User:John Stephenson/sandbox

At sea the powerful Royal Navy blockaded the long American coastline (allowing some exports from New England, which was trading with Britain and Canada.) The blockade devastated American agricultural exports, but helped stimulate local factories that replaced goods previously imported. The American strategy of using small gunboats to defend ports was a fiasco, as the British raided the coast at will. The most famous episode was a series of British raids on the shores of Chesapeake Bay which included an attack on Washington that resulted in the burning of the White House and other public buildings. The American strategy of sending out several hundred privateers to attack British merchant ships was more successful, and hurt British commercial interests, especially in the West Indies. Although few in number compared to the Royal Navy, American Navy's heavy frigates prevailed in several one-on-one naval battles against British ships. The decisive use of naval power came on the Great Lakes and depended on a contest of building ships. Ultimately, Americans won control of Lake Erie and thus neutralized western Ontario and cut the native forces off from supplies. The British controlled Lake Ontario, preventing any major American invasion. The Americans controlled Lake Champlain, and a naval victory there forced a large British invasion army to turn back.

The Americans destroyed the power of the Indians of the Northwest and Southeast, thus securing a major war goal. With the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, British trade restrictions and impressment ended, thus eliminating that root cause of the war. With stalemate on the battlefields, both nations agreed to a peace that left the prewar boundaries intact. Before Congress ratified the treaty, the Americans decisively defeated a veteran British army at the Battle of New Orleans.

The war had the effects of both uniting Canadians and also uniting Americans far more closely than either population had been prior to the war. Canadians remember the war as a victory by avoiding conquest by the Americans, while the Americans celebrated victory in a "second war for independence" personified in the hero of New Orleans, Andrew Jackson.