Through the Perilous Fight Read online

  U.S. CAPITOL, LATE AFTERNOON, WEDNESDAY AUGUST 24

  Retreating to the District militia’s rendezvous point at the heights overlooking Washington, General Winder was not encouraged by what he saw. “[L]ooking round him, [he] saw his army scattered over the face of the whole country,” an officer on General Smith’s staff recalled. Winder ordered a further retreat to the Capitol, hoping to find the Maryland militia waiting, though he had given no such instructions to Stansbury. “I supposed, from the rapidity of their flight, [they] might have reached that point,” Winder noted sardonically.

  But apart from the District militia, which arrived soon after the general, the only other organized unit forming near the Capitol was a group of 250 flotillamen who were not under Winder’s command. With Barney and many of his officers wounded or dead, the flotillamen were without a leader.

  Winder was conferring with Major Peter on the north side of the Capitol when Secretary of War Armstrong and Secretary of State Monroe rode up. Armstrong asked Winder his intentions. The general replied that “his force was broken down by fatigue and dispersion” and in no shape to fight, and that he intended to retreat again, this time to the heights above Georgetown. That meant surrendering the city to the British.

  Monroe and Armstrong, in agreement for once, approved Winder’s decision. “[W]e united in opinion that he should proceed to occupy the heights of Georgetown,” Armstrong wrote soon afterward. Monroe agreed that taking a stand at the Capitol was too risky, and that a retreat to the Georgetown heights would leave the Americans in position to launch a counterattack. With that, Monroe and Armstrong wheeled their horses and rode off. Winder gave orders for the District militia to retreat through the city, into Georgetown, and continue to Tenleytown, a hamlet within the city limits about three miles northwest of Georgetown.

  For the District militia, the order ended any illusions that they could save the city. “It is impossible to do justice to the anguish evinced by the troops of Washington and Georgetown on the receiving of this order,” reported Smith. “The idea of leaving their families, their houses, and their homes at the mercy of an enraged enemy was insupportable.” Smith and his officers found it impossible to maintain order. Angry troops broke off to protect homes and families. Others went “in pursuit of refreshments,” as a congressional report put it. “Some shed tears, others uttered imprecations, and all evinced the utmost astonishment and indignation,” Major Williams wrote.

  From the third floor of his home on Capitol Hill, James Ewell, a Washington physician, saw thick clouds of dust rising over the trees and soon realized the militia was retreating into the city. “Presently I beheld the unfortunate Secretary of War and suite in full flight, followed by crowds of gentlemen on horseback, some of whom loudly bawled out as they came on, ‘Fly, fly! The ruffians are at hand!’ ”

  Among those riding into the city was Francis Scott Key, accompanying the District militia. His face was streaked with dust and sweat, and his horse was steaming as he rode along roads crowded with angry militiamen and civilians abandoning their homes. Stunned at the scale of the disaster, Key hurried past the Capitol and down tree-lined Pennsylvania Avenue, continuing to the President’s House, and then on to his Georgetown home. The “memorable flight from Bladensburg,” as he termed it, had been humiliating. Now the retribution he long feared was at hand.

  PRESIDENT’S HOUSE, WASHINGTON, 4 P.M., WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24

  Weary after sixteen miles in the saddle in the dreadful heat, James Madison reached the President’s House around 4 p.m., not long after Dolley had departed. He was accompanied by Attorney General Rush and several other men, including his friend General John Mason, the commissary general of prisoners, and Tench Ringgold, a local rope manufacturer. Madison took off the pistols George Campbell had loaned him and left them on the front hall table. He needed rest.

  Barker and De Peyster were still at the President’s House, seeing to the first lady’s requests. After much difficulty, the two men had found a horse and cart, along with a driver and a young helper. The cart had been loaded with various items that Dolley had asked to be saved, including four cases of papers from Madison’s private office, several large silver urns, and two ornamental eagles from the drawing room. The Washington portrait, which they were saving for last, still lay on the dining room floor.

