"On thousands of miles of coastline there was scarcely a fort to oppose the enemy. British troops pillaged and burned the city of Washington and laid waste to many sections along the Middle Atlantic States (Lattimore)
Militia training "was 'mostly a farce, nothing but an exhibition of rags, caps, and broomsticks,' a United States senator from Rhode Island observed. It was merely 'mock military duty,' and an excuse for 'riot, drunkenness, and every species of immorality, which the pageant boobies, called officers had neither intelligence to anticipate nor intellect sufficient to prevent' (Lears)
" During the elections prior to the War of 1812, "two competing national parties emerged who regarded themselves as divided over basic principles. The Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, viewed the pro-British Federalists as monarchists; the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton and John Adams and favored by Washington, viewed the pro-French Republicans as Jacobins (Plattner)
Calhoun created the office of commanding general in an "effort to bring greater centralization and professionalization to the management of the U.S. Army (Rafuse)
It also did not stop the British from stopping U.S. merchant ships that were going to France (Hickman)
As the privateers were by and large more successful than the American Navy, the British turned to Baltimore, as many of the privateers were based there. First, however, they would go to Washington (Benn, 2002)
At times, they were successful in doing so -- in the case of their disrupting of British trade routes between Nova Scotia and the West Indies. A few victories against British frigates, like the HMS Macedonian, led the English to build bigger, better armed ships of war (Gardner, 1996)
The Americans tried to out-build the English but neither gained advantage in Lake Ontario. The British continued its blockades, and other than the utter slaughter at New Orleans, never allowed the American military to carry out any real strategic endeavors (Turner, 2000)
England's navy was the most powerful in the world. However, when the American Navy did act, it acted in an indirect manner -- by attempting to "disrupt" the English merchant marine traders (Wright, 2007)