserves from the british navy well in fact the problem was they didn't believe that we could naturalized british subjects born english you die and so they would pick out either what they said were irish sailors or british sailors the irish being part of the united kingdom then now what was the test how did they determine if you were an irish sailor they would ask you what you had for lunch ment crew coming aboard and picking out americans forty percent of american sailors were born in the british isles and of the others quite a few had purchased their citizenship for a dollar you could get forged papers for a dollar at the time well the impressment crisis really did bring along the war of eighteen truck twelve very quickly because the british took nine thousand nine hundred seventeen sailors off our ships and finally by eighteen zero seven they stopped and searched an american warship the chesapeake and that was it and an international crisis because the captain of the american ship refused to let him come aboard the british open fire with cannon killing several of the americans and then the american surrendered ship and crew so the chesapeake crisis brings us much closer well our friend jefferson president jefferson tried to plough massai but that failed and so he tried an economic boycott we hear of those today so what he did was cut off all american trade with any foreign country it's called the embargo act of eighteen zero seven which hid from on very hard because our trading partner was right across the border in canada which was a british position we were deterred from and a lot of honor's are very ingenious when they're forced to be in such a situation so one story i've heard from an historian was the british were buying pork and from honors dressed up their swain's rode in the front seat right across the border selling frozen pork to the british army that comes from a reputable historian you can't make up stuff like this we also basically were cutting down our f as fast as we could not only to clear farmland but to make something called potash burning the tree stumps and limbs cetera because potash could be sold for gold to the british canada which they sent to make historical marker where there was a shooting war here on these grounds between revenuers they would have been called i think by some people the first customs service and the black snake and its crews who were smuggling potash through the embargo to canada what the embargo did generally was make jefferson a horribly unpopular american to spell the word backwards and they called it the old grab me there is jefferson portrayed as a very large turtle taking a bite out of americans to prevent their trade people got a lot of their information from cartoons even  that time and their political views well the embargo was a failure and it ended in one year because it managed to destroy eighty percent of american commerce our importing export trade there were soup lines in portland and boston the whaling trade died because they were not allowed to go anywhere for where a lot of them or sell the oil new england suffered especially hard and new england never recovered from jefferson  there is a place we have our state capital it used to be in jefferson county and as a result of the embargo the name was changed to washington county after jefferson came his sidekick neighbor closest friend james madison now madison had to deal with another crisis other than impressment he had to deal with trouble on the front teeth the american settlers were streaming west irish immigrants were coming in thousands because of a failed insurrection in ireland they couldn't afford the land in the east so they were heading for kentucky ohio indiana for cheap farmland they ran into an indian by the name of tecumseh a brilliant military and political strategist who was organizing in indian confederacy to block any more western migration he happened to be away on and on a recruiting trip all the way down to alabama all the way up to the great lakes when he left his half brother in charge at the capital of to pick a new indiana i say halfwit it's hard to tell you have to judge people by their actions sometimes he decided to attack the american army before the american army could attack him and the result was the destruction of to comes this base at a canoe and the slaughter of hundreds of his warriors families to come so when over to the british for arms and support and to give them military support our army was only three thousand man he had ten thousand warriors at no time were the more warriors organized for any struggle along which the war hawks the pro war party captured control of congress and in the closest senate vote in our history on that gratian of war the country split nineteen for war thirteen for peace new england descent to new england against the war the south and the west for it and president madison felt compelled to declare war on england remember that army three thousand americans the british had two hundred fifty thousand experience troops from fighting napoleon and eight thousand veterans and canada we had twenty warships including five freight gets and from there on down smaller they had nine hundred including six hundred fifty one battle ready men of war with three decks of weapons but we declared war on them they never forgot us or forgave us really they considered a stab in the back because we declare war in june of eight hundred twelve at exactly the moment napoleon was six hundred thousand men was invading russia so sooner or later that great imbalance of force was bound to happen well we were up for a war though we really wanted war thomas jefferson the pacifist put it this way to capture canada would be a mere matter of marching god he had a gift for the language we tried three times we failed each three times in that first year of war eight twelve we had one startling success and that was the constitution the u s s constitution we know it better is old ironsides i show this scene because it shows you something that the sailors did that the british really didn't like they called it a yankee trick now here's old ironsides being chased by an entire squadron of british ships and the wind is died and the british ships are become well isaac hall the captain ship on the old ironsides the men are turning a big wheel the capstan that tightens up the rope and actually