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Exactly 1,404 years after the sack of Rome, we sacked Washington, DC, torching the White House. Who is the “we” I speak of? Well, I’m Canadian, and after four years of Canada being the apartment above a meth lab I’d like to say WE burned the White House, but it’s more complicated than that, because Canada wouldn’t officially exist for another half-century.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: August 24, 1814--
The War of 1812 began because Britain, who had the world’s largest navy, was restricting trade to its traitorous colonies. So, the U.S. declared war on Britain and immediately invaded Canada, which at the time was still a British colony. And the Americans got their asses kicked. Canada, fuck yeah!
After that, the war had mixed results, but on August 24, 1814, serious shit went down. Earlier in the day British forces handed a humiliating defeat to the Americans at the Battle of Bladensburg, only nine miles northeast of DC. Knowing this, President James Madison, his top brass and his government fled the capital, which turned out to be wise. Because the Brits then showed up in Washington and, in retribution for the damage Americans had done invading Canada, set much of the city on fire. This included not just the White House (then referred to as the Presidential Mansion) but several military and government buildings, including the Capitol Building and the U.S. Treasury. At least it was a foreign power attacking the Capitol Building that time, and not that 2021 civil war redux bullshit.
Anyway, Americans are all “In God We Trust” and the Lord sent a mighty storm the next day to put out the fires. Or: random chance. One of those two.
A few weeks later, on September 11, the Americans won a naval victory against the British fleet, and the Brits retaliated the next day with a 25-hour naval bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore. The next day the fort’s defenders raised a large American flag as a fuck you to the Brits and Francis Scott Key wrote some song about it. Perhaps you’ve heard it.
A treaty was signed the following December but tirades on Twitter weren’t a thing yet, so it took a while for certain parties to get the memo, which is why the Brits attacked New Orleans in January and lost, leaving Americans with a finishing taste of victory even though precisely zero of their strategic aims for the war had been realized.
The war was basically a wash, but it must be noted that Native Americans played a major role, fighting on both sides, and suffering heavy casualties.
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