The last year of the War of 1812 was as unnerving as the others had been. The British naval presence off the coast was more intermittent, but Indian River received a serious raid in June 1814. The burning of Washington, in August, however, really brought the war home. Everyone feared attacks up the coast. In Philadelphia old former President Thomas McKean was brought out of retirement to organize the defenses, and finally Pea Patch Island was actually fortified. The progress of the British army was halted at Baltimore and Delaware was not attacked again. Commodore Thomas Macdonough of Odessa was one of the heroes of 1814, defeating the British fleet on Lake Champlain, and U.S. Senator James A. Bayard, Sr. of Wilmington was one of the commissioners to the peace conference that produced the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war.