polls the ship along to the next anchor when they throw the next day or in so they actually went and for a day and a half those men in those pools who rode and rode and rode and left the british fleet behind will come back to what happened to that captain but old ironsides was the first success the only success in the war of eighteen  clinton who wanted peace the north wanted peace the south water war but the news of that victory convinced a lot of americans if they could win against the british in london the news sent the price up six hundred percent it was a shock to the british as well it was a proud moment for the americans when old ironsides led the rest of our ships into boston harbor it was it was in my imagination it's like a goose leading her goslings proudly into the nest after the battle but they never could get out after that because the british had all those ships and began blockading our coastal harbors one ship tried to escape and within twenty minutes it was destroyed so the news wasn't very good along the coast at the same time we  were building a fort and a naval base on lake ontario and we were building up an army here imagine burlington in plattsburgh as the twin military capitals of the united states four thousand men on each side was the largest concentration troops in the us at that time so over here we had guns ships barracks you go down by the old post office building on george street those are what's left of the war of eighteen twelve barracks there are graves sprinkled around them county so many of the men died from a smallpox epidemic on  plattsburgh side you have this gentleman building his base his name is zeppelin pike you may recognize that name there is a mountain named after him pike peak which he never got to climb but he saw it once while he was climbing a long peak but it was named after him for his role in the war of eighteen twelve not for his discovery i think he built up an army in the wintertime at plattsburg and let it overland through the snow once the ground was frozen and he took an army in sleds to sac at harbor in new york on lake ontario where they drilled on the ice in the winter while they built ships and some of the unsung heroes of this war are ship builders who came from new york in the worst of weather and built fleets on the lakes so the the brown brothers of the smith brothers know and adam smith and one hundred forty shipwrights went through the snow to lake ontario and built the fleet by the spring of eighteen thirteen and pike had trained his his regiment of in from truman on the ice and we attacked canada for the first time here's a map  so here are the places i'm talking about here we have a army base in burlington we have a base at plattsburg the men go through the snow if they stayed on the sleigh they made it if they got off they froze to death ok but here's here's sakit harbor where we build a fleet in the winter of eighteen twelve eighteen thirteen and by the spring we attacked if we can reach it from no we attacked what we call toronto they called it york at the time they called it upper canada which also confused me because it's right next to lower canada it takes a while to learn what was going on b but we attacked the york and destroyed what would become toronto pike was doing pretty well you can see here's a map of the landings we had our navy in in the lake the fleet we went into the woods and fought the indians who were on the side of the canadians and the british we drove them back and then we attacked toward the center there and we took their outer fortifications now the british were not ready for an attack one of their cannons had been used by crom well in the sixteen forty s and had been handed around farther and farther from england ever since the other cannon were left over captured in the revolutionary war so we were taking their fortresses and they pike stopped for a break two hundred some men leaning on their muskets he was there with us officers interrogating a prisoner when the commander of the british decided to withdraw and gave the order to destroy the powder magazine that was five hundred barrels of gunpowder right underneath where zeppelin pike was sitting on a so the man who has pikes peak named after him was killed by a boulder when it fell on this head the men went wild but there was a rampage for three days when people came back to their houses after where the all what was left with the walls one american decided to crush the alders over in the anglican church to make it fit better in his backpack they found that there were more taverns and they had ever seen in one place but it was the legislative capital of opportunity so they drained all that whiskey and all the rum and went on to looting rampage they were so drunk that when they got into the assembly chamber of upper canada they mistook the weight of the speaker of the house for a scalp and then they really had blood in iraq even the commander of our ships admiral chauncey decided to take out some library books all of them and take them away he went back to finish the job the next year and he returned the books can you imagine but the first invasion of canada was an utter failure unlike erie that year we had our first great military success and that was oliver hazard perry with the smith brothers again building him a navy taking on a superior british fleet and the feeding it right off press kyle offshore from here in pennsylvania and sending back to washington the famous message we have seen the enemy and he is ours that's always fit but we've taken over great the great lakes and we never relinquished them for the rest of the war to come said didn't and very well because the british wouldn't listen to him he had all those warriors he knew how to fight he actually took detroit with very few shots he took detroit helping the british with his warriors because the commander in detroit was old and feeble and scared to death he had a stroke he had a problem standing  up after drinking all night he had his daughter and grandchildren along in the fort on the front here and he was afraid they would get scalped so without consulting his officers he surrendered detroit to the british  while he was at it he threw in chicago and minnesota so in one bad day we lost the midwest and we didn't get it back for the rest of the war this is at the same time that his adopted son isaac hall is defeating