War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. your host, James Early. Hello and welcome back to Key Battles of the War of 1812.

This is your host, James, as always.

And I've got with me my buddy and co-hosts, Steve Gwara, as always, Steve. How are you doing,

sir? I'm great. Thanks for having me on again for this great series. Yeah, you passed the audition,

so I thought I'd bring you back for at least one more. We'll see. Well, I don't know about

episode three. No, I'm just kidding. But let's do this, Steve. So last time we talked about some introductory things, we gave the background

and the lead up to the war of 1812, and we saw that despite some efforts to avoid war, there was just

too much passion for war on the American side. The British didn't really want it, but the Americans,

at least a lot of them did. We're going to see later that

some actually did not. And we saw that the vote was fairly close as far as the Declaration of

War, but it did pass. And so it is on. So now we're going to talk about the very first major

campaign of the War of 1812, and that is the 1812 invasion of Canada.

I call this episode, Disaster on Land. Gee whiz, Steve, that kind of gives it away already,

does give it away. I guess that does give it away. I guess we can start off, right? And just what was

this whole background of this disastrous invasion of Canada?

Good question.

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