Through the Perilous Fight Read online

  The seventy-one-year-old Jefferson had planned to offer the library to Congress upon his death, but Washington’s misfortune coincided with the fact that the former president was short on cash. Congress could name the price, but Jefferson insisted the collection be taken in its entirety or not at all, save for a few books he would keep for his personal use. He sent Smith a copy of his catalog for Congress to peruse.

  Debating the offer in October, some members of Congress welcomed it as an unmatched opportunity. But others raised objections to the size and potential cost of the library, and they criticized Jefferson’s book selection as “embracing too many works in foreign languages, some of too philosophical a character, and some otherwise objectionable.” The works of Voltaire were cited as a prime example.

  Madison sent a note to Jefferson as the debate continued in Congress: “It will prove a gain to them, if they have the wisdom to replace it by such a collection as yours.”

  CHESAPEAKE BAY, EARLY OCTOBER

  The British remaining in the Chesapeake under Rear Admiral Malcolm followed the debate over Washington’s fate in the newspapers with great interest. When John Skinner visited the fleet, several British officers confided to the American agent that abandoning Washington would be a craven act. “No, I would sooner build a barn to meet in than remove under existing circumstances,” Captain Sir Thomas Hardy told Skinner.

  Malcolm had secret orders to join the attack on New Orleans with most of the frigates, bomb ships, and troops. Privately, Malcolm was much disheartened by the death of Ross and wanted the war over. “[I]f any inquire of you my opinion, … say—he is decidedly of opinion that we should make peace,” he wrote his wife, Clementina. “Just now we have an advantage and the Americans suffer severely, but soon they will be driven to become soldiers.”

  The British were preparing to depart the bay when they received a visit from an old nemesis: Commodore Joshua Barney. The flotilla commander, after several weeks of recuperation at his home in Elkridge, remained in great pain from the musket ball lodged in his hip. Nonetheless, in order to gain his own release from parole and reassume command of the flotilla, Barney sailed from the Washington Navy Yard on October 5 aboard a truce ship with eighty British prisoners to exchange for Americans captured at Bladensburg and Baltimore.

  Barney found Malcolm’s fleet two days later near the mouth of the Piankatank River in Virginia. Among the prisoners Barney brought with him was the redoubtable Colonel William Thornton. Bladensburg’s gentry had grown attached to the charming man who had led the charge across the bridge six weeks earlier, and they were sorry to see him go. “If a bullet is not an obstacle, I am sure that Colonel Thornton will become one of the most important generals, and he is a very pleasant man,” Rosalie Stier Calvert wrote her sister.

  The British were delighted to have Thornton back before they sailed for the Gulf of Mexico. Though walking with a limp, Thornton was in good spirits, telling stories he had learned while in captivity, including one that President Madison had fled the battlefield “at about nine miles an hour, whipping his horse with all his might.”

  “I rejoice,” Cockburn wrote upon hearing of Thornton’s release. “[T]here are in my opinion very few like him to be met with.”

  With the departure of Malcolm and most of the ships on October 14 for the Gulf of Mexico, the remaining British force in the Chesapeake no longer posed a serious threat.

  BERMUDA, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14

  That same day, the British garrison guns overlooking the blue waters of St. George’s Harbor in Bermuda fired in salute as the remains of Captain Sir Peter Parker were laid to rest. Rear Admiral George Cockburn, joined by every officer in his squadron, stood at attention as the mournful sound carried far over the water.

  With the sad business of Parker completed, Cockburn settled down to wait while Albion, in wretched shape after a year at sea, was refitted. Bermuda was a homecoming of sorts for Cockburn. His elder brother James had been appointed governor of Bermuda a year earlier, and the admiral stayed with him at a house on Mount Wyndham. Cockburn learned for the first time of “the sensation” the capture of Washington had created in England. He grandly presented his brother with the presidential book he had taken from the Capitol. (A rare books dealer would return it to the Library of Congress 126 years later, during the early days of the Anglo-American alliance in World War II, to the delight of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.)

