<P> A significant military development was the increased emphasis by General Winfield Scott on professionalism in the U.S. Army officer corps and in particular, the training of officers at the United States Military Academy ("West Point"). This new professionalism would become apparent during the Mexican - American War (1846--1848). After the Texas Annexation by the U.S., the term Manifest Destiny became a widely used political term for those who propagated American expansionism and military pride . </P> <P> In a related development, the United States officially abandoned its reliance on the militia for its defense . Moreover, Army Corps of Engineers (which at that time controlled West Point), began building fortifications around New Orleans as a response to the British attack on the city during the war . This effort then grew into numerous civil river works, especially in the 1840s and 1850s under General Pierre Beauregard . The Corps remains the authority over Mississippi (and other) river works . </P> <P> The embarrassing defeat of Fort Madison in what is now Iowa and Fort McKay in Prairie du Chien led to the fortification of the Mississippi, with the expansion of Fort Belle Fontaine near St. Louis, and the construction of Fort Armstrong (1816) and Fort Edwards (1816) in Illinois, Fort Crawford (1816) in Prairie du Chien, and Fort Snelling (1819) in Minnesota . Removal of all Indians from the Mississippi Valley became a top priority for the U.S. government . </P> <P> Historian Norman Risjord has emphasized the central importance of honour as a cause the war . Americans of every political stripe saw the need to uphold national honour, and to reject the treatment of the United States by Britain as a third class nonentity . Americans talked incessantly about the need for force in response . This quest for honour was a major cause of the war in the sense that most Americans who were not involved in mercantile interests or threatened by Indian attack strongly endorsed the preservation of national honour . Chesapeake--Leopard Affair in which the HMS Leopard attacked the USS Chesapeake in June 1807 was a decisive event . Historians have documented the importance of honour in shaping public opinion in a number of states, including Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, as well as the territory of Michigan . Americans widely celebrated the conclusion of the war as successful, especially the spectacular defeat of the main British invasion army at New Orleans, while conveniently overlooking the loss of their flagship the very next week . For the next century it was often called "the Second American War for Independence" and it propelled Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison to the White House . Americans felt they had restored their sense of honour . </P>

The war of 1812 is called this because that is the year the war did what