Through the Perilous Fight Read online

  Two hundred years after the battle, tattered and frail, the Star-Spangled Banner seemed more powerful than ever.

  Copyright © 2013 by Steve Vogel

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Random House and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Vogel, Steve.

  The perilous fight : three weeks that saved the nation / Steve Vogel. —1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-1-4000-6913-2

  eBook ISBN 978-0-679-60347-4

  1. Baltimore, Battle of, Baltimore, Md., 1814. 2. Cockburn, George, Sir, 1772–1853. 3. Key, Francis Scott, 1779–1843. 4. Washington (D.C.)—History—Capture by the British, 1814. 5. Maryland—History—War of 1812—Campaigns.

  6. United States—History—War of 1812—Campaigns. I. Title

  E356.B2V64 2013

  973.5’2—dc23

  2012039797

  www.atrandom.com

  Cover design: Dan Rembert

  Cover painting: © Tom Freeman for the White House Historical Association

  Excerpted from Through the Perilous Fight by Steve Vogel, copyright © 2013 by Steve Vogel. Published by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  v3.1

  To my wife, Tiffany,

  and our children, Donald, Charlotte, and Thomas

  Nations will seldom obtain good national anthems by offering prizes for them. The man and the occasion must meet.

  —John Philip Sousa

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  MAP

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  PRELUDE: I See Nothing Else Left

  CHAPTER 1: How Do You Like the War Now?

  CHAPTER 2: Laid in Ashes

  CHAPTER 3: The British Invasion

  CHAPTER 4: What the Devil Will They Do Here?

  CHAPTER 5: Be It So, We Will Proceed

  CHAPTER 6: The Enemy in Bladensburg!

  CHAPTER 7: The Battle for Washington

  CHAPTER 8: A Spectacle Terrible and Magnificent

  CHAPTER 9: They Feel Strongly the Disgrace

  CHAPTER 10: Hide Our Heads

  CHAPTER 11: The Arrogant Foe

  CHAPTER 12: The Mission of Francis Scott Key

  CHAPTER 13: The Town Must Be Burned

  CHAPTER 14: The Battle for Baltimore

  CHAPTER 15: The Rockets’ Red Glare

  CHAPTER 16: Does That Star-Spangled Banner Yet Wave?

  CHAPTER 17: Our Glorious Peace

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  NOTES

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  About the Author

  To download a PDF of this map, click here.

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  col1.1 The Star-Spangled Banner (Armed Forces History Division, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)

  map.1 The Chesapeake Theater map (Gene Thorp/Cartographic Concepts, Inc.)

  col2.2 George Cockburn engraving from Edward Pelham Brenton’s Naval History of Great Britain, published in 1824 (Library of Congress)

  prl.1 Admiral Cockburn Burning and Plundering Havre De Grace on the 1st of June 1813 by William Charles (Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library)

  1.1 Etching of Francis Scott Key from a newspaper clipping (Library of Congress)

  1.2 The Key home in Georgetown by John Ross Key (Courtesy of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, U.S. Department of State)

  1.3 James Madison portrait by Joseph Wood (Virginia Historical Society)

  2.1 Joshua Barney portrait by Stanislav Rembski (Naval History and Heritage Command)

  2.2 Sketch of the British blockade at the mouth of the Patuxent River by Commodore Joshua Barney in August 1814 (National Archives)

  2.3 Portrait of Major General Robert Ross (Stephen Campbell)

  3.1 Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane engraving from Brenton’s Naval History of Great Britain (Naval History and Heritage Command)

  3.2 Advance on the Capital in 1814 map (Gene Thorp/Cartographic Concepts, Inc.)

  3.3 A View of the Capitol Before it was Burned Down by the British, by William Birch (Library of Congress)

  3.4 Sketch of Brigadier General William Winder by Benson J. Lossing (The Pictorial Field-book of the War of 1812)

  3.5 Map showing the route of the British from the Patuxent River to Washington, published in 1818 by William James (The Albert H. Small–George Washington University Collection)

  4.1 James Monroe, painted circa 1819 by Samuel F. B. Morse (Library of Congress)

  4.2 Joshua Barney sketch of a Chesapeake flotilla barge (National Archives)

  4.3 Map depicting march of the British Army from Benedict to Washington by Benson J. Lossing (The Pictorial Field-book of the War of 1812)

