The Glenn Beck Program - June 27, 2026


The War of 1812： From Ashes to Anthem ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 12

Topics
Francis Scott Key and British bombardment at Fort McHenry
Hosted by
Glenn Beck
Mentioned
Andrew Jackson James Madison Mary Pickersgill Thomas Jefferson William Beans Robert Henry Goldsboro Francis Scott Key George Washington Patriot Mobile William Hull John Skinner Baltimore Edward Pakenham Holly Madison Henry Clay Aaron Burr Beck Oliver Hazard Perry Stephen Pleasanton George Armistead and 32 more
Best of the Program ｜ Guest： Ceirion Dewar ｜ 6⧸26⧸26 European Communists BAN Air Conditioning Amid Deadly Heat Wave？! ｜ Guests： Lara Trump & Jon Erwin ｜ 6⧸29⧸26

Episode Stats


Length

50 minutes

Words per minute

142.19

Word count

7,219

Sentence count

599

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

21

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

It s August, 1814, and British troops are closing in on the young nation s capital. Amid the growing frenzy of activity, one unassuming hero emerges: Stephen Pleasanton, a senior clerk in the U.S. State Department. He s racing against time to save America s most precious possessions, the fragile papers that form the blueprints of our nation.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 It's August, 1814.
00:00:04.180 The air in Washington is heavy with humidity and dread.
00:00:08.820 British troops are in Maryland, closing in a rapidly tightening noose around the young nation's capital.
00:00:15.380 The city, it's a sitting dock, half-built, barely defended.
00:00:19.880 Amid the growing frenzy of activity, one unassuming hero emerges.
00:00:24.940 Stephen Pleasanton, a senior clerk in the State Department.
00:00:29.660 He's just a guy with a desk job, racing against time to save America's indispensable, most
00:00:35.360 priceless possessions, the fragile papers that form the blueprints of our nation.
00:00:40.920 So Stephen Pleasanton springs into action.
00:00:44.380 He dashes out and buys bolts of sturdy linen.
00:00:48.400 Back at the office, he and his fellow clerks grab scissors and just start cutting.
00:00:52.480 They stitch the fabric into makeshift book bags.
00:00:55.840 Then they open the drawers in the cabinets, delicately lifting out the contents.
00:01:01.200 The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, treaties, letters in George Washington's
00:01:06.660 handwriting.
00:01:07.520 These are the original copies, the document DNA of America.
00:01:13.640 Pleasanton meticulously tucks them into bags.
00:01:16.960 There is no margin for error here.
00:01:19.140 There can be zero snags or tears.
00:01:22.020 Yet the clock is ticking.
00:01:23.780 Rumors of redcoats swarm the streets.
00:01:27.100 The bags are quickly loaded onto a makeshift convoy of wagons.
00:01:31.660 Pleasanton leads the charge, escorting them across the Potomac at dusk.
00:01:36.780 They rumble into a grist mill on the Virginia side of Chain Bridge, wheels grinding over rough roads.
00:01:43.820 They unload the bags, and they're about to stash them when Pleasanton learns there is a cannon foundry nearby.
00:01:50.200 He knows it could be a prime target for the British.
00:01:53.260 too risky. He rallies locals and secures more wagons from nearby farms. They reload the precious
00:02:00.140 cargo and push on. The wagons roll another 30 miles west through the darkness. Finally,
00:02:07.020 they spot their new destination. A deserted mansion near Leesburg, Virginia. Inside,
00:02:14.380 down in the basement, is an empty brick vault. As Pleasanton and others rush the documents
00:02:21.020 into the vault. Every noise turns their head. Every rustle in the woods could be
00:02:26.260 an enemy scout. The linen bags are stacked inside the brick chamber.
00:02:32.200 Pleasanton finally closes the heavy door and locks it. He exhales with relief. The
00:02:39.940 heart of America beats on, but now it's cloaked in linen and brick. You know,
00:02:47.020 Sometimes the fate of history hinges on those
00:02:50.020 who just recognize the moment and what is worth saving.
00:02:55.460 He steps back into the stuffy night air and pauses.
00:02:58.620 In the distance, an eerie glow lights the horizon.
00:03:02.640 It's the fire of burning buildings in the nation's capital.
00:03:07.760 Washington is ablaze.
00:03:11.660 This is the American story, The Beginnings,
00:03:15.520 Adapted from the book of the same title by David Barton and Tim Barton.
00:03:21.360 Episode 12, The War of 1812, From Ashes to Anthem.
00:03:29.420 In 1808, James Madison, that quiet intellectual who had been Thomas Jefferson's right-hand man as Secretary of State,
00:03:37.280 was easily elected as the nation's fourth president.
00:03:40.820 But right from the start, Madison inherited a massive headache.
00:03:45.360 Britain and France were locked in their latest war, and neither respected America's neutrality.
00:03:51.460 They intercepted U.S. ships, seizing cargo and disrupting trade like it was no big deal.
00:03:56.680 To push back, Madison tried a limited embargo, banning U.S. trade with Britain and France.
00:04:02.260 It was supposed to hurt their economies without crippling ours, but it didn't work.
00:04:07.240 Britain and France were America's biggest customers,
00:04:10.180 and choking off that trade meant choking the young nation's economy.
00:04:14.840 Britain had another motive for stopping U.S. ships.
00:04:17.820 Their enormous navy and war with Napoleon demanded more sailors.
00:04:22.800 American merchant ships, with their higher pay and better conditions,
00:04:26.280 had become a kind of floating job fare for British sailors.
00:04:30.380 In fact, about 30% of American sailors were actually British guys who had made the switch.
00:04:35.920 So Britain turned to impressment, forcibly grabbing men and shoving them into service.
00:04:42.960 They boarded U.S. ships, dragged off their own citizens, and also took 10,000 American citizens in the process.
00:04:50.660 France did some of this too, but nowhere near the scale of Great Britain.
00:04:56.200 To Americans, this wasn't just an insult, it was a ghost of the revolution.
