In this episode, John explains how it is that the United States, less than 30 years after fighting Great Britain to become and independent country, wound up fighting the British once again. John begins by discussing James Madison as a presidential figure: how he became president, what he wanted to achieve and how he differed from the first three presidents. John also breaks down the issues that Madison had to deal with during his term that didn’t involve Great Britain and France messing with American shipping and trade, including the annexation of Florida, congressional and party factionalism and maintaining national unity in the face of growing sectionalism.

John then concentrates on the titanic struggle between Great Britain and France and how the United States found itself caught in the middle. He covers the ways that the U.S. tried to stand up for itself as a sovereign country, short of war, what was entailed in the so-called “restrictive regime”, and why it was so difficult for the American government to control its destiny in the early 1800s. Finally, John details how it was the U.S. came to declare war against Great Britain in the summer of 1812, despite the fact that the British really did not want war and attempted to placate the U.S. in a number of ways in the weeks and months before the declaration was issued.