Through the Perilous Fight Read online

  The ground was shaking at Fells Point, where terrifying rumors swept through the streets that the British had taken the fort and were on the way to the city. Rev. John Baxley, the Methodist minister, was awakened by the furor at 1 a.m. “Such a terrible roar of cannon and mortars I never heard before, and never wish to hear again,” he wrote in his diary. Fearing the British had landed, Baxley woke his entire family and had them ready to flee.

  The night “will never be erased from my memory,” John Moore, watching from his roof, wrote to his wife. “The portals of hell appeared to have been thrown open—the earth and air, nay all the elements, seem to have been combined for the destruction of man.”

  PATAPSCO RIVER, EARLY MORNING, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14

  From the deck of the truce ship, Key and Skinner watched each shell and rocket from the moment it was fired, following the red trace of fire high through the sky until it fell, and then listening anxiously for its explosion. The Americans saw the blue signal rocket, so memorable and ominous, but were uncertain as to its meaning. The bursting shells and flaring rockets illuminated the air above. Sheets of rain were accompanied by terrific flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder.

  Earlier, in the twilight, Key had seen an American flag still flying over Fort McHenry. In keeping with military practice given the tempestuous weather, the storm flag would likely have been flying. The garrison flag was too big to fly in such a raging storm; the weight of such a large, sopping-wet wool flag might snap the flagpole.

  Once night fell, Key could no longer see the flag. He paced the deck, surrounded by a hostile fleet and held against his will, as the assault on Fort McHenry reached ever-higher levels of ferocity. Yet, he recalled many years later, his step was firm and his heart strong. The bombardment was proof enough that the fort had not surrendered.

  BRITISH ARMY HEADQUARTERS, EARLY MORNING, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14

  The British troops facing Hampstead Hill remained in assault position for hours, expecting the order to attack at any moment, unaware they would soon be retreating. The tremendous cannonading was at once thrilling and terrifying to Corporal David Brown with the 21st Fusiliers. “It was the most wonderful night I ever spent in my life,” he wrote in his memoir. “The rain fell in torrents. The roaring of the thunder and the tremendous flashing of lightning was truly awful; at the same time, being within musket shot of the enemy, made it such as I never had experienced before—it was most dreadful.”

  Brooke, like everyone else, watched and listened to the sound and fury of Napier’s valiant diversion. Whether the colonel was tempted to change his mind and order an attack, he never said. Yet it must have been agonizing.

  At 3 a.m., the men were ordered to fall in; Corporal Brown, like many others, expected the order to attack had at last arrived. Instead, the men soon realized to their shock that they were marching away from Baltimore. “I cannot express the discontent and murmuring that every soldier felt when he found they were to retreat, though every man knew it was to be a great saving of their lives,” he wrote.

  Some blamed the Royal Navy, others Brooke. “It was the universal belief throughout our little army, that had General Ross survived, Baltimore would have been in our possession within two hours of our arrival at the foot of [the] Hill,” one man wrote.

  But others made little secret of their relief.

  FERRY BRANCH, EARLY MORNING, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14

  Black Charlie was still fighting, determined to give the army its chance. Napier’s diversion had succeeded in at least drawing American fire. Armistead and Rodgers were convinced the British were trying to land troops and storm the fort. But Samuel Smith was not budging, showing no intention of abandoning the trenches of Hampstead Hill to defend the Ferry Branch.

  Napier looked toward the hill, but he could see no sign of the expected army attack on the American line. After several hours, he finally ordered the barges to retreat. To get to the ships, they had to run a gauntlet of fire past Fort McHenry.

  The Fort McHenry crews spotted the barges and were delighted to finally have a target. “We once more had an opportunity of opening our batteries and kept up a continued blaze for nearly two hours,” reported Armistead. The gun barges and battery at Lazaretto joined in for good measure, catching the barges in a crescent of American fire. One barge flipped over and bodies were strewn in the river. Teakle heard cries for help. “By God, they’ll blow us out of the water,” a man called.

  Finally, the barges pulled out of range, and the American guns fell silent. The British bomb ships had likewise ceased fire, allowing Napier’s men to pass back in safety.