00:05:01.680 Impressment had been one of the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence.
00:05:06.280 Now, it was happening again.
00:05:08.680 And as if that weren't enough, Britain brushed aside U.S. protests,
00:05:12.900 ignored claims of neutrality, and quietly armed Native American tribes, 0.62
00:05:17.860 encouraging them to raid settlers along the western frontier.
00:05:22.380 By June 1812, Madison had had it. He was fed up.
00:05:26.980 He sent Congress a grim list of British offenses.
00:05:30.360 After weeks of debate, Congress did something they had never done before.
00:05:33.660 Congress declared war. But this was no slam-dunk unified moment. The House vote was 79-49,
00:05:43.520 the Senate 19-13. Barely 60% of Congress supported the decision, the slimmest margin for any declared
00:05:52.720 war in all of U.S. history. The loudest opponents were the Federalists, mostly from New England.
00:05:58.600 They were cozy with Britain, their biggest commercial partner. War to them looked like 0.78
00:06:03.300 economic suicide. They sneered at the conflict as Mr. Madison's war, pinning it squarely on
00:06:09.580 the soft-spoken president. This Congress was packed, however, with fiery newcomers called
00:06:15.700 war hawks, young guns from the West pushing for action. Their leader was Henry Clay from Kentucky,
00:06:23.440 a charismatic orator who got elected Speaker of the House and stacked key committees with
00:06:28.520 all of his allies. These war hawks? They talked of national honor, of standing up to the British
00:06:34.540 arrogance, but they also dreamt of expansion. Canada to the north, Spanish Florida to the south,
00:06:41.280 a continent waiting, they believe, to be claimed by Americans.
00:06:47.380 Declaring war sounded bold, but America's military was still a joke compared to Britain's.
00:06:53.160 Both Jefferson and Madison had shrunk the forces during peacetime.
00:06:58.040 The U.S. had a tiny army and navy scattered and underfunded.
00:07:02.360 State militias, rusty from decades without real threats, were poorly trained and equipped.
00:07:08.320 The one silver lining here was that Britain was bogged down in a massive war with France,
00:07:14.400 so most of their elite troops were tied up in Europe.
00:07:17.320 The war in North America to British leaders, that was just an annoying sideshow.
00:07:23.160 On paper, the Americans even seemed to have an advantage.
00:07:27.660 Counting regulars and militias, they outnumbered British forces in Canada by a wide margin.
00:07:33.880 But numbers hid the truth.
00:07:36.600 British soldiers were professionals.
00:07:39.320 Canadian militias were much better drilled than their American counterparts.
00:07:43.480 Plus, Britain had allies, Native American warriors who knew the terrain and were being paid to fight.
00:07:50.800 Some U.S. leaders were way overconfident.
00:07:53.780 Madison's Secretary of War, William Eustace, boasted,
00:07:57.100 We can take the Canadas without soldiers.
00:07:59.740 We have only to send officers into the province, and the people will rally round our standard.
00:08:05.620 Henry Clay chimed in.
00:08:06.980 The militia of Kentucky are alone competent to place Montreal and Upper Canada at your feet.
00:08:14.060 Reality was harsh.
00:08:16.860 General William Hull, a Revolutionary War veteran, led the first push into Canada.
00:08:22.440 His campaign unraveled almost immediately.
00:08:25.000 He split his forces, making them easy pickings, ambushed by Indians.
00:08:28.920 His men panicked, and Hull yanked everybody back across the border.
00:08:33.660 Then the British counter-attacked.
00:08:36.380 At Fort Detroit, with his superior force of 2,500, Hull surrendered without firing a shot.
00:08:43.320 He said he was trying to spare his soldiers and nearby civilians from massacre.
00:08:48.000 The collapse didn't stop there.
00:08:49.640 Hull ordered the evacuation of Fort Dearborn near present-day Chicago.
00:08:53.420 As the column withdrew, it was attacked.
00:08:56.560 Many were killed, and the post was destroyed.
00:09:00.280 General Hull was eventually court-martialed, convicted of cowardice, and sentenced to death.
00:09:05.940 But President Madison, remembering Hull's service in the Revolution, intervened and commuted his sentence.
00:09:11.780 Two more American invasions of Canada followed before the end of 1812.
00:09:16.360 Both failed miserably.
00:09:18.160 A Vermont newspaper summed up the war so far with brutal clarity,
00:09:22.140 saying it had produced nothing but, quote,
00:09:24.620 disaster, defeat, disgrace, and ruin in death.
00:09:30.860 In 1813, America scrambled to regroup.
00:09:35.180 Troops were added, new ships were built.
00:09:38.160 In April, U.S. forces struck at the Canadian capital of York, which is present-day Toronto.
00:09:44.060 They captured the town, but as the British withdrew, they lit the fuse on the fort's powder magazine.
00:09:50.340 The explosion was catastrophic.
00:09:53.900 250 Americans were killed or wounded.
00:09:57.680 Over the next several days, furious U.S. troops burned public buildings, the Legislative Hall, the Governor's House,
00:10:04.280 acts that would prove consequential later in the war.
00:10:08.460 Surprisingly, the greatest bright spot for the U.S. came on the water.
00:10:14.100 In September of 1813, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry met the British fleet on Lake Erie.
00:10:21.360 At the height of the battle, Perry's flagship was wrecked,
00:10:24.180 but he rode to another ship under heavy fire, rallied, and smashed the British line.
00:10:28.940 The victory kept Lake Erie in American hands for the rest of the war,
00:10:33.460 blocking any British invasion of Ohio or Pennsylvania from Canada.
00:10:38.380 For a moment, morale soared.
00:10:40.900 But it was only a moment.
00:10:43.000 Because far to the south, the war took on a darker, more savage cast.
00:10:49.380 Britain relied on Indian allies to strike American settlements.
00:10:53.860 In August of 1813, Red Stick Creek warriors stormed Fort Mims in the Alabama Territory.
00:11:01.180 The attack was sudden and overwhelming.
00:11:04.980 500 men, women, and children were slaughtered, many of them scalped, and the fort was a charred ruin.
