Through the Perilous Fight Page 31

  At 1 p.m., the task force moved forward in arrowhead formation, centered on North Point Road. Armed with long-barreled rifles and carrying powder horns on their right hips and bullet pouches on the left, the riflemen marched with a flag showing a coiled snake with the words don’t tread on me.

  GODLEY WOOD, EARLY AFTERNOON, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12

  General Ross was no less impatient than Stricker. It was the middle of the day, and if the British did not hurry, they would not be in position to assault Baltimore in the morning. Around 12:30 p.m., he ordered the advance to continue.

  Beyond the Gorsuch farm, a canopy of heavy woods shaded the road, with occasional clearings for cornfields. Lieutenant George De Lacy Evans accompanied the scouts as they moved through the woods, covering the front and flanks and watching for an ambush.

  Ross and Cockburn, near the front as usual, moved forward with the advance party, accompanied by a few officers. Among them was Ross’s aide, Captain Duncan MacDougall and Captain Edward Crofton, commander of the naval brigade.

  After they had ridden about two miles, Cockburn, by his later account, grew concerned that the advance guard was moving too far ahead, the “main force being at this time a very long way in the rear.” He recalled raising the matter with Ross, who assured Cockburn he would not advance much farther before halting to allow the column to close. Soon afterward, the scouts at the front were surprised to run into an American skirmish line. The three American prisoners who had described the extensive defenses at Baltimore had said nothing about a militia brigade positioned just ahead.

  The Americans opened up with sharp and unexpected fire. Cockburn and Ross saw the enemy posted at a turn of the road, extending into woods to their left. “[T]here was nothing left for it, but to dash forward against them, returning their fire, as quickly as possible,” according to Cockburn’s memoir. Two aides rode back to hurry on the main column.

  Ross grew concerned as the fire continued and rode farther up to investigate. “He was upon all occasions the most forward, and upon the present occasion particularly so,” Major Richard Gubbins, the acting commander of the 85th Light Infantry, wrote.

  Reaching the crest of a knoll, Ross examined the American positions with a spyglass. The enemy seemed stronger than expected, and he was eager to bring up the column. Some four hundred yards to their front, Sergeant William Sannford, a courier accompanying Ross, spotted three Americans, one of them in a tree. Then Sannford saw the three men fire simultaneously in their direction.

  Major Heath’s skirmishers were no less surprised than the British to run into the enemy. After departing the American line, they had moved through a tangle of scrub pine, honeysuckle, and blackberry so thick that a small detachment of cavalry accompanying the task force quickly fell behind. The men had advanced a half mile ahead of Stricker’s line when they discovered the British were no longer breakfasting at the Gorsuch farm. The enemy advance guard rose from the woods and poured fire onto the Americans.

  Heath ordered Howard’s Mechanical Volunteers at the front of the skirmish line to fire a volley. The Independent Blues followed with a second volley a few seconds later. Captain Levering had ordered his men to drop three buckshot down their barrels atop a musket ball; “buck and ball,” as it was known, combined the lethality of a large-caliber ball with the spreading pattern of buckshot. “Take good aim, there’s an officer,” Levering said, by one account.

  Aisquith’s riflemen were also firing, arrayed in the tall grass and behind trees. An officer instructed several men to climb trees so they could see farther. Others braced their rifles on the boughs of trees looking for targets. By later accounts, the riflemen spotted one or more British officers on a knoll. “I see a mark,” McComas is said to have called to Wells. “So do I,” Wells replied.

  The shot that hit Ross passed through his right arm and buried itself in his chest, likely breaking ribs and puncturing at least one lung. “My arm is broken,” the general exclaimed. He collapsed from his horse, his fall broken by Captain Crofton, who gently lowered Ross to the ground with help from Captain MacDougall and other nearby officers.

  A soldier ran to Cockburn, nearby on his horse, and asked if he knew the general had been shot. “No, it is impossible,” the admiral replied. “I parted with him this moment.” Cockburn rushed to Ross’s side.

