Through the Perilous Fight Read online

  The House of Representatives was equally untended, and it fell to another resourceful clerk, Sam Burch, who had marched out of town with the District militia but finally convinced superiors to let him return and safeguard the papers. On Monday, Burch hunted fruitlessly for anything with wheels before finally hiring an ox-drawn cart from a farm six miles from the city. That night, Burch and another clerk hurriedly tossed the most valuable papers into the cart and spirited them out of the city.

  One man in Washington was not moving with any particular urgency on Monday. At the War Department offices, Secretary of War John Armstrong spent the day working on assignments for regiments in New York. He was annoyed by the bustle across the hallway in the offices of the State Department, which were on the same floor as the War Department. Stephen Pleasonton, the upright and methodical senior State Department clerk, had received instructions from Monroe to secure the papers, and he and the other clerks filled coarse linen bags with valuable documents.

  The secretary of war stopped Pleasonton in the hallway. Armstrong “observed to me that he thought we were under unnecessary alarm, as he did not think the British were serious in their intentions of coming to Washington,” Pleasonton later wrote. The clerk did not back down. “I replied that we were under a different belief,” Pleasonton said, “and let their intentions be what they might, it was the part of prudence to preserve the valuable papers of the Revolutionary Government.”

  Armstrong returned to his office, and Pleasonton continued with his work, loading the precious linen bags into carts and taking them by wagon train to Virginia, first to an abandoned gristmill near Chain Bridge and then to a safer location inside the brick-arched storage chamber of a mansion near Leesburg. Among the documents secured were the secret journals of Congress, correspondence of George Washington, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence.

  MIDDLEBROOK MILLS, MARYLAND, EVENING, MONDAY, AUGUST 22

  Terra Rubra had always been Francis Scott Key’s refuge, but the war had made it impossible to stay longer. Accompanied by his wife, he had departed for Georgetown, first to pack up his papers and valuables, and then to volunteer his services to the District militia. On Monday evening, they reached Middlebrook Mills, a hamlet about midway on the road from Frederick to Washington, and stopped for the night at Peck’s Tavern. Key would have preferred Polly stay at Terra Rubra, but as he later told John Randolph, she “insisted on getting as near Georgetown as she could.”

  “Polly will stay here [at the tavern] for a few days till she hears what is likely to take place,” Key wrote that night to his mother, who was looking after the children at Terra Rubra. “I go in the morning.”

  Key sorted through the rumors flying through the tavern. “We hear a great many different accounts of the operations and force of the enemy,” he wrote his mother. “I beg you will mind nothing that you hear, till you hear it two or three times and from known authority. There is some reason to think that their object is perhaps Barney’s flotilla—others suppose Fort [Washington], and that the city will not be their first object. If this is the case and they allow us time, they will I trust be too late. It is said that Genl. Winder will have a large force in a day or so—he says he expects to have 15,000 by tomorrow—his present force is stated at 8 or 9000, but it is probably not so great. The British are said to have landed 6,000 but it is mere conjecture.

  “I hope we shall be preserved through these anxious times to meet again in peace and happiness,” he concluded. “For this our united prayers will I trust be heard.”

  POTOMAC RIVER, EVENING, MONDAY, AUGUST 22

  No ships with heavy guns on board had ever sailed up the Potomac River past the Kettle Bottoms. The notorious shoals, a series of intricate and constantly shifting shallows and oyster bars, stretched for miles between Nomini Cliffs in Virginia to Lower Cedar Point in Maryland, some running just a few feet in length, others continuing for acres. Washington, as well as the ports of Alexandria and Georgetown, depended on the Kettle Bottoms to defend against an attack up the Potomac. Vice Admiral Warren, Cochrane’s predecessor as commander of the North American Station, had not even attempted to cross them during his foray up the Potomac the previous summer.

  But in July, just before destroying Kinsale, Cockburn had scouted the Potomac and reported finding a passage the British warships could take through the shoals.