  5.1 Photograph of Gen. George De Lacy Evans by Roger Fenton (Library of Congress)

  5.2 Engraving of Commodore Joshua Barney by Cephas G. Childs and Thomas Gimbrede (A Biographical Memoir of the Late Commodore Joshua Barney)

  6.1 Secretary of the Navy William Jones (Naval History and Heritage Command)

  6.2 Final Stand at Bladensburg by Charles H. Waterhouse (Art Collection, National Museum of the Marine Corps, Triangle, Virginia)

  7.1 A British Congreve rocket that burned the Waller farmhouse in Maryland’s Eastern Shore during a raid led by Capt. Peter Parker in August 1814 (National Park Service).

  7.2 Engraving of Dolley Madison based on a portrait by Gilbert Stuart in 1804 (Library of Congress)

  7.3 Paul Jennings photograph taken in the 1850s (Estate of Sylvia Jennings Alexander)

  7.4 Mural in the Capitol depicting its burning by the British, painted by Allyn Cox in 1974 (Office of the Architect of the Capitol)

  8.1 The Fall of Washington map (Gene Thorp/Cartographic Concepts, Inc.)

  8.2 Watercolor of Washington Navy Yard by William Thornton, circa 1815 (Library of Congress)

  8.3 The President’s account book, later returned to the Library of Congress (author photo)

  8.4 Capture of the City of Washington, engraving from Rapin’s History of England, published in London in 1815 (National Archives)

  8.5 George Cockburn, mezzotint of circa 1817 painting by John James Hall (Library of Congress)

  9.1 Captain Thomas Tingey, commandant of the Washington Navy Yard (Naval History and Heritage Command)

  9.2 The U.S. Capitol after burning by the British, sketch by George Munger in 1814 (Library of Congress)

  9.3 A view of the Presidents house in the city of Washington after the conflagration of the 24th August 1814, hand-colored aquatint by George Munger in 1814 (Library of Congress)

  10.1 Captain John Rodgers, the senior U.S. naval officer in the war (Naval History and Heritage Command)

  10.2 A Baltimore clipper, sketch by Benson J. Lossing (The Pictorial Field-book of the War of 1812)

  10.3 General Samuel Smith, 1817 portrait by Rembrandt Peale (Maryland Historical Society, image ID CA681)

  10.4 “Johnny Bull and the Alexandrians,” 1814 political cartoon by William Charles (Library of Congress)

  11.1 Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, engraving by Henry Meyer from portrait by John W. Jarvis (Library of Congress)

  11.2 Captain David Porter in oil portrait, possibly by John Trumbull (Naval Histo
ry and Heritage Command)

  11.3 Francis Scott Key portrait by Joseph Wood, circa 1825 (Walters Art Museum)

  12.1 John Stuart Skinner in 1825 (The Baltimore Sun)

  12.2 Sketch of the Potomac battle by William Bainbridge Hoff (Naval History and Heritage Command)

  12.3 Assembly of the Troops Before the Battle of Baltimore, oil by Thomas Ruckle, Sr., circa 1814 (Maryland Historical Society, image ID 1879.2.1)

  13.1 Joseph Hopper Nicholson, in an 1810 engraving by Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Memin (Maryland State Archives)

  13.2 Sketch of Brigadier General John Stricker by Benson J. Lossing (The Pictorial Field-book of the War of 1812)

  13.3 5th Maryland at the Battle of North Point, painting by Don Troiani (www.historicalimagebank.com)

  14.1 Battle for Baltimore map (Gene Thorp/Cartographic Concepts, Inc.)

  14.2 Death of Genl. Ross at Baltimore, print from painting by Alonzo Chappel (Library of Congress)

  14.3 Bombardment of Fort McHenry by Alfred Jacob Miller, circa 1828–30 (Maryland Historical Society, image ID 1901.2.3)

  15.1 Mary Pickersgill photograph (Library of Congress)

  15.2 Fort McHenry bomb (author photo)

  15.3 Battle of Baltimore, pen, ink, and watercolor sketch by Lt. Henry Fisher of the 27th Maryland Regiment (Maryland Historical Society, image ID MA480)

