100 Fun Facts About War of 1812

Which nickname was given to the congressmen who pushed the United States into declaring war in June 1812?

The War Hawks. Mostly members from the South and West, they hoped the fighting would let the United States take Canada, an ambition the war proved was beyond its army.

What did the anti-war Federalist Party call the War of 1812?

Mr. Madison's War. Not one Federalist in Congress voted for it, and the party's north-eastern strongholds kept up their opposition for as long as the fighting lasted.

Which party supplied the votes for war in June 1812?

The Democratic-Republicans. They carried the House 79 to 49 on Southern and Western votes, while most members from the trading Northeast opposed a war declared mainly over grievances at sea.

The fall of which ruler in April 1814 freed thousands of British troops for the war in North America?

Napoleon. Once he had abdicated, Britain could ship whole brigades across the Atlantic, and within months they had invaded New York and burned Washington.

Which British prime minister was assassinated on 11 May 1812, weeks before the war began?

Spencer Perceval. The government that followed his repealed the trade orders America had protested against, but the news did not cross the Atlantic in time to stop the war.

Which American post guarding the Huron–Michigan passage was the first to fall to the British in 1812?

Mackinac. Its commander had not yet heard that war was declared when British regulars, fur traders and several hundred Indigenous warriors arrived, and he gave up without a shot.

Which city did American general William Hull surrender to Brock on 16 August 1812?

Detroit. Brock had the smaller force but marched straight at the fort while Tecumseh's warriors closed in, and Hull gave up to spare the town 'the horrors of an Indian massacre'.

Isaac Brock was killed during which October 1812 battle on the Niagara River?

Queenston Heights. Brock was shot leading a counter-attack up the slope, yet the Americans still lost, because much of their militia refused to cross the river onto foreign soil.

USS Constitution, a frigate made famous by the War of 1812, is preserved as a museum ship in which city?

Boston. She was built in the city in the 1790s, and when word spread in 1830 that she was to be scrapped, a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes raised a public outcry and she was repaired instead.

The River Raisin massacre of January 1813, which gave American troops a rallying cry, took place in which present-day state?

Michigan. Wounded prisoners left behind at the village of Frenchtown were killed by warriors allied to the British, and 'Remember the Raisin!' became the Americans' battle cry.

Which American commodore reported his 1813 victory on Lake Erie with the words 'We have met the enemy and they are ours'?

Oliver Hazard Perry. He scrawled the note on the back of an old envelope after capturing an entire British squadron, a win that forced the British army to pull back into Upper Canada.

The battle flag flown at the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie carried which dying words of Captain James Lawrence?

Don't give up the ship. Lawrence gave the order as he lay mortally wounded three months earlier, and his crew could not obey it: the British boarded and took his frigate anyway.

Which future president led the American delegation that negotiated the Treaty of Ghent?

John Quincy Adams. His five-man team, which included Henry Clay, held out through months of British demands for territory and came home with the pre-war borders intact.

York, the capital of Upper Canada burned by American troops in April 1813, is now which city?

Toronto. The Americans burned its parliament and other public buildings, and the tit-for-tat that followed ended the next year with British troops setting fire to Washington.

Which Canadian heroine walked some 30 km in 1813, dodging American sentries, to warn the British of an attack?

Laura Secord. Her request for a pension was refused and her walk went unrewarded for decades, until the visiting Prince of Wales heard the story in 1860 and sent her £100.

After burning Washington in 1814, the British were beaten off weeks later at which nearby port city?

Baltimore. A sharpshooter killed the general who had burned the capital as his troops advanced on the city, and the fleet's guns failed to batter its harbour fort into surrender.

Charles de Salaberry's Canadian volunteers turned back a far larger American army marching on Montreal at which 1813 battle?

Châteauguay. From behind log barricades de Salaberry's men raised a din of bugle calls and cheers, so the Americans could not tell how few defenders they faced and gave up the march.

Which American general's brigade of grey-clad regulars beat the British in open battle at Chippawa in July 1814?

Winfield Scott. Short of blue cloth, his men wore militia grey, so the British commander took them for amateurs; months of hard drill had made them anything but.

Which inconclusive July 1814 battle near Niagara Falls was one of the bloodiest of the war?

Lundy's Lane. Exhausted troops fought hand to hand around the British guns in the pitch dark of a sultry night, often unable to tell friend from foe, and neither side could win.

After the British burned the Library of Congress in 1814, which Founding Father sold his own books to restock it?

Thomas Jefferson. Congress bought all 6,487 of his volumes to start again, but a second fire in 1851 went on to destroy nearly two-thirds of them.

