Through the Perilous Fight Read online

  The news soon reached Washington, fueling outrage at “the arrogant foe,” as Secretary Jones called the British. “The terms of capitulation of the town of Alexandria are so degrading and humiliating as to excite the indignation of all classes of people,” he wrote Rodgers on Monday.

  There was as much, if not more, indignation at Alexandria as at the British, particularly over its unseemly eagerness to surrender. Dolley Madison derided the citizens of Alexandria as “slaves” to the British and declared they “ought to have suffered their town to be burnt rather than submit to such terms,” according to Anna Thornton’s diary entry that Monday. “But they had no defense,” Thornton added. She understood what the first lady and others forgot, or chose to ignore: Alexandria had been left defenseless by the federal government.

  The Alexandria warehouses were filled with tobacco, flour, cotton, and other goods—“immense booty,” Jones called it. The British had their work cut out for them, and began loading ships on the wharf at the foot of King Street.

  WASHINGTON, 1 P.M., MONDAY, AUGUST 29

  At the bustling American camp at Windmill Point early Monday afternoon, General Walter Smith heard a sudden commotion. Secretary of War John Armstrong had just returned to the city, and when he appeared at the camp, troops erupted in indignation. Charles Carroll of Bellevue, one of the city’s most prominent citizens, made a show of refusing to shake Armstrong’s proffered hand. In a loud voice, Carroll denounced the secretary. He declared that Armstrong’s conduct demanded a “full investigation and explanation before he would meet him as a gentleman, or as an honorable man.”

  Since the day of the battle, the city had seethed with rage at Armstrong. The citizens and militia blamed Armstrong more than Madison or Winder for the disaster. “All confidence in him was gone,” Monroe later told Jefferson. There were reports American soldiers had hung Armstrong in Frederick. That was untrue, but he was hung in effigy at the burned-out Capitol, with a sign reading ARMSTRONG THE TRAITOR.

  One rumor held that Armstrong had been in treasonous correspondence with a British army officer at Bladensburg; another claimed he had issued orders for Captain Dyson to blow Fort Washington. The story was told that Armstrong had been unconcerned when he learned of the destruction in Washington, remarking “that the city would make as good a sheep walk as before, and was never fit for anything else.”

  Upon Armstrong’s appearance at Windmill Point, officers laid down their swords in protest, and troops digging ditches threw down their shovels. The brigade officers unanimously agreed they would no longer serve under Armstrong, whom they blamed as “the willing cause of the destruction of the city of Washington.”

  Smith sent his aides, Major John Williams and Major Thomas McKenney, to report the uprising to the president, who had left the camp a short time earlier. Catching up with Madison as he approached the Cutts house, they reported that “every officer would tear off his epaulettes” rather than have anything to do with Armstrong. But the men would cheerfully serve under any other cabinet officer, they added.

  The militia’s declaration amounted to mutiny, but the president was sympathetic. Madison sent the officers back to Smith with word that he would give the matter immediate consideration and that in the meantime he would ensure that Armstrong issued no orders conflicting with his own.

  Early in the evening, Madison rode to Armstrong’s boardinghouse on Pennsylvania Avenue. The president gingerly noted that a matter of “much delicacy” had arisen, he recalled in a memorandum a few days after the meeting. “Violent prejudices” were being directed against the administration for its failure to protect the capital, Madison noted, and “threats of personal violence had, it was said, been thrown out against us both, but more especially against him.”

  No officer in the city was willing to serve under him any longer, Madison told Armstrong. “Any convulsion at so critical a moment could not but have the worst consequences,” the president added. He suggested Armstrong relinquish his duties related to the defense of Washington.

  Armstrong haughtily replied that he had no intention to bow “to the humors of a village mob” and insisted he must be secretary of war “wholly or not at all.” If the president insisted on stripping him of any authority, he would resign.

  Even now, Madison preferred to preserve the façade of harmony in his cabinet. He declined the offer, telling Armstrong that a resignation might be misconstrued. Armstrong then suggested he might temporarily “retire from the scene” by visiting family in New York, an idea Madison latched on to.