the british on old ironsides the war is very small but there was great news to come so was leaving the rear guard action in the canada during the second american invasion the british would not listen to him and stand and fight they were headed for the nearest fort and he stood and you can see this depiction of him fighting to the death against the kentucky militia cavalry kentucky had mounted cavalry men with rifles able to fire accurately from horseback so here's the colonel this is a heroic depiction that colonel would run for vice president one day he was so popular for killing to pa that comes although we don't know that it comes to die they never found the body the indians aren't sure he was killed and we always have ghost figures the war changed in april of eighteen fourteen when the polian capitulated that is surrendered for the first time in paris now the british could turn loose their army and their navy in north america and they began sending over whole regiments of battle seasoned troops and scores of ships and the strategy became looting burning and pillaging all along the american coast this this man gets the prize there are two ways to pronounce this name it's spelled c o c k b u r n scottish pronounce it coburn you can decide which the pronunciation you want you specially if you live along with chesapeake where they looted and pillaged for two hundred miles raiding every plantation especially and here is this is a family portrait this so proud of what he did they have him standing over the fireplace with burning washington behind him we'll call a makeover where on television but what he did typically was raid the homes of any american who was known to have fought against the british and here he is and have heard the grass they have heard a grace they pronounce it their looting the home of the captain of one of our frigates going to so his wife could give concerts on it in bermuda in the wintertime while the fleet was resting and while he roared around bermuda in the ship captains carriage on the way out of town her coburn burnt the captain's father's house his tavern and they looted that and i can sure now this is the british army looting the anglican church i guess they figured we'd already broken with them but this is what was going on they were taking cows so they did the officer would have fresh milk aboard ship it was big business because the british admiral and all the way down to the crew of the ship got prize money it's called whatever they captured they could sell off and the admiral in charge of the north atlantic station of the british navy was able to retire after one strenuous year of counting his money because his card had been one hundred thousand pounds sterling from all the ships that he had taken and refitted and resold so it was a new kind of war fire and plunder a new kind for americans anyway this is joshua barnett you won't find him in most history books this was an amazing fellow he was in the revolution then he became an ugly commodore in the french navy of napoleon then he became a private men building ships that would attack the british during the war of eighteen twelve here's one of his ships tacking a payroll ship of the british that was a special plum but then when the british attacked the chesapeake he got permission from the maryland assembly to build a fleet of of twenty four gun boats and barges armed with his crews of experience privateer's men and they fought the british for almost a year going into shallow rivers and then coming out and striking but soon the british sent an armada fifty warships five thousand veterans to the chesapeake and it was left up to the commanding generals and the admirals whether they would attack washington c or not their orders were to pillage and ravage the coastal towns of america but the three leaders got together one night in a tavern this side a sort of what the heck we're here anyway and they marched overland quick marched in the august heat and they burned washington now they're pretext their reason is in a letter from the governor general of canada asking them to do it in reprisal for the destruction of toronto so was retaliation they had orders not to burn any private property or do any looting mostly they follow that so they burned all the public buildings they burned the capital they tried to burn it but it was made out of iron and steel so they emptied their rockets they had these in the star spangled banner here the rockets red glare these were more danger to the guy who fired it than anybody else so they did a little damage they drained all the gunpowder from the rockets and they managed to finally blow up the capitol building then they marched up pennsylvania avenue where the last one to leave is mrs madison dolly madison now her part in this has become a thought he she wouldn't leave until the portrait of george washington was carved out well had to be cut down because it was bolted to the wall which she probably didn't know it was a copy about she didn't want the image of washington march through the streets of london like concord hero so she waited until a slave cut it off out of its frame rolled it up and handed it to a citizen happened to be there  here she also saved the presidential papers and the original declaration of independence which is usually not given credit for and then she left in one of the last carriages it was hard to get a taxi in washington on that day and so a lot of people who couldn't get one stayed and looted much of washington including the white house the british didn't do everything there were a lot of people who resented the fact that the government and absolutely nothing to defend washington d from attack but there's a dolly madison and she been watching all day through a telescope from the roof of the white house because she could see the battle going on in bladensburg what's called bladensburg maryland on the outskirts of washington where a bridge the main british army is attacked and a hodgepodge of american militias lined up against them our friend barney the privateer was the only one who stood and fight with his men and asked what foot to stand and fight with the scan and part of the confusion was the president madison became the only president in our history to go into battle with his troops which sounds heroic except he countermanded orders and his mere presence there cause confusion