  Madison took a seat in the dining room and poured himself a glass of wine. French John had dinner to serve but Madison was not hungry. The president, in a reflective mood, described the battle to Barker and De Peyster. Steeped as he was in the Jeffersonian distrust of a standing regular army and in the belief in the citizen soldier, the day had been quite disillusioning. “I could never have believed that so great a difference existed between regular troops and a militia force, if I had not witnessed the scenes of this day,” Madison told them.

  Barney and the flotillamen, on the other hand, had deeply impressed Madison with their “good conduct.” But in the end, the president said, the discipline of the British troops had proven too much. “He said the fire from Barney’s guns made perfect lanes through the ranks of the enemy, but that the troops filled the voids thus created, without turning to the right or to the left to see whether their companions had lost a head, a leg or an arm,” Barker recalled.

  Outside, exhausted troops retreating along Pennsylvania Avenue stopped in front of the President’s House. French John thoughtfully set out buckets of water and bottles of wine for their refreshment. Groups of soldiers wandered into the house, and at some point, George Campbell’s pistols disappeared from the front hall and were never seen again.

  Madison lingered for an hour, receiving reports and planning his next step. Though the president had told his cabinet to rendezvous in Frederick, Maryland, should the capital fall, he had dropped the plan, apparently for fear the road would be jammed. (No one informed Armstrong or Campbell, who dutifully rode to Frederick.) The next plan was to meet Dolley at Bellevue, the Carroll mansion in Georgetown, and then escape together to Virginia. But with time running short, Madison sent a messenger to Secretary of the Navy Jones, who had joined Dolley’s group at Bellevue, with word that everyone should meet at the Foxall Foundry, an armaments manufacturer northwest of Georgetown on the Potomac River. From there they could escape into Virginia across the Little Falls Bridge.

  Before leaving, Madison, joined by General Mason, took a quick look around the President’s House. While Madison left no record of his thoughts on the occasion, it must have been a despondent and anxious moment. The survival of the nation he had helped create had never seemed so tenuous, a catastrophe brought on by the decision he supported for war with Great Britain. Now he must abandon the President’s House and leave the capital to face the consequences. Madison mounted his horse and slowly rode toward the river.

  After the president’s departure, Barker and De Peyster went back to work. With their hired help, they picked the portrait off the floor, carried it out the front door, and loaded it into the cart. They fell into the trail of the retreating army into Georgetown, the life-size image of President Washington one more refugee riding in a cart.

  Much of value remained in the President’s House, to the delight of some local unsavory characters. “[A] rabble, taking advantage of the confusion, ran all over the White House, and stole lots of silver and whatever they could lay their hands on,” Paul Jennings complained.

  After everyone else cleared out, French John closed up. He carried Dolley’s brightly colored, screech-voiced macaw—a favorite pet of the first lady—a few blocks away to the home of the French minister, leaving it with the chef for safekeeping. Back at the President’s House, he banked the kitchen fires, closed the doors, and left.

  WASHINGTON NAVY YARD, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24

  Around 4 p.m., smoke rose from the Eastern Branch Bridge, and minutes later a tremendous explosion rocked the area, throwing fragments of wood into the air. Navy Captain John Creighton, hearing word of the British victory at Bladensburg, had ordere
d the Marine guard detail to ignite the powder kegs stowed on scows beneath the bridge.

  Captain Thomas Tingey, commandant of the Washington Navy Yard, had just received word that the army could not defend the installation. Secretary of the Navy Jones had left Tingey with clear orders: Should the enemy enter the city, Tingey must destroy the Navy Yard, including the ships and the stores of supplies.

  Short, stout, and temperamental, Tingey had been at the yard from its creation. The London-born officer had served in the Royal Navy, but after marrying the daughter of a Philadelphia merchant, he was commissioned a captain in the U.S. Navy. His familiarity with the great shipyards of England led to his selection in 1800 to oversee the building of the nation’s first navy yard in the new capital. Within a few years, Tingey had transformed a piece of undeveloped tidal front into a bustling shipyard, which served as the homeport for the fledgling American fleet and remained one of the navy’s most important shipbuilding and repair facilities.

