Through the Perilous Fight Page 29

  Key visited Beanes, whom he found in the forward part of the ship, among the sailors and soldiers; the doctor had not had a change of clothes from the time he was seized and “was constantly treated with indignity by those around him,” according to Key. Beanes had been treated as a criminal, not as a prisoner of war, and had feared he might be tossed overboard.

  Securing Beanes’s freedom had been surprisingly easy. Ross wrote a letter for the Americans to take back to Mason, explaining that Beanes was being released “purely in proof of the obligation which I feel for the attention with which the wounded have been treated.”

  Key’s famed eloquence “was not put to the test in this instance,” Skinner later said. Nor had it been necessary for Skinner to negotiate any terms for exchange. But the journey for the Americans was far from over.

  Early the next morning, Thursday, September 8, Key was informed “that neither he, nor anyone else, would be permitted to leave the fleet for some days,” until after the attack on Baltimore. Cochrane also informed the Americans that they could no longer stay aboard Tonnant, as the flagship was too crowded with officers preparing for the attack.

  Key, Skinner, and Beanes were transferred to HMS Surprize, the frigate commanded by Sir Thomas Cochrane, the admiral’s son, who the elder Cochrane promised would make the Americans comfortable. At 7 a.m., a party of Royal Marines from Surprize took charge of the truce ship and placed her under tow. The ten-man American crew also came aboard the British frigate.

  Baltimore, however, was not the first destination for the British. Captain Gordon’s squadron had not returned from the Potomac, and learning of the American effort to destroy the ships, Cochrane sailed his entire force into the river on Thursday. If necessary, he would land troops to relieve the pressure on the squadron. “We were bent on other plans; but hearing reports of vessels being sunk & batteries formed to prevent their return, we decided on making the safety of these ships our first consideration,” Codrington wrote. In any event, the bomb ships with Gordon were needed for any assault on Fort McHenry, which guarded Baltimore Harbor.

  Before dawn Friday, Cockburn continued upriver ahead of the troopships. Twenty miles from the mouth of the Potomac, Albion spotted a procession of sails approaching. At 6:45 a.m., Cockburn sent the signal Cochrane was awaiting: “All our ships standing down.”

  Gordon’s return from his squadron’s epic twenty-three-day journey into the Potomac electrified the rest of the fleet. The squadron had overcome treacherous shoals and a powerful squall, forced the destruction of Fort Washington, captured Alexandria, and fought its way back down the river with twenty-one prize ships stuffed with booty. For the British, the expedition was a grand triumph in the finest traditions of Royal Navy seamanship. “In short it is nothing less brilliant than the capture of Washington, and those employed deserve laurel crowns,” Codrington wrote his wife. Theodore Roosevelt agreed in his famous history, The Naval War of 1812, calling Gordon’s expedition “a most venturesome feat, reflecting great honor on the captains and crews.”

  But all the glory and loot had come with a price: Baltimore had gained precious time to prepare. At least two days had been lost because the fleet had been forced to sail into the Potomac looking for Gordon.

  At 11 a.m. Friday, Albion led the reunited fleet back down the Potomac. The ships raced downriver with a good wind, rounded Point Lookout late that afternoon, and began to beat their way up the Chesapeake Bay. Gleig wrote in his diary of the men’s delight: “We now put about again all in a body and took the direction of Baltimore which is confidently stated to be the next point of attack.”

  The Potomac battle over, Captain John Rodgers and his men rushed back to Baltimore, soon followed by Porter’s and Perry’s detachments. Fourteen wagonloads of Porter’s men paraded out of Washington Tuesday evening, September 6, with their captain at the head of the procession, accompanied by the sounds of a boatswain whistle and the famed “Free Trade and Sailors Rights” banner flying from the first wagon.

  Arriving in Baltimore on Wednesday evening, Rodgers found more than 15,000 troops in the city, not including the thousand seamen and marines in his naval brigade. Rodgers threw himself back into the city’s defenses, positioning his men at gun batteries along the water and at Hampstead Hill, conferring with Samuel Smith, and making plans to sink boats to protect the harbor. Porter, however, was ordered north to aid in the defense of New York City, and Perry was ill after his exertions at Indian Head. Rodgers was unconcerned about losing the assistance of his fellow captains, believing the situation well in hand.