Who commanded the American squadron that won the Battle of Plattsburgh on Lake Champlain?

Thomas Macdonough. His victory made a British army of some 11,000 turn back to Canada, and pushed Britain's negotiators at Ghent to drop their territorial demands.

Tariff money the British took from occupied Castine, Maine, helped found which university?

Dalhousie. Customs duties collected while the British held the port went home to Halifax, where the Earl of Dalhousie used them in 1818 to found a college open to students of every church.

Which British general led the force that captured and burned Washington in August 1814?

Robert Ross. Less than three weeks after his troops burned the capital's public buildings, an American rifleman shot him dead as he rode at the head of his next advance.

The rout of American militia at which battle opened the road to Washington?

Bladensburg. The outflanked militia broke and ran with no plan for a retreat, and by that same evening British troops were marching into the capital.

What put out the fires in Washington less than a day after the British lit them?

A violent thunderstorm. Possibly a hurricane, it spun a tornado through the city, and its flying debris is said to have killed more British soldiers than the capital's defenders had.

What did British officers do inside the White House in August 1814 before setting it on fire?

Ate the president's dinner. The table had been laid for his guests, and a servant who had helped prepare the meal recalled that the invaders finished it and drank the wine.

The full-length portrait rescued from the White House before the British burned it in 1814 depicts whom?

George Washington. Legend has the First Lady cutting the canvas from its frame herself, but a servant who was there wrote that staff took the huge portrait down and sent it off by wagon.

Which singer topped the American charts in 1959 with the comic ballad 'The Battle of New Orleans'?

Johnny Horton. The song was written by Jimmy Driftwood, an Arkansas school principal who set the story of the battle to an old fiddle tune to get his pupils interested in history.

'Defence of Fort M'Henry' was the original title of the poem that became which song?

The Star-Spangled Banner. Printed as a handbill within days of the 1814 bombardment, it was sung for more than a century before Congress made it the official national anthem in 1931.

Francis Scott Key's poem about Fort McHenry was set to which tune of a London gentlemen's music club?

The Anacreontic Song. Its tune was so popular in America that Key had already fitted an earlier patriotic song of his own to it in 1805, and he wrote his new verses to match.

Who ran both the State Department and the War Department through the final months of the War of 1812?

James Monroe. When the secretary of war resigned after the capital was burned, he took on that office as well, and two years later he was elected president.

The huge flag that flew over Fort McHenry in 1814 is now kept and displayed by which institution?

The Smithsonian. Mary Pickersgill's 30-by-42-foot flag stayed with the fort commander's family for ninety years, and they snipped pieces off it as souvenirs before it went to the museum.

The Red Sticks, who fought the Americans in the South, were a faction of which nation?

The Creek (Muscogee). The fighting began as a civil war inside the nation, and other Creeks fought beside the Americans, yet the peace treaty took more than 20 million acres from the nation as a whole.

What did the smuggler Jean Lafitte and his men receive for helping to defend New Orleans in 1815?

A full pardon. The British had offered to pay him handsomely to fight on their side; he took the offer to the Americans instead and bargained for his men's freedom from prosecution.

Which future Texas hero was badly wounded as a young lieutenant at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814?

Sam Houston. Among the first over the enemy barricade, he took three wounds that nearly killed him, and his courage won him the lasting patronage of his commanding general.

The Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, was signed on the eve of which holiday?

Christmas. Signed on 24 December 1814, the treaty handed back every conquest and never mentioned impressment, the grievance that had taken America to war.

The city of Ghent, where the peace was signed, lies in which modern country?

Belgium. The country did not exist in 1814: Ghent was about to be joined to the new Kingdom of the Netherlands, and Belgium broke away only in the revolution of 1830.

Which general won the lopsided Battle of New Orleans two weeks after the peace treaty had been signed?

Andrew Jackson. News of the peace had not yet crossed the Atlantic, so the battle changed nothing in the treaty, but it made him a national hero and, in 1828, president.

Which British major general commanded the attack on New Orleans in January 1815?

Edward Pakenham. The Duke of Wellington's brother-in-law rode forward to rally his faltering columns, was hit by an American volley and died of his wounds soon after.

The spell of national unity that followed the War of 1812 is known as the Era of what?

Good Feelings. With the anti-war Federalists discredited and fading away, one party ran national politics almost unopposed, and much of the old rancour went with them.

New England Federalists met to air their grievances about the war in which city over the winter of 1814–15?