  Now he had to destroy it. With a heavy heart, Tingey ordered word spread in the neighborhood, home to hundreds of Navy Yard workers, and one of the most densely populated areas in town. A strong wind was blowing, and firing the yard could create a conflagration in the surrounding homes. Horrified residents appeared at Tingey’s door, imploring him not to do it. Tingey sent them away, warning “any farther importunities would cause the matches to be instantly applied.” If they left him alone, Tingey promised, “I would delay the execution of the orders, as long as I could feel the least shadow of justification.”

  Mordecai Booth, Tingey’s clerk, could not fathom the idea. Captain Creighton was also strenuously opposed, not least because Argus, the sloop-of-war he was slated to take command, lay nearly ready at the Navy Yard wharf. Tingey was willing to hold off, but he needed accurate intelligence about the whereabouts of the British. Creighton and Booth offered to scout. Tingey agreed to wait for their report, but with great trepidation.

  BLADENSBURG, 5 P.M., WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24

  The fear was universal in Washington that the enemy was on the tail of the retreating militia. But the victorious British army had pursued the fleeing Americans for only a mile before Ross called a halt. The British captured few prisoners, “owing to the swiftness with which the enemy went off,” a jocular Cockburn reported. Without cavalry, the British had been unable to fully exploit their victory. Several officers from the 85th thought they spotted Madison riding off and lamented that they would have caught the president if only they had horses.

  Ross decided rest was imperative. The wounded, many with terrible injuries, were carried to makeshift hospitals in Bladensburg. Details buried some of the dead and collected stragglers, and Barney’s captured artillery was destroyed. The British had suffered greater casualties than the Americans, a measure of their costly charges in the face of artillery fire. Officially, the British reported 64 dead, 138 wounded, and another 107 captured or missing, but the numbers were likely higher. The brunt of the battle had fallen on Thornton’s Light Brigade, which suffered about 25 percent casualties, including 86 dead or wounded in the 85th Light Infantry alone.

  The Americans, by and large, had retreated too quickly to die, suffering at most 40 dead, up to 60 wounded, and 120 captured, by Winder’s estimate. The marines accounted for roughly a quarter of the American total, a grim reflection of their brave stand with the flotillamen, who also suffered heavily.

  As the British rested, Ross and Cockburn conferred. Despite the exhaustion, there was little sense in giving the Americans time to regroup. Ross chose the 3rd Brigade, which had seen little combat, to lead the way into Washington; the brigade included the bulk of the Fusilier battalion, the seamen, and the Royal Marines. Also included were the Colonial Marines; the escaped slaves would have the honor of entering the capital as conquerors.

  After a two-hour rest and a hasty meal, the 3rd Brigade fell in, and around 6 p.m. began its march on Washington, with Ross and Cockburn at the head.

  GHENT, MIDNIGHT (6 P.M., WASHINGTON), WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24

  For five days, the American delegation in Ghent had squabbled on the proper response to the August 19 British ultimatum. All agreed that the outrageous British demands—in particular, the creation of a permanent Indian buffer state carved from American territory—must be rejected, even though it meant the peace talks would likely collapse. But exactly how to frame the language of the American response was at issue. John Quincy Adams drafted an initial reply. “I found, as usual, that the draft was not satisfactory to my colleagues,” Adams wrote pithily in his diary. Albert Gallatin wanted to strike out every expression that might offend the British; Henry Clay thought Adams’s old-fashioned figurative language was improper for a state paper; Jonathan Russell wanted to tinker with the construction of each sentence; James Bayard wanted it all recast in his own language. All of Adams’s colleagues agreed about one other matter: The reply was much too long.

  On Wednesday evening, the delegation met after dinner to hash out a final draft. “[W]e then sat until eleven at night, sifting, erasing, patching and amending, until we were all wearied,” Adams wrote. None of the delegates was happy with the end result, but they gave in to exhaustion.

  The American reply would be signed and delivered to the British in the morning. It would, predicted Adams, “bring the negotiation very shortly to a close.” As the clocks in Ghent tolled midnight, Adams went to bed, fearing for his country’s future.

