In this exalted moment it was vouchsafed him to sound a trumpet call, clear and far-echoing, as did Rouget de Lisle when, with soul aflame, he wrote the _Marseillaise_ for France.

If it was the destiny of the War of 1812 to weld the nation as a union, the spirit of the consummation was expressed for all time in the lines which a hundred million of free people sing today: O! say can you see by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
The luckless endeavor to capture Baltimore by sea and land was the last British expedition that alarmed the Atlantic coast.

The hostile army and naval forces withdrew to Jamaica, from which base were planned and undertaken the Louisiana campaign and the battle of New Orleans.
* * * * * The brilliant leadership and operations of Andrew Jackson were so detached and remote from all other activities that he may be said to have fought a private war of his own.

It had seemed clear to Madison that, as a military precaution, the control of West Florida should be wrenched from Spain, whose neutrality was dubious and whose Gulf territory was the rendezvous of privateers, pirates, and other lawless gentry, besides offering convenient opportunity for British invasion by sea.

As early as the autumn of 1812 troops were collected to seize and hold this region for the duration of the war.