  15.4 Dawn’s Early Light, by Edward Percy Moran, circa 1912 (Maryland Historical Society, image ID CA562)

  16.1 The first sheet music for “The Star Spangled Banner” (Library of Congress)

  17.1 “The Fall of Washington—or Maddy in full flight” published by S.W. Fores in 1814 (Library of Congress)

  17.2 The Signing of the Treaty of Ghent, Christmas Eve, 1814, by A. Forestier (Library and Archives Canada)

  17.3 Photograph of Francis Scott Key’s original handwritten manuscript of “The Star Spangled Banner” (Library of Congress)

  epl.1 Memorial to Robert Ross (author photo)

  epl.2 Wood trim from boat recovered at the 2012 Scorpion excavation (Julie Schablitsky, Maryland State Highway Administration)

  epl.3 Sculpture of Francis Scott Key on his grave (author photo)

  epl.4 The first known photograph of the Star Spangled Banner, taken at the Boston Naval yard in 1873 (American Antiquarian Society)

  “The most hated man in the United States, and the most feared.”

  Sir George Cockburn, GCB

  PRELUDE

  I See Nothing Else Left

  POTOMAC RIVER, TUESDAY, AUGUST 9, 1814

  Sailing under a white flag of truce, American agent John Stuart Skinner rounded Point Lookout and entered the broad mouth of the Potomac River, searching for the enemy fleet. The river was at its widest here, three miles from shore to shore where its water flowed lazily into the Chesapeake Bay. The sultry August weather had turned cool overnight, and the day was refreshingly crisp. Even from a distance it was easy to spot HMS Albion, anchored along the far Virginia shore. The 74–gun frigate, weighing nearly 1,700 tons and manned by a crew of 620, was one of the largest and most powerful British warships ever seen in these waters, and it was accompanied by nearly two dozen brigs, sloops, and tenders.

  More daunting than the ships and weaponry was the man the agent had come to see: Rear Admiral George Cockburn. The “Great Bandit,” as the papers called him, was the most hated man in the United States, and the most feared. Americans compared him to notorious barbarians of ancient times, among them Attila the Hun.

  For more than a year, the British squadron commander had waged a campaign of terror along the Chesapeake Bay, sacking Havre de Grace, Maryland, at the mouth of the Susquehanna, ravaging Hampton, plundering the Virginia shoreline, and torching farms in Maryland, acts that had infuriated Americans. Ruthless, witty, and swashbuckling, the lowlands Scot was determined to make Americans pay a hard price for their ill-considered war with Great Britain.

  “[T]here breathes not in any quarter of the globe a more savage monster than this same British Admiral,” the Boston Gazette declared. “He is a disgrace to England and to human nature.” A Fourth of July celebration in Talbot County, Maryland, included a toast to Cockburn, “a man in person but a brute in principle; may the Chesapeake be his watery grave.” One irate Virginian had offered a thousand dollars for the admiral’s head or “five hundred dollars for each of his ears, on delivery.”

  Skinner had sailed from Baltimore on August 7, 1814, bearing official dispatches for the British. As the government’s designated prisoner of war agent, Skinner was a veteran of many such missions, routinely carrying communications from Washington or negotiating prisoner exchanges. He was as familiar as anyone in America with Cockburn and his depredations. Just three weeks previously, the British had burned the Maryland plantation in Prince Frederick where Skinner had been born, and earlier in the summer, they had torched his barn and property at nearby St. Leonard. But if he held a grudge, Skinner was too savvy to make it known to Cockburn.

  As usual, Skinner was courteously welcomed aboard Albion. For all of Cockburn’s haughty bombast and undisputed ruthlessness, Skinner had found him to be a gracious host, always seating Skinner for a meal at the admiral’s table and ready “to mitigate the rigors of war” with hospitality. Skinner had a rough-and-tumble personality to match his pugilistic face, as well as an innate candor, all of which Cockburn appreciated.

  The admiral, his Scottish complexion reddened by the relentless Chesapeake sun, was in a good mood, having just completed a series of successful raids that had terrified residents along the Potomac shores of Virginia’s Northern Neck. At 2 a.m. on August 3, Cockburn had headed up the Yeocomico River, probing the inlet off the Potomac with a force of 500 sailors and Royal Marines in twenty barges. Among them, dressed in red coats, were a special company of 120 Colonial Marines—slaves who had escaped to the British from plantations in Virginia and Maryland, and trained to fight their former masters. Their use was a particularly brilliant and insidious stroke, unleashing deep-seated fears among the locals of a slave revolt.