  As Cockburn later described it, Ross had been “cantering to the rear to hurry up the column” when he was hit by one of the “last straggling shots” from the retreating Americans. Evans, however, recalled that Ross “was at the moment stationary and fronting the enemy” when shot.

  From the start, accounts likewise varied about what had hit Ross. Cockburn and others called it a musket ball. Cochrane called it a “musket ball” in one official report and a “rifle ball” in another. Other British accounts called it a rifle shot, but an army officer with Ross later insisted the general’s wound bore evidence of being from buck and ball.

  There was no doubt, however, that the wound was devastating. Ross recognized this right away. “Send immediately for Colonel Brooke,” he gasped. Evans took off at a gallop for the rear.

  The shot that hit Ross passed through his right arm and buried itself in his chest, likely breaking ribs and puncturing at least one lung. “My arm is broken,” the general exclaimed.

  Death of Genl. Ross at Baltimore

  The Light Brigade was nearing the front when Captain MacDougall galloped back, calling for a surgeon. Then the general’s horse plunged through the woods riderless, its saddle stained with blood. “We all dreaded something was wrong, and our fears were too soon realized,” Gleig wrote in his diary.

  Private Aquila Randall, a twenty-four-year-old with the Mechanical Volunteers, might have been the first American to die in the defense of Baltimore. The British had recovered from their initial surprise and poured fire on the Americans, aiming at telltale puffs of smoke. Randall was killed near the spot where Ross had been hit. Another shot felled Lieutenant Gregorius Andre from the fence where he had been firing. His third sergeant, Alexander MacKensie, was hit and wounded, but Dr. Sam Martin managed to throw him on a horse and get him out.

  With the arrival of the Light Brigade, Major Heath was completely outnumbered. “The greater part of one company fled immediately in great confusion,” McHenry wrote. The rest kept up their fire, but Heath, whose own horse was shot dead from underneath him, was soon forced to order a retreat. The Americans “took to their heels in all directions,” by Cockburn’s account.

  McComas, the rifleman with Aisquith’s company, was still by the tree where he had fired and was reloading his rifle with the ramrod halfway down the barrel when he was shot through the chest. His friend Wells, close behind, was shot in the back of the head. Heath’s men stumbled back to Stricker’s line, exhausted from their brief but sharp engagement. Stricker wanted a fight, and now he had one.

  Ross lay underneath an old oak tree on the side of the road, sheltered by a canopy of blankets. He had asked to be covered so the arriving troops would not recognize him and be disheartened, but none were fooled. “All eyes were turned upon him as we passed, and a sort of involuntary groan ran from rank to rank, from the front to the rear of the column,” recalled Gleig.

  Cockburn stayed at Ross’s side while a surgeon bound his wound. As he was placed on a stretcher, Ross spoke to the admiral. “He assured me the wounds he had received in the performance of his duty to his country caused him not a pang, but he felt a lone anxiety for a wife and family dearer to him than his life,” Cockburn reported. Ross handed the admiral a locket. “Give that to my dear wife, and tell her I commend her to my king and my country,” he told Cockburn.

  In the month since the general arrived in the Chesapeake, Ross and Cockburn had forged a close bond—“the friendship and confidence which existed between us to the last, having been most unreserved and complete,” Cockburn would later write. He must have felt some responsibility for Ross’s fate. The admiral’s early and insistent advocacy for
an attack on Baltimore had undoubtedly influenced the general, and Cockburn confessed to “heartfelt sorrow.”

  Two miles back, Evans found Brooke advancing with the main body. Evans “came galloping up to me, and told me, General Ross was wounded, and he feared mortally,” Brooke recorded in his journal. The colonel rode as fast as he could to the front. When he arrived at Ross’s side, the general was unable to give him any details on his plan of attack, but requested the colonel consult with Cockburn.

  Recognizing his wound was mortal, Ross asked to be taken to the ships. A rocket wagon, the only vehicle available, was brought up, but the general waved it off. “Go on, you are more wanting in front,” he told the artillery drivers. “He positively refused [transport] in a rocket wagon, declaring he would rather die on the spot than deprive his brave troops,” according to an army report.