  But as Armstrong defended his actions, the meeting turned angrier. Madison noted that “it would not be easy to satisfy the nation that the event was without blame somewhere and I could not in candor say that all that ought to have been done had been done and in proper time.” When Armstrong insisted that he had spared nothing to protect Washington, Madison finally lost his patience. Armstrong had failed in a number of respects, the president told him. He had never appreciated the danger to the city, nor taken “a single precaution” for its safety. Moreover, Armstrong had failed to implement the preparations ordered by the president.

  The icy conversation came to a close when Madison told the secretary he would have no objection if Armstrong departed in the morning. At sunrise Tuesday, Armstrong left town.

  BENEDICT, MORNING, TUESDAY, AUGUST 30

  The shore of the Patuxent River at Benedict was crowded with sailors heartily cheering Ross’s army on their return. News of Washington’s capture had arrived three days earlier in a note from Cockburn, and the sailors basked in the army’s reflected glory. One by one, the regiments marched down to the beach, and the exhausted soldiers responded with their own hoarse shouts.

  “Ross and Cockburn have immortalized themselves,” Captain Robert Rowley, commander of the troopship Melpomene, wrote to a friend on Tuesday. All were stunned to hear the extent of the American incompetence. Ross reported that “three thousand men well posted would have obliged them to retreat,” Rear Admiral Malcolm wrote his daughter. “The truth is they could not bring themselves to believe that with so small a force we should undertake such an enterprise.”

  Ross was no less shocked that he had succeeded. “It was never expected that an Army of 4,000 men could march with little or no difficulties, take and have at its mercy the capital of the United States,” he wrote his sister-in-law.

  Everyone took particular delight in Madison’s flight; in the British telling, the president scampered off the battlefield in terror and then personally ordered the Potomac River bridge burned to protect his retreat. Madison “must be rather annoyed at finding himself obliged to fly with his whole force from the seat of government,” Rear Admiral Codrington wrote his wife. Most popular of all were stories of the sumptuous meal waiting at the President’s House.

  It seemed as if the capture of the capital might force a quick end to the war, as Cockburn had predicted. “We are all well content with what has been done and consider that it will have the most beneficial effect,” Malcolm wrote. “The inhabitants appeared to be lost in amazement that our army of 5000 men should have burned their capital.… [T]hey are certainly more desirous of peace.…”

  Vice Admiral Cochrane likewise relished Madison’s “humiliating” experience. Forgotten, at least publicly, was Cochrane’s opposition to attacking Washington; he made no mention of it in his subsequent report to London. He sent a letter to the Duke of Gloucester, the king’s nephew, boasting of the accomplishments and omitting any reference to Cockburn.

  Ross had no compunctions about acknowledging Cockburn’s central role when he sat down that day aboard Tonnant to write his official dispatch to London. “To Rear Admiral Cockburn who suggested the attack upon Washington and who accompanied the Army I confess the greatest obligation,” the general wrote.

  Cockburn, however, did not want to rest on his laurels. As soon as he returned to the fleet, the admiral proposed that they take advantage of American panic and immediately sail for Baltim
ore. There was “every reason to expect” the city could be captured without difficulty, the admiral argued at a planning conference.

  But Cochrane had already decided otherwise. “Baltimore may be destroyed or laid under severe contribution, but our present force is not adequate to the attempt without incurring more risk than it would be prudent to do,” he wrote to Bathurst on August 28, requesting an additional 4,000 troops. In the meantime, Cochrane informed London, he would soon sail to Rhode Island to escape the Chesapeake’s feared “sickly season.”

  BALTIMORE, TUESDAY, AUGUST 30

  As the British rested, militia flocked to Baltimore from every direction. The capture of Washington spawned a surge of fear, anger, and patriotism that swept the coast. “Every American heart is bursting with shame and indignation at the catastrophe,” Private George Douglass, a Baltimore merchant who volunteered with an artillery company at Fort McHenry, wrote Tuesday to his friend Henry Wheaton, editor of the National Advocate in New York.