00:11:13.120 Into the chaos stepped a backwoods southerner named Andrew Jackson.
00:11:18.740 He volunteered his services to President Madison, who gave him a military command in the southeast.
00:11:24.780 Jackson's soldiers called him Old Hickory,
00:11:27.620 tough, unyielding, impossible to bend.
00:11:31.040 Discipline under him was fierce.
00:11:34.180 If you were a volunteer and you tried to bail,
00:11:36.460 Jackson planted himself right in front of you with a rifle
00:11:39.560 and warned that he would shoot any man who deserted.
00:11:43.860 He also believed in finishing what he started.
00:11:45.960 His personal maxim was simple and relentless.
00:11:50.840 Until all is done, nothing is done.
00:11:55.440 In early 1814, Jackson hunted the Red Stick Warriors responsible for the Fort Mims Massacre. 0.56
00:12:03.760 He cornered them in a section of the Talaposa River called Horseshoe Bend.
00:12:08.220 The fighting was close, chaotic, very bloody.
00:12:11.500 Among Jackson's troops was a young soldier named Sam Houston.
00:12:15.580 At Horseshoe Bend, he was nearly killed, pierced by an arrow in the thigh,
00:12:19.440 then struck by two musket balls in the arm and the shoulder.
00:12:22.940 Doctors expected him to die.
00:12:25.300 Instead, he went on to become the legendary governor of Texas.
00:12:29.300 But when the smoke cleared, more than 800 red-stick warriors were dead. 0.93
00:12:35.400 Their power in the region had finally been broken. 0.79
00:12:38.920 The British lost their most effective allies in the southeast,
00:12:41.980 and Jackson had crushed the resistance, exactly as his gritty motto promised.
00:12:48.400 Yet the War of 1812 was far from over.
00:12:52.000 Greater trials were in store, but in these early years, the pattern was already clear.
00:12:57.460 A young republic, overconfident, underprepared,
00:13:00.840 struggling for full independence from the world's strongest empire.
00:13:04.680 It played out over and over.
00:13:06.420 you know every year around the fourth of july we celebrate independence but here's the
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00:14:02.220 to plan. So go to preparewithglenn.com. Take advantage of the Independence Day sale. That's
00:14:07.260 preparewithglenn.com. Back when James Madison was a congressman during George Washington's
00:14:19.020 presidency, Madison was introduced to a Quaker widow named Dolly. The introduction was made by
00:14:25.220 their mutual friend, Aaron Burr, who was then a senator. You might recall that Burr is the guy
00:14:30.760 who actually went on to shoot and kill Alexander Hamilton in a duel.
00:14:35.900 Dolly's life had been upended just a year earlier in 1793
00:14:39.560 when her first husband and their youngest son both died
00:14:43.320 in that brutal yellow fever epidemic that struck Philadelphia.
00:14:47.660 Well, after a whirlwind courtship, Madison and Dolly tied the knot.
00:14:51.980 She was 26. He was 43.
00:14:55.660 Over the next 41 years, they were rarely apart,
00:14:58.880 Devoted partners in both life and politics.
00:15:02.380 James Madison was reserved.
00:15:04.560 He was a man who preferred papers to people.
00:15:07.420 Dolly was the opposite. 0.52
00:15:09.020 She was warm.
00:15:09.820 She was unreserved, magnetic.
00:15:11.360 She loved conversation, laughter, and above all, gathering people together.
00:15:16.780 Where Madison calculated, Dolly connected.
00:15:20.800 Well, as his career rose, she became the indispensable bridge between power and personality.
00:15:26.780 She hosted receptions and dinners that drew in the most influential figures of the young
00:15:31.400 republic.
00:15:32.740 Thomas Jefferson was the first president to spend his full term living in the White House,
00:15:36.900 but as a widower, there was no official first lady.
00:15:41.120 Sometimes his daughter stepped in as hostess for events, but often Jefferson leaned on
00:15:45.240 his buddy Madison, who was Secretary of State, and that meant Dolly frequently took the reins
00:15:50.280 as official hostess.
00:15:52.560 She shaped the first official Washington scene, charming the diplomats and the lawmakers alike, 1.00
00:15:58.680 and in doing so, she basically invented what we think of as the First Lady's role today.
00:16:04.680 By the end of her husband's presidency, combined with Jefferson's eight years in office, 0.93
00:16:08.800 Dolly had effectively served as First Lady for 16 years.
00:16:13.780 The public adored her as much as the power players did.
00:16:16.800 She became the toast of Washington, D.C. and remains the only First Lady ever granted an honorary seat on the floor of Congress. 0.86
00:16:25.800 But what could have been a charmed White House existence for the Madisons was upended by war.
00:16:32.400 When Britain finally crushed Napoleon in 1814, the world's greatest navy and battle-hardened army 0.52
00:16:44.500 were suddenly available to focus on America. They expanded their assault on multiple fronts
00:16:51.880 across the U.S. Part of their new strategy targeted Chesapeake Bay. British ships fanned
00:16:58.700 out across Maryland's eastern shore, attacking the small towns, burning some to the ground,
00:17:03.920 and raiding farms for livestock and crops. Despite this escalating grip on the region,
00:17:09.560 Madison's new Secretary of War, John Armstrong, insisted the real British threat was in Baltimore.
00:17:16.960 In a message to the D.C. militia's commander, he scoffed,
00:17:20.280 By God, they would not come here with such a fleet without meaning to strike somewhere.
00:17:24.840 but they certainly will not come here. What the devil will they do here? No, no, Baltimore is the
00:17:33.380 place, sir. That is of so much more consequence. Because of that hubris, defenses around the
00:17:39.820 Capitol stayed pathetically weak. No serious preparations, no real urgency. And the reckoning
00:17:46.420 began August 24th, 1814 at Bladensburg, Maryland. That's less than 10 miles away from Washington,
00:17:53.180 D.C. American forces outnumbered the British two to one, holding the high ground with artillery
00:17:59.260 overlooking the bridge that the Brits needed to cross. Yet numbers and position meant little
