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BUT these little affairs along the coast were of small
consequence in comparison with what befell the capital of
the country. Relieved by the peace in Europe, the English Government
resolved to prosecute the American war with greater vigor, and fixed upon the
policy of striking at the cities. Baltimore, Washington, Charleston,
Savannah, and New Orleans were all marked for capture or destruction. A
powerful British fleet was sent to the Bermudas, and a large number of
veteran troops transported thither, and the commanders on our coasts were
directed to draw thence such forces as they might need for their expeditions.
That Washington was likely to be the object of a hostile
demonstration of some kind, was known to the Administration for months, but
no efficient measures were taken to meet it. President Madison and
General Armstrong, Secretary of War, did not like each other, and neither man
was large enough not to let his personal feelings stand in the way of the
country's interests. When the President urged that something should be
done to avert the danger that threatened the capital, General Armstrong
opposed the proposition with such abstruse reasons as that "militia were
always most effective when first called out."
The only effective means of defense consisted of a small
flotilla commanded by Commodore Joshua Barney, who sailed the waters of
Chesapeake Bay for some weeks, continually annoying the English fleet.
On the 1st of June he had an engagement with two schooners in the Patuxent,
and drove them off with hot shot. A few days later, he was chased into
St. Leonard's Creek, where he formed his boats in line of battle across the
channel and engaged the enemy's barges, ultimately chasing them down to the
ships.
On the 10th he was attacked by twenty barges and two
schooners; but he beat them all off, and so severely handled one of the
schooners, an eighteen-gun vessel, that her crew ran her aground and
abandoned her. On the 26th, with the help of a corps of artillery and a
detachment of the Marine Corps, Barney attacked the whole squadron that was
blockading him in the St. Leonard's, and after a fight of two hours compelled
them to raise the blockade.
General Robert Ross, who had served in several campaigns
under Wellington, and was with Sir John Moore when he fell at Corunna, was
selected by the Duke to command an expedition against Washington. In
July, with three thousand five hundred men, the finest regiments of
Wellington's army, he sailed from Bordeaux for the Chesapeake, where he
arrived in August, and was at once reinforced by a thousand marines from Cockburn's
blockading squadron, and a hundred negroes from the neighboring plantations,
who had been armed and drilled as British soldiers.
The District of Columbia and the adjacent counties of
Virginia and Maryland had recently been formed into a military district, of
which the command was given to General William H. Winder. His forces
consisted of five hundred regulars and two thousand militia. On the
approach of the enemy, Maryland and Virginia were hastily called upon for
reinforcements of militia, and nearly three thousand came from Maryland; but
the Virginians, from delay in receiving their flints, did not move till the
fighting was over.
Ross's expedition ascended the Patuxent, and on the morning
of August 19th his troops were debarked without molestation at Benedict, on
the western or right bank, forty miles southeast of Washington. He had
twenty-seven vessels, and over four thousand men.
By order of the Secretary of War, Commodore Barney blew up
his little flotilla, and with his five hundred seamen and marines retreated
to Nottingham, where General Winder assigned to them the management of the
artillery.
The weather was fearfully hot, and the enemy proceeded by
slow marches, dozens of men falling and fainting by the way. It was
remarked at the time that their route might have been so impeded by felling
trees, that the weather and the labor of removing them would have defeated
the expedition. But nothing of the sort was done. Winder waited
in a chosen position at Wood Yard, twelve miles from the city, to give
battle. But Ross turned to the right after reaching Nottingham, taking
the road to Marlborough, where Admiral Cockburn joined hint with a body of
marines and seamen.
The Americans fell back to Battalion Old Fields, a
detachment under Major Peters skirmishing sharply with the advancing enemy,
and on the 24th to Bladensburg, six miles from Washington, where a bridge
spanned the eastern branch of the Potomac. Here they made a stand,
taking a strong position on the western bank, commanding the bridge.
The President and several members of his Cabinet were on the field, all
interfering more or less with the military arrangements. Monroe — then
Secretary of State, afterward President — who had been a staff officer in the
Continental army more than thirty years before, considered himself specially
qualified as a military meddler, and actually changed the disposition of some
of Winder's troops at the last moment.
It could not be expected that a mass of raw militia,
hastily called together, and hardly knowing by whom they were commanded,
would stand long, even in an advantageous position, before the onset of
veteran troops. "Come, General Armstrong, come, Colonel Monroe,"
said the President, "let us go, and leave it to the commanding
General." So Mr. Madison and his Cabinet left the field, and it
was not long before the militia followed their illustrious example.
The ground on the eastern side of the river, where the
British approached, was low and clear. On the western it rose in a gradual
slope, and along the stream was fringed with willows and larches. A
body of American riflemen was posted in the shrubbery that lined the
bank. Three hundred yards up the slope was a slight earthwork, mounting
six guns, supported by two companies of Baltimore volunteers. General
Stansbury had posted three regiments to the right of it, but Secretary Monroe
had moved them to a point in the rear of the battery and five hundred yards
farther up the slope. At the top of the hill, one mile from the bridge,
was formed a line consisting of Maryland militia on the right, Barney's
seamen and marines in the center, a detachment of regular troops and a
regiment of District militia on the left, with a battery of six guns and a
company of riflemen in front.
