Today in History June 18 1812 : WAR OF 1812 BEGINS 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 military resources to the American war, and Washington, D.C., fell to the British in August. In Washington, British troops burned the White House, the Capitol, and other buildings in retaliation for the earlier burning of government buildings in Canada by U.S. Soldiers. In September, the tide of the war turned when Thomas Macdonough’s American naval force won a decisive victory at the Battle of Plattsburg Bay on Lake Champlain. The invading British army was forced to retreat back into Canada. The American victory on Lake Champlain led to the conclusion of U.S.-British peace negotiations in Belgium, and on December 24, 1814, the Treaty of Ghent was signed, formally ending the War of 1812. By the terms of the agreement, all conquered territory was to be returned, and a commission would be established to settle the boundary of the United States and Canada. British forces assailing the Gulf Coast were not informed of the treaty in time, and on January 8, 1815, the U.S. Forces under Andrew Jackson achieved the greatest American victory of the war at the Battle of New Orleans. The American public heard of Jackson’s victory and the Treaty of Ghent at approximately the same time, fostering a greater sentiment of self-confidence and shared identity throughout the young republic. ====================================================== THE ANCESTOR HUNT By Kenneth R Marks Mississippi is one of the states that does not have a central online state repository for searching historical newspapers. Several states use the Library of Congress Chronicling America site as their main central online site for searching old newspapers and Mississippi has most of its online newspapers available on that site. Mississippi also has additional newspapers from other websites. Some are free and many require a subscription. Below is a list of where the titles are stored and the link so that you can access them. There are over 1,500 newspapers that have been published in the Magnolia State - certainly not all of them are searchable online. But, there are quite a few that are indeed available. So go for it - find your Mississippi ancestors and all the interesting articles that capture the stories of their lives. Check out the list of newspapers at: http://tinyurl.com/yatzfe9w ====================================================== DID YOU KNOW? Fort Leavenworth was the first settlement in Kansas territory, and the oldest active Army post west of the Mississippi River?