00:18:05.420 against experience. British artillery thundered. Congreve rockets screamed through the air with a
00:18:13.420 terrifying high-pitched shriek. Unlike anything most American troops had ever heard,
00:18:20.620 Panic spread. Many dropped their muskets and bolted in terror. A lone British regiment forded
00:18:27.860 the Anacostia River north of the bridge, outflanking the Americans left side. More rockets
00:18:33.940 rained down and the U.S. force shattered, men fleeing in droves and leaving the path
00:18:38.960 wide open. One British officer smirked that they'd captured some prisoners, but not too many
00:18:45.260 because the Americans vanished too quickly.
00:18:48.920 A newspaper article later described the hasty American retreat
00:18:52.020 as the Bladensburg Races.
00:18:54.920 President Madison himself was there at Bladensburg
00:18:58.000 watching the humiliating rout unfold.
00:19:01.580 In his official report to the Secretary of War,
00:19:04.340 General William Winder wrote one of the most understated assessments
00:19:08.000 of a defeat ever recorded.
00:19:10.940 The contest was not as obstinately maintained as could have been desired.
00:19:15.260 As soon as the defeat became apparent, President Madison dispatched his servant, James Smith, back to the White House with urgent orders. 1.00
00:19:24.800 Tell the First Lady to flee. A British march on the Capitol was imminent.
00:19:31.000 Word of the retreating soldiers hit Washington, D.C. like a shockwave, turning concern into outright chaos.
00:19:38.500 Citizens and officials grabbed what they could carry and poured across the Potomac toward Virginia.
00:19:43.960 90% of the residents evacuated, leaving a virtual ghost town.
00:19:49.020 Now, inside the president's house, Dolly Madison remained composed.
00:19:54.700 She issued orders to save the valuables and state papers,
00:19:58.480 and in the nail-biting final minutes before fleeing,
00:20:01.500 she focused on Gilbert Stewart's iconic 1797 portrait of George Washington.
00:20:07.980 She ordered the heavy frame broken, canvas cut free, rolled, and carried out.
00:20:13.940 It was later hidden in a farmer's barn outside of the city.
00:20:18.520 Well, an exhausted Madison staggered back to the White House around 4 p.m.,
00:20:22.120 finding Dolly already gone.
00:20:24.340 Shaken by the Bladensburg debacle, he waved off food,
00:20:27.500 downing just a glass of wine before fleeing to evade capture himself.
00:20:31.620 The Capitol lay completely exposed.
00:20:35.140 Paul Jennings, Madison's enslaved White House worker, later reported,
00:20:38.680 A rival, taking advantage of the confusion, ran all over the White House and stole lots of silver
00:20:45.800 and whatever they could lay their hands on. Looting had begun before the British even arrived.
00:20:53.420 Well after dark, the British army marched in.
00:20:59.300 And as they crested Capitol Hill, they traded the docks with stray U.S. soldiers,
00:21:04.040 but it was far too little too late. They reached the Capitol building,
00:21:07.780 The first phase of which had only been completed three years earlier, the Capitol didn't have yet the iconic rotunda, just two large wings of the building connected by a covered wooden walkway in the central section where the rotunda would eventually rise.
00:21:22.980 Margaret Bayard Smith, founder of the local newspaper, described the horror that ensued.
00:21:28.680 Fifty men, sailors and Marines, were marched by an officer silently through the avenue.
00:21:34.880 When arrived at the building, each man was stationed at a window.
00:21:38.880 The windows were broken, and this wildfire was thrown in,
00:21:42.720 so that an instantaneous conflagration took place,
00:21:45.940 and the whole building was wrapped in flames and smoke.
00:21:50.440 This initial effort did not achieve the desired destruction.
00:21:54.480 Since ceilings in the capital were covered in sheet iron,
00:21:57.080 the building proved a challenge to burn down.
00:22:00.620 Frustrated, the British piled furniture and curtains inside the House and Senate chambers,
00:22:05.280 doused them with gunpowder, and fired rockets into the heaps.
00:22:09.020 Finally, the flames roared.
00:22:11.600 A plume of embers rose so high it ignited a nearby building.
00:22:15.700 The Union Jack was then raised over the ruins.
00:22:19.220 At 11 p.m., General Robert Ross and Admiral George Cockburn rode down Pennsylvania Avenue with 150 men.
00:22:26.420 The White House stood there, empty.
00:22:30.420 They rifled through what was left of the Madison's food and possessions,
00:22:34.420 and then they stacked the furniture, bedding and curtains,
00:22:37.420 and they ordered 50 soldiers to encircle the mansion
00:22:40.420 and throw oil-soaked rags on poles through the windows like flaming javelins.
00:22:46.420 The roaring furnace collapsed the White House interior into a smoldering shell.
00:22:51.420 Today, scorched marks from the fire are still visible on the exterior of the White House
00:22:56.960 in two small sections that have been left unpainted as reminders of the national tragedy.
00:23:03.840 The British next burned the treasury, war, executive office buildings.
00:23:08.220 The Library of Congress and its 3,000 books all went up in flames.
00:23:12.560 It was revenge for the American destruction of public buildings in York, Canada just the
00:23:16.920 year before.
00:23:18.680 In the aftermath of the destruction, D.C. residents inscribed their anger on the walls
00:23:23.160 of the Capitol.
00:23:23.880 One message read, quote, the Capitol and the Union was lost by cowardice.
00:23:29.400 Another said, quote, George Washington founded this city after a seven-years war with England.
00:23:34.880 James Madison lost it after a two-years war.
00:23:39.040 Senator Robert Henry Goldsboro of Maryland wrote this to his wife.
00:23:43.700 The city of Washington, once very beautiful to my eye, is now an odious, miserable object.
00:23:51.600 It is the dreadful monument of an unfortunate and illy-timed war, 0.89
00:23:55.700 and the unerring evidence of a weak, incompetent, and disgraced administration.
00:24:02.900 It was the lowest point of the war.
