Through the Perilous Fight Read online

  At least one printed copy made it into Key’s hands before he left town Saturday. He likely rode the mail coach to Frederick, forty-five miles to the west, on a road that took him past fields where farmers sowed their fall wheat and rye, and through a familiar rolling landscape as he approached the hills of home.

  Once in Frederick, Key hurried to the small brick house where his sister Anne lived with Roger Taney. “We had heard nothing from him … and we were becoming uneasy about him, when, to our great joy, he made his appearance at my house, on his way to join his family,” Taney recalled.

  After a happy reunion, Key told his sister and brother-in-law of the momentous events he had witnessed—the sail to find the enemy fleet, and gaining the release of Dr. Beanes, only to be detained by the British. “He proceeded then with much animation to describe the scene on the night of the bombardment,” Taney recalled. “He then told me that, under the excitement of the time, he had written a song, and handed me a printed copy.”

  Taney read the handbill and was astonished at the composition’s elegance. “I asked him how he found time, in the scenes he had been passing through, to compose such a song?” Taney recalled. Key described the song’s creation and modestly mentioned that he “believed it to have been favorably received by the Baltimore public.”

  Before long, Key borrowed a horse for the last twenty miles of his journey, riding up the old road leading to Terra Rubra and then up the driveway to the grand columned home, where his parents, wife, and six children waited. Overjoyed to be back with his family, Key apparently gave the song little more thought.

  FORT MCHENRY, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18

  At noon Sunday, the guns of Fort McHenry fired once more. News had arrived in Baltimore the previous day from Captain Thomas Macdonough of his “signal victory” over a British fleet on Lake Champlain, and the concurrent defeat of Lord Prevost’s army at Plattsburgh, New York. The powerful British force, invading New York from Quebec, had been repulsed. The American triumph, one of the most decisive of the war, had been fought September 11—coincidentally, just as the British prepared to land at North Point.

  Together with the British reversal at Baltimore, the American victories represented a stunning turnaround for British fortunes in North America. “The invincibles of Wellington are found to be vincible, and are melting away by repeated defeats,” William Wirt, a prominent Virginia legislator and attorney, wrote to his wife. “A few more such repulses as they met at Baltimore … and we shall have a peace on terms honorable to us.”

  General Samuel Smith ordered the defenders of Baltimore to fire a federal salute in honor of the victory in the north. Atop Hampstead Hill, gunners at Rodgers Bastion set off their cannons in answer to the guns of Fort McHenry, and the guns at Forts Covington and Babcock followed last.

  Despite the good news from near and far, Baltimore was a nervous town. Many expected another British attack at any time. “Some say the enemy has gone down the bay—others, that he has received a reinforcement—but the most correct opinion, I believe, is that he still lays round North Point, and is preparing for the fatal blow he means to give this place,” John Moore wrote to his wife Saturday.

  In taking command of Fort McHenry, Captain Rodgers had extracted a promise from Smith that he would only stay as long as the enemy was in sight. Despite the fears of others, the eternally optimistic Rodgers felt sure it would not be long, and he was soon proven right.

  Even before the thunderous salute had ended Sunday, scarcely any British ships remained in sight. “The last of the enemy’s ships are passing the mouth of the river standing down the bay with a fresh wind from the NW,” Rodgers promptly reported to Navy Secretary Jones.

  “I have now the pleasure to inform you that the last ships got under way this morning and are sailing down the Bay—never I hope to return,” Private David Winchester wrote to his brother James. “Where they will next make their appearance God knows—This is a day of great exultation to Baltimore.”

  CHESAPEAKE BAY, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18

  The British doubtless could hear the thunderous salute from Fort McHenry as they sailed away from Baltimore and moved down the Chesapeake. Aboard Tonnant, Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane put the finishing touches on dispatches for London. In his official report, the admiral painted as positive a picture as he could of the Baltimore operation, terming it “a demonstration” that had “fully accomplished” its goals. The British threat had forced the city to sink ships and destroy a ropewalk, sent civilians fleeing, and diverted forces from across the region to Baltimore.

