In June of 1812, the fledgling United States of America declared war on England - in a very real sense the equivalent of the 1959 Peter Sellers' movie The Mouse that Roared, in which the fictional European principality of "Grand Fenwick" declares war upon the United States. The British Empire ruled the waves - and Napoleon notwithstanding, thus still ruled much of the world. As author Walter R. Borneman notes in his new book, 1812: The War That Forged a Nation, it was "a silly little war - fought between creaking sailing ships and inexperienced armies often led by bumbling generals."

The war was largely the result of the British practice of stopping ships on the high seas and "pressing" anyone into naval service who appeared to be a British subject (it should be noted that the British did recognize American sovereignty in the context of American citizens, but the British believed that someone was "once British, always British," and they would therefore still press even naturalized Americans into service). This was an extension of British naval law that contemplated that naval officers could go ashore and essentially compel any able-bodied person to go to sea (talk about a draft!).

However, some of the "pro war hawks" actively promoting the notion of open war with England also had other motives: namely, the cry of what would ultimately come to be known as "manifest destiny," the idea that the United States should occupy the entire breadth of the continent. In this context, that meant bringing Canada into the fold. So the war was essentially the result of two purposes: first, to stop what was regarded as an invasive and offensive British naval practice, and second, to extend American dominance northward.

War was declared by the smallest margin in American history (although it should be noted that for the past few decades nobody actually bothers to "declare" war anymore). And Borneman notes that there were more than a few intelligence "failures" leading up to that war as well (just so we wouldn't think recent events are isolated occurrences). Those would include James Madison's presentation of a report purchased from a con artist that supposedly revealed information about a British plot to encourage the secession of the New England states (at the time, New Englanders were the ones not quite so certain about this whole "union" thing). Unfortunately for Madison, the reports contained nothing that couldn't have been obtained by reading the Boston newspapers and identified not one individual "conspirator." The upshot of the whole thing was that to many, the war effort remained "Mr. Madison's War," a war many thought "was commenced in folly, it is proposed to be carried on with madness, and (unless speedily terminated) will end in ruin."