Hartford. As its delegates neared Washington with their demands, news arrived of peace and of the victory at New Orleans; the protest now looked disloyal, and the party never recovered.

The 1817 Rush–Bagot Treaty demilitarised which waters?

The Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. Each country agreed to keep no more than a vessel or two on each lake, which ended the naval building race there.

USS Constitution earned which nickname after British shots bounced off her hull against HMS Guerriere?

Old Ironsides. A sailor is said to have shouted 'Huzzah! Her sides are made of iron!', and half an hour later the British frigate was such a wreck that her captors had to burn her.

Which June 1813 frigate duel off New England ended within fifteen minutes with the American ship boarded and captured?

Shannon vs Chesapeake. The British captain, who had drilled his crew for seven years, sent a written challenge into port, and the fight that followed was over in about a quarter of an hour.

Legend traces which national nickname to a New York meatpacker who supplied army rations in the War of 1812?

Uncle Sam. The story says soldiers joked that the 'U.S.' stamped on Samuel Wilson's barrels stood for him, but dictionaries say only that the name grew out of those initials during the war.

In 1807 HMS Leopard fired on an American frigate off Virginia and boarded her in search of what?

Royal Navy deserters. The British killed three of the crew and took four men off the ship, and American fury over the seizure of sailors smouldered until war came five years later.

Who led the American forces at the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe against Tecumseh's confederacy?

William Henry Harrison. The battle gave him the nickname 'Tippecanoe', and nearly thirty years later the slogan 'Tippecanoe and Tyler Too' carried him to the presidency.

Tecumseh's brother, the spiritual leader known as 'the Prophet', was named what?

Tenskwatawa. His accurate prediction of a solar eclipse in 1806 won him a following across the tribes; a defeat in 1811, fought while his brother was away, lost him most of it.

Fort Dearborn, whose evacuees were ambushed in August 1812, stood where today?

Chicago. Potawatomi warriors attacked the column soon after it left and the empty fort was burned; the rebuilt post grew into the city, whose flag carries a star in its memory.

American general James Wilkinson, who led the 1813 push on Montreal, was secretly paid by which country?

Spain. He swore secret allegiance to its king in 1787 and drew its pension as agent 'Number Thirteen', all while rising to become the most senior general in the United States Army.

Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, a Fourth of July staple, marks not the War of 1812 but Russia's defeat of which invader?

France's 1812 invasion of Russia is what the cannon fire recalls. The piece only became a July 4 tradition after conductor Arthur Fiedler programmed it in 1974.

HMS Terror, a bomb ship that shelled Fort McHenry in 1814, later vanished in the ice on whose Arctic voyage?

John Franklin took HMS Terror into the Northwest Passage in 1845 because a bomb ship's frame, built to absorb mortar recoil, was thought strong enough for sea ice.

Which American explorer, namesake of a famous Colorado mountain, was killed leading the 1813 attack on York?

Zebulon Pike died when the retreating British blew up their powder magazine, showering his troops with rock. He never reached the summit of the peak that carries his name.

Francis Scott Key, who watched the 1814 bombardment of Fort McHenry from a ship, earned his living as what?

A lawyer by trade, Key had gone out to the British fleet to win a captured friend's release when the attack began. In his youth he almost became an Episcopal priest.

Tecumseh, who rallied a great confederacy to resist American expansion, belonged to which people?

Shawnee chiefs led by persuasion rather than command, so Tecumseh travelled some 3,000 miles in six months to recruit allies in person.

Fort McHenry, which withstood a 25-hour British bombardment in September 1814, stands in which state?

Maryland's harbour fort is the only place in the United States designated both a National Monument and a Historic Shrine. During the Civil War it served as a military prison.

Which British war hero, asked in 1814 to take command in North America, advised peace without territorial demands?

Wellington said he would go but was needed more in Europe, and told ministers that the state of the war gave Britain no right to demand American territory.

Which king, by then too ill to rule in person, was Britain's monarch throughout the War of 1812?

George III, the same king the American colonies had rebelled against, relapsed into illness in 1810. His eldest son ruled as Prince Regent for the whole war.

Which steamboat pioneer designed the world's first steam-powered warship to defend New York Harbor in 1814?

Robert Fulton died in February 1815 before his floating battery, Demologos, was finished. The war ended first, so the ship never saw action.

In 1818, with the War of 1812 over, a treaty with Britain ran the border west to the Rockies along which line?

The 49th parallel was chosen because a straight line would be easier to survey across the plains than the old boundaries based on watersheds.

Upper Canada, the colony American armies kept invading during the War of 1812, lies within which modern province?