  “Forts, redoubts and entrenchments are thrown up all around the town and the place now has nothing to fear, even should the enemy make his appearance tomorrow,” Rodgers wrote on Friday, September 9, to Commodore Alexander Murray in Philadelphia. The British would not attack Baltimore, Rodgers added. “It is understood however that he has descended the Bay and whatever might have been his intentions that he will not now attempt an attack on this place with any such force as he can command at present,” he wrote. “I hope to leave here in two or three days for Phila., as I begin to feel tired of playing soldier, and more particularly as there will not be any occasion for our services.”

  BALTIMORE, MORNING, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10

  At Fort McHenry, the garrison commander, Major George Armistead, also believed that the crisis was ending. He finished a letter Saturday morning to his wife, Louisa, who was expecting the birth of their second child at any moment. The British threat to Baltimore had forced her to flee to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It now seemed as if the upsetting evacuation had been unnecessary. “I wish to God you had not been compelled to leave Baltimore but you now must be contented as it is impossible from your present situation to attempt a return,” Armistead wrote.

  Armistead, the coolheaded and courageous thirty-four-year-old son of a Virginia planter, had served fifteen years in the army at posts around the nation. He had a special connection to Fort McHenry and Baltimore, where he had served before the war and had met and married Louisa, the daughter of a prominent Baltimore merchant. After hostilities broke out, Armistead was sent to the Niagara frontier. His role in the seizure of Fort George on the Canadian border in early 1813 earned him promotion to major and the honor of bringing the captured British flags to President Madison. While in Washington in June 1813, he was given command of Fort McHenry, replacing a lackluster officer who had balked at cooperating with Samuel Smith.

  The latest intelligence had the British at the mouth of the Potomac, moving down the Chesapeake. Armistead hoped to reunite soon with his family. “[S]hould they depart from the Bay I will be with you immediately so be not alarmed if I should pop in on you,” he wrote Louisa.

  “I dreamt last night you presented me with a fine son,” he added. “God grant it be so and all well.”

  With Armistead’s blessing, Captain Joseph Nicholson, commander of Fort McHenry’s Baltimore Fencibles, a volunteer artillery company, marched his 80 men to town at noon. The British were reported to be departing, and “we were led to hope we should have a little rest from our incessant labors, in preparing to resist them,” wrote Private Isaac Munroe, an editor of the Baltimore Patriot and one of the “gentleman volunteers” serving with the Fencibles.

  Nicholson, from a prominent family on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, was a born leader—passionate, impatient, and bursting with energy.

  Joseph Hopper Nicholson, in an 1810 engraving.

  The handsome and dashing Nicholson, forty-four, was a judge on Maryland’s highest court. He had raised the fencibles, as the home guard units were called, drawing volunteers from many of Baltimore’s finest families, among them merchants, tradesmen, and bankers who were defending not only homes but also considerable wealth. Nicholson, from a prominent family on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, was a born leader—passionate, impatient, and bursting with energy.

  Like Francis Scott Key and Richard West, Nicholson was married to one of the high-society Lloyd girls of Annapol
is—Rebecca, the eldest of the sisters. He was close to Key, serving as something of an avuncular figure to the younger attorney.

  Elected to the House of Representatives in 1799, Nicholson proved to be a loyal supporter of Jefferson, never more so than when the disputed 1800 presidential contest against Aaron Burr came to the House for resolution. Nicholson, though severely ill, stayed in the chamber nursed by his wife through seven days of balloting, and cast a crucial vote helping Jefferson to victory. But Nicholson left Congress in 1806 for a seat on the Maryland Court of Appeals after he and fellow Maryland representative Samuel Smith had a bitter falling-out vying for House leadership positions.

  Nicholson had been a staunch war supporter from the start, but was also a realist, and after Napoleon’s fall, he recognized that the United States was fighting for survival. “We should have to fight hereafter not for ‘free trade and sailors rights,’ not for the conquest of the Canadas, but for our national existence,” he wrote Navy Secretary Jones, a friend from their days in Congress.

