If Only We'd Thought of This at the Time ...

Jon Schwarz' articles on the less inspiring part of the National Anthem have gotten a lot of attention, from print media to social media to e-mail.  Like this one:

I have to admit, David has a point.  The pre-Columbian peoples of the Americas quickly learned that a multiracial population was foolish; you let in a few white people, and before you know it, they've given you diseases, looted your treasuries, and stolen your land.

But leave aside such hindsight; as a great American sage reminded us, we must look to the future, not to the past.  Let's stick with the War of 1812 itself.  There was another ready-made fifth column in our infant nation at the time: British immigrants and their children and grandchildren.  During World War II we put such people (of slightly different ancestry, of course), with their presumable -- indeed inevitable -- sympathy for the Enemy into concentration camps.  Deporting British-Americans would probably not have been feasible, given the primitive surveillance and other technology of the day.  But confinement surely would have been.  Luckily, it proved not to be necessary: the United States eked out a fragile victory over the Enemy that time.  I wonder where David's ancestors came from ...