War of 1812

The War of 1812 grew out of British efforts to restrict the United States' transatlantic trade and the seizure and impressment of American sailors into the British Navy. On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on Great Britain, and by July the USS Constitution had won a major naval battle against the British in the Atlantic. Fighting spread across the United States, parts of Canada, and Spanish Florida, while indigenous people fought for their land. On March 26, 1814, US forces with allied Creeks and Cherokees defeated the Red Sticks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama, after which Georgia land belonging to the defeated Creeks was seized and sold in a lottery. On August 24, 1814, the British attacked Washington, DC, burned the White House, and forced First Lady Dolley Madison to flee. On September 13-14, Fort McHenry in Baltimore was bombarded through the night, inspiring The Star Spangled Banner, the poem that later became the national anthem. Strained by war with Napoleon in Europe, the British government agreed to peace negotiations, and the Treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24, 1814, ending the war, though the news did not reach United States forces until months later and the Battle of New Orleans continued until January 8, 1815. During the war Florida remained under Spanish control and became a haven for runaway slaves and Red Stick Creeks fighting the United States, and invasions of Florida by US troops under General Andrew Jackson during and after the war led to the First Seminole War. Florida did not become a US territory until 1821 with the Adams-Onis Treaty during the administration of President James Monroe. Some of the earliest settlers on Lake Monroe in the area now called Sanford were veterans of the war, including Elias Woodruff, who served under General Andrew Jackson in New Orleans, came to Florida from Mississippi in 1844, and whose descendants still lived in Sanford in 2009, and John Hughey of South Carolina, who arrived in 1845 to claim land granted under the Armed Occupation Act of 1842 and settled on land later known as Sanford Heights.

Sanford, Florida · United States