When you write a history column and it is called “200 Plus,” you have to take special notice of the bicentennial of a major event. Next month the United States and Canada will begin to commemorate the events of the War of 1812, sometimes in the U.S. called the Second War of Independence. Today if people know anything of the war, they think of impressment, the Star-Spangled Banner, old Ironsides or the battle of New Orleans.