  “All was for sometime still,” Niles’ reported, “and the silence was awful.”

  “I hope I shall never cease to feel the warmest gratitude when I think of this most merciful deliverance,” Key wrote.

  Dawn’s Early Light, by Edward Percy Moran, circa 1912. Francis Scott Key, aboard truce ship, gestures toward the American flag flying above Fort McHenry.

  CHAPTER 16

  Does That Star-Spangled Banner Yet Wave?

  The quiet was terrible for Francis Scott Key and the other Americans watching and listening from the deck of the truce ship. Had the attack been abandoned, or had Fort McHenry surrendered?

  In the predawn blackness, the bomb ships resumed a sporadic fire, but with none of the fury of the night, and the Americans were unsure what to make of it. They had no communication during the night with the enemy ships surrounding them, and the Royal Marine guards aboard the truce ship knew no more than they did. The storm had finally passed, but it remained cloudy and misty.

  Key and Skinner paced the deck in painful suspense, anxiously awaiting the return of day, looking every few minutes at their watches. Finally, the first pale signs of dawn brightened the sky. Even before there was light enough to see distant objects, they trained their glasses on the fort, as Key later told Taney, “uncertain whether they should see there the stars and stripes, or the flag of the enemy.”

  Through the morning mist, “on the shore dimly seen,” Key would write, the Americans finally could make out a flag, towering over the grassy knoll of the ramparts. But the banner hung limply from the flagpole, and it was impossible to tell if it was American or British.

  As the morning lightened, a slight breeze blew fitfully from the northeast, scattering the mist. The flag stirred with a tantalizing hint, but Key and Skinner remained unsure. Finally a beam of sun illuminated the flag, revealing it to be American. “Through the clouds of war, the stars of that banner still shone,” Key later said.

  He was overcome with relief. “I hope I shall never cease to feel the warmest gratitude when I think of this most merciful deliverance,” Key wrote soon afterward to John Randolph. “It seems to have given me a higher idea of the ‘forbearance, long-suffering and tender mercy’ of God than I had ever before conceived.”

  FORT MCHENRY, MORNING, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14

  Soon after sunrise, the bombardment of Fort McHenry halted. Aboard Surprize, Cochrane at 7 a.m. signaled the bombardment squadron to withdraw. There was no point in further fire. Captain Napier had returned with the remaining barges, and the fort clearly was not surrendering. The bomb ships and rocket ship set sail by 9 a.m., and the rest of the squadron followed soon afterward.

  From Baltimore, the drained residents watched the ships depart. “The work of destruction, intended by the enemy, they have failed to carry into execution, and they are now all standing under sail and appear to be going down the river,” John Moore wrote his wife. Fort McHenry was reported not to have suffered “any great injury.” Some residents hurried to the fort to see for themselves. Rev. Baxley arrived at 8 a.m. with warm coffee and refreshments—“greatly reviving to the men, who had been standing in the mud and wet for a number of hours,” he recalled.

  The bombardment had lasted twenty-five hours with two brief intermissions. Armistead calculated—and ships logs verify—that some 1,500 to 1,800 shells had been fired at the f
ort. The five bomb ships alone fired some 133 tons of shells during the bombardment. “[A] few of these fell short, a large proportion burst over us, throwing their fragments among us and threatening destruction, many passed over, and about four hundred fell within the works,” Armistead reported. The British had also fired 700 to 800 rockets. Yet the casualties had been astonishingly light. Only 4 of the fort’s garrison had been killed, and 24 wounded. Some of the wounds were severe; Frederick Hall, the escaped slave who lost a leg, died two months later in a Baltimore hospital.

  At 9 a.m., the Fort McHenry garrison stood at attention as the storm flag was lowered, and the great banner was raised in its place. The ceremony was performed every morning at that time, in keeping with regulations, but there was no denying the special resonance it held this day.