  WASHINGTON, EVENING, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24

  The sun was setting at Mason’s Ferry on the Georgetown waterfront as President Madison waited for a boat to carry him across the Potomac. Yet again, events had not unfolded as planned. Retreating militia jammed the roads, forcing Madison to drop his plan to rendezvous at the Foxall Foundry with Dolley, Jones, and the rest of their party. The president had sent Tench Ringgold to the foundry with word that he would instead cross by ferry to Virginia and meet the others at Salona, the estate of the Madisons’ friends the Maffitt family.

  Along with Rush, General Mason, and Paul Jennings, Madison rode the ferry across the Potomac to Mason’s Island, today known as Theodore Roosevelt Island, a seventy-five-acre island by the Virginia shoreline. From there, the party crossed into Virginia via a causeway, mounted their horses, and rode up the Georgetown Road away from the river.

  Meanwhile, Dolley Madison and the Cutts, Jones, and Carroll families struggled in their carriages through the clogged streets of Georgetown, arriving at Foxall only to learn from Ringgold that the president had crossed downriver. The group continued upriver toward the Little Falls Bridge to cross into Virginia.

  Those left in the city watched in shock as Winder’s broken army retreated through the streets. “[T]he poor creatures were marched to death on a dreadfully hot day before the engagement began & then retreated 12 or 13 miles without halting,” Anna Maria Thornton, wife of Key’s friend William Thornton, recorded in her diary. “[T]hey were obliged to lay down in the fence corners & anywhere on the road they were so completely exhausted with hunger and fatigue.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Laval and his cavalry squadron retreated past the Capitol and continued to the President’s House, hearing a rumor that Winder planned to make a stand there, but upon arrival “saw no army or symptoms of any,” he reported.

  Navy clerk Mordecai Booth, reconnoitering the city, rode to the President’s House, expecting someone there would know the whereabouts of the American army. Instead, in front of the mansion, he encountered a lone cavalry officer who started to draw his weapon until Booth identified himself. The officer dismounted, walked up the steps, pulled the bell violently, knocked on the door, and called for French John. “But all was silent as a church,” Booth reported. “Then, and not until then, was my mind fully impressed that, the metropolis of our country was abandoned to its horrid fate.”

  As the inferno blazed, troops stood outside watching the Capitol “wrapped in its winding sheet of fire.”

  Mural on the ceiling in the House wing
of the Capitol, depicting its burning by the British.

  CHAPTER 8

  A Spectacle Terrible and Magnificent

  Moving at a fast clip as daylight waned, the British victors soon reached the outskirts of the capital. No resistance was met, save from a party of American cavalry that fired a futile volley and fled. General Ross halted on a field two miles from the Capitol. The bulk of the 3rd Brigade, about 1,200 men, would remain here. Ross wanted no looting and would enter Washington with only 200 Fusiliers, along with Cockburn and a naval party.

  A pale moon rose as the troops moved down Maryland Avenue toward the Capitol. Ross and Cockburn rode together up front, accompanied by Lieutenant George De Lacy Evans. Close behind them rode Cockburn’s aide, Lieutenant Scott and two of Ross’s aides, Captain Harry Smith and Captain Duncan MacDougall, flanked by the troops.

  On Capitol Hill, Michael Shiner, a nine-year-old slave, spotted the British column as soon as they crested a rise. “[T]hey looked like flames of fire, all red coats and the stocks of their guns painted with red vermillion, and the iron work shined like a Spanish dollar,” he later wrote. That one glimpse was enough for Shiner; he and a companion began running. An old lady named Mrs. Reid collared Shiner before he got away. “Where are you running to, you nigger, you?” she asked. “What do you reckon the British wants with such a nigger as you?”

  His friend slipped away and hid in a baking oven, but Shiner, his courage bolstered by Mrs. Reid’s impolite question, stuck around to watch what happened next.

  To download a PDF of this map, click here.

  Approaching the Capitol, Ross and Cockburn halted to confer. An officer sent forward under a flag of truce reported finding no one in arms and no opposition. Ross may have sounded a request on drums for a parley, but the only response was dead silence. The general’s instructions from Lord Bathurst, the war secretary, authorized him to demand ransom in exchange for sparing a captured city, a common practice.