There are wars of expansion. There are wars of ideology. The War of 1812 was a War of Pride and a War of Humiliation. The United States gained no territory and no power and the British lost none. Treasure was not an issue. Neither was political philosophy or self-determination. This was a War of Prestige. The United States declared war on the British Empire because it had been humbled. The battles that resulted were battles of status in every fight of the War of 1812, one side humiliated the other. The War of 1812 is today little discussed, but it was no trivial affair. It mattered because it changed the way the United States saw itself. And how the world saw us. It demonstrated America's full membership in the family of nations and forced Britain to acknowledge our permanent independence. It's concluding treaty established the special relationship between the United States and Great Britain, one of the most extraordinary alliances in history. The War launched the political ambitions of Andrew Jackson, whose later presidency would be a watershed in democratic governance. And it had another far darker significance for the Native peoples of North America. Officially, the War had just two sides. On June 1818-12, the United States, a weak infant nation, built on unproven ideas, declared war on the beleaguered superpower Great Britain. But these were not the only powers at war. Britain's primary enemy was Napoleon, and it struggled to defeat him at sea led to its side-show conflict with the Americans. Britain also had colonists in Canada who did much of the fighting and dying. In addition, Britain was allied with the Tacumsa Confederacy, a league of 15 Indian nations determined to halt American expansion. America's grievances were as follows. American soldiers were being impressed at sea into British naval service. British embargoes were illegally interfering with American French trade. The British were supporting and arming America's Indian enemies. In each of these grievances, we see injuries to American pride and America's full sense of independence. The British were treating the United States as though it had never left their empire. It was time to establish prestige through combat. That combat took place in three theaters of war, the Northwest Frontier, the American South, and the Atlantic. In the Northwest, the US invaded Canada repeatedly and was repeatedly expelled. American warships fought the British on the Great Lakes, and American troops fought Tacumsa's Indians at America's Western borders. In the Atlantic, American ships struggled to resist the world's greatest navy. Many British victories turned into invasions along the Atlantic coast. The most famous humiliation of the war was the burning of Washington. British forces who had fought into Chesapeake Bay and marched on the Capitol proceeded to vandalize great symbols of American pride. They set ablaze not only the US Treasury Building and the Capitol, but the White House itself. Amazingly, it was not American troops, but American weather that avenged this disgrace. Less than 24 hours after the Red Coats marched onto Washington. A tornado and a hurricane drove them back to their ships, killing British and American troops alike, and putting out most of the fires. In the South, the most famous battle of the war was fought two weeks after the peace treaty was signed. News of the treaty of Gant had not yet reached the New World when the British landed on the southern coast of Louisiana, intent on seizing the city of New Orleans. When General Andrew Jackson saw the enemy encamped just outside the city, he said, by the eternal they shall not sleep on our soil. The Battle of New Orleans was a route. Jackson's forces crushed the British and inflicted casualties of 20 to 1. The war had been fought for status, and the spoils of the war was status alone. Britain and America would henceforth be more siblings than parent and child. The special relationship between the powers would prove vital to world affairs through the present day. Andrew Jackson, born to a widow on a poor farm, would run for president as the hero of 1812, and by winning would prove the truly democratic character of the young nation. Between the British and the Americans, there was no clear winner, but the war of 1812 had won clear loser. When Tacumso fell at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, his Confederacy fell with him. It had been the last serious challenge to American expansion ever brought by the Indians. They would never again threaten America's conquest of the continent. For the Indians, at least, the war of 1812 was more than a war of pride and humiliation. It was the death of a people's dream. The war of 1812 was a war of pride and humiliation.