among the other generals and so his militia had turned out for maryland earned the nickname for the battle as the bladensburg races because they left the battlefield so fast so madison was on the run looking for dolly dolly was on the run looking for him for a couple of days the only government building that surprise that survived was the post office building we should have special affection for the post office for that reason alone but it was so it's survival only because it's where the patent office was and the manager of patents who had designed the capitol building william thorn persuaded the the british general disparate because the models were private property they were public property so that building was spared but the rest bird i huge fire that was only put out by a hurricane that came along a few days later and you could see the fire and the smoke from thirty miles away in the next target of the there was no loot in washington except the ham and their ice cream the dali had left out for the commanding officers but in baltimore five hundred twenty four privateering ships had sailed and many of them were still in the inner harbor and the prize was those ships and their cargoes loot if the british could take baltimore they did what the british had done often after battles they took a vacation they took a month off it was hot which gave baltimore a chance to build fortifications eleven thousand people black and white night in day working in shifts with picks and shovels built to mountains at either end of the city federal hill  were impregnable when the british fleet arrived now the this is the battle of north point which i didn't know about until one of the benefactors of this homestead dr john high son told me about it he was from baltimore he was very proud of on one side of an open field and fought the british on the other side of an open field just the way they would do it in england just firing volleys at each other and trying to get around each other they might not have the americans might not have one except for this gentleman the british commander of the expedition general william ross one of the duke of wellington's favorite generals who he rode around in the battle looking like that with nice white stripes for his sword in his mind ocular as target practice time two brothers from maryland shot at the same time and that was the end of one of the best british generals william ross and when that happened the british army folded the second in command would not continue the attack they went back on their ships and went off to their real price which was new orleans which was even more lewd the best estimate was four million pounds sterling in loot in the ships in new orleans harbor so if you have any question about the motivation of these officers the only thing that stopped them was our ships or sharpshooters when wellington heard what happened to ross after hearing what happened to other generals here he said i don't think i want to command an america i must not die and so he refused it and this was september of eighteen fourteen so temper thirteenth and what was going on here well we can't skip fort mchenry if you read the second stanza of the star spangled banner i recommend reading it over singing it it was originally a fourteenth century english drinking song and that's the only way in which you can usually sing that song but if you read the second stanza bombs bursting in air the rockets red glare the bombs were bursting  air because the americans had french cannon with longer range artillery and the british had to back up and stay more than two miles away so they fired two thousand shells overnight into the air that burst and made a lot of noise only making twenty american casualties killing three british rocketeers who had the misfortune of trying to fire the things with a new weapon they didn't take time to practice when they came about bombs bursting in air and so by the dawn's early light francisco key who was an antiwar protester but also was a lawyer and he had a client who had been captured by the british so he happened to be there negotiating a sex change he becomes a history just his history figure because he couldn't get away and he described it in verse it's the second version of the poem he wrote the first time after the battle of tripoli but he tried it again and this one caught on it was distributed free and he became one of our folklore figures but baltimore held and exactly at the same time there we are there is the actual star spangled banner before we put music to the that flag that you could see waving proudly was about thirty six feet long and had been made to hoist up above the fort as a signal to the people of baltimore that the fort had survived and when that flag went up the more in the morning after the battle the british also took it as a signal to leave now in exactly that time the british are invading with their largest army since the revolutionary war down lake champlain the plan the plan was to take plattsburg and destroy the army base there and then to go on and take  bottom of the mat virgins because that for gents we were building our first navy on lake champlain now i urge you to read this section of the book if you get a chance it's too long for me to go through in this talk but basically it's a it's an amazing story because in the woods behind virgin's and below the falls americans built five ships and twelve row galleys and gun boats in a matter of sixty days once the word came that the british were attacking  men would hundreds of men went into the forest and cut down tall white pines it would be a tree on the third of may it was the keel of the saratoga the american ship on the kate  smith brothers had a contract to build one ship in sixty days they built five and forty and the man who did most of this in charge of all this is a twenty eight year old lieutenant who had been next  decatur on that ship and it went into tripoli harbor ten years before this is my this is william mcdonough now the war was so unpopular here that when  mcdonough came a year before nobody would read his wife a house or even a room she had to live in a in a tavern until her baby was born until he found a place for much of new england was against the war but mcdon put in charge of this navy he was supposed to get control of lake champlain and with the help of the smith brothers he put together