  The people of Baltimore were at first surprised and confounded and expected at any moment to be attacked … but the agony is past, the panic dissipated.… All hearts and hands have cordially united in the common cause. Every day, almost every hour, bodies of troops are marching in to our assistance. At this moment we cannot have less than 10,000 men under arms.

  Across the region, new companies of volunteers sprang up within hours of hearing the news. Travelers found the roads packed with militia heading to Baltimore. More than 3,000 men marched for Baltimore from western Maryland, and militia from Virginia and Penn-sylvania had begun arriving.

  All of Baltimore, it seemed, was under arms. “[I]t is a perfect military camp—no business is done,” Sailing Master William Taylor, who had arrived from the Washington Navy Yard to assist in the defense of Baltimore, wrote his wife. “[E]very man is a soldier.… [T]hey swear to die in the trench before they will give up the city.” From dawn to dusk, the hills east of the port were covered with troops training with artillery and practicing infantry skills. Tents, baggage wagons, and cannon stretched in every direction.

  Those not in arms were summoned to report with wheelbarrows, pickaxes, and shovels to dig earthworks. On Sunday morning, August 28, as martial music played, the citizens brigade broke ground on Hampstead Hill, a large promontory that commanded the east side of town. The Baltimore Committee of Vigilance and Safety divided the city into four quarters, and all citizens free from militia duty were requested to report every fourth day at 6 a.m. and work until dusk. Free blacks were “most earnestly invited” to join, and owners were requested to send their slaves.

  By the end of the first day, wrote Private Douglass, “at least a mile of entrenchments with suitable batteries were raised as if by magic, at which are now working all sorts of people, old and young, white and black.…” Each day, the works grew more elaborate, and soon included two long lines of breastworks interspersed with semicircular batteries stretching northwest from the harbor mouth to Perry Hall Road—today Bel Air Road—protecting the city from attack from the east, where the British would likely land.

  More than anything, there was a determination not to repeat the mistakes that had lost the capital. Said Douglass, “The horrible mismanagement at Washington has taught us a useful lesson, and we must be worse than stupid if we do not make proper use of it.”

  That determination did not bode well for William Winder. The general had arrived in Baltimore at 3 a.m. on August 27, soaked by a heavy rain and irate at Major General Samuel Smith for usurping power. When Smith finally made time to see him, Winder received no satisfaction. Smith “to my astonishment still conceives himself in command and persists to exercise it,” Winder complained to the War Department. Winder suggested he be promoted, thereby ending Smith’s claim to higher rank. But no assistance was forthcoming from Washington; Madison thought it “advisable” that Smith stay in command, and Winder was ordered to report to the capital. Governor Winder was likewise of no help to his nephew, disingenuously disavowing any responsibility for Smith’s appointment.

  His audacity cheered the nation, as did his terse dispatch after the battle: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”

  Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry

  Just as important for Baltimore’s new spirit was the remarkable trio of navy officers defending the city. Captain John Rodgers formally took command of all naval forces in Baltimore on August 28 and established a brigade with two regiments, one commanded by Captain David Porter, the other by Captain Oliver Hazard Perry. It was Baltimore’s good fortune that the three commodores, each waiting for new ships to be completed, happened to be available. The very presence of such illustrious officers serving under Smith’s overall command lent credibility to the general’s plans. “[Y]our name is worth a thousand men to us, and the animating influence of your presence a thousand more,” Captain Robert T. Spence, chief of the Baltimore naval station, told Rodgers.

  The twenty-eight-year-old Perry, from a distinguished family of Rhode Island mariners, had been catapulted to fame by his signal victory a year earlier at Lake Erie, fighting under a battle flag bearing the words DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP. His audacity cheered the nation, as did his terse dispatch after the battle: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” Perry was a natural leader long on pluck and courage, though his streaks of petulance sometimes marred his performance as an officer. Perry’s performance at Lake Erie had earned him command of the new 44–gun Java, a beautiful frigate of hand-hewn timber built at Fells Point and nearly ready to sail, but bottled up in Baltimore by the British threat. The men who had followed Perry to Baltimore to serve aboard Java would instead defend the city. The handsome and vigorous Perry appeared “tranquil as an unruffled lake” at the change in plans, a witness recalled.