  Nicholson, visiting New York City when he learned that the British had sailed in force into the Chesapeake, made it back to Baltimore one day after the capture of Washington. “Good God! How have we been disgraced,” Nicholson wrote Jones. “Our cursed militia have been coming in one, two, and three at a time, and all speak highly of their gallantry.”

  Despite a high fever, Nicholson reported to Fort McHenry to take command of his Baltimore Fencibles. He was appalled to see his despised rival, Samuel Smith, with unfettered command of Baltimore, and he began a one-man campaign to get him replaced, convinced that Smith would surrender at the first chance. “[I]f general Ross had marched to this place instead of to Patuxent he could’ve been master of our city, with even less trouble than he had at Washington,” Nicholson groused to Jones.

  Nicholson was ambivalent about whether Winder should resume command, but he was sure Smith must go, telling Jones, “for God’s sake let us have a commander who has nerve and judgment.”

  CHESAPEAKE BAY, SATURDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER 10

  Along the coast, a column of more than 50 British ships raced up the Chesapeake Bay on a fine breeze, triggering the greatest alarm on the shore. Sailors and soldiers on the decks watched delightedly as warning guns fired, beacons lit up, horsemen galloped about, and carts headed to the hinterlands loaded with furniture. Annapolis, the picturesque state capital, was particularly panicked. “We could plainly perceive the inhabitants flying in all directions,” exulted Midshipman Robert Barrett, aboard Hebrus.

  Watching from the cupola of the State House in Annapolis, Major William Barney, Samuel Smith’s chief intelligence officer, sent reports to Smith that the British fleet was sailing north toward Baltimore. Barney, the son of Commodore Joshua Barney, had set up an elaborate network of observation stations along the coast all the way to Baltimore, with horse relays at ten-mile intervals. But Smith was receiving contradictory information and delayed taking action.

  Around dusk, lookouts near Baltimore saw the first distant ships coming up the bay under a press of sail and a fair wind. At Fort McHenry Saturday night, Armistead learned that some 30 British vessels—ships-of-the-line, heavy frigates, and bomb vessels—had been spotted near the mouth of the Patapsco, “with every indication of an attempt on the City of Baltimore.”

  Armistead ordered the garrison to man their stations. In town, Captain Nicholson received orders at 9:30 p.m. to gather the Baltimore Fencibles from their homes and march them back to the fort. Noncommissioned officers knocked on doors, telling the volunteers to muster at once at the corner of Howard and Market streets. The men marched in a torrential rain and reached the fort by midnight. “On our arrival,” Private Munroe wrote, “we found the matches burning, the furnaces heated and vomiting red shot, and every thing ready for a gallant defense.”

  BALTIMORE, MORNING, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11

  An odd calm prevailed in Baltimore on Sunday morning. Unlike Armistead, Major General Smith was uncertain whether the reported sightings of British ships meant an attack was pending. He sounded no general alarm, and many residents attended church. Militia troops joined the services at the Wilkes Street Methodist Church, leaving their arms stacked peacefully out front.

  Around noon, the quiet dissolved. Messengers arrived from observation posts at North Point reporting that British warships escorting troop transports were plainly visible through the haze at the mouth of the Patapsco. The speed of the British fleet caught Smith by surprise. He ordered three alarm guns fired from the courthouse green, signaling the troops to muster.

  Church bells rang, drums beat, and couriers hurried about with messages. At the Methodist church, the preacher abruptly slammed his Bible shut. “My brethren and friends, the alarm guns have just fired,” he announced. “The British are approaching, and commending you to God and the word of His Grace, I pronounce the benediction, and may the God of battles accompany you.” The troops rushed out, grabbed their weapons, and took off running.

  Samuel Smith’s plan for defending Baltimore was predicated on one premise: A British attack would come via the Patapsco Neck, the ten-mile-long peninsula leading northwest from the Chesapeake Bay to the city. Unlike Winder at Bladensburg, Smith had carefully thought out a scheme of defense.

