For Honour's Sake (51 page)

Not so the militia and regular troops. They outran the president and his party, scurrying by without pause. The British, who had expected a stiff fight, watched with wonder. “Never did men with arms in their hands make better use of their legs,” observed Lt. George R. Gleig.
¹¹
They quickly dubbed the affair the Bladensburg Races. Not that the battle was bloodless. The British counted 64 dead and 185 wounded—mostly due to Barneys work—while American losses were only 10 to 12 killed and about 40 wounded.
¹²
If the Americans had not bolted, their weight of numbers might have prevailed.

Winder hoped to regroup in the capital, but could not bring his men under control. Most fled to their homes. Those from Washington gathered up their families and a few belongings and joined long lines of civilians abandoning the city. Madison arrived at the White House to find supper growing cold on the table and Dolley gone. She had stuffed a wagon with the silverware, prized velvet curtains, boxes of official papers, books, and a full-length portrait of George Washington that had been painted by Gilbert Stuart and which she had ordered cut from its frame. Everything else was abandoned. Madison could do nothing more to save personal or state possessions. He had only a horse. Calmly mounting it, he rode for Virginia, where the government was instructed to rally to determine its next move. After nightfall, Madison's party rode up to the ferry that would carry them across the Potomac.
¹³
Looking toward Washington, they saw “columns of flame and smoke ascending through the night … from the Capitol, the President's house, and other public edifices, as the whole were on fire, some burning slowly, others with bursts of flame and sparks mounting high up in the horizon … If at intervals the dismal sight was lost to our view, we got it again from some hilltop or eminence where we paused to look at it.”
¹⁴

The British burned only government buildings. In addition to the Capitol and the president's house, the Treasury, the War Office, and the government propaganda newspaper
National Intelligencer
were torched. Before fleeing the capital, naval secretary William Jones ordered the dockyard burned, including a sloop and recently completed frigate. Two bridges over the East Branch had also been destroyed by the Americans, and the British wrecked the main Potomac crossing. Thousands of tons
of military stores were destroyed, including more than 200 artillery pieces. Resistance to the destruction was minimal, but the British suffered some casualties when a dockyard munitions dump exploded massively. Ross led his men out of Washington on the morning of August 25. Four days later, the British boarded their ships at Benedict.
¹⁵

Burning Washington was roundly decried by most Americans as an act of barbarism, but largely the British troops had shown restraint. Even the
Intelligencer
editor admitted that few private buildings were molested.
¹⁶
Albert Gallatin was among the unlucky few. His house on Capitol Hill was burned, although all possessions there, save a valuable map collection, were removed before the fire was kindled.
¹⁷
More important, the fires, whether through fortune or design, failed to spread to residential areas. Certainly the raid and the destruction wrought by the British fell within the well-established pattern set by both sides over the past two years.

President Madison returned to Washington on August 28, morosely picked through the ashes of the White House, and examined the shell of the Capitol. The pillars in Representatives Hall were badly cracked; the still-smoking great hand-painted dome had collapsed into the cellar. A delegation of Washingtonians and citizens of Georgetown demanded he send a deputation to Admiral Cochrane to capitulate. Madison urged citizens and troops alike not to despair. His rapid return to the city was soon credited with stiffening the nation's backbone.
¹⁸
Madison ordered the unharmed post and patent offices converted into halls that could respectively seat the Senate and House of Representatives. The presidential residence was established in the eccentric Octagon House, which had formerly housed the French minister to America. In this manner, the government quickly regained its feet.
¹⁹

Armstrong slunk into the city forty-eight hours after Madison to face a virtual mutiny of regular officers. They bluntly warned Madison that they would tear off their epaulettes if Armstrong remained in charge. Madison charged Armstrong with doing nothing to prepare the city's defence and actively impeding the efforts of others. He cited Armstrong's long-standing insubordinate ways and ordered him to leave town.
²⁰
From
Baltimore, Armstrong submitted his resignation and Monroe was formally appointed secretary of war, also retaining the State Department.

