During Thomas Jefferson's second term the United States became embroiled in the Napoleonic wars, as Britain and France interfered with American shipping. To assert America’s neutral rights, Congress adopted an embargo prohibiting American trade with foreign countries. An unpopular and costly failure, the embargo provoked widespread smuggling.

By 1812, many Americans believed that only war with Britain could preserve Americans neutral rights and national honor. American grievances included interference with American trade, impressment of thousands of American sailors, and incitement of Indian attacks.

The War of 1812 was crucial to the future of the United States. It effectively destroyed Indians' ability to resist American expansion. It allowed the United States to solidify its control over the lower Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. It encouraged New England merchants to invest in textile factories. It also ended America’s brief experiment with a two party political system, as the Federalists were branded as traitors for failing to support the war.

Following the War of 1812, a spirit of nationalism pervaded the nation, evident in the creation of a second Bank of the United States; enactment of a tariff to protect industry, and a series of Supreme Court decisions strengthening the power of the central government. The United States acquired Florida from Spain, convinced Russia and Spain to relinquish their claims to the Oregon country, and delivered a strong warning, in the Monroe Doctrine, that European powers were not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere.

A severe economic depression, the Panic of 1819, and a bitter controversy over slavery in Missouri in 1819 and 1820, provoked growing political divisions and a deepening sectional split between North and South.

Pictures

-The United States Capitol after the British burned Washington, D.C. in August 1814.

• http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/era.cfm?eraID=4&smtid=1
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812 (pictures)