On February 17, 1815, the United States Senate ratified the Treaty of Ghent, formally ending the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain. The treaty had been signed in Ghent, Belgium, on December 24, 1814, but news of the peace took weeks to cross the Atlantic. Ratification came more than a month after the treaty was signed and two weeks after the Battle of New Orleans had already been fought. The war's end marked a new era of Anglo-American relations and a period of American territorial expansion and national consolidation.

The Treaty of Ghent and the War of 1812 became enduring subjects in American literature, inspiring patriotic poetry and fiction that shaped a nascent national identity. Poets such as Francis Scott Key, who wrote 'The Star-Spangled Banner' during the war, and later writers like Herman Melville, drew upon the conflict's themes of resilience and national destiny. The war's conclusion also allowed American literary culture to turn inward, fostering the rise of distinctly American voices in the decades that followed.