  Now it would be up to thirty-one-year-old Captain James Gordon, commander of the British squadron sailing up the Potomac, to prove it could be done. Gordon was not the type to be daunted by shoals. He had joined the Royal Navy from his hometown of Aberdeen, Scotland, as a semiliterate boy and risen to become one of Nelson’s captains. Gordon’s left leg had been shot off below the knee by a French cannonball in the Adriatic in 1811, and he walked with a wooden leg. His life of derring-do inspired later claims that he was a model for the fictional naval hero Horatio Hornblower.

  Gordon’s Potomac squadron—small but loaded with firepower, including one thousand men aboard two frigates, three bomb ships, one rocket ship, and a dispatch schooner—entered the river on August 17. When they reached the Kettle Bottoms, Gordon led the way aboard his 36–gun frigate Seahorse, with the second frigate, Euryalus, and the other ships following her exact course. The British confidence grew as depth soundings showed plenty of water. Then the Euryalus stopped moving. “No one could tell where she hung; there was abundance of water astern, ahead, all around, and yet the ship was immovable,” Charles Napier, captain of Euryalus, recorded. “A diver went down, and found, to the astonishment of all on board, that an oyster bank, not bigger than a boat, was under her bilge.”

  The crew managed to heave Euryalus off the shoal, but it was only the start of a lengthy ordeal up the Potomac. Lack of rain had left the river lower than normal, and each ship went aground at least twenty times. Battling contrary winds, the ships had to be painstakingly warped—hauled by an anchor that was dropped ahead by a boat, again and again—for five days and fifty miles.

  But by Monday evening, August 22, “by the severest labour,” as Gordon said, the Potomac squadron was clear of the Kettle Bottoms and had done what the Americans thought impossible.

  The British now had two formidable forces within striking distance of Washington, one on land and one on water. All that stood between Gordon and the major Potomac ports at the nation’s capital was Fort Washington, the fortress on the river eight miles south of the city.

  OLD FIELDS, EVENING, MONDAY, AUGUST 22

  Late Monday afternoon, President Madison decided it would be appropriate for the commander-in-chief to visit the troops and confer with General Winder at the new American camp at Old Fields, about seven miles east of Washington. He would be gone at least one night, and was worried about leaving Dolley at the President’s House. “[O]n my assurance that I had no fear but for him, and the success of our army, he left, beseeching me to take care of myself, and the Cabinet papers, public and private,” Dolley later related.

  Some in Washington found the idea of the little president riding out to see the troops ludicrous. “Our chief, thinking his presence might occasion them great confidence, buckled on his sword, put his holsters on his saddle (pistols in, of course) and set out at five in the evening to visit the camp,” Martha Peter wrote a friend. Nonetheless, Madison, accompanied by Attorney General Rush, Navy Secretary Jones, and three aides, crossed the bridge over the Eastern Branch of the Potomac and continued into Maryland.

  Old Fields, a hamlet named for its worked-out tobacco fields, was located midway between Washington and Upper Marlboro. It was a good spot for the forces to muster, as it blocked a British advance on the main road to Washington, but would also allow the Americans to quickly move on Bladensburg should the British attack in that direction.

  Around 8 p.m., the presidential party stopped at the Williams farmhouse, about a mile from the Old Fields camp. Rush rode forward to inform Winder of the president’s arrival. The general sent troops to guard the farmhouse, but exh
austed by the “infinite” stream of officious, self-appointed advisers, he declined to call on the president and went to bed.

  The scene at Old Fields was chaotic. By now, Winder’s force had grown to about 3,200 men, including cavalry. Colonel Allen McLane, an aide to Winder who arrived that evening, found the camp “very much exposed and as open as a race ground.” Boisterous groups of militiamen laughed and quarreled, their tents illuminated by campfires. Troops approaching the sentinels shouted the countersign so loudly it could be heard from fifty yards away. “My conclusion was, if General Ross does not rout us this night it will not be our fault,” said McLane.