  But in a private letter to the Admiralty, Cochrane emphasized that the attack was made “contrary to my opinion,” and he admitted the whole affair was a mistake. “I now exceedingly regret my deviation from my original plan,” Cochrane wrote. With a few thousand more troops, Cochrane lamented, Baltimore would have been “either laid in ashes or under a heavy contribution.”

  Aboard Albion, Cockburn wrote a regretful letter for Captain MacDougall, Ross’s aide, to carry to the general’s older brother, Rev. Thomas Ross, at Clifton in Bristol, England, where Elizabeth Ross was waiting. “Having had the honor of accompanying your gallant brother General Ross in all his late active and brilliant achievements against our insidious enemy in this country … I consider myself particularly called upon to trouble you with this letter to inform you of the melancholy and unfortunate event which has deprived me of a friend and our country of one of its best and bravest soldiers,” Cockburn wrote. He asked that Elizabeth Ross be told “how anxious I shall always be to prove the real friendship I bore her husband.…”

  Late in the afternoon, the fleet anchored in familiar waters off the mouth of the Patuxent. From here, the fleet would split up. Cochrane would sail aboard Tonnant to Halifax and hurry the construction of flat-bottomed boats needed to attack New Orleans via the shallow bayous and lakes protecting the city. Cockburn would sail to Bermuda with Albion, which badly needed repairs before any further operations. Rear Admiral Malcolm, aboard Royal Oak, would sail in the morning toward the Potomac with several frigates, bomb ships, and troopships, keeping a reduced British presence in the Chesapeake.

  A final piece of business demanded attention before the ships sailed. Two seamen held in chains—James Crosby of Tonnant and Michael Welch of Weser—were found guilty by court-martial on Sunday of attempting to desert to the enemy. “[T]wo wretches … have been condemned and will suffer tomorrow,” Cochrane noted in his report.

  At daylight Monday, with the fleet anchored below Drum Point, work ceased on the ships and every sailor in the fleet witnessed “the awful execution,” recalled Midshipman Barrett. While the bodies dangled in the air from the yardarm of Weser, officers aboard each ship read an admonition from Cochrane warning of “the necessity of a strict attention to discipline.”

  With that, the mighty British fleet in the Chesapeake dissipated.

  WASHINGTON, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19

  Congress reconvened in Washington on the morning of September 19, assembling in the Patent Office, the only government building left untouched by the British. Though the three-story building at 8th and E streets filled nearly a block, “every spot up to the fireplace and windows” was filled by legislators and spectators. “[T]he galleries (if they deserve that title) were so crowded, that it was utterly impossible for me to get even a view of the hall,” wrote one visitor, J. Stith.

  Tempers flared in the hot and cramped quarters. Representative Willis Alston of North Carolina pushed Alexander Contee Hanson, the Federalist newspaper publisher, who responded by giving Alston “a pretty severe whipping,” according to Stith.

  Many of the arriving congressmen had passed along the turnpike through Bladensburg, where they were horrified by the sights and stench from the battle three weeks earlier. Along the road where the British had charged Barney’s guns, the ditches were filled with corpses, their forms still visible, hardly covered with earth. “The hogs root them up, and the waters wash them up, they are c
overing them up daily again,” Senator Robert Henry Goldsborough of Maryland wrote to his wife.

  The sight of Washington was no less mortifying. “The City of Washington once very beautiful to my eye is now an odious miserable object,” wrote Goldsborough, a Federalist. “It is the dreadful monument of an unfortunate and illy timed war, and the unerring evidence of a weak, incompetent and disgraced administration.”

  The President’s House remained an empty shell, its white exterior walls scarred by “great licks of soot” rising from the windows. “The rooms which you saw so richly furnished, exhibited nothing but unroofed naked walls, cracked, defaced and blackened with fire,” William Wirt wrote his wife. “I cannot tell you what I felt as I walked amongst them.” Laborers under the guidance of “French John” Sioussat had shoveled through the thick bed of ashes and rubble in the basement, salvaging some iron pots and the iron range from the kitchen, but finding little else of value.

