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European Events Boost the British
In early 1814, at the battle of Leipzig, the European allies, including Britain, defeated Napoleon, who was exiled to the island of Elba. With Napoleon gone, Britain suddenly had more resources available to continue the war against the US. The British plans became more ambitious, involving three separate initiatives: an attack against the Middle States; an attack against New Orleans, designed in part to usurp control of the Mississippi; and an invasion of New York from the north.
Reorganization of US Military
The US, meanwhile, angered and embarrassed at its myriad failures on land, reorganized its army. The government promoted younger men, who had served with recent distinction, to the rank Major General. These new Major Generals included Andrew Jackson in the South and Jacob Brown in Western New York.
The reorganization of the American Army paid immediate dividends. The immature, undisciplined American troops of 1812 and 1813 were, by 1814, transformed into a fighting force capable of holding ground against British veterans. Though the battles of 1814 provided the US with no further opportunities to renew their attacks against Canada, they were able to stop the British advance and, on a larger level, forced the British to grudgingly respect American military power.
Battles Around Fort Erie
On July 3, 1814, as the refocused British were sending veteran reinforcements into Canada, American troops under Major General Brown retook Fort Erie in Ontario, which the US had abandoned in June 1813. US forces would use the fort as a base of operations during the Battle of Chippawa as well as at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane, where a brigade of British reinforcements engaged the US in the bloodiest standoff of the war. In August, the British moved against the Fort Erie, but the Americans held, inflicting serious losses on the British.
Larger British Battle Plans
The British attacks were prelude to a planned larger invasion, with almost 15,000 men primed and waiting in Canada. Having learned from the calamity of the Battle of Saratoga in the Revolutionary War, however, the British decided to build a water-based supply line. Control of Lake Champlain, a lake on the New York border just south of the Canadian border on the other side of New York State from Fort Erie, was key in maintaining the supply line. The British built a flotilla of ships to wrest the lake from the American ships patrolling it.
Battle of Lake Champlain
As the British prepared for a large land invasion at the small town of Plattsburgh on the New York side of Lake Champlain, a small US squadron of ships held the Lake, none of them as heavily armed as the British ships. To offset British firepower, the US commandant of ships, Thomas Macdonough came up with a plan, installing cables along his anchor that would allow him to quickly spin his boat and present the enemy with a fresh broadside. On September 11—the same day Admiral Cochrane brought his fleet into Chesapeake Bay before bombarding Baltimore—the British attacked from Lake Champlain at Plattsburgh. After almost six hours fighting was fierce, as the British seemed to have the advantage, Macdonough sprung his trap and opened fire from his fresh broadside, blasting the British flagship, Confiance and killing the British captain.
The British soon retreated, and—realizing that even if they took Plattsburgh, they would have no supply chain to sustain them—they abandoned their planned invasion of New York.
Combined with the British failure to capture Baltimore, the American victory on Lake Champlain marked the end of two of the three British prongs of attack. Though the US and Britain had been making small efforts to find a means for peace since 1813, after Lake Champlain, the two countries moved to the negotiating table in earnest.