00:24:06.360 The capital was now in ruins, the army disgraced, and the nation stood stunned.
00:24:11.740 Ten days after the burning of D.C., Madison accepted the resignation of War Secretary John Armstrong.
00:24:18.180 Three and a half weeks on, Congress slowly crept back to survey the wreckage.
00:24:24.040 They set up a temporary Capitol in the unscathed Patent and Post Office building.
00:24:29.500 Debates raged about relocating the Capitol, maybe to Philadelphia or New York,
00:24:33.880 but in late October they voted to stay put in Washington, D.C.
00:24:37.320 In a rare practical move for Congress, they determined it would be cheaper to restore the Capitol and White House than to build entirely new ones.
00:24:46.500 Six months after the fire, Madison approved a $500,000 loan to rebuild.
00:24:52.880 In the meantime, James and Dolly Madison moved to a house known as the Octagon, second in size only to the White House.
00:24:59.940 The Octagon's owner granted the government a six-month lease for $800.
00:25:05.100 Madison set up his office in a circular study on the second floor.
00:25:09.060 From there, in a scarred city still reeking of smoke,
00:25:12.840 the quiet president and the indomitable first lady
00:25:15.480 began the work of holding together a shaken nation.
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00:26:24.920 Mary Pickersgill.
00:26:26.860 Appropriately enough, shared a birthplace and a birthday with America, Philadelphia, 1776.
00:26:34.940 She was widowed at age 29, leaving her with a young daughter to support.
00:26:39.940 No safety nets back then.
00:26:41.420 Mary had to work hard. 0.91
00:26:42.860 She was a flag maker.
00:26:44.920 It was a trade she learned from her mother, so she moved to Baltimore, one of America's
00:26:48.800 biggest port cities where ships were in constant need of flags and banners.
00:26:52.460 In 1807, Mary rented a modest house on Pratt Street, right there in the heart of it all.
00:27:02.360 She dove into her flag-making business, and in a little over a decade,
00:27:06.580 she scrapped together enough cash to buy that house outright.
00:27:10.720 For a woman in that era, that was almost unheard of.
00:27:17.800 The summer of 1813 brought Mary the biggest commission of her life,
00:27:21.680 Major George Armistead, the no-nonsense commander of Baltimore's Fort McHenry, needed two new American flags.
00:27:30.340 He wanted one so large the British would have no difficulty seeing it from a distance.
00:27:35.980 Well, Mary got to work on this massive new flag, 30 feet by 42 feet, plus a smaller storm flag 17 by 25 feet. 0.73
00:27:45.400 She had help from her mother, her 13-year-old daughter, two nieces, and an indentured black servant. 0.60
00:27:50.740 For the large flag the red and white stripes were two feet wide. The stars 0.88
00:27:56.060 were 24 inches point to point. Now at the time the U.S. added a star and a stripe
00:28:01.380 for every new state that had been added to the Union. So Mary's flag had 15 0.71
00:28:06.500 stars and 15 stripes. To work they had to spread this giant flag out on the
00:28:12.180 expansive floor of a nearby brewery. They finished the project in seven weeks
00:28:20.280 having no clue that they had just stitched together what would become the most famous flag in their nation's history.
00:28:26.580 The glow of the burning of Washington, D.C. could be seen from Baltimore, and residents knew, we're next.
00:28:35.060 Baltimore was the third largest city in the nation.
00:28:38.120 Its port was a hub of privateers who specialized in raiding British ships.
00:28:43.080 It was only a matter of time before the British paid them a visit.
00:28:47.320 Well, under army supervision, Baltimore was divided into four zones, each zone working on
00:28:52.600 the city's defenses on alternating days. Every citizen had to pitch in, regardless of age,
00:28:57.960 sex, or race. In just three weeks, they threw up over a mile and a half of entrenchments.
00:29:04.200 Baltimore would not be going down without a fight.
00:29:09.800 On September 12, 1814, the British landed 5,000 troops and eight cannons at North Point,
00:29:15.960 that's about 10 miles southeast of Fort McHenry. The U.S. countered with 3,200 troops, most of them
00:29:22.360 Baltimore natives. Early in the battle, two young sharpshooters from the 5th Maryland militia shot
00:29:28.280 and killed the British commander as he rode near the front of his line. Now, amid the chaos, heavy
00:29:33.640 casualties piled up. The Americans were ultimately forced to retreat, but they delayed the British
00:29:39.000 push forward into Baltimore buying precious time. At 6.30 a.m. on September 13th the British fleet
00:29:49.320 of 55 ships opened fired on Fort McHenry with mortar shells. These bombs weighed about 200
00:29:56.120 pounds each. They were hollow shells stuffed with 10 to 15 pounds of gunpowder with wooden fuses
00:30:03.640 screwed in. When the shells were fired from ships, the explosion of powder in the cannon
00:30:09.320 lit the fuse, which was time for a 27-second flight. When the fuse burned down to the powder
00:30:15.880 inside the shell, the gunpowder was set off and the bomb exploded in the air, raining down jagged
00:30:21.960 shrapnels on the target. Well, inside Fort McHenry, 1,200 troops worked out in the open.
00:30:27.800 There were no bunkers for cover. The men fired back at the British, nailing some of the frigates
00:30:33.000 and smaller ships, but the British mostly stayed out of range, so by 11 a.m. Major Armistead
00:30:38.680 dialed it back to conserve ammunition. Suddenly, a British bomb struck the fort's powder magazine.
00:30:46.680 It glanced off the arched roof and caved in part of the ceiling of a room that held
00:30:51.000 200 barrels of gunpowder. Had the bomb punched through the barrels, Fort McHenry and all of
00:30:57.080 its soldiers would have vanished in a single catastrophic explosion. But Major Armistead
00:31:02.520 quickly ordered the powder barrels moved and spread out along the fort's outer walls.
00:31:07.800 Through his spyglass, Admiral Cochrane saw the activity and mistook it for panic. He ordered