Elsewhere the British were on the offensive. Alexandria, Virginia, endured an August 28 raid by a British squadron. Occupying the town without a fight, Capt. James Gordon agreed to not burn the place if all public works, ordnance and naval stores, and shipping—whether private or public—were surrendered. Twenty-one small vessels were seized and large quantities of military stores destroyed or carried off.
²¹

Meanwhile, the British fleet carrying Ross's troops headed for Baltimore intending a demonstration that might turn into an attack if circumstances proved favourable. Cochrane was skeptical. Baltimore was no defenceless Washington. The nation's third-largest city lay 12 miles up Patapsco River from Chesapeake Bay and its very narrow harbour entrance was guarded by Fort McHenry. Senator and militia major general Samuel Smith commanded its defence. Since early 1813 this veteran of the Revolution and renowned political intriguer had been preparing to defend the city. As the British approached Baltimore, Smith deployed almost 15,000 men in its defensive works. More than 1,000 were packed into the small confines of Fort McHenry. When Major General Winder arrived to assume command, Smith curtly refused.
²²

The British disembarked about 4,500 men on September 11 to march overland along the peninsula formed by the Patapsco and Back rivers while a squadron of frigates, bomb and rocket ships, and sloops commanded by Cochrane pushed up the Patapsco to bombard the fort. As during the Washington raid, Cockburn accompanied Ross's troops.

Instead of waiting to be attacked, Smith sent 3,200 men with six small cannon to meet the British halfway along the peninsula. A sharp action followed the next morning in which Ross was struck in the chest by a musket ball and mortally wounded. Col. Arthur Brooke assumed command and broke the American line. The Americans lost 24 killed, 139 wounded, and 50 taken prisoner, while the British counted 46 dead and 295 wounded.

On September 13, Brooke closed to within a mile and a half of Baltimore and sent messengers to Cochrane proposing a joint night attack. After examining the American harbour defences, Cochrane deemed the idea impracticable. He had sixteen fighting ships, of which five were bomb or
rocket vessels. The former mounted large mortars that could breach fortress walls, but the rocket ships were largely just for show.

In addition to the fort, the Americans had clogged the harbour entrance by sinking twenty-four vessels of various sizes. Standing behind these wrecks was a line of gunboats. Guarding the Patapsco main channel where the British might land troops behind Fort McHenry stood the smaller Fort Covington and a nearby artillery battery. The best Cochrane could hope for was to batter the two forts into submission, but he saw no utility in throwing Brooke's redcoats against the American defences. Brooke was ordered to remain in place to keep the enemy guessing his intention and then withdraw in the early morning hours of September 14. By then the forts would have been either subdued or not.
²³

The bombardment lasted slightly more than twenty-four hours and 1,500 rounds were fired, of which 400 struck home. Aboard one ship was American lawyer Francis Scott Key, who was trying to arrange the release of a physician captured in Washington and pressed into treating British wounded. Key watched the shelling and scribbled out a little poem entitled “The Star Spangled Banner,” which vividly depicted the flag continuing to fly over Fort McHenry even as Congreve rockets whizzed overhead and mortar bombs exploded in airbursts that spewed shrapnel into the fort. In 1931, Congress would declare the poem America's national anthem.
²⁴

Shortly after dawn, Cochrane ordered the bombardment ceased, and the fleet and troops withdrew. Lingering in the Chesapeake well into October, this force took no further major action. It finally sailed to Jamaica, while Cochrane returned to Halifax.

In American eyes, Baltimore's stand offset the Washington calamity. The British deemed it a modest setback. Far graver was the Lake Champlain failure, where the British suffered a defeat that frustrated London's hopes for the 1814 campaign.

Fortune in war is fickle. The campaign that the British launched in the Lake Champlain region in early September logically should have yielded a success, enabling entrance into the Hudson Valley to cut New England off from the rest of the United States. Combined with the victories that
Lt. Gen. Sir John Sherbrooke's forces were racking up on its coast, New England might have capitulated.