  The Capitol was “a most magnificent ruin,” architect Benjamin Latrobe later wrote. A story circulating among the arriving legislators held that Cockburn had mounted the Speaker’s chair in the grand House chamber and addressed the gathered soldiers and sailors. “Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned?” Cockburn had supposedly asked. “All for it will say aye.” Pronouncing that the measure had carried unanimously, the tale went, the admiral had ordered the Capitol burned. Such was Cockburn’s reputation that many believed it.

  Congress was meeting in Washington at the insistence of Madison, who had called the session before the capture of Washington. Fears ran high of another attack, with the British still lurking in the Chesapeake, and there was little confidence in the administration’s ability to defend the capital. Some had suggested that Congress meet in a less precarious location. But Madison had refused. He had ordered the Patent Office prepared to house Congress.

  The Madisons, at least, had nice accommodations. They had moved from the Cutts home into the Octagon, after French minister Louis Sérurier offered to vacate the mansion. The president “excused himself at first, but in such a fashion as to make me insist, and he finally accepted it,” Sérurier reported to Talleyrand, the French minister of foreign affairs. It was “the best house in the city,” by Sérurier’s estimation, and the rent was accordingly high—more than $110 a month.

  The Treasury occupied the former home of the British minister; the War Department took space in a building next to the Bank of Metropolis; the Navy Department was in a Mr. Mechlin’s house near the West Market; and the General Post Office occupied yet another private home. Few were happy with the arrangements, and many legislators were ready to abandon the city altogether.

  Several cities had offered to host the capital. Philadelphia wanted to lure the government back and promised comfortable accommodations for the president. Georgetown, eager to gain an edge on its neighbor Washington, offered the use of Georgetown College as well as board for congressman at ten dollars per week, instead of the sixteen dollars charged in Washington. Baltimore, New York, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, were suggested, and even Cincinnati and Baton Rouge mentioned. The House soon appointed a committee to study the temporary removal of the government from Washington. While all of New England supported the move, Virginia, Maryland, and all the southern states protested vehemently, fearing it would lead to a permanent move of the capital north.

  Regardless of where they met, Congress and the Madison administration faced a financial and political crisis unprecedented in the country’s history. After Washington’s fall, banks from New York and the South were refusing to redeem paper money for coins. The refusal to raise taxes to pay for the conflict had left the Treasury without enough money to fund the war, or even to meet interest payments on the national debt. The government had only half the money needed to pay war costs in 1814, and none on hand to pay for 1815, reported Treasury Secretary Campbell, who was in such feeble health and so “humbled” by the crisis that he promptly resigned.

  Another blow came from Navy Secretary Jones, who had served the president more ably and loyally than any other member of the cabinet. Disastrous business dealings in Europe had left Jones deeply in debt, and he had warned the president in April that he might have to resign. Now, hounded by creditors, Jones could wait no longer. On September 11, he tendered his resignation, though he agreed to serve until December. Jones was ashamed at abandoning the president during this moment of crisis, but believed he had no choice. “My own afflictions are rendered still more poignant by the contemplation of the savage warfare now waging against our beloved country,” Jones told Madison. To his wife, Eleanor, Jones expressed sympathy for his successor, whoever that would be: “Instead of a wreath of laurels he has a much greater chance of acquiring a crown of thorns.”

  Everyone was eager to assign blame for the loss of Washington. “Each one now knows how the memorable battle of Bladensburg ought to have been conducted and had he commanded things would not be as they are at this day,” government surveyor Seth Pease wrote to a friend.