  The columns of troops streaming forward parted to allow the stretcher-bearers through. “Genl. Ross was beloved by the whole army, most of whom shed tears as they saw him carried through the ranks,” Royal Marine Lieutenant Benjamin Beynon wrote in his diary. An attendant followed, leading the general’s horse.

  The party transferred Ross into a horse and cart borrowed from a farmhouse en route, but the jolting ride down the road did the general no good. Ross lingered for two hours after his wounding. Before he died, he was taken from the cart and placed under the shade of a large poplar tree near the Gorsuch farm. Ross let out a final sigh. “Oh! My dear wife.”

  GODLEY WOOD, 2 P.M., MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12

  The fight was not going to wait. Arthur Brooke had been thrust into command at the start of battle. Like Ross, he was Anglo-Irish, the third son of a prominent Northern Ireland family with a long military tradition—it would later produce Alan Brooke, chief of the Imperial General Staff during World War II. The new commander was “perhaps, better calculated to lead a battalion, than to guide an army,” George Gleig, an eighteen-year-old lieutenant at the time of the Battle of North Point, would later write, and the characterization has followed Brooke ever since. In fact, Brooke was a veteran, ambitious officer with more than twenty years’ experience in the army, from Egypt to Sicily to Flanders, and he had commanded a brigade in the Peninsula under Wellington. Ross had entrusted him with independence at Bladensburg and at North Point. And Brooke did not hesitate now.

  The Light Brigade, pursuing the routed militia skirmishers across open fields, soon ran headlong into a much larger American force—the City Brigade. Brooke, riding ahead of Cockburn, could see the Americans “drawn up in a very dense order” just inside thick woods at the edge of the fields, behind a sturdy wooden fence. “In this situation, [I] had but little time for thought, knowing nothing of the intentions of the General, and without a single person to consult with, I determined on an instant attack,” Brooke wrote in his diary.

  Brooke ordered his rockets and two six-pounder cannons to move forward and open fire, hoping to distract the Americans while he reconnoitered farther and waited for his remaining troops to arrive. The first British rockets flew over the militiamen’s heads around 2:30 p.m., followed by cannon fire directed at the American artillery in the center. Major Heath’s foray had stirred quite a hornet’s nest, the Americans realized. “This advance seems to have awakened the whole British Army which immediately advanced, and attacked our line,” Corporal McHenry wrote. Stricker responded with his own cannon fire, and a sharp artillery duel developed.

  Meanwhile the Light Brigade wheeled expertly to the right across the American line, covering the front. “We lost no time in pushing the Light Brigade as close to them as possible,” said Major Gubbins. Lying amid the grass and trees safely out of firearms range, the troops took what refreshment they could from their haversacks and canteens while the rest of the British force moved up.

  Brooke, soon joined by Cockburn, surveyed the American line. It was a strong position, its flanks defended by creeks and marsh. The woods protecting the Americans were so thick that the British could see nothing beyond the double line of militia strung along the front. The British would have to cross the open fields of the Boulden farm to reach the Americans.

  Brooke quickly grasped that his best prospects lay to his right. The Americans had left a gap of several hundred yards between their left flank and the bank of the Back River. Brooke ordered the 4th Foot to move through the swampy ground on the right, and try to turn the American left flank. The King’s Own, as it was known, was one of the most ancient regiments in the British army, the badges on their shakos emblazoned with lions that denoted their royal status. Undetected at first, the men scurried through a hollow in the woods toward the enemy’s left. The deep thunder of artillery fire shook the ground to their front, as the British poured barrages on the American left to cover the flanking movement.

  The 44th Foot, bolstered by the Royal Marines and a contingent of seamen, took position behind the Light Brigade. The 21st Fusiliers remained in column on the road with orders to attack the American right, but were peppered by destructive grape shot as they waited. A British rocket fell short and landed on a haystack, igniting a fire that spread to surrounding stacks and farm buildings and produced billowing smoke between the opposing forces.

