Through the Perilous Fight Read online

  Parker had done well with his assignment to create a diversion in the upper Chesapeake while the rest of the force attacked up the Patuxent and Potomac. With only a frigate and two schooners, Parker kept the Americans off balance with a foray up the bay that stoked fears of a British strike on Annapolis or Baltimore. After probing Baltimore Harbor on August 27, Parker crossed the bay to the Eastern Shore, where he learned that a large body of militia was camped in the woods near Fairlee Creek. Parker decided to seize the opportunity for a surprise attack.

  Yet the captain was melancholic in the hours before the landing. When his gold-lace cocked hat fell overboard, Midshipman Frederick Chamier heard him mutter, “My head will follow this evening.” Just before departing the ship, Parker dashed off a note to his wife, Marianne. “If any thing befalls me, I have made a sort of will,” he wrote. “My country will be good to you and our adored children.”

  Parker recovered his customary vim when the barges landed around 11 p.m. with a force of 260 sailors and marines. The British had been told the Americans were camped only a half mile from the beach, but after landing they learned from a slave that the militia had moved another mile inland. One mile turned into two, but at Parker’s insistence they kept marching. Soon they had moved four or five miles from the boats. “It was the height of madness to advance into the interior of a country we knew nothing about,” Chamier later said.

  The British believed their landing had gone undetected, but the Americans had spotted their barges even before they reached shore. At 11:30 p.m., Lieutenant Colonel Philip Reed, commander of the 21st Maryland Regiment, received a report that the British were landing and immediately ordered his 200 militiamen to break camp. The fifty-four-year-old Reed, an Eastern Shore native, was a tough, battle-tested Revolutionary War veteran and former U.S. senator. Once he learned the British were marching in his direction, Reed set up at the nearby Caulk farm, placing his men and five artillery pieces in a field in front of a line of woods.

  A moon shone brilliantly on the rising ground occupied by the Americans. In the early morning hours of Wednesday, the British marched through a narrow path leading to the field. As they reached the clearing, the militia guns opened up with devastating fire. Parker led the Royal Marines in a charge. “[H]is Turkish sabre sparkled in the moonlight as he waved it over his head, and his continual cry of ‘Forward! Forward!’ resounded amidst the firing,” Chamier recalled. But then Parker’s voice failed, and he fell. Buckshot had cut his femoral artery, and he was bleeding profusely. “I fear they have done for me,” he gasped to his men before passing out. “[Y]ou had better retreat, for the boats are a long way off.”

  Parker bled to death as his men carried him back. The Maryland militia, meanwhile, had run out of ammunition and was likewise retreating. But while American casualties were light, the British had lost 14 dead and 27 wounded. The Battle of Caulk’s Field had proven costly and foolhardy for the British.

  The next morning, during a truce, the Americans brought the British a fine leather shoe, marked with Parker’s name, that had been found on the battlefield. “We guess that your captain was not a man to run away without his shoes,” a militiaman remarked. The loss of Parker, beloved by his crew and the English public alike, was anguishing for the British. Byron would write a poem saluting the valor of the “gallant Parker.”

  The reaction was much different among the Americans. “Huzza for the militia!” declared a Washington newspaper. Following the humiliation of Bladensburg, it was an impressive performance by the Maryland militia. And it was the first sign that British fortunes in the Chesapeake were changing.

  “I have to make a journey to the fleet to try to get Dr. Beanes released from the enemy—I hope I may succeed but I think it very doubtful.”

  Francis Scott Key

  CHAPTER 12

  The Mission of Francis Scott Key

  HMS TONNANT, IN CHESAPEAKE BAY, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1

  The British fleet slowly sailed out from the Patuxent River, the men savoring the triumph of Washington. Officers planned dinner parties and balls aboard the ships. Landing parties held picnics on the shores, serenaded by band music, while sailors and soldiers happily foraged for pigs and chickens.

