"This is a fine old Amereican tradition. For example, all thru the War of 1812 there was a brisk cross-border traffic between Canada & northern New York and Vermont. One estimate was that fully 60% of the beef consumed by British troops in the area came from the U.S.

Making a quick buck trumps "patriotism" most every time."

Greg F, you are no student of history. Governments waged and fought wars, the civilian population got on with life and with trade. The time that you refer to was the cusp of this sort of activity. The War of 1812 was part of the Napoleonic War but not of the Napoleonic War. The Americans had a separate agenda that had nothing whatsoever to do with Britain or what was happening in Europe, where Napoleon had introduced the concept of the "levee en masse" - total mobilisation of a country for war. To the colonials this concept would be regarded as a bit radical, so they just continued as before, business as usual, nothing unpatriotic about it.