  An “ear-piercing fife and spirit-stirring drum” carried through the air, courtesy of George Schellenberg and the other U.S. Corps of Artillery musicians. “At this time our morning gun was fired, the flag hoisted, Yankee Doodle played, and we all appeared in full view of a formidable and mortified enemy,” Private Munroe wrote.

  The sailors of the retreating British fleet were mortified indeed. “In truth it was a galling spectacle for British seamen to behold,” wrote Midshipman Robert Barrett, aboard Hebrus. “And as the last vessel spread her canvas to the wind, the Americans hoisted a most superb and splendid ensign on their battery, and fired at the same time a gun of defiance.”

  HAMPSTEAD HILL, MORNING, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14

  Only as morning dawned did the American forces entrenched on Hampstead Hill realize that the British army was no longer perched on their doorstep. American scouts moved forward to find empty British camps with untended fires still burning, as well as abandoned cartridges, powder, slaughtered cattle, and even some swords, evidence of a hurried departure in the dark.

  Some of Smith’s subordinates urged an attack on the retreating enemy. But Smith refused, fearing the British withdrawal was a trick to lure him out of the trenches. Though the bombardment squadron was pulling back from Fort McHenry, the British fleet remained in the Patapsco. The fight in the Ferry Branch was over, but perhaps the British were preparing to test the city’s defenses elsewhere.

  Smith would only consent to sending General Winder with a brigade of Virginia militia accompanied by cavalry to follow the British. Stricker and the City Brigade were eager for the assignment, but Smith wanted them close at hand. Some grumbled that Smith was allowing the British to escape unmolested, and the pursuit was indeed lackluster. “All the troops were however so worn out with … being under arms during three days & nights exposed the greater part of the time to very inclement weather that it was found impracticable to do any thing more than pick up a few stragglers,” Smith said.

  British prisoners reported that Ross had been mortally wounded. Captain Rodgers was confident the day had been won, and the enemy “severely drubbed.” But Smith remained cautious, ordering his commanders to keep the men ready to march at a moment’s warning. “The enemy have retired not departed,” Smith wrote in his general orders. “Their retiring may be a stratagem to throw us off our guard.”

  MEETING HOUSE, MORNING, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14

  Colonel Brooke fervently wished the Americans would attack. With forlorn visions of glory, the British commander halted his army at 7 a.m. at the Methodist Meeting House, hoping the enemy would pursue and give him a last chance at victory.

  Cockburn was under no such illusions and used the time to arrange a prisoner exchange. Many of the British wounded who had been left at the Meeting House after the battle were in no shape to be carried to the ships. James McCulloh, the young U.S. Army surgeon helping treat the wounded at the makeshift hospital, was the senior American present and agreed to exchange the wounded British for American prisoners captured at Bladensburg.

  Cockburn candidly told the surgeon that the British were departing. At the nearby headwaters of Bear Creek, McCulloh soon saw the British loading those wounded able to travel onto small boats, to bring them to the ships ahead of the retreating army.

  AMERICAN TRUCE SHIP, PATAPSCO RIVER, MORNING, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14

  Key and Skinner watched from the truce ship’s deck as the morning lightened, their hopes soaring at every sign of British retreat. The bombardment squadron sullenly sailed downriver. A stream of small boats came down Bear Creek, carrying wounded British soldiers and Royal Marines. From their numbers and condition, Key concluded they had been “roughly handled.” Looking toward Baltimore, Key could see the big garrison flag flying defiantly over the ramparts at Fort McHenry.

  Inspiration, Key told Roger Taney, came “in the fervor of the moment, when he saw the enemy hastily retreating to their ships.” For a man who had spent his life scribbling poems and verse for every occasion, it was a natural impulse. “[I]n that hour of deliverance, and joyful triumph, the heart spoke,” Key recalled many years later. “Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?”

  Key pulled a letter from his pocket and wrote some notes on the back. “With it came an inspiration not to be resisted,” he said, “and if it had been a hanging matter to make a song [I] must have made it.”

  GODLEY WOOD, LATE MORNING, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14

  After waiting in vain for three hours to see if the Americans would follow, the British army continued its grim retreat to North Point. Brooke sent word to Cochrane that the army would reach the landing beach by the following morning, and he requested the boats be ready to load the men.