Ontario's old name had nothing to do with north. 'Upper' meant upriver, beyond the headwaters of the St. Lawrence, while Lower Canada downstream became Quebec.

Which Tennessee frontiersman, later an Alamo defender, served as a militia scout in the 1813 war against the Red Sticks?

Davy Crockett signed on for 90 days in September 1813 and spent much of it hunting wild game for the troops, a job he felt suited him better than fighting.

Which state, scene of the last great battle of the War of 1812, joined the Union just weeks before the fighting began?

Louisiana became the 18th state on April 30, 1812, less than two months before Congress voted for war. Within three years a British army was at the gates of its largest city.

Tecumseh was killed, and his confederacy collapsed, at which October 1813 battle in Upper Canada?

The Thames, also known as Moraviantown, saw American mounted infantry overrun the British lines. Tecumseh's warriors fought on until he fell, and his alliance never recovered.

The financial disarray left by the War of 1812 persuaded Congress to charter which institution in 1816?

A national bank had lapsed in 1811, when rival private banks blocked its recharter. Its successor, the Second Bank of the United States, opened in Philadelphia in 1817.

USS Constitution's hull, which British shot struggled to pierce in 1812, owed its strength to which dense Southern wood?

Live oak cut on the Georgia coast went into a hull built 21 inches thick. For a later restoration the Navy turned up a forgotten stockpile of the timber cut in the 1850s.

Which American captain, already famous for burning the frigate Philadelphia at Tripoli, captured HMS Macedonian in 1812?

Stephen Decatur's frigate United States outgunned Macedonian at long range and left her a dismasted wreck. Her captain had earlier bet a beaver hat that his ship would win.

The 1813 Battle of Lake Erie, an American naval victory, was fought near Put-in-Bay off the shore of which state?

Ohio's South Bass Island sheltered the American squadron before the battle, and a 352-foot memorial column stands at Put-in-Bay.

Maine broke away in 1820 partly out of anger that which state had refused to defend it from British invaders in 1814?

Massachusetts governed Maine as a district, and its anti-war merchants refused to defend the coast when the British invaded. Maine entered the Union on its own under the Missouri Compromise.

Which future president first won fame in September 1812 by defending an Indiana Territory fort against attack?

Zachary Taylor's stand was the American forces' first land victory of the war. It earned the young captain what one historian calls the first brevet promotion in the army's history.

Which future Civil War admiral served as a boy midshipman aboard the frigate USS Essex during the War of 1812?

David Farragut was 11 when he was trusted to bring a ship captured by Essex safely into port. He had become a midshipman at nine.

Which Canadian canal, famed for winter skating, was built after the War of 1812 as a safe military supply route?

The Rideau gave military vessels a protected inland route west from Montreal, away from the American border. No battle has been fought between the two countries since it opened.

Which British admiral spent 1813 and 1814 raiding American coastal towns and planned the attack on the capital?

George Cockburn went in person to burn the premises of the capital's leading newspaper, but relented when women living nearby pleaded that the fire would spread to their homes.

The rockets that British ships fired at Fort McHenry in 1814 were named after which English inventor?

William Congreve's rockets followed those the Kingdom of Mysore had fired at the East India Company in the 1790s. Against a fort with little to set alight they did scant damage.

Which Latin phrase sums up the Treaty of Ghent, under which each side handed back everything it had conquered?

Status quo ante bellum, the state of things before the war, meant the borders of June 1812 were restored, so nearly three years of fighting moved the frontier not at all.

USS Constitution's second frigate victory, over HMS Java in December 1812, came off the coast of which country?

Brazil's coast saw Java left an unmanageable wreck. Her captor burned her, but first salvaged her wheel to replace his own, which had been shot away in the fight.

Which New York town did British forces burn in December 1813 in revenge for the American torching of Newark?

Buffalo lost all but four of its buildings. Weeks earlier a retreating American garrison had burned Newark and turned its people out into a winter night.

Which government building did William Thornton persuade British officers to spare when they burned the capital in 1814?

The Patent Office was saved by its superintendent, who won the invaders' cooperation. Weeks later Congress met there, in one of the few buildings left that was big enough to hold it.

Which Swiss-born Treasury secretary left the cabinet during the War of 1812 and helped negotiate the peace at Ghent?

Albert Gallatin, born in Geneva, is the longest-serving Treasury secretary in American history. He was often left to run the federal government while the president summered at home.

Which Union general of the Civil War was given the middle name Tecumseh by a father who admired the fallen leader?

William Sherman wrote that his father had 'caught a fancy' for the great chief. By one account the boy was called simply Tecumseh until a priest added William at his baptism.