  The commander would keep more than 10,000 men, representing the bulk of his force, in the trenches on Hampstead Hill. The vast majority were militia, mostly from Maryland, including the ill-trained 1st Brigade from Cecil and Harford counties, along the upper Chesapeake Bay, and General Stansbury’s 11th Brigade, from Baltimore County outside the city, which had performed so poorly at Bladensburg. Another 2,600 Virginia and 1,000 Pennsylvania militia were inexperienced and of unknown quality. Rounding out the force were about 900 U.S. Army regulars from the 36th and 38th regiments, some of them veterans of Bladensburg. Smith hoped that this time, protected in their formidable position on Hampstead Hill and supported by the naval brigade, the troops would hold and fight.

  Smith had chosen his best militia brigade—the 3rd, or City Brigade—to march out on the neck Sunday afternoon to block the expected invasion. The 3,200 men in the brigade were virtually all from Baltimore—clerks, blacksmiths, laborers, sail makers, carpenters, merchants, and apprentices, most of them volunteers. They served in companies of Hussars, Chasseurs, Dragoons, Yagers, and Blues, among others, names that bespoke their notion of war as a noble pursuit. The heart of the brigade were the 5th Maryland Regiment and the Baltimore Rifle Battalion, both quite familiar with the British from Bladensburg—“not entirely a recommendation,” author Walter Lord noted. Humiliating as it was, the experience had taught the men what to expect from the Invincibles, and it had left them eager to restore their reputations. And this time, they would be fighting for their homes.

  Stricker had served under Samuel Smith for years, accompanying him as second in command of the Maryland troops sent to put down the Whiskey Rebellion.

  Sketch of Brigadier General John Stricker, commander of the City Brigade.

  Brigadier General John Stricker, a taciturn descendant of Swiss pioneers, commanded the City Brigade. He was an experienced officer, quick to take offense at perceived insults. During the American Revolution, Sticker had fought at Princeton, Brandywine, and Monmouth, and he had stood a few paces from the gallows when Major John André, the British spy, was executed for assisting Benedict Arnold in his treason. Stricker had served under Samuel Smith for years, accompanying him as second in command of the Maryland troops sent to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. But Stricker’s reputation had been tarnished by his failure as commander of the city militia to curb the Baltimore mob during the infamous 1812 riot.

  By 3 p.m., Stricker and the City Brigade moved out. The men marched east on Baltimore Street, behind fife and drums and flags, but with less swagger than three weeks earlier, when the 5th Maryland paraded to Bladensburg. The regiment’s blue uniforms were not as splendid now, after the dust, toil, and blood of battle; some of the other units lack
ed uniforms altogether, and the men wore civilian clothes, ranging from work togs to silk top hats. The brigade took the Philadelphia Road through the defensive lines at Hampstead Hill, then followed the North Point Road out to the Patapsco Neck, which was framed by the Patapsco and Back rivers. The day remained intensely hot, and some men sank to the road in the suffocating dust.

  Around 8 p.m., Stricker reached the spot he wanted, just beyond the Methodist Meeting House, a plain, wooden one-room church about halfway to North Point. Stricker had scouted the site a year earlier with Major Barney, the intelligence officer, and they had chosen the ground as the most defensible position. It was at one of the narrowest points of Patapsco Neck, where Bear Creek, an inlet of the Patapsco River, cut far up into the peninsula. The neck was further pinched from the north by the marshy black mud around Bread and Cheese Creek, which narrowed the land to little more than a half-mile-wide stretch of solid ground.

  Smith did not want to challenge the British at their likely beachhead at North Point, where the American defenders could easily be cut off and destroyed by an amphibious landing. Still, the American commander was taking a risk positioning his troops even halfway out the neck. Though the Patapsco was shallow, the British had many small craft that could bypass the American position, sail closer to Baltimore, and cut off Stricker’s force.

  Stricker pushed the Baltimore Rifle Battalion with some cavalry several miles forward to watch for the British. The remainder of the force camped around the Methodist Meeting House, near a grove of trees known as Godley Wood. “We lay that night without tents on the bare ground at the distance of about 7 miles from Baltimore,” wrote Corporal John McHenry of the 5th Maryland. The fort defending Baltimore harbor was named after his uncle, James McHenry, the Irish-born secretary of war under George Washington and John Adams who had pushed to bolster coastal defenses. But on this night, Corporal McHenry was just another cold and sleepless militiaman, anxiously awaiting the British.