  At 2:45 p.m., Brooke and Cockburn inspected the positions. Brooke and his staff galloped down the line, ensuring that all was ready. The admiral rode at a more leisurely pace along the line from left to right, a tempting target atop a white horse. The fire of the enemy guns seemed to follow him every step of the way.

  “Look out, my lads, here is the Admiral coming, you’ll have it directly,” troops called sardonically. But Cockburn’s show of defiance in the wake of Ross’s death boosted spirits, “cheering the army on and showing himself in every place where danger was, even at the very muzzle of the enemy’s guns,” Corporal Brown wrote in his diary.

  Across the front, Stricker rode behind the American line. Seeing the concentration of British fire on his left flank, he ordered the two regiments on his second line to shore up the line. The 39th Regiment took position to the far left, extending the American line, while the 51st Regiment was ordered to form a right angle at the end of the line, creating a square corner to protect the flank. The maneuver confused the untested 51st, and neither its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Amey, nor his men understood what to do. Stricker’s aides rushed to properly position the men, but the 925 men of Stricker’s largest regiment were teetering before the real fighting had even started.

  The King’s Own was in place by 2:50 p.m., hiding in a thicket on the American left flank. The whole British force was ready. Brooke ordered a charge, and the call was relayed down the line by bugle and drum. “As soon as everything was ready, we sounded the advance and made a grand dash at them,” Major Gubbins recalled. Lieutenant Evans took off his hat and cheered the troops forward. Across the front, thousands of red-coated troops sprang to their feet and moved forward in unison.

  From the center of the American line, the guns of the Union Artillery let loose with a murderous barrage. Some fired grapeshot, while others were loaded with an equally deadly mix of scrap metal.

  The British advanced through the shower of iron. As Gleig moved forward, his stuffed haversack swung low and caught a shot that would otherwise have hit his groin. “[I]t pounded the biscuit to powder but did not hurt me in the least,” he wrote his mother. Even as fellow soldiers went down, the British troops did not break pace, moving within 150 yards of the American line. Until then, neither side had fired a musket, but upon orders the American militiamen leveled their firearms. A volley of fire rippled down the line from right to left, tearing into the British.

  For the Americans, it was a heady experience. “The men took deliberate aim, and the carnage was great—the ‘invincibles’ dodging to the ground, and crawling in a bending posture, to avoid the militia,” according to an account in Niles’ Weekly Register. But while the British were ducking and diving, they were not stopping.

  The King’s Own moved thro
ugh muck and swamp grass and suddenly appeared on the far left of the American flank. A creek stymied the advance, but the mere approach of the redcoats was enough to panic the wavering 51st Regiment. The men “fired one round at they knew not what, and they immediately fled,” McHenry wrote his cousin. The fear spread to one of the battalions of the neighboring 39th Regiment, which also bolted. By the time the King’s Own found a shallow point to cross, the entire 51st and half the 39th had disappeared into the thick woods.

  Yet despite the collapse of the left flank, the rest of the American line held. On the American right, the battle-tested men of the 5th Maryland stood their ground against the column of Fusiliers, who suffered terribly from American artillery and musket fire. Lieutenant Furlong was the only Fusilier officer in his company to escape injury, and even so found a bullet in his black silk neck cloth. In the center, the 44th Foot met stiff resistance from the 27th Maryland. “Of the 5th, much was expected, but the 27th behaved at least as gallantly,” Niles’ reported.

  Brooke could see terrible holes opening up in his line. The American fire “was so destructive, and thinning our ranks so much,” he wrote in his diary.

  Once again, the British rose to the occasion. “[W]e returned a hearty cheer, and giving them back a volley rushed on at double quick,” Gleig wrote in his diary. Some did not make it far. Captain Robyns, leading the Royal Marines forward, tumbled to the ground, hit by a musket ball that passed through his left thigh. All around him men were falling.