Chapter 21: US Events

War of 1812

The War of 1812 is one of the forgotten wars of the United States. The war lasted for over two years, and while it ended much like it started; in stalemate; it was in fact a war that once and for all confirmed American Independence. The offensive actions of the United States failed in every attempt to capture Canada. On the other hand, the British army was successfully stopped when it attempted to capture Baltimore and New Orleans. There were a number of American naval victories in which American vessels proved themselves superior to similarly sized British vessels. One of the main reasons that President James Madison declared war on Great Britain was because the British were stopping American ships at sea, searching them, and sometimes imprisoning American sailors. So a mainly this war was fought to free the US once and for all from Europe's control over the ironclad grip on trade they had acquired. This war, while by no stretch of the imagination a major victory, would basically assert that the United States was here to stay.

Morse Key (1837)

Samuel Morse and his assistant, developed Morse Code in the United States. While electrical telegraph systems were beginning to emerge in Europe, Morse is considered to have perfected the system with his simple code and reliable system of communication. In Europe William Fothergil Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patented a telegraph system almost at the same time as Morse. Their system used a number of needles on a board that could be moved to point to letters of the alphabet. The five-needle system saw great commercial success until the cables laid out for the system began to fail as a result of deteriorating insulation. Once Morse's system became known around the world, Europeans began to adopt the system rather than deal with the complex five-needle system by Cooke and Wheatstone. It became the European telegraphy standard in 1851.