  But aboard Tonnant, the man who conquered Washington was not celebrating. Instead, General Robert Ross sat at a table and composed a painful letter to his wife. “It is my best loved Ly with feelings of the most acute misery that I take my pen to write to you,” Ross began. Two letters from Elizabeth Ross had arrived while he was gone. Written from Bordeaux, they made clear that his wife was deeply depressed at his absence and perhaps on the verge of a breakdown.

  Reading the letters “has completely overwhelmed me,” Ross told his wife. “I declare to you that were it in my power to leave the Army I would without hesitation fly to you,” he wrote. “This war cannot last long, we then meet my Ly never again to separate.”

  Almost as an aside, Ross mentioned that he had captured the capital of the United States. The news offered hope that he would soon return, he told her. “I trust all our differences with the Yankees will be shortly settled,” Ross wrote. “That wish is, I believe, very prevalent with them.”

  That wish was doubtless on Ross’s mind when he met with Vice Admiral Cochrane that same day and urged him to attack Baltimore “without delay.” Echoing Cockburn’s sentiments, the general argued that “the paramount consideration” was to strike before the Americans could fortify the town. Cockburn, too, continued to press for an attack, believing it could be a decisive stroke, possibly ending the war.

  Cochrane conceded an attack on Baltimore would doubtless succeed, but he still refused to give his assent, insisting that it was imperative to sail for Rhode Island to escape the “fatal” Chesapeake weather.

  After some “ineffectual solicitations” by the general failed to sway Cochrane, according to Evans, Ross decided it advisable to bow to the vice admiral’s plans. But other officers saw that Ross was miserable.

  Ross attended to other business as well. On Wednesday, before the fleet departed Benedict, an American emissary, Richard West, arrived to plead for the release of Dr. Beanes and the other two American prisoners. West, a close friend of Beanes, lived near Upper Marlboro at the Woodyard plantation with his wife, an older sister of Francis Scott Key’s wife. West carried “necessaries” for the three prisoners and a letter from Governor Winder complaining of the “great rudeness and indignity” by which Beanes had been carried off from his home, and requesting he be freed.

  Ross not only refused, he declined to let West even see the doctor. But he sent for Dr. William Hill and young Philip Weems, the other two Americans. Hill used his audience with the general to make the case that he, unlike Beanes, had not surrendered to Ross upon his entry to town. After hearing Hill out, Ross concluded that his imprisonment was “an injustice” and ordered him freed.

  “I thought you and Doctor Beanes were alike in trouble, nor was I undeceived until a few minutes ago,” Ross told Hill. “It is my wish to alleviate as much as possible the horrors of war, therefore I shall let you return to your friends and family.…” Pointing to Weems, Ross said he “could return with me, as he was under age and not found in arms,” Hill recalled. Ross invited Hill into the cabin for some refreshments before he and Weems were put ashore at Benedict.

  Beanes was another matter altogether. As the fleet moved down the Chesapeake, the doctor languished in harsh conditions aboard Tonnant.

  ALEXANDRIA, THURSDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 1

  After four days of methodically stripping Alexandria of its merchandise, Captain Gordon’s Potomac squadron was almost done. Nearly 16,000 barrels of flour, 1,000 hogsheads of tobacco, and 150 bales of cotton, as well as quite a bit of wine and sugar, had been loaded from warehouses along the river. Plenty more remained, but there was no more room on the twenty-one prize vessels they had captured, even including the sunken ships that had been raised, caulked, and rigged by the sailors.

  Thro
ugh it all, the British had been terribly polite. After emptying one merchant’s cellar, they invited the man on board for some wine. “They dismissed him with many smooth words and good-natured recommendations to think no more about the flour,” a witness recalled. Alexandria Mayor Charles Simms was delighted at the good manners. “It is impossible that men could behave better than the British,” Simms wrote approvingly to his wife.

  U.S. Navy Captain David Porter watched the proceedings with disgust. With Baltimore safe for the moment, Navy Secretary Jones had summoned the three commodores—Rodgers, Perry, and Porter—to defend Washington from a second attack and to lay a trap for the British along the Potomac when they left Alexandria. Porter had arrived in Washington with sailors and marines on the evening of August 30, and was ordered to set up a battery on the Virginia shore of the Potomac above Mount Vernon to batter the British.