00:31:13.880 his ships closer. Then they dropped anchors at the bow and the stern just to steady themselves.
00:31:20.040 As they closed in with a mile and a half, Armistead gave the order. All of Fort McHenry's guns opened
00:31:27.160 fired. For an hour, U.S. cannons hammered the British fleet. Rigging shattered, hulls splintered,
00:31:38.040 Admiral Cochran finally pulled his ships back out of range, but the British fleet was wounded.
00:31:44.120 However, far from done, all night their bombs and rockets peppered Fort McHenry.
00:31:50.200 Across the harbor, the citizens of Baltimore watched from the rooftops and windows,
00:31:54.520 feeling the ground tremble with every explosion. Among the sleepless observers was a prominent
00:32:00.840 lawyer named Francis Scott Key, but he had a much different vantage point because he was on a ship
00:32:07.840 that was under guard of the very British fleet reigning destruction on Fort McHenry.
00:32:16.100 Francis Scott Key was a family man and a slave owner. He and his wife had 11 children. He was a
00:32:22.260 respected attorney, he had defended two men accused of treason in a shadowy conspiracy
00:32:26.900 tied to Aaron Burr. Several days before the British bombardment began, Key was on a small
00:32:32.580 American ship sailing towards the British fleet under a flag of truce. After the burning of
00:32:38.280 Washington, D.C., the British arrested a Maryland physician. His name was William Beans. They
00:32:44.960 accused him of helping round up some British soldiers as they left Washington. Francis Scott
00:32:51.100 Key knew Dr. Beans, so Key went to President Madison. He received permission to intervene
00:32:56.060 and traveled to Baltimore to meet up with John Skinner, who was the U.S. prisoner exchange agent.
00:33:02.880 Together, they sailed out to Admiral Cochran's flagship. They negotiated Dr. Beans' release,
00:33:08.960 and then they were told they couldn't leave. They had heard too much while on board the flagship.
00:33:15.000 The British had been discussing the impending bombardment around the Americans, so they
00:33:19.080 They wouldn't let Key, Skinner, or Dr. Beans return to shore until the attack was officially
00:33:25.060 complete.
00:33:26.320 The Americans were allowed to return to their own ship, but they were guarded by a group
00:33:30.480 of British Marines.
00:33:32.240 There they waited, helpless, two miles from the fort.
00:33:37.460 They watched from the deck of the truce ship as the 25-hour bombardment dragged on through
00:33:43.200 the night.
00:33:45.200 1,500 shells and cannonballs pummeled Fort McHenry.
00:33:50.200 When the firing finally stopped in the early hours of September 15th, Key and Skinner scanned
00:33:55.520 the fort with a spyglass.
00:33:58.040 What was over it?
00:33:59.440 Had the fort fallen?
00:34:00.880 Had Baltimore surrendered?
00:34:03.180 Then in the first light of the morning, they saw it.
00:34:07.280 The enormous 30 by 40 foot flag.
00:34:10.320 Mary Pickersgill's flag, unfurling above the ramparts.
00:34:16.200 It was unmistakably the American flag, identifiable from this great distance, just as Major Armistead
00:34:23.060 had wanted.
00:34:24.060 Key, as a lawyer, always was prepared with paper.
00:34:28.700 He pulled some out and he began to write.
00:34:30.920 He labored over the verses while they were still under British guard, shaping the experience
00:34:35.280 into poetry.
00:34:37.040 The following evening, after the British finally released them, he reached Baltimore and took
00:34:41.900 to a room in the Indian Queen Tavern.
00:34:45.240 There he finished the poem.
00:34:47.360 Skinner and Dr. Beans read it and urged him to print it.
00:34:51.760 Later that day, 1,000 copies rolled off the press under the title, The Defense of Fort
00:34:56.580 McHenry.
00:34:58.100 Set to the tune of Anacreon in Heaven, by afternoon the handbills were in the streets
00:35:03.480 and the hands of soldiers at Fort McHenry.
00:35:05.820 within six weeks, newspapers all across every state had reprinted it. Key's song would eventually
00:35:11.760 become known as the Star-Spangled Banner. The song grew in popularity over the next century,
00:35:28.760 but it didn't become our official national anthem until an act of Congress in 1931.
00:35:35.820 Today, the same flag that Francis Scott Key saw by the dawn's early light is preserved
00:35:42.160 on display in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, completely restored
00:35:48.820 and repaired by Ralph Lauren.
00:35:56.480 Unbeknownst to those in Baltimore, at almost the same moment, far to the north, another
00:36:01.240 Another drama was unfolding on Lake Champlain in Upper New York.
00:36:08.320 There U.S. Captain Thomas McDonough faced a superior British fleet.
00:36:13.040 During the brutal, brutal engagement, the 30-year-old commander was knocked unconscious twice.
00:36:20.120 The first time by falling rigging and later by the flying decapitated head of one of his
00:36:25.180 gun captains after a British cannonball struck the ship.
00:36:32.260 McDonough fought on and won.
00:36:35.060 The victory, like Fort McHenry's stand,
00:36:37.460 electrified the nation.
00:36:39.720 But America wasn't out of the woods yet.
00:36:41.900 Britain sent so many warships to U.S. shores
00:36:45.300 that they achieved an almost total blockade
00:36:48.060 of American ports.
00:36:49.640 The British Navy captured 1,400 American merchant vessels.
00:36:53.540 U.S. exports collapsed by 95%.
00:36:56.480 The country was being strangled.
00:36:59.140 America was not going to be able to hold out much longer.
00:37:04.360 President Madison replaced his Secretary of War with James Monroe,
00:37:08.960 who immediately called up the militia to strengthen the defenses of Washington and Baltimore.
00:37:13.500 He then ordered Andrew Jackson to march his troops south towards New Orleans,
00:37:19.280 where another British blow seemed inevitable.
00:37:23.540 I think about Providence often these days, the idea that we're stewards of our families, our communities, our own safety.
00:37:30.620 The founders understood this. It's woven into the fabric of who we are as Americans.
