British insults continued, especially the practice of using the Royal Navy to intercept unarmed American merchant ships and "impress" (conscript) all sailors who might be British subjects for service in the British navy[citation needed].
Madison's protests were ignored by the British, so he helped the nationalist Republicans to stir up public opinion in the west and south for war.
One argument by the so-called "war hawks" was that an American invasion of British Canada would be easy and would provide a good bargaining chip.
Madison carefully prepared public opinion for what everyone at the time called "Mr. Madison's War", but much less time and money was spent building up the army, navy, forts, and state militias.
After he convinced Congress to declare war, Madison was re-elected President over DeWitt Clinton but by a smaller margin than in 1808
Some historians in 2006 ranked Madison's failure to avoid war as the sixth worst presidential mistake ever made.
In the ensuing War of 1812, the British, Canadians, and First Nations[citation needed] allies won numerous victories, including the capture of Detroit after the American general there surrendered to a smaller force without a fight, and the occupation of Washington, D.C. which forced Madison to flee the city and watch as the White House was set on fire by British troops. The attack was in retaliation for a U.S. invasion of York, Upper Canada , in which U.S. forces twice occupied the city, burning the Parliament Buildings of Upper Canada.
The British also armed American Indians in the West, most notably followers of Tecumseh who met defeat at the Battle of the Thames.
The Americans built warships on the Great Lakes faster than the British and Oliver Hazard Perry defeated the British fleet to avert a major invasion of New York in 1814.
At sea, the British blockaded the entire coastline, cutting off both foreign trade and domestic trade between ports.
Economic hardship was severe in New England, but entrepreneurs built factories that soon became the basis of the industrial revolution in America.
Madison faced formidable obstacles—a divided cabinet, a factious party, a recalcitrant Congress, obstructionist governors, and incompetent generals, together with militia who refused to fight outside their states. Most serious was lack of unified popular support.
There were serious threats of disunion from New England, which engaged in massive smuggling to Canada and refused to provide financial support or soldiers.
However Andrew Jackson in the South and William Henry Harrison in the West destroyed the main Indian threats by 1813.
War-weariness led to the end of conflict after the apparent defeat of Napoleon in 1814.
Both the British and American will to continue were exhausted, the causes of the absurd war were forgotten, the Indian issue was resolved for the time being, and it was time for peace.
New England Federalists, however, set up a defeatist Hartford Convention that discussed secession. The Treaty of Ghent ended the war in 1815.
There were no territorial gains on either side as both sides returned to status quo ante bellum, that is, the previous boundaries. The Battle of New Orleans, in which Andrew Jackson defeated the British regulars, was fought fifteen days after the treaty was signed but before the news of the signing reached New Orleans.
With peace finally established, the U.S. was swept by a sense of euphoria and national achievement in finally securing solid independence from Britain.
In Canada, the war and its conclusion represented a successful defense of the country, and a defining era in the formation of an independent national identity.
This, coupled with ongoing suspicion of a U.S. desire to again invade the country, would culminate in creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867.
In the U.S., the Federalist Party collapsed and eventually disappeared from politics, as an Era of Good Feeling emerged with a much lower level of political fear and vituperation, although political contention certainly continued.
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