  Reaching Alexandria on his way south, Porter rode into town on the hot and calm Thursday morning to get a firsthand look at the strength of the British force. He was accompanied by Captain John Creighton. Both officers had a score to settle with the British; Argus, the sloop-of-war Creighton was supposed to command, had been destroyed in the Washington Navy Yard fire, as had Porter’s new frigate, Essex.

  Near the river, they watched sailors rolling barrels of flour from a warehouse. The city had proven so cooperative that the British walked around without any precautions. A young British officer, Midshipman John Went Fraser of Euryalus, had wandered off from the rest of his party. On impulse, Porter and Creighton made a dash for him, likely looking for a prisoner they could interrogate.

  The powerful Creighton grabbed Fraser by his cravat and tried to throw him onto his horse. “The youngster, quite astonished, kicked and squalled most lustily,” recalled Captain Napier, the British second in command. Creighton dragged the bawling midshipman a hundred yards until the kerchief tore. Free from Creighton’s grasp, Fraser ran to the wharf, where the alarmed British landing parties retreated to their boats and prepared the carronades, expecting a cavalry attack. Seahorse, anchored in the Potomac, hoisted its battle signal, and all the warships prepared for action, ready to “put the town in a blaze,” Napier said. Women and children ran screaming through the streets, seeking shelter.

  A distressed Mayor Simms hastily sent an apologetic delegation to Captain Gordon disavowing any responsibility for the action. Gordon seemed more amused than angry. He called off the attack but warned that a repetition “might lead to the destruction of the town.” Gordon remained wary, having heard rumors that the Americans were setting up a trap downriver.

  Thursday evening, the 18–gun British brig Fairy arrived in Alexandria bearing a dispatch from Admiral Cochrane ordering Gordon’s immediate return to the bay. Moreover, the Fairy commander reported coming under heavy American fire that afternoon below Mount Vernon. Gordon and his Potomac squadron would have to fight their way out.

  WASHINGTON, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1

  Even while seething at the enemy’s “cupidity,” Navy Secretary Jones had not been blind to the opportunity presented while the British loaded their ships with loot in Alexandria. The three commodores had responded quickly to his plan “to annoy or destroy the enemy on his return down the river.”

  Jones believed it critical that the government take the offensive in the wake of the humiliation of Washington and the capitulation of Alexandria. Around the country, there were calls for Madison to be impeached and his cabinet to resign. “Poor, contemptible pitiful, dastardly wretches!” declared the Virginia Gazette. “Their heads would be but a poor price for the degradation into which they have plunged our bleeding country.”

  “Is it possible that after being two years at war, our capital, the seat of our general government, should have been left so defenseless? … Can men who manage in this way be fit to govern a great and free people?” asked the New York Evening Post.

  “The President and the whole administration are damned men in Baltimore—neither of them I believe could get one vote in the city,” Sailing Master William Taylor wrote his wife.

  Upon hearing of Alexandria’s capitulation, half the residents of Salem, Massachusetts, removed their furniture and belongings from town, fearing the British would sail north. “How much has Mr. Madison to answer for!” Salem resident Leverett Saltonstall wrote to his father. “All these evils are occasioned by his rushing into war unjustly, to assist Bonaparte in his nefarious project of conquering the world. No wonder the British are irritated and impelled to carry on war harshly against us.”

  Newspapers were filled with doggerel such as these lines published in New York:

  Fly, Monroe, fly! Run, Armstrong, run!

  Were the last words of Madison

  To Jones, a show of defiance would be the best way to stop the mockery and rally the war effort. Echoing advice from Rush, Jones presented Madison with a memo on September 1 urging the president to immediately issue a proclamation from Washington responding to the burning of the capital.