Which New York fur magnate, the first American multi-millionaire, lost his Oregon trading post to the British in 1813?

John Jacob Astor's partners sold the post to a Montreal rival in 1813, and it was renamed Fort George. He went on to die the wealthiest person in the United States.

The frigate USS Essex spent 1813 capturing British whaling ships in which ocean?

The Pacific cruise took thirteen British whalers in five months and gave the United States its first naval base in that ocean, on an island in the Marquesas.

Britain opened the Ghent peace talks by demanding a vast buffer state south of the lakes for whom?

Indigenous nations were to have a barrier state that the British called essential to any peace. The Americans refused to consider it, and the talks came to the brink of breakdown.

American prisoners of war, held for months after the peace, were shot by guards in 1815 at which English prison?

Dartmoor held about 6,500 American sailors in leaking, badly fed blocks. Britain later paid compensation to the families of the seven men killed.

Which New York politician, later the driving force behind the Erie Canal, lost the wartime presidential race of 1812?

DeWitt Clinton drew support from Federalists and from dissidents in the president's own party, and lost a close race. Five years later he was governor, building his canal.

Which ceremonial object, taken from York's legislature by American troops in 1813, did the United States return in 1934?

The Speaker's mace, the symbol of the assembly's authority, stayed in American hands for 121 years before it went home as a goodwill gesture.

The smuggler Jean Lafitte ran his fleet from an island base in which bay south of New Orleans?

Barataria was far from the nearest naval base, so cargo could be landed unseen by customs men. An American naval force raided it in September 1814 and took most of Lafitte's fleet.

Which architect, winner of the original 1792 design competition, rebuilt the White House after the British burned it?

James Hoban sat on the city council for most of his later life, except during the years he spent rebuilding the gutted mansion he had first designed.

Which colonel turned his claim to have killed Tecumseh in 1813 into a campaign boast and a term as vice president?

Richard Johnson's supporters made the deed his campaign chant. He became the only vice president ever chosen by the Senate, after falling one electoral vote short.

HMS St Lawrence, a 112-gun warship larger than Nelson's Victory, was built in 1814 at which Canadian dockyard?

Kingston's shipwrights built the only ship of the line the British navy ever launched in fresh water. Her arrival ended the naval contest on the lake without her firing a shot.

Which November 1813 battle beside the St. Lawrence River made the Americans abandon their march on Montreal?

Crysler's Farm saw a British and Canadian force defeat a much larger American army, whose commander then called off the whole autumn campaign.

Red Stick warriors stormed which stockade north of Mobile in August 1813, killing most of the people sheltering inside?

Fort Mims was a fortified homestead rather than an army post, held by settlers and militia. Its fall became the rallying cry of the campaign against the Red Sticks.

Which governor general of British North America led the invasion army driven back at Plattsburgh in 1814?

George Prevost was blamed for the defeat in the navy's official despatch and asked for a court martial to clear his name. He died a week before it was due to sit.

Which vice president, a signer of the 1776 Declaration, died in office in November 1814 with the war unfinished?

Elbridge Gerry gave his name to the gerrymander, coined for the contorted districts drawn while he was a governor. He was the second vice president in a row to die in office.

The Merikins, formerly enslaved Americans who fought for Britain as Colonial Marines, settled on which Caribbean island?

Trinidad granted the veterans land in the south of the island in 1815 and 1816, and some of their Company villages survive.

During the War of 1812 the British occupied eastern Maine and revived which name for the colony they planned there?

New Ireland had first been tried during the Revolution, when it lasted four years. The second attempt, run from Halifax, survived only eight months.

The rival captains killed when USS Enterprise fought HMS Boxer in 1813 are buried side by side in which Maine city?

Portland gave the American and British commanders a joint state funeral, and the two enemies lie together in the city's Eastern Cemetery.

The main Battle of New Orleans was fought about five miles downriver from the French Quarter on which plantation?

Chalmette's main house and sugar mill were destroyed in the fighting. Congress set the battlefield aside as a federal memorial site in 1907, and a 100-foot monument marks it.

Which British prime minister took office in June 1812 and governed for the whole of the war with America?

Lord Liverpool stayed in office until 1827, a premiership that also took in Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna. He told his envoys at Ghent to offer a return to the pre-war position.

The fifteen-star flag that flew over Fort McHenry had gained stars and stripes for Vermont and which other state?

Kentucky and Vermont each brought a new star and a new stripe under the Flag Act of 1794. No other official American flag has carried more than thirteen stripes.