On July 11, a small force out of Halifax had captured Eastport on Moose Island and gained control of Passamaquoddy Bay. Sherbrooke then moved to seize control of all of Maine from New Brunswick to Penobscot Bay, initiating a British strategy to declare the Penobscot River as the new boundary between America and their colonies.
²⁵

The British entered the bay on August 31. Quickly overcoming a garrison of about fifty men at Castine, they next captured Belfast on the opposite side of the bay and then pushed upriver to Hampden. On September 2, they drove off the defenders, pillaged the town and burned the disabled American corvette
Adams,
which had earlier run aground during a storm. Marching overland halfway back to Passamaquoddy Bay, the redcoats seized the village of Machias on September 10. By September 27, all of Maine between the two bays was subdued.
²⁶

Canadian governor Sir George Prevost's operation on Lake Champlain could have achieved much the same result in southern New England. But the aggressiveness required to take an army into enemy territory did not come easily to Prevost—not even when the gates were left unguarded. On August 29, Maj. Gen. George Izard had, in accordance with instructions from Armstrong, reluctantly marched 4,000 men to reinforce the Americans on the Niagara Peninsula. Left behind were just 3,000 regulars and militia under Brig. Gen. Alexander Macomb. Only half of these were considered fit for duty. The rest were sick, raw recruits, or New York militia in whom the general had little faith.
²⁷

Five days after Izard's departure, Prevost crossed into America with 10,000 men. Two-thirds were Peninsular War veterans. What Prevost lacked, however, was naval control of Lake Champlain. This lay in the hands of Capt. Thomas Macdonough and his 26-gun flagship
Saratoga,
the 20-gun
Eagle,
and supporting fleet of a schooner, two sloops, and twelve gunboats. The British, however, were ready to challenge his mastery with a new flagship, the 36-gun
Confiance,
a captured French ship. Still, the overwhelming force Prevost brought to the field seemed substantial enough regardless of who ultimately won the lake contest.

By September 5 the British were camped 8 miles from Plattsburgh, where Macomb's men were throwing up redoubts to meet Prevost's juggernaut. Plattsburgh was a complicated village cut into uneven chunks by the Saranac River, which emptied into Lake Champlain from its midst. The next day the British probed into the outskirts, but Prevost cautiously refrained from pressing the attack. He had no idea where the river crossings were and could not locate the American fortifications. The American naval vessels lurked offshore. Several British gunboats had paralleled the army's advance, but they were insufficient to tackle the U.S. boats. Prevost demanded that the British naval commander, Capt. George Downie, clear away the American vessels. At first, Downie resisted.
Confiance
was not ready for action; most of her crew were soldiers untrained in operating ship-borne guns. But Prevost insisted.

On September 11, Downie sailed directly into the bay in an attempt to bring
Confiance
alongside
Saratoga
before the Americans could react. With him was the 16-gun brig
Linnet,
which dropped anchor beside
Eagle
with 11-gun
Chubb
supporting. The 10-gun
Finch
and most of the British gunboats sawed off against the 17-gun
Ticonderoga
and 7-gun
Preble.
At first things looked good as
Confiance
slammed
Saratoga
with a heavy broadside. But return fire killed Downie, and
Finch
was disabled and forced to strike her colours after running aground.
Chubb,
too, was sent drifting out of control by devastating fire from
Eagle
and was soon captured.

The battle turned on whether
Confiance
could prevail over
Saratoga.
Both vessels were badly damaged,
Saratoga's
starboard guns reduced to a shambles. Using an anchor and hawsers, Macdonough quickly winched his ship around to bring the port guns to bear. This feat of seamanship carried the day. Battered by the fresh broadsides,
Confiance's
colours were soon struck.
Linnet,
no match for
Saratoga,
followed suit. American control of the lake was indisputable. The Americans lost 52 killed and 58 wounded, the British 80 dead and 100 wounded.
²⁸

Prevost had organized an attack to begin in concert with the naval assault, but his troops had only just begun to move when the battle on the lake abruptly ended. Seeing the British vessels surrendered or wrecked, Prevost's always tremulous nerve failed completely. He cancelled the attack. Demoralized, his army trailed back to Canada, crossing the
border on September 14. They reported 35 killed, 47 wounded, and 72 lost as prisoners in the entire campaign, while the Americans suffered just 37 killed and 62 wounded.
²⁹