00:37:35.500 And I want to share something with you. It's called BURNA, B-Y-R-N-A, and it's changed how I think about personal protection. 0.68
00:37:41.780 Here's the thing. Most people assume self-defense is complicated, that you need training, licensing, you know, government approval.
00:37:47.160 but Burna is legal in all 50 states.
00:37:49.880 No permit, no background check,
00:37:51.540 because your right to protect your family
00:37:53.260 shouldn't require anyone's permission.
00:37:55.620 The range on this is 60 feet.
00:37:57.140 That's not pepper spray distance, that's real distance.
00:37:59.700 It gives you time to think, to move, to get your family safe.
00:38:03.220 It's simple enough that anyone can use it, anyone.
00:38:05.980 And it's built in Fort Wayne, Indiana, right here in America,
00:38:08.980 in American hands, American craftsmanship.
00:38:11.360 And that matters to me, and I think it matters to you.
00:38:13.760 I'm not here to scare you.
00:38:14.740 I'm here to tell you being prepared isn't paranoia.
00:38:17.160 It's love.
00:38:18.020 It's what we do for the people that you'd do anything for.
00:38:20.600 So go to Burna, B-Y-R-N-A dot com slash Glenn.
00:38:25.120 For more of the history that inspired this podcast series, be sure to read The American Story, The Beginnings, by David Barton and Tim Barton.
00:38:34.360 Available now at wallbuilders.com.
00:38:37.180 Andrew Jackson hated the British.
00:38:48.200 It was a very personal hatred that reached back to 1781
00:38:51.480 when the Revolutionary War still smoldered across the southern colonies.
00:38:57.280 Jackson had been 13 years old,
00:38:59.260 and he was riding through Carolina backcountry as a courier for the patriot cause.
00:39:04.620 He was scrawny, fiery, stubborn, already displaying the gritty traits that would later earn him the nickname of Old Hickory.
00:39:13.400 Jackson joined his 16-year-old brother Robert in fighting with the local militia in their latest guerrilla attack on the British.
00:39:20.460 It was a raid on an enemy outpost at Hanging Rock that inflicted 200 British casualties.
00:39:26.500 A rare win for the scrappy frontier patriots, but Jackson and Robert wasn't a win for them.
00:39:32.900 and they were captured.
00:39:34.600 They were hungry, sick, and herded into a makeshift prison camp.
00:39:39.780 One day, a British officer ordered Jackson to clean his boots.
00:39:43.400 Neil Jackson refused.
00:39:44.400 He was a prisoner of war, not a servant.
00:39:49.120 The officer swung his saber, slashing Jackson across the face and cutting his left hand
00:39:54.840 to the bone.
00:39:56.740 The scars and the memory never left him.
00:40:00.560 Smallpox hit the prison camp, and both brothers caught it.
00:40:03.560 Their mother pulled strings for a prisoner exchange to free their sons,
00:40:07.020 but Robert died of smallpox a few days after the release.
00:40:11.100 The older brother had been killed in a battle two years earlier.
00:40:14.820 When Jackson recovered from smallpox,
00:40:17.640 his mother left for Charleston to help care for the sick and wounded troops,
00:40:21.360 but she contracted cholera and died.
00:40:24.800 Jackson's immediate family was now entirely gone.
00:40:28.500 as his father had died just a few weeks before he was born.
00:40:32.920 By war's end, 14-year-old Andrew was an orphan,
00:40:37.040 alone in the world, and seething with rage.
00:40:41.160 Years later, with the heat of that teenage trauma still burning in his chest,
00:40:45.740 Jackson would tell his wife Rachel,
00:40:47.420 I owe to Britain a debt of retaliatory vengeance.
00:40:51.260 Should our forces meet, I trust I shall pay the debt.
00:40:58.500 In December 1814, in the Belgian city of Ghent, American negotiators led by John Quincy Adams, 0.97
00:41:05.720 son of the second president and the war hawk Henry Clay, were holed up with their British
00:41:10.780 counterparts trying to end the messy War of 1812. As the days dragged on, Adams scribbled in his
00:41:18.780 diary about how Clay kept him up all night, boozing, gambling with the enemy. Finally,
00:41:24.240 both sides threw in the towel. The U.S. had no real military edge, and the British 0.82
00:41:29.400 were just tired of the hassle. On Christmas Eve, they signed the Treaty of Ghent,
00:41:35.260 officially calling it quits. Nothing much changed. Any conquered land was returned,
00:41:40.360 and borders snapped back to pre-war lines between the U.S. and Canada.
00:41:44.160 Oh, and the British promised to stop stirring up Indian tribes against the American settlers.
00:41:49.500 The treaty also contained a provision that was long overdue, yet still a bit ahead of its time.
00:41:54.860 There was an anti-slavery clause in which both nations agreed to work together toward abolishing the African slave trade.
00:42:02.940 It read,
00:42:04.360 Whereas the traffic in slaves is irreconcilable with the principles of humanity and justice,
00:42:10.700 And whereas both His Majesty and the United States are desirous of continuing their efforts to promote its entire abolition,
00:42:20.380 it is hereby agreed that both the contracting parties shall use their best endeavors to accomplish so desirable an object.
00:42:32.060 After Britain's embarrassing flop at Baltimore, they pivoted south, eyeing New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
00:42:40.120 They knew if they could control that, they would have a highway into America's heartland.
00:42:45.140 Andrew Jackson was already racing ahead, forces in tow, that old vengeance debt fueling his urgency.
00:42:56.280 He declared martial law in New Orleans and rallied every able-bodied man to fortify the outskirts.
00:43:03.120 Jackson scraped together an unlikely patchwork army of 4,500 men,
00:43:07.940 including army regulars, frontier militiamen, free black fighters,
00:43:12.500 wealthy Creole aristocrats, and Choctaw warriors.
00:43:16.120 And then there were the pirates.
00:43:20.480 Jean Le Fitt, the suave smuggler, king of Barataria Bay, had been courted by the British.
00:43:28.220 Instead, he sent word to Jackson.
00:43:31.140 He'd fight for the Americans, and his cannons and gunners would come with him if his captured men were pardoned.
00:43:38.400 Jackson, who valued results over respectability, agreed.