  The whole camp was roused around 2 a.m. when a sentinel fired his musket at a herd of cattle he mistook for the British army. Winder, not knowing the cause, ordered the whole force kept under arms until daylight. It was the second straight night the men were deprived of sleep.

  Shortly after sunrise on Tuesday, August 23, Winder rode to Madison’s quarters at the Williams farm for a conference with the presidential party, which now included Secretary of War Armstrong, who had arrived from Washington. Commodore Barney joined the group, along with senior militia officers. Winder was flummoxed trying to figure the British intentions, as he admitted to Major Peter. “[H]e informed me that there were such various accounts of the position and movements of the enemy that it was impossible for him to decide how to act,” Peter later wrote.

  Winder offered a variety of guesses about the intentions of the enemy army sitting at Upper Marlboro. He discounted the likelihood that the British would attack Washington anytime soon. Annapolis, just fifteen miles from Upper Marlboro by good road, was a better possibility. But based on reports that the British squadron on the Potomac had passed the Kettle Bottoms, Winder now believed the objective was Fort Washington, the bastion on the river. Winder predicted the British army would sit at Upper Marlboro until the Potomac squadron approached the fort; then it would join forces with the ships for a combined land and water assault on the fortress. Rumors of the enemy army’s size were wide-ranging, stretching from four to twelve thousand, with the best estimates putting it at five to seven thousand.

  Armstrong, for his part, insisted that the British army had “no object” other than the destruction of the now-defunct flotilla. In the unlikely event the army moved on Washington, he declared, the force was so weak it would accomplish nothing more than “a mere Cossack hurrah.”

  Madison and his entourage rode to camp, where the American troops were drawing up in lines for a presidential review at 9 a.m. The day had already turned hot and sticky. The men did not appear to be crack soldiers, half in civilian clothes, and others wearing only bits of uniforms. But though they had been up all night, they were in good cheer.

  Most impressive were Barney’s flotillamen and Captain Miller’s marines, who brought a bit of swagger to the review. Jones proudly noted their “appearance and preparation for battle, promised all that could be expected from cool intrepidity, and a high state of discipline.” Many of the flotillamen were black, as the navy had no restrictions barring their service, unlike the army and militia. Among them was Charles Ball, who, after escaping from slavery in Georgia and returning to his native Maryland, had joined the flotilla in the Patuxent, working as a seaman and cook. Madison asked Barney if the blacks “would not run on the approach of the British?” After four months on the river and in the woods with his men, Barney gave a sure reply. “No sir,” the commodore said. “They don’t know how to run; they will die by their guns first.”

  Madison spoke briefly, exhorting the officers to be firm and faithful in their duty. He was encouraged by the enthusiasm and growing numbers of American troops. In addition to the main force at Old Fields, the Maryland militia was gathering at Bladensburg, about ten miles northwest. The assurances of Winder and Armstrong persuaded him that Washington was safe.

  After the review, Madison sent Dolley a message brimming with confidence. “I have passed the forenoon among the troops, who are in high spirits and make a good appearance,” he wrote. “The reports as to the enemy have varied every hour. The last and probably truest information is that they are not very strong, and are without cavalry and artillery, and of course that they are not in a condition to strike at Washington.”

  As the president conferred further with Armstrong and Winder, Major Thomas McKenney, a Georgetown dry goods dealer serving as an aide to General Smith, rode in with a patrol that had scouted the British position at Upper Marlboro and captured two British deserters. Briefing the presidential party, McKenney described the size and position of the British force at Upper Marlboro and predicted the enemy would reach the American position before daylight the next morning.

  Armstrong scoffed. “They can have no such intention,” he said. “They are foraging, I suppose; and if an attack is meditated by them upon any place, it is Annapolis.”