have a fleet the canadians were coming down canada i mean the idea of a canadian invasion because we only think of it as hopefully as tourism but it was a it was a canadian army many of them were loyalists there were three brigades of canadians and british many of whom  fought against napoleon and europe the commander of one of the brigades was the son of the man who sent the letter to ethan allen asking him to turn traitor during the revolutionary war now he was the head of a brigade british troops so this is general prevost he's the one who told the other generals to burn washington he was coming told to take plattsburg and then destroy the shipyards of for jenn's and with nine thousand veteran troops they marched across the border into new york on september first eighteen fourteen one of the places who we use as an observation post the see them coming down the lake was the original building of the university of vermont i've had a hard time finding a drawing but there it is because it written a burning building burned not too many years after that but the highest spot around was the kukula of u v m and with a telescope you could see the british ships being assembled at the troops coming down the lake now why they attacked the new york side instead of the vermont side well one isn't a letter from general prevost back to london saying don't worry about giving us any money for food that's all taken care of by our friends the vermonters there were trail drives of cattle through the vermont side of the farthest to sell meat so unpopular was the war to the british and the new yorkers were cooperating by sending rafts of timber the of the british ships were coming up on the current going down on the current across into canada so americans expressed their dissatisfaction with going to war by in a way cooperating a large scale not every e this is what they were making that for gents they had iron mines forges blast furnace is falling mills grist mills wire mills it was an industrial city of eight hundred fifty people the gunners had come down from burlington twenty two miles and as the guns were made a fort was built along lake champlain called fort cason at the mouth of a creek because they knew the british sooner or later would try to attack this is called a long gun this is what the british preferred he wanted to stay far away and blast away long range the americans on the other hand like this this was short fired at close range and fired a forty two pound explosive shell these are both on the grounds of the naval institute at washington d c and this is what they are building here in vermont as well as making one thousand and thirty two pound cannon balls on the plattsburgh side  we have this gentleman who is from the first graduating class of west point and he is building fortifications south of the river three block houses a high grade cannons ditches motes in case the british decide to attack by land which they did so we'll see that this is the actual battle and nineteenth century depiction it's a little bit telescope because it has plattsburgh represent on the left in flames and has the british coming across the saranac river and somehow the british navy the the naval battle is behind it which is kind of hard to picture but this is from the memories of people who were there this is more accurate this is also from the eighteenth thirty's and this is mcdonough in the battle on the ship to saratoga now i was going to read the passage but it's very very long the details of the battle but essentially what happened is the british were not ready they took too much time they changed commanding officers they sent and a captain who was not familiar with the lake the crews were soldiers who had never  they didn't know where the gun locks were for their cannon they dragged their feet and mcdonough and his ships got from their gens to plattsburgh bay first and thanks to an eighteen year old boy named joseph baron be a be a r r o n jr of plaid burlington who was a pilot and knew the lake mcdonagh went into plattsburgh bay and stayed close knowing the british navy would have to come down and they would be sailing against a strong current so mcdonald mcdonough twenty eight listen to a teenage boy and they took their stations inside the flats per day the ships were lined up from northeast to southwest two miles  offshore where british guns could not reach them again they knew the range of the enemy weapons so when the british army came it got stalled in the saranac they tried an end run and two hundred british soldiers were cut down by fifteen year old boys led by captain john war of vermont the battle finally happened on nine eleven eighteen forty that isn't always a curse a day because a nine eleven eighteen fourteen the british finally came down came around cumberland head and mcdonough and his fleet refused to come out and fight the british wanted to fight in the open where they could use their long guns mcdonagh listen to barack and stayed behind the headlamp knowing that the wind would change and when the when did change the british could nominate over they had planned to rake the americans out in the open this is the water car from the rom from onshore and those fighting ships are clustered in the middle one observer said it was constant thunder you couldn't hear nothing else for two hundred for two hours nothing but the roar like  interruption everything covered with smoke on the outside you can see on the left a row galleys with that kind of arab sail on the back of it it made them very maneuverable either as a row boats or a sailing ships benedi to use them in the revolution on the right you have british gunboats you can't see you can see people on shore the islands were lined with people as if they were going to a baseball game if they had baseball yet sitting and watching as spectators the british came down in rowboats just for the spectator sport and were bobbing around and watching as this one within twenty minutes the british commander captain george downie was killed the firing was that intensive close range the first british bali raked the gun deck along the gun deck of the american ship the saratoga killing forty men right away including the first lieutenant who was supposed to aim the guns so it was mcdonough himself all wound up aiming their guns until one of the guns was hit and knocked him down he actually was decked