<P> After months of negotiations, against the background of changing military victories, defeats and losses, the parties finally realized that their nations wanted peace and there was no real reason to continue the war . Now each side was tired of the war . Export trade was all but paralyzed and after Napoleon fell in 1814 France was no longer an enemy of Britain, so the Royal Navy no longer needed to stop American shipments to France, and it no longer needed more seamen . The British were preoccupied in rebuilding Europe after the apparent final defeat of Napoleon . The negotiators agreed to return to the status quo ante bellum with no changes in boundaries . Both sides signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814 . The next and final step would be formal ratification by each government . </P> <P> The British--but not the Americans--knew, when they signed, that a battle was imminent at New Orleans (it was fought on January 8, 1815). This treaty finally went into effect when it was formally ratified by both sides in February 1815 . </P> <P> The Treaty of Ghent failed to secure official British acknowledgment of American maritime rights, but in the century of peace between the worlds naval powers from 1815 until World War I these rights were not seriously violated . The British navy ended the practices that angered Americans, for they were no longer needed after Napoleon . American pride and honor was built as a result of the Indian threat being ended, and through rejoicing surrounding American victory at New Orleans . In doing so, the United States had successfully created sense of becoming fully independent from Britain . </P> <P> A key reason that American frontiersmen were so much in favor of the war in the first place was the threat posed to their continued settlement of Native American - inhabited territory by various tribes, which they blamed on the arms and supplies provided by British agents in Canada . In addition, they wanted access to lands that the British acknowledged belonged to the U.S. but that the British were blocking expansion into by inciting and arming the Native Americans . The death of Tecumseh in battle in 1813 removed a powerful obstacle to expansion, although Native American involvement in the war continued, as did their resistance to American westward expansion after the war's end . The natives were the main losers in the war, losing British protection, and never regained their influence . </P>

What were the effect of the war of 1812