  “Every ignorant booby is sporting his opinion on the combat at Washington,” Colonel Allen McLane, an aide to Winder, wrote to the general, who was a particular object of derision. Winder “ought to be hung & would b[e in] any other country,” Captain Bacon, the U.S. Marine quartermaster, wrote another officer. James Monroe wrote a “private and confidential” letter to Winder advising him to immediately report to Washington. “The tempest of dissatisfaction at the late events here, rages with great fever, and among others against you,” Monroe wrote. “An enquiry into the causes of the disaster will probably be set on foot.” The House established a committee of inquiry—comprised of members supportive of the administration—to investigate the fall of Washington.

  On Tuesday, September 20, the president addressed Congress. It was no moment of glory for Madison. Yet the very act of meeting in Washington served as notice that the British attack on Washington had failed in its most important goal of forcing the collapse of the American government. Moreover, the news from Baltimore and Lake Champlain allowed Madison to take a victorious tone that would have been unimaginable even a week earlier.

  The enemy, the president warned, “is aiming, with his undivided force, a deadly blow at our growing prosperity, perhaps at our national existence.” But the capture of Washington, Madison predicted, would unite the nation in a new way against the British. “The American people will face it with the undaunted spirit which, in their revolutionary struggle, defeated his unrighteous projects,” Madison declared. “His threats and his barbarities, instead of dismay, will kindle in every bosom an indignation not to be extinguished, but in the disaster and expulsion of such cruel invaders.”

  BALTIMORE, EVENING, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20

  The Baltimore Patriot was exultant when it resumed publication on Tuesday evening for the first time since the British fleet appeared before the city ten days earlier. “[H]ow nobly is the fame of our country rescued!” the paper declared. “How is the flame which was bust forth at Lexington, and blazed in perfect brightness at Yorktown, rekindled!”

  The Patriot used the occasion to print “Defence of Fort M’Henry” at the top left of the first column on this page. “The following beautiful and animating effusion, which is destined long to outlast the occasion, and outlive the impulse, which produced it, has already been extensively circulated,” the Patriot editor informed readers in an unusually prescient introduction. “In our first renewal of publication, we rejoice in an opportunity to enliven the sketch of an exploit, so illustrious, with strains, which so fitly celebrate it.”

  John Skinner later took responsibility for the song’s appearance in the newspaper, writing that he “passed it on to the Baltimore Patriot and through it to immortality.” Skinner may have done so, though as the newspaper noted, the song was already all over town, and the Patriot might have acquired it from any number of sources.

  The Baltimore American, though it had printed the handbill on September 17 and had publ
ished a newspaper edition on the morning of September 20, had missed the chance to scoop the Patriot, its great rival. After the Patriot appeared, the American apparently changed its mind about the song’s worth and published it the next morning, though without an effusive introduction. Both the American and the Patriot circulated widely along the Atlantic seaboard, and the song soon appeared in many eastern cities.

  The Mercantile Advertiser in New York was the first to publish it outside of Maryland, on September 22. In Washington, the Intelligencer printed the song on September 26. “Whoever is the author of those lines, they do equal honor to his principles and his talents,” the newspaper remarked. The Federal Republican in Georgetown was quick to follow, printing the composition the next day with its own high praise: “A friend has obligingly favored us with a copy of the following stanzas, which we offer to our readers as a specimen of native poetry, which will proudly rank among the best efforts of our national muse.” The Boston Patriot and the Richmond Enquirer printed the song on September 28, and papers as far away as Georgia and New Hampshire followed within days.

  The hometown Frederick-Town Herald, perhaps tipped off by Taney or someone else close to Key, was the first to identify the heretofore-unidentified gentleman who wrote the song, naming him as “F.S. Key Esq. formerly of this place” when it published the song on September 24. Within a week, many in Washington knew Key to be the song’s author. On September 30, Navy Secretary Jones sent a copy to his wife. Jones assumed, incorrectly, that Key was a Federalist, though in truth Key remained disgusted with both political parties. In any event, Jones was willing to overlook any supposed party affiliation: “He is a Federalist, but with such Federalists I can have but a common feeling.”

  “I hear Uncle Key’s song is sung every night … to a crowded audience and with great applause.”