literally twice he was knocked down by a cannon somehow survived and then one of his own spars came down and hit him in the head he must have been a very tough man he survived the british commander george downey had an entire cannon landed on him a cannon worked if it fired forward but if it became a projectile itself it weighed hundreds of thousands of pounds so this went on one ship after another drifted away and finally saratoga use the yankee trip trick that's why i showed you  old ironsides in the first place cage anchors mcdonough had fitted the saratoga with long cables so that he could pivot and turn his ship around close quarters if all his guns were knocked out on one side and the other fellow's guns were almost all locked now knocked out and when that happened the men pulled on the cab stand pulled on the cage anchors pulled on the cables the saratoga came around and blasted away finishing the battle in a matter about twenty more minutes so the yankee trick and the twenty eight year old lieutenant and an eighteen year old pilot from burlington who won the most decisive battle of the war of eighteen twelve i didn't say that winston churchill said that admiral mann the military historian said without doubt it was the most studies of action of the war eighteen twelve and the duke of wellington's said that when the news reached france where wellington had defeated napoleon but was worried about his comeback the polish wellington said we don't have the lakes we cannot win and he refused to come over negotiate we had wonderful diplomats who became famous for something else there they are john quincy adams already bought in the middle  henry clay already bald on the right and the british negotiators but these men lived for a year in that city of ghent that you didn't know about or i didn't anyway it was the first place we went to work on this book was charming but is it peace negotiations there finally both sides decided to call it quits it was a stalemate the diplomatic turn is the status quo ante bellum let's give it all back and go back to where we were the y before the war well we had no choice we were broke the french and the dutch turned us down for loans to cover the expenses of our diplomats the man who supplied the copper to the mint of the united states to make pennies refuse the us government further credit so there is no eight hundred fifteen penny we were broke we didn't have a penny american revolution finally and oh i forgot andrew jackson oh oh yes yes yes can he he won he won he won he said so wellington didn't want to come so he sent his brother in law his brother in law led the attack in do andrew jackson's marksman artillery and said to his brother in law and two thousand were killed maimed in about twenty minutes and that was after the war was over but in the psyche of americans andrew jackson won and in the psyche of americans we had beaten the british the revolution was over what you were ready to go on the march thank you very much you know oh the question was if you go to virgins can't you see the remains shipyard no you can see the falls there are yes i yes and then take the road to the maritime museum is really worth doing ok questions sir well it's tricky because mostly what what what are the political incineration is or why provost went down one side or the other well at some level probably in london the prevost didn't necessarily know about the british  hoping that all of new england would be fact from the united states because the war was for popular but when anybody counts for much behaving like the rest of the mainland he is misinformed  the motives were more i think in the area it's and basically also vermonters didn't like being told by their governor who had one turn as governor that they shouldn't participate in the war one of the things i had to go over very quickly is the militias of of the states refused to cross borders or cross into canada and sometimes it caused terrible consequences for the first forces cross over what they had signed up son of thomas friedman but in middlebury and all revolutionary war captain on a cane went around the town with a fifer drummer honest to god and lined up louisiana purchase the question is did jefferson being a fast pacifist allow him to gain louisiana purchase i think i would have to say it was propensity for squandering fortunes and his being out of money during a true snake in eighteen zero three the piece of m e n he didn't money and washington used illegal fund sequestered for congress without congressional approval to get the money over to tell the rand payoff so that's how we got to louisiana purchase if you want to go to a deeper level jefferson believed in the west he grew up on the far this ridge settlement in virginia and he always believed in the west and the people who believed in him politically were the ones who were willing to fight the indians take more land and more land he believed in the land as much as anything but in the back of the doorway please well it would take i had i had an hour and i could take another hour just on time but very briefly he went over because of the commander of the american army who was in contact with him the most william henry harrison kept taking land from the indians by force or by trickery in treaties and to come so wanted his people to stop backing away and form a confederacy to hold their onto their their their land their heritage and stop the americans from going farther west and to come so was negotiating with harrison very tensely there's a scene in the book and finally tecumseh asked to go and talk madison himself and so harrison sent along word that madison would see tecumseh but then a white house aide said yes but you have to come along comes to said wow you know more than i do i know i have to cut my when the battles over i don't get to follow through on a lot of the family history and it's really a loss i love these talks because i learned more from these talks i have to say you sometimes than you would have to go around for but i find so if you can give me more information on that i would promise you off somewhere to use it in the future and anybody else to  by the way i'm going to have cards on the book table in there that have my website and contact information and any ideas you have your history or our history i'm grateful if you send me an e mail i always well thank you so