  “The effect will not be confined to this nation, but will be felt with surprise and admiration in Europe, where the conquest of the capital is generally equivalent to the subjugation of the nation,” Jones told Madison. “The enemy, moreover, will be thus robbed of the fruit, of his enterprise, and will have acquired nothing, but the shame of his vandalism.”

  The previous day, Monroe had received a letter from Cochrane publicly revealing his orders in July to “destroy and lay waste” towns along the coast in retaliation for American actions in Canada. At the risk of furthering panic, Madison and his cabinet decided to make Cochrane’s threat public, hoping to continue rallying public support by painting the British as vandals.

  On September 1, Madison issued a presidential proclamation. In forceful, contemptuous language, drafted by Rush but altered by the president, Madison condemned the British for “wantonly” destroying public buildings and archives that had no military value but were “precious to the nation as the memorials of its origins.” He accused the British of “a deliberate disregard of the principles of humanity and the rules of civilized warfare.”

  Madison dismissed Cochrane’s claim that the British actions were in retaliation for Canada, as an “insulting pretext,” given the “multiplied outrages” already committed by Admiral Cockburn.

  Madison concluded with an appeal to the American people to “unite their hearts and hands” to expel the invaders, harkening to the spirit of an earlier generation: “On an occasion which appeals so forcibly to the proud feelings and patriotic devotion of the American people none will forget what they owe to themselves, what they owe to their country and the high destinies which await it, what to the glory acquired by their fathers in establishing the independence which is now to be maintained by their sons.”

  GEORGETOWN, EVENING, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1

  Roger Brooke Taney, Francis Scott Key’s brother-in-law, was making no progress in persuading Polly Key to leave Georgetown. Taney had traveled from Frederick to the Key home on Bridge Street, hoping to bring Key’s wife back to the safety of Maryland, but she had refused.

  For several days, Frank Key had been assisting with the defenses to protect Georgetown against the British squadron, still within sight at Alexandria. “He would not, and indeed could not, with honor, leave the place while it was threatened by the enemy,” Taney later wrote. For her part, Polly Key would not leave if her husband stayed.

  Though the six Key children had been sent to their grandparents’ home at Terra Rubra, the family was worried that Polly remained in harm’s way. “Believing, as we did, that an attack would probably be made on Georgetown, we became very anxious about the situation of his family,” Taney recalled.

  But the talk of Polly’s departure was put on hold on Thursday evening, when another family member showed up at Key’s home: Polly’s brother-in-law, Richard West. Key and West, each married to Lloyd sisters, had grown close over the years, and West had participated in many of the salon debates at
the Georgetown home with John Randolph and other members of Key’s circle.

  West shared the latest alarming news about their mutual friend, Dr. Beanes, whom Key knew primarily through West. Reports of Beanes’s seizure had already reached Georgetown, and West described the disheartening British response to his attempt the previous day to free the doctor. Given Beanes’s advanced age and frail condition, and the depth of the British rancor toward the doctor, friends were deeply worried. Unless Beanes was released before the enemy ships departed the Chesapeake, the doctor would be taken to the British prison in Halifax, likely never to return to Maryland.

  Beanes’s friends wanted Key to put together a mission sanctioned by the Madison administration seeking the doctor’s release. Key’s connections with the government, his tact, and his ability as an attorney made him a natural choice. Key immediately agreed to help.

  That evening, Key called on President Madison, who promptly approved the mission. The president consulted with General John Mason, the commissary general of prisoners, and they agreed that Key should be accompanied by the American prisoner of war agent, a veteran of many dealings with the British: John S. Skinner.

  ALEXANDRIA, 5 A.M., FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

  It was still dark when Seahorse left her moorings and the British began departing Alexandria. The Potomac squadron was considerably more weighed down than on its way upriver, the eight warships and twenty-one prize vessels loaded to the brim with loot.

  The visit to Alexandria had been quite profitable for the British and humiliating for the Americans, but now the tables might be turned. Gordon had been entrusted with three of Admiral Cochrane’s five vital bomb ships. Losing the squadron would be a devastating blow to British plans along the east coast and Gulf of Mexico.