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new regiments was sanctioned together with the construction of twelve ships-of-the-line and twenty-four frigates. The next month the individual states were authorized to raise 50,000 volunteers and finally in April they were also directed to call out 100,000 militia. Finance was provided by a variety of increases in taxation (though it was agreed these should not be implemented until the actual outbreak of war), plans were drawn up for the invasion of Canada, and all shipping was confined to port. And, finally, despite the fact that the United States was far from ready for conflict - there were still, for example, only 7,000 men in the regular army - on June Madison approached Congress with a declaration of war.

The struggle that followed has often been portrayed as the result of British foolishness and intransigence. This, however, is unfair. It is true that until 1811 Britain had been unbending in her response to American protests over maritime policies, and further that, although serious protest at home had led to a concerted parliamentary campaign against the Orders-in-Council that led to their abolition on 23 June 1812, the move came too late to placate Washington. But all the evidence suggests that many Americans were bent on war come what may - that the war, in fact, was rooted not in the Atlantic but the Great Lakes. In the successive votes that got the war through Congress, the representatives of New England - the region with most reason to object to British control of the seas - either abstained or voted against, while those of the South - the region next most affected - were divided, and those of Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee unanimously in favour. The War of 1812 was, then, above all a war of American expansion, and it is no coincidence either that volunteering for the war was at its most enthusiastic on the western frontier, or that the first American attacks came in the vicinity not of Quebec and Montreal, but Niagara and Detroit.

The story that follows need not detain us here, except to say that, despite efforts to bring it to an end - backed up by the disappearance of the Orders-in-Council, the British offered peace talks as early as July 1812, while in September Russia put herself forward as a mediator - the war was still dragging on when Napoleon abdicated in April 1814: indeed, the very last shots were not fired until the embarrassing British defeat at New Orleans on 8 January 1815. What matters is that, whoever’s fault it was, many British troops and, above all, much British shipping, were tied up in a difficult war the other side of the Atlantic. Thanks to the employment of local auxiliaries, not many troops were sent prior to 1814- the total, apart from drafts of new recruits for units already in theatre, seems to have come to eleven infantry battalions, a battery of artillery and a regiment of cavalry. Yet the impact was still quite substantial: without the war with the United States, it might have been possible to send a much stronger expeditionary force to Germany in 1813 and thereby considerably enhance Britain’s diplomatic standing. The war was hardly a triumph for the United States: her forces won few battles against the British, Washington had been occupied and the White House burned, and the navy had been unable to prevent a close British blockade. Yet it was a major landmark in her history. In the course of the fighting the chief bastions of Indian resistance east of the Mississippi had been broken: Tecumseh had been killed at the battle of the Thames on 5 October 1813 and on 27 March 1814 Andrew Jackson smashed the powerful Creek confederation at Horseshoe Bend. And at the very end of the war the tide also turned in the fighting against the British. Even before New Orleans, an invasion of New York State from Canada and an attack on Baltimore had both been frustrated, and the British in consequence offered the Americans generous peace terms. To all intents and purposes, the British abandoned any attempt to penetrate south and west of the Great Lakes. No more, then, could Indian leaders such