  Cockburn was eager to set sail again, but he would not be joining the expedition to New Orleans. Instead, he was to return to the Chesapeake, collect the little force that remained, and then sail south to create a diversion along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. Cochrane, perhaps tired of being outshone by his dashing subordinate, would keep the glory of New Orleans to himself.

  Cockburn was philosophical about being left out. He wrote Colonel Brooke on October 25 that he would “most happily” join with “my Chesapeake friends” on the attack. “It has however been decreed that I am not to take part in your present expedition and it is perhaps for the best, for the longer I live the more I am convinced of the old adage that ‘too many cooks spoil the broth,’ and by my being kept away, you will at all events have one the less who, if present, could not possibly resist having his finger in the pie.”

  LONDON, MONDAY, OCTOBER 17

  Still heady from the capture of Washington, London expected more good news any day from America. Rumors spread that Baltimore had already fallen, and that Philadelphia, New York, and Boston were at risk.

  On October 17, Captain Duncan MacDougall arrived from the Chesapeake, carrying dispatches for the War Office. The news was stunning, but it was not what the British expected. The American forces defending Baltimore had repulsed the British army and Royal Navy, and General Ross was dead. “The death of this brave and accomplished officer will throw a gloom over the public feeling throughout the Empire,” a newspaper wrote. In Rostrevor, which had barely finished celebrating Ross’s capture of Washington, the news brought “grief indescribable.”

  Concurrently, reports arrived of the shocking American victory over British forces in Lake Champlain and Plattsburgh. Together with the report from Baltimore, the news “materially counteracted” the coup of Washington’s capture, said Lord Castlereagh, the foreign minister.

  Harry Smith was visiting his father at Whittlesea in Cambridgeshire when a letter arrived with the news from London. He was ordered to report back to duty immediately to serve as assistant adjutant general for the reinforcements being sent under Sir Edward Pakenham, Wellington’s brother-in-law, who had been appointed to succeed Ross and lead the attack on New Orleans.

  All around the nation, the mood toward the American war turned abruptly pessimistic, from the highest levels of government to the man in the street. The public’s war weariness was acute after two decades of war with France. Citizens had tired of high taxes, a strained economy, and the loss of lucrative trade with America.

  Further, the news fueled a growing debate in London on the propriety of burning the public buildings of Washington. After the initial rush of excitement, the country was chagrined to be condemned around the continent for an act “more suitable to the times of barbarism.” France reveled in the proof that Napoleon was not alone in wartime excesses; the Washington episode was “unworthy of civilized nations,” the Journal de Paris declared.

  In Parliament, Samuel Whitbread, the reformer and Whig leader, condemned the act as “abhorrent to every principal of legitimate warfare.” On the defensive, the government sent orders to Cochrane November 2 to suspend his policy of retaliation.

  “Willingly, would we throw a veil of oblivion over our transactions at Washington,” wrote the London Statesman. “The Cossacks spared Paris, but we spared not the capital of America.”

  BALTIMORE, EVENING, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19

  The war years had not been good for the Holliday Street Theater in Baltimore. After a dismal season in 1811 on the eve of the conflict, the theater had not even
bothered to open in 1812. Owner William Wood used the time to rebuild the original wooden structure with a “fine brick edifice” seating two thousand, but the ongoing war prevented it from opening in 1813. The theater finally reopened on October 12, 1814, a few weeks after the British departed. Count Benyowski, a five-act tragicomedy translated from German, was on the bill for October 19. Trying to spice up the program, Wood placed an advertisement in the newspapers promising additional entertainment:

  After the play, Mr. Hardinge will sing a much admired NEW SONG, written by a gentleman of Maryland, in commemoration of the GALLANT DEFENCE OF FORT M’HENRY, called THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER

  Almost certainly, there had already been many informal performances of the song, whether by a handful gathered around a piano or by larger gatherings of citizens and soldiers at taverns and squares. But the performance at the Holliday Street Theater was the first known public rendition of Key’s song, and the first known use of its new title, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” As advertised, the song was “sung with great applause” on Wednesday night by J. Hardinge, an Irishman with the Warren & Wood Chestnut Street Company who was said to have a rich brogue.