  The thirty-four-year-old Porter, a Bostonian who had grown up in Baltimore, was likewise a celebrated figure, having just returned from one of the most daring cruises in the history of the U.S. Navy.

  Captain David Porter

  Porter, a Bostonian who had grown up in Baltimore, was likewise a celebrated figure, having just returned from one of the most daring cruises in the history of the U.S. Navy. On his own initiative, Porter in February 1813 sailed the frigate Essex around the treacherous Cape Horn and into the Pacific Ocean, where he harassed British whalers around the Galapagos, nearly shutting down the industry single-handedly. The British finally destroyed Essex off Valparaiso, Chile, in March 1814. Released with his men on a prisoner exchange, Porter returned as a hero to the United States in July after a year-and-a-half absence. After traveling to the capital and meeting the president, the thirty-four-year-old Porter had been given command of a new 44–gun frigate Essex under construction at the Washington Navy Yard. Porter had been in New York when Jones called him and his crew to the capital, but he had arrived too late to save his new ship, destroyed in the Navy Yard fire.

  Despite the fame of Perry and Porter, it was Rodgers, the senior naval officer in the war, who was the most powerful and influential. The veteran Rodgers had fought the French in the Caribbean in 1799 during the Quasi-War and the Barbary pirates off Tripoli. An hour after learning that war had been declared with Britain in 1812, he took to sea from New York in the frigate President and was credited with firing the first shot of the war. The war had become personal for Rodgers, the son of a tavern keeper from near Havre de Grace. He was at sea when Cockburn struck the town in May 1813, and his wife, sons, and sisters had been forced to flee to safety. The Rodgers family home, Sion Hill, was among those looted and damaged.

  Rodgers had been awaiting the completion of his new frigate, Guerriere, in Philadelphia when he, too, was summoned south. Though he had no experience commanding land forces, Rodgers gamely oversaw the preparations of fortifications and the training of his sailors for ground combat. “If you were to see what a figure I cut with spurs on, accompanied by my aides and gig-men on horseback, you’d split your sides a laughing,” he confessed to his wife, Minerva.

>   The sea-loving sailors were instructed on the fine points of ground combat. “To charge” meant the same as “to board,” an officer explained. “Here they were at home,” a witness reported. “Their eyes glistened.”

  The key redoubt in the center of the line on Hampstead Hill was soon known as Rodgers Bastion, and it was a formidable position, fortified with 16 guns, including twelve-pounders from the sloop-of-war Erie. The 450 sailors in Baltimore were reinforced by 220 marines and some 500 flotillamen, spoiling for another fight with the British even without Barney at their side. The addition of these battle-hardened men to the city’s defenses was electric, giving courage and confidence to the raw militiamen, as Rodgers proudly noted in a letter to Minerva on August 29: “I have the satisfaction to tell you that our little band of seamen coming here at the moment they did has changed the complexion of things very much.”

  EASTERN SHORE OF MARYLAND, 11 P.M., TUESDAY, AUGUST 30

  Across the Chesapeake Bay from Baltimore, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Sir Peter Parker was eager for “one more frolic with the Yankees.” Boats carrying Royal Marines and sailors left HMS Menelaus at 9 p.m., the men rowing in silence with muffled oars until the keels grated on the sandy shore.

  Dashing and reckless, Captain Parker was descended from three generations of British admirals. With his bouffant hair, winning smile, and aristocratic bearing, Parker was “the handsomest man in the navy,” by one estimate. He had inherited his good looks from his mother, the celebrated beauty Augusta Byron, aunt to the poet Lord Byron. Parker had gone to sea with the Royal Navy at the age of thirteen, and propelled by family connections and his own affinity to command, made captain at age twenty, and now, at age twenty-eight, had fifteen years of service through two wars with France. Inspired by Cockburn’s exploits, Parker was eager to lay claim to his own glory in the Chesapeake.