00:43:42.260 Wading offshore in the swamps south of the city were 8,000 British troops, many of them veterans of wars against Napoleon,
00:43:50.100 commanded by Lieutenant General Edward Pakenham.
00:43:53.660 They were battle-hardened professionals. 0.91
00:43:55.740 They fully expected to crush the American rabble that they referred to as the Dirty Shirts. 0.86
00:44:01.700 The clash kicked off on December 23rd. 0.53
00:44:04.200 Jackson struck first, launching a gutsy nighttime raid on the British camp nine miles south of New Orleans.
00:44:13.300 The fighting was fierce and confused.
00:44:16.440 The British absorbed the blow, but it did not break.
00:44:19.860 Jackson withdrew and fell back to a 10-foot-wide canal near a large plantation off the Mississippi River.
00:44:26.520 There, using enslaved labor, his men widened the canal into a defensive trench
00:44:32.100 and piled the excavated earth into a 7-foot-high rampart reinforced with timber.
00:44:38.460 The line stretched nearly a mile from the river's edge to almost an impassable swamp.
00:44:45.040 When the work was done, Jackson rallied his motley crew.
00:44:48.160 Here we shall plant our stakes and not abandon them 1.00
00:44:53.120 until we drive these redcoat rascals into the river or the swamp. 1.00
00:44:58.420 A probing skirmish by the British on December 28th fizzled indecisively. 0.99
00:45:03.600 But on New Year's Day, British artillery roared for hours,
00:45:08.200 trying to smash the American line.
00:45:10.660 But the rampart held together.
00:45:13.000 January 8th, 1815, at dawn, the final British assault began.
00:45:18.160 a concrete rocket screams overhead that was the signal redcoats cheered surge
00:45:25.840 forward the British guns roar but Jackson's 24 artillery pieces some man
00:45:31.840 by Lafitte's salty pirates answer with a fury
00:45:38.100 Pakenham banks on burning fog for cover but it lifts with the Sun exposing his
00:45:44.080 lines in bright red uniforms. American cannons rip holes into the British ranks, flinging
00:45:50.960 men and deer skyward. As the British push on, musket fire shreds them further. Frontiersmen,
00:45:57.520 who had spent their lives hunting deer in dense forests, now take aim at the masked ranks in
00:46:03.440 open ground. Their rifle fire is devastatingly precise. General Pakenham rides forward to rally
00:46:12.560 his men, and he's struck down by grape shot. Within 30 minutes, the attack collapses. The
00:46:19.720 British fall back in chaos, leaving over 2,000 wounded or killed. The American lose 71 men,
00:46:26.460 13 killed, 39 wounded, and 19 missing or captured. One Kentucky soldier stared across the carnage
00:46:34.040 and later wrote, when the smoke had cleared away and we could obtain a fair view of the field,
00:46:39.900 It looked at the first glance like a sea of blood.
00:46:42.980 It was not blood itself which gave this appearance,
00:46:45.640 but the red coats in which the British soldiers were dressed.
00:46:48.760 The field was entirely covered with prostrate bodies.
00:46:53.260 Almost a month passed before the battle result even reached Washington, D.C.
00:46:58.580 It was February 4th that messengers finally arrived
00:47:01.340 with word that Jackson had annihilated the British at New Orleans.
00:47:05.920 Ten days later came another urgent dispatch,
00:47:08.660 the Treaty of Ghent had been signed. Because Americans learned of the battle first,
00:47:14.780 many assumed the victory had forced Britain to make peace. In reality, the war had already ended,
00:47:21.020 but perception mattered more than chronology. The nation had been battered and humiliated by
00:47:27.140 so many earlier defeats. They chose to remember the war as ending in triumph.
00:47:33.440 The Senate rushed to ratify the treaty, and Congress asked President Madison to proclaim
00:47:37.740 a national day of prayer. In his address, Madison said,
00:47:42.660 No people ought to feel greater obligations to celebrate the goodness of the great disposer of
00:47:48.900 events and of the destiny of nations than the people of the United States. And to the same
00:47:54.160 divine author of every good and perfect gift, we are indebted for all those privileges and
00:48:00.040 advantages, religious as well as civil, which are so richly enjoyed in this favored land.
00:48:07.740 The War of 1812, it didn't produce territorial gains or formal surrender.
00:48:15.520 The British simply agreed to stop fighting.
00:48:18.020 But it had produced something more subtle.
00:48:21.200 Respect.
00:48:22.600 Britain and Europe learned the United States could not be casually bullied anymore.
00:48:27.900 War would no longer be their first solution.
00:48:30.500 That's why Americans soon began calling the War of 1812 the Second War for Independence.
00:48:36.520 and towering over that memory stood old hickory.
00:48:41.880 The Battle of New Orleans transformed Andrew Jackson into a national hero.
00:48:48.100 The scarred boy who had once defied a British officer's command
00:48:51.820 had finally, in his own mind at least, paid his debt of retaliatory vengeance.
00:48:58.260 Jackson's fame would mutate into a consequential presidency
00:49:02.480 that brought permanent changes to the office.
00:49:05.560 U.S. politics, and an untold tragedy for Native Americans that would echo on through generations.
00:49:15.520 Coming up on The American Story, The Beginnings.
00:49:20.120 7 o'clock in the morning, May 30th, 1806.
00:49:24.740 Jackson and Dickinson face each other.
00:49:28.280 24 feet apart, pistols loaded.
00:49:31.180 jackson playing it cool or maybe strategic lets dickinson fire first the shot cracks the air
00:49:39.940 slamming into jackson's chest lodging near his heart blood begins to soak his shirt running
00:49:46.120 down into his boot but jackson steadies himself levels his pistol click the hammer catches
00:49:54.500 halfway. Re-cocks, aims again, and fires. Dickinson is struck in the abdomen and crumples to the
00:50:03.960 ground. By sundown, he's dead. Jackson walks away. That bullet remained buried in his chest
00:50:13.540 for the rest of his life.
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