  The song’s popularity in Baltimore continued to grow, one of Key’s nieces proudly noted. “I hear Uncle Key’s song is sung every night … to a crowded audience and with great applause,” she wrote in October. Judge Nicholson had done his best to spread the song, sending copies to relatives near and far. “We are delighted with Mr. Key’s little piece and can readily imagine what the feelings of so grand a man must have been on such an occasion,” Nicholson’s sister-in-law wrote in reply.

  “I do not know when I have been so charmed with any thing as with the sweet little piece he enclosed,” a cousin wrote from Greenwich, Connecticut. ‘O say, does that star spangled banner still wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

  GHENT, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21

  Henry Goulburn could not conceal his dismay when the reports of Baltimore and Plattsburgh were delivered to the British delegation in Ghent, along with new instructions from London: The British would settle for keeping the American ground already held, and not insist on any further territorial gains.

  “The news is very far from satisfactory,” Goulburn petulantly wrote Bathurst on October 21. “We owed the acceptance of our article respecting the Indians to the capture of Washington; and if we had either burnt Baltimore or held Plattsburg, I believe we should have had peace on the terms which you have sent us in a month at least. As things appear to be going on in America, the result of our negotiation may be very different.”

  The British delegation dutifully followed instructions, delivering a note to the Americans later that day: If there were to be peace, it would have to be made on the basis of uti possidetis—the retention of territories actually held. This at least allowed territorial gains and guarantees for the Indians that would allow the British to protect Canada and claim victory. The United States would have to cede all territory occupied by the British, including Fort Niagara, and give up a slice of northern Maine, providing the British a direct route between Halifax and Quebec. The Americans would doubtless “appreciate the moderation of His Majesty’s Government,” the British note stated.

  The Americans did not. Acting in rare unison, the delegation refused to even consider uti possidetis. In Adams’s room on Monday morning, October 24, they signed a note proposing that each side revert to the status quo ante bellum. Reading the American response that afternoon, Goulburn thought the American stance warranted breaking off the talks. The British delegates sent a message to London that night asking for further instructions.

  The news from America had altered the balance in Ghent, deflating the British as much as it invigorated the U.S. delegation. “The Capture of Washington was a source of great triumph and exultation and inspired a belief that their troops could not be resisted,” American delegate James Bayard wrote to his cousin on October 26. “This error has been sadly corrected by the repulse in the attack upon Baltimore, by the destruction of their fleet on Lake Champlain, and by the retreat of Prevost from Plattsburg.”

  ENGLAND, NOVEMBER 1814

  Lord Liverpool, the prime minister, concluded that the Americans were delusional upon reading their note. Yet the British government could not be seen as breaking off peace negotiations over a demand for territory. The war “will probably now be of some duration,” he lamented in a note to Castlereagh, the foreign minister.

  An extended war was a most unwelcome development, both agreed. It already had cost the government 10 million pounds. Castlereagh was eager to be rid of “the millstone of an American war” so he could concentrate on European affairs at the Congress of Vienna, which had begun in September. Liverpool wanted to demobilize the military, reduce the country’s enormous debt, and end wartime taxation.

  Some change was needed to bring the war to a quick and satisfactory end. After a cabinet discussion on November 4, Liverpool informed the Duke of Wellington that the government was considering appointing him chief of command in America. “The more we contemplate the character of the American war, the more satisfied we are of the many inconveniences which may grow out of the continuance of it,” Liverpool wrote Wellington at his headquarters in Paris. He would be sent with full powers to bring the war to “an honorable conclusion,” either by making peace or prosecuting it “with renewed vigor.”