  A Virginia militia artillery company waiting at Mundy’s Point fired on the British with six-pounder cannons, and the first shot beheaded a Royal Marine in the lead boat. But the Virginians soon ran low on ammunition, and the British swarmed ashore. Major Pemberton Claughton, a Virginia militia commander, was shocked to see a slave who had escaped from his plantation among the invaders. The admiral and his “gallant band” chased the retreating Americans ten miles almost at a run, burning every house they passed, including Major Claughton’s home. Finally, the raiding party collapsed on the ground, exhausted in the 90-degree heat. But there was no time for rest—Cockburn learned that the Virginia militia was regrouping at the nearby village of Kinsale.

  “What! Englishmen tired with a fine morning’s walk like this,” cried Cockburn. “Here, give me your musket; here, yours, my man. Your admiral will carry them for you.” He placed a musket on each shoulder and began marching, rousing the men.

  Returning to their boats, the British sailed to Kinsale, opened fire on the town, and scattered the militia. The village was burned and some thirty homes destroyed. A dead Virginia militiaman was dragged out, his pockets turned inside out and rifled. The British carried off five captured schooners brimming with hogsheads of tobacco, five prisoners, a field gun, and two horses belonging to a militia commander and his son.

  Spreading fear was Cockburn’s mission, and the sack of Kinsale had served this goal quite well. Back on the ships, Cockburn was even more pleased by the news brought to him August 7 by two British frigates, freshly arrived in the Potomac from Bermuda: Troopships carrying 4,000 battle-hardened British army soldiers would soon sail into the Chesapeake.

  Captain Robert Rowley, commander of one of the squadron’s ships, mused about the news in a letter home to England. “I suppose some grand attack will be meditated,” he wrote.

  A grand attack was precisely what Cockburn had in mind.

  Three weeks earlier,
on July 17, Cockburn had submitted a secret plan to capture the capital of the United States. All he needed were army troops that he could bring up the Patuxent River, a Maryland tributary of the Chesapeake providing a back route to Washington. “Within forty-eight hours after arrival in the Patuxent of such a force, the city of Washington might be possessed without difficulty or opposition of any kind,” Cockburn had written to Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, the fleet commander, then in Bermuda assembling reinforcements.

  The British invasion of the Chesapeake was meant to force the United States to divert troops it had sent to attack British colonies in Canada. But Cockburn saw the possibility for more. The fall of the American capital could be the strategic blow that brought Britain victory. The government of James Madison, or “Jemmy,” as Cockburn contemptuously called the five-foot, four-inch president, would be scattered and disgraced, and perhaps even fall. “It is quite impossible for any country to be in a more unfit state for war than this now is,” he told Cochrane. Even if the Americans learned every detail of the British plan of attack, Cockburn added, they were too weak to “avert the blow.”

  Now in its third year, America’s war with Great Britain was about to take a dangerous turn for the United States.

  The War of 1812 was an outgrowth of the titanic struggle that had raged between England and France almost continuously since 1793, when the French Revolutionary government declared war on Great Britain. That conflict had only grown more desperate with the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor of France and his dominance over much of Europe by 1811. Fighting in their mind for England’s survival—and even the survival of civilization—the British never hesitated to trample on American sovereignty to support the war’s ends. They seized American sailors of suspected British origin to man Royal Navy ships, and they severely restricted U.S. trade with Europe.

  One generation removed from the Revolutionary War, the United States seethed with resentment against her former colonial master. For many Americans in 1812, the belief was strong that the revolution was not complete, that the United States had won its freedom, but not its independence. Bowing to the arrogant British behavior would leave Americans “not an independent people, but colonists and vassals,” President Madison believed. In Congress, the war hawks—an aptly named band of representatives from the South and West—were eager to see North America cleared of the British, allowing unimpeded expansion to the west, and, some hoped, to the north. In June 1812, a bitterly divided Congress, split on both party and geographic lines, had narrowly agreed to declare war.