The enemy entered the village of Bladensburg soon after
noon of the 24th, and was at once subjected to a fire that compelled him to
seek the shelter of the houses. At one o'clock the advance column
rushed at the double quick upon the bridge, where it met a concentrated fire
from the American batteries and riflemen, and almost entirely melted
away. A remnant, however, succeeded in crossing, deployed at once, and
advanced upon the first line, which fell back and permitted two guns to be
lost.
Elated at this success, the thin line of British troops
threw off their knapsacks and advanced toward the second line, without
waiting for another column to cross the bridge to their support. When General
Winder saw their error, he placed himself at the head of a regiment of
Baltimore volunteers, gave them an effective volley, and then made a charge,
and at the point of the bayonet drove them down to the very brink of the
river, where with difficulty they maintained their foothold under the trees
till another brigade had crossed the bridge to their relief.
One regiment of these fresh troops turned the left of the
American line, and threw in some Congreve rockets, which so frightened the
militia on that flank that they broke at once and fled in confusion.
The regiment headed by Winder stood firm till both its flanks were turned,
when it retired, its retreat being covered by the riflemen.
The enemy then attacked the remainder of the line, all of
which soon gave way, except Barney's men, who kept them in check for half an
hour, and with the fire of four pieces of artillery ploughed their ranks
through and through. But when the militia broke, the teamsters
stampeded, without stopping to unhitch their horses from the ammunition
wagons. Barney was thus left with but a single round of ammunition,
while the enemy was gradually gaining a position upon his flank; and though
many of his men were acting as infantry and behaved admirably, charging
several times with great effect, he was obliged to order a retreat. He
himself had been severely wounded, while two of his principal officers were
killed, and two others wounded. He fell into the hands of the enemy,
who took him to their hospital at Bladensburg. In this action the
Americans had lost seventy-seven men killed or wounded; the British, more
than five hundred. Ross's entire loss, including deserters, prisoners,
and those who succumbed to the weather, was said to be nearly a thousand.
But no serious obstacle now stood in the way of General
Ross's purpose to destroy the capital; and with that portion of his force
which had not been engaged, he marched thither without the loss of an hour,
arriving at eight o'clock that evening.
The most valuable portion of the public archives had been
removed to a place of safety, and Mrs. Madison had managed to carry away the
original draft of the Declaration of Independence, a portrait of Washington
that hung in the White House, and a few other articles, which could not have
been replaced. The magazines and shipping at the Navy Yard had already
been fired by order of the Secretary of War, and everything there was
destroyed.
It is said that General Ross offered to spare the city for
a price; but there was no one at hand who could treat with him, if the
authorities had been inclined to purchase its safety. He expected to be
attacked by a more formidable force than that he had met at Bladensburg, and,
as he wrote to Earl Bathurst, "judging it of consequence to complete the
destruction of the public buildings with the least possible delay, so that
the army might retire without loss of time, he "without a moment's delay
burned and destroyed everything in the most distant degree connected with the
government." There was one notable exception.
At the intercession of Dr. Thornton, who superintended the
Patent Office, the building containing that and the Post Office was spared;
because, as the doctor represented, it contained great numbers of models and
papers which were of value to the whole scientific world. The jail, one
hotel, and a few dwellings also escaped. All else, including the
President's house, the public libraries, and the new Capitol— of which only
the wings had been built — was given to the flames.
The commanders of the expedition distinguished themselves
personally in this vandalism. Admiral Cochrane, who had a spite against
the National Intelligencer because of its strictures upon his marauding
exploits along the coast, caused the office to be sacked and the type thrown
into the street, and with his own hand set the building on fire.
Admiral Cockburn is said to have led his men into the hall of the House of
Representatives, where he leaped into the Speaker's chair and shouted,
"Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned? All for it will
say, Aye !"
In the night of the 25th, Ross silently withdrew from the
city, leaving his campfires burning, for he expected and feared pursuit, and
marched with all that remained of his force to Benedict, where they
re-embarked.
A division of the enemy's fleet, consisting of eight
vessels, ascended the Potomac to attack the city of Alexandria. Fort
Warburton, a small work intended for its defense, was destroyed by the
garrison at the approach of the ships, and with no opposition they passed up
and laid the town under their guns. A parley was had, the result of
which was that the dwellings were left unmolested, the condition being,
"the immediate delivery [to the enemy] of all public and private naval
and ordnance stores; of all shipping, and the furniture necessary to their
equipment then in port; of all the merchandise of every description, whether
in the town or removed from it since the 19th of the month; that such
merchandise should be put on board the shipping at the expense of the owners;
and that all vessels which might have been sunk upon the approach of the
fleet should be raised by the merchants and delivered up with all their
apparatus."
These conditions, hard as they were, were complied with,
and on the 6th of September the fleet, loaded with booty, returned down the
river. Two batteries on the shore—at White-House and Indian Head,
commanded by Captains Porter and Perry, of the navy —- damaged it
considerably as it passed, but were not able to stop it.