  Passing through the Godley Wood battlefield, the troops were greeted by the ghastly sight of Americans hanging lifeless in tree branches. Other corpses lay on the ground “bleached as white as snow” after two days of rain and heat. British soldiers who had died from their wounds lay along the roadside. “Putting all together it was a shocking sight to see,” recalled Corporal Brown, with the 21st Fusiliers. The melancholy only grew around noon, when they passed the spot where Ross had been shot.

  As the rear guard moved from the thick woods into a clearing, the troops heard a crackle of musket fire from behind. The Americans were reportedly on their heels. Bugles sounded and the troops expertly wheeled into line, but it was only a few American horsemen, reconnoitering the British departure.

  The frustrated British resorted to name-calling: “What! You are not satisfied, Jonathan, aren’t you! You want another dose! … Come along then, you beggars! We are all ready for you.” One sailor, “burning to meet the enemy,” jumped a fence “and rushed singly towards the enemy, uttering nautical defiance,” recalled Chesterton. An officer dragged him back to British lines with a “few well-applied strokes” from his scabbard.

  Two straggling seamen from Tonnant had their chance at revenge when an American hiding in a tree fired a rifle shot through the hat of one of the sailors, grazing his ear. When the sailors drew their pistols on the American, he begged for mercy. “Devil burn me if I do,” replied one of the seamen. “It was just such a [fellow] as you, killed our general.”

  The sailors each took a shot at the American. “They both misfired, and then agreed that as they had their turn, it would not be fair play to kill the fellow,” Midshipman John Bluett wrote in his diary. “They therefore made him come down, and drawing their cutlasses placed him between them and marched him arm to arm into the camp.”

  GODLEY WOOD, AFTERNOON, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14

  As the British withdrew, parties of Americans moved through the battlefield, collecting the dead. Farmers brought two wagonloads of corpses to a camp, where the bodies, grotesquely swollen from the heat, were laid in a ring. Families came from town searching for husbands, sons, and brothers. A woman gazed at a disemboweled corpse. “My God, there is the body of my dear husband,” she cried. Militia Captain Sam Dewees stayed only a short while. “I cleared myself, for I could not endure the heart-rending cries of the women,” he recalled.

  Sometime after midday, Private Henri Dukehart of
the 5th Maryland found the bodies of Daniel Wells and Henry McComas where they had fallen, a few paces apart. William McComas, Henry’s brother, never forgot the terrible walk along the North Point road back to Baltimore, following the two-wheeled cart carrying the bodies. Henry’s long legs hung over the edge, swinging in a macabre dance all the way home.

  Over time, the story grew that Wells and McComas were the ones who felled Ross with their rifles. In 1851, their bodies would be exhumed, laid in state for three days, and taken in a procession to Ashland Square in Baltimore, where they were reburied and a twenty-one-foot-tall obelisk monument eventually constructed. Wells and McComas were in the right spot and may indeed have shot Ross. But it is also plausible that the general was killed by a musket shot fired by an unknown militiaman with the Mechanical Volunteers or the Independent Blues.

  The debate would never end. What could not be disputed was that Wells and McComas died at the start of their lives, defending their city from an enemy invasion. They would remain, as Baltimore native H. L. Mencken wrote more than a century after their deaths, “two imperishable heroes in the shape of a pair of Baltimore boys.”

  WASHINGTON, AFTERNOON, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14

  News from Baltimore had been slow to arrive in the capital. Reports were received that militia had marched from the city to meet the invading army, but little more was known. “The moment of suspense is awful,” the Intelligencer wrote Wednesday.

  But late in the day, a messenger arrived with a brief note for Secretary of War Monroe from Major General Samuel Smith at his Hampstead Hill headquarters, written at 10 a.m. “Sir,” Smith began, “I have the honor of informing you, that the enemy, after an unsuccessful attempt both by land and water on this place, appear to be retiring.” Smith added that all the British vessels in the Patapsco could be seen going down the river. “I have good reason to believe that General Ross is mortally wounded,” Smith concluded.