  But Madison wanted to hear more. The president interrogated the two deserters, but the men claimed to know next to nothing. Then McKenney directed the prisoners to gauge the size of the American force gathered at Old Fields, and asked them whether the British force was equal to it. Recalled McKenney, “They did so, and with a smile, said—‘We think it is.’ ”

  ACADEMY HILL, UPPER MARLBORO, mORNING, TUESDAY, AUGUST 23

  General Ross was no more certain than the Americans about the next step. At his headquarters at the home of Dr. Beanes, the British commander convened a council of war to decide whether to attack Washington or retreat to the ships.

  In many respects, the British found themselves in a strong position. The troops were in better shape than when they landed at Benedict four days earlier, and they were now in striking distance of the American capital. Locals were more than happy to sell the British all the cattle they needed, nor had it been a problem buying enough horses to pull the small train of artillery. Slaves were a font of useful information, and for that matter, “the white inhabitants by no means incorruptible,” Evans observed.

  But Ross was disturbed by the intelligence learned from informants: The American forces collecting to his front were more numerous than anticipated, and strongly placed. Moreover, though the flotilla’s destruction gave the British unquestioned control of the Patuxent, the American boats no longer served as an excuse to explain the British incursion.

  The small expeditionary force was now twenty-five miles from the ships at Benedict, with little artillery and no cavalry. Until now, the army had been moving alongside or at least close to the river. From here on, an attack on Washington would take the army inland, away from communication with the ships.

  It was clear the American troops were saddled with “leaders devoid of talent,” one of Ross’s aides observed. Still, their failure to put up any resistance or even to chop a single tree across a road to slow the British progress was so odd that Ross wondered if he was being lured into an ambush. Surely the Americans could not be this incompetent. But what bothered Ross the most was that an attack on Washington “completely overstepped” his instructions from the government. The general’s staff was split on whether to proceed.

  The most passionate voice arguing for Washington was that of Lieutenant George De Lacy Evans. The hard-knit and sinewy Irishman was from an old Norman family that had arrived in the British Isles in the footsteps of William the Conqueror.

  Photograph of Gen. George De Lacy Evans circa 1855, when Evans commanded a British division during the Crimean War.

  The most passionate voice arguing for Washington was that of Lieutenant George De Lacy Evans. The hard-knit and sinewy Irishman was from an old Norman family that had arrived in the British Isles in the footsteps of William the Conqueror. Evans, though only twenty-three, had already served eight eventful years in the army, distinguishing himself by dash and daring in India and in the Peninsula. From the beginning of the expedition, the ambitious Evans had glued himself to Ross’s side, making himself indispensable to the general.

  As the council of war continued, Evan
s realized that Ross was wavering. What they needed, Evans decided, was Cockburn. “[H]is presence might have the effect of inclining the scale in favour of the forward movement,” Evans later wrote.

  Evans and an ally raced on horseback five miles to Mount Calvert, a brick plantation house overlooking the Patuxent where Cockburn had set up headquarters after the flotilla’s destruction. The officers explained the dilemma and suggested the rear admiral accompany them to Upper Marlboro. Cockburn was happy to oblige, jumping on a spare mount the officers had brought.

  Arriving at the Beanes home, Cockburn went to work. The Americans truly were as weak as they seemed, Cockburn insisted. “Let us now push on, so far as to feel their strength,” he told Ross, assuring him that the British could retreat to the ships if need be. Cockburn scoffed at Ross’s concerns about his troop numbers. Nothing was impossible for the soldiers who had fought their way through France and Spain. Cockburn offered to bolster Ross’s force with Royal Marine artillery and seamen to carry provisions. The admiral declared he “would go himself & either conquer or die,” a sailor recollected.

  Ross was soon persuaded. But before the deliberations were complete, a message for Cockburn arrived from Vice Admiral Cochrane. After four days anchored off Benedict, the commander-in-chief made it clear in a curt note that he believed the British excursion had gone on long enough. “I congratulate you most cordially on the destruction of Barney’s Fleet and think as this matter is ended, the sooner the army get back the better,” Cochrane wrote.