If the importance of General Ross's exploit was overrated
by the Americans, who naturally felt chagrined that so small an invading
force should have destroyed their capital and momentarily dispersed their
Government, it was enormously exaggerated by the English journals. By
confounding the capital of the country with its metropolis, they led their
readers to believe that the chief city of the United States had been laid in
ashes; whereas Washington was but a straggling place of eight thousand
inhabitants, which had been made the seat of the Federal Government but a
dozen years before.
Taking it for granted that what would have befallen England
or France with London or Paris in the possession of a foreign enemy, had
actually befallen the United States, the London Times proceeded to say:
"The ill-organized association is on the eve of dissolution, and the
world is speedily to be delivered of the mischievous example of the existence
of a government founded on democratic rebellion." In another issue,
October 9th, 1814, it said: "Next to the annihilation of the late
military despotism in Europe, the subversion of that system of fraud and
malignity which constitutes the whole policy of the Jeffersonian school, was
an event to be devoutly wished by every man in either hemisphere who regards
rational liberty or the honorable intercourse of nations. It was an
event to which we should have bent, and yet must bend, all our energies.
The American Government must be displaced, or it will sooner or later
plant its, poisoned dagger in the heart of the parent state."
In a speech in Parliament, Sir Gilbert Heathcote naively
said, "it appeared to him that we feared the rising power of America,
and wished to curtail it." Which, as the Scottish captain in the
story said, was "a verra just remark."
In the night of August 30th, Sir Peter Parker, commander of
the frigate Menelaus, who had been blockading Baltimore with that and another
vessel, landed on the Eastern Shore, with two hundred and thirty men,
intending to surprise and capture a small body of Maryland volunteers at
Moorfields. But the Maryland men were ready for them, and after a sharp
fight of about an hour the British retreated, leaving sixteen of their men
killed or wounded on the field, and bearing away seventeen others, among whom
was Sir Peter, who died almost as soon as he reached his ship. Three of
the Americans were wounded.
Rightly conjecturing that Baltimore would be the next place
at which the enemy would strike, the people of that city had made haste to provide
for its defense. The fortifications were extended, and manned by about
five thousand men. On the 11th of September forty British war-vessels
appeared at the mouth of the Patapsco, and that night eight thousand men,
under General Ross, were landed at North Point, a dozen miles below the
city. No resistance was offered till they had marched four miles up the
little peninsula, when they were met by General John Stricker with three
thousand two hundred men, including an artillery company with six small guns,
and a detachment of cavalry.
The cavalry and a hundred and fifty riflemen were thrown
forward to feel the enemy. General Ross, who had declared that he
"didn't care if it rained militia,'' and had expressed his intention of
making winter quarters in Baltimore, put himself at the head of his advance
guard, and promptly attacked. But as he rode along the crest of a
little knoll, he was shot in the side by an American rifleman, and before his
aides could bear him back to the boats, he expired.
Notwithstanding the loss of their leader, the British
forces rushed steadily forward, drove the American skirmishers back upon the
main line, and brought on a general engagement. The battle lasted two
or three hours with varying fortune, till a heavy attack on the American left
turned it, when the whole body retreated to an entrenched position near the
city.
The British followed the next day, but found their enemy
strongly placed and reinforced, whereupon they took advantage of a dark night
and retraced their steps. They had lost two hundred and ninety men,
killed or wounded, and had inflicted upon the Americans a loss of two hundred
and thirteen, including fifty prisoners. This action is known as the
battle of North Point, but has sometimes been called the battle of Long-log
Lane.
While Ross's men were approaching Baltimore by land,
sixteen vessels of the British fleet moved up the bay, and opened fire upon
its immediate defenses. The shallowness of the water prevented them
from getting near enough to bombard the town itself; but for twenty-four
hours they poured an almost uninterrupted shower of rockets and shells into
Fort McHenry, Fort Covington, and the connecting entrenchments. Most of
the firing was at long range; whenever any of the vessels came within reach
of the batteries, they were subjected to a fire that quickly drove them back,
and in some cases sank them. Fort McHenry, garrisoned by six hundred
men under Major George Armistead, bore the brunt of the attack.
At the dead of night the enemy attempted to land a strong
force above the forts, for an attack in the rear; but it was discovered and
subjected to a concentrated fire of red-hot shot, which speedily drove it off
with serious loss. This practically put an end to the attempt to take
Baltimore, and a few hours later the fleet withdrew. The loss of the
Americans by the bombardment was four killed and twenty-four wounded.
The loss in the fleet is unknown.
This bombardment of Fort McHenry gave us one of our national
songs. Francis S. Key had gone out to the British fleet in a rowboat,
under a flag of truce, to ask for the release on parole of a friend who had
been made prisoner. Admiral Cockburn, who had just completed his plans
for the attack, detained him, and in his little boat, moored to the side of
the flagship, he sat and watched the bombardment. When the second
morning broke, and he saw that the flag of the fort — which Cockburn had
boasted would "yield in a few hours" — was still flying, he took an
old letter out of his pocket, and on the back of it wrote the first draft of
"The Star-Spangled Banner." The flag is now in the possession
of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
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