The day after the Senate followed the House of Representatives
in voting to declare war against Great Britain, President James
Madison signs the declaration into law--and the War of 1812
begins. The American war declaration, opposed by a sizable
minority in Congress, had been called in response to the British
economic blockade of France, the induction of American seaman
into the British Royal Navy against their will, and the British
support of hostile Indian tribes along the Great Lakes frontier.
A faction of Congress known as the "War Hawks" had been
advocating war with Britain for several years and had not hidden
their hopes that a U.S. invasion of Canada might result in
significant territorial land gains for the United States. In the
months after President Madison proclaimed the state of war to be
in effect, American forces launched a three-point invasion of
Canada, all of which were decisively unsuccessful. In 1814, with
Napoleon Bonaparte's French Empire collapsing, the British were
able to allocate more