  Wellington held military stature unmatched in the British Empire—his name alone might be enough to end the war. “[T]he knowledge that he is to have the command in America, if the war continues, may be expected to produce the most favorable effects,” Liverpool told Castlereagh.

  Wellington’s lack of enthusiasm for the scheme was obvious, though his sense of duty made it impossible for him to simply turn it down. “Does it not occur to you that by appointing me to go to America at this moment, you give ground for belief all over Europe that your affairs there are in a much worse situation than they really are?” he asked the prime minister. Without British control of the Great Lakes, Wellington noted, “I shall do you but little good in America.…”

  More sobering for Liverpool than Wellington’s reluctance was his pointed advice that Britain drop its demands for territory. “I confess that I think you have no right from the state of the war to demand any concession of territory from America,” Wellington wrote. “You can get no territory, indeed the state of your military operations, however creditable, does not entitle you to demand any.”

  Wellington’s views could not be ignored. On November 13, Liverpool assured the duke that Britain would give up its territorial demands. That being the case, the prime minister concluded it made little sense to extend the war in the hope of taking more territory.

  Following instructions from London, the British delegation informed the Americans that Great Britain was dropping its insistence on uti possidetis. Only a few minor issues remained to be settled. When the note was delivered to the Americans in Ghent on Sunday, November 27, even Adams, the most pessimistic of the ministers, thought peace was now “probable.”

  WASHINGTON, CHRISTMAS EVE, 1814

  A gloomy holiday was settling at Francis Scott Key’s home in Georgetown. His parents, tending to business at Terra Rubra, had been unable to join the family for the holiday as expected. On Christmas Eve, Key anxiously awaited the arrival of his uncle, Philip Barton Key, from Annapolis, where it was rumored British ships might attack to drive away the state legislature.

  As he waited, Key wrote a letter to his mother. Three months after Fort McHenry, Key was even more pessimistic about the war than usual. “There is nothing new here—some people think we shall have peace but I have not the least expectation of it,” he wrote. “As things are going on we shall be wretchedly prepared to meet any of the evils which threaten us and I fear the next year will be one of great suffering.”

  Key was not alone in this view. “The prospect of peace appears to get darker and darker,” Hannah Gallatin wr
ote to Dolley Madison on December 26. In Connecticut, Federalists had convened the Hartford Convention to air grievances against the war. The twenty-six delegates, mostly from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, were discussing the nullification of federal laws and taxes that supported the war. Some extremists called for secession. “The bond of Union is already broken,” a Boston newspaper declared. The delegates did not seriously consider secession, but as they met behind closed doors, rumors of treason spread. James Madison complained to a friend that the northern movement “certainly is the greatest, if not the sole, inducement” for the British to continue prosecuting the war.

  Despite his opposition to the war, Key was nonetheless dismayed by the developments in New England. “These Yankees are sad fellows,” he told John Randolph. He was considering founding a national, nonpartisan newspaper to fight the threat of disunion. “I have thought something might be done by an impartial anti-party paper to prevent this & other evils to which we are exposed,” Key said.

  Late on Christmas Eve, Philip Barton Key showed up safely from Annapolis. Relieved, Frank Key added a postscript to the letter to his mother: There was “no danger” to report from the British.

  GHENT, CHRISTMAS EVE, 1814

  At 4 p.m., the five American ministers arrived by carriage at the British residence at the Chartreux Convent, stepping out into a crisp Christmas Eve that carried the hint of snow in the air. After weeks of final bargaining, the American and British delegations had agreed to terms.

  Much of the bickering in the last weeks had not been with the British, but among the members of the American delegation, with Gallatin forced to broker shouting matches between Adams and Clay. The Americans and British were able to reach agreement on the final disputed issues by leaving them out of the treaty altogether, including the fate of disputed islands off the coast of Maine, questions of British navigation on the Mississippi, and the rights of American fishermen in Newfoundland.