CHAPTER XVII. THE WASHINGTON CAMPAIGN.
Ross's Expedition against Washington—Battle of Bladensburg—Destraction of the Capital—Capitulation of Alexandria—Comments of the London Times—Expedition against Baltimore—Death of Sir Peter Parker—Battle of North Point—Death of General Ross—Bombardment of Fort McHenry—How a Famous Song was written.
But these little affairs along the coast were of small consequence in comparison with what befell the capital of the country. Relieved by the peace in Europe, the English Government resolved to prosecute the American war with greater vigor, and fixed upon the policy of striking at the cities. Baltimore, Washington, Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans were all marked for capture or destruction. A powerful British fleet was sent to the Bermudas, and a large number of veteran troops transported thither, and the commanders on our coasts were directed to draw thence such forces as they might need for their expeditions.
That Washington was likely to be the object of a hostile demonstration of some kind, was known to the Administration for months, but no efficient measures were taken to meet it. President Madison and General Armstrong, Secretary of War, did not like each other, and neither man was large enough not to let his personal feelings stand in the way of the country's interests. When the President urged that something should be done to avert the danger that threatened the capital, General Armstrong opposed the proposition with such abstruse reasons as that "militia were always most effective when first called out."
The only effective means of defence consisted of a small flotilla commanded by Commodore Joshua Barney, who sailed the waters of Chesapeake Bay for some weeks, continually annoying the English fleet. On the 1st of June he had an engagement with two schooners in the Patuxent, and drove them off with hot shot. A few days later, he was chased into St. Leonard's Creek, where he formed his boats in line of battle across the channel and engaged the enemy's barges, ultimately chasing them down to the ships. On the 10th he was attacked by twenty barges and two schooners; but he beat them all off, and so severely handled one of the schooners, an eighteen-gun vessel, that her crew ran her aground and abandoned her. On the 26th, with the help of a corps of artillery and a detachment of the marine corps, Barney attacked the whole squadron that was blockading him in the St. Leonard's, and after a fight of two hours compelled them to raise the blockade.
General Robert Ross, who had served in several campaigns under Wellington, and was with Sir John Moore when he fell at Corunna, was selected by the Duke to command an expedition against Washington. In July, with three thousand five hundred men, the finest regiments of Wellington's army, he sailed from Bordeaux for the Chesapeake, where he arrived in August, and was at once reenforced by a thousand marines from Cockburn's blockading squadron, and a hundred negroes from the neighboring plantations, who had been armed and drilled as British soldiers.
The District of Columbia and the adjacent counties of Virginia and Maryland had recently been formed into a military district, of which the command was given to General William H. Winder. His forces consisted of five hundred regulars and two thousand militia. On the approach of the enemy, Maryland and Virginia were hastily called upon for reënforcements of militia, and nearly three thousand came from Maryland; but the Virginians, from delay in receiving their flints, did not move till the fighting was over.
Ross's expedition ascended the Patuxent, and on the morning of August 19th his troops were debarked without molestation at Benedict, on the western or right bank, forty miles southeast of Washington. He had twenty-seven vessels, and over four thousand men.
By order of the Secretary of War, Commodore Barney blew up his little flotilla, and with his five hundred seamen and marines retreated to Nottingham, where General Winder assigned to them the management of the artillery.
The weather was fearfully hot, and the enemy proceeded by slow marches, dozens of men falling and fainting by the way. It was remarked at the time that their route might have been so impeded by felling trees, that the weather and the labor of removing them would have defeated the expedition. But nothing of the sort was done. Winder waited in a chosen position at Wood Yard, twelve miles from the city, to give battle. But Ross turned to the right after reaching Nottingham, taking the road to Marlborough, where Admiral Cockburn joined him with a body of marines and seamen. The Americans fell back to Battalion Old Fields, a detachment under Major Peters skirmishing sharply with the advancing enemy, and on the 24th to Bladensburg, six miles from Washington, where a bridge spanned the eastern branch of the Potomac. Here they made a stand, taking a strong position on the western bank, commanding the bridge. The President and several members of his Cabinet were on the field, all interfering more or less with the military arrangements. Monroe—then Secretary of State, afterward President—who had been a staff officer in the Continental army more than thirty years before, considered himself specially qualified as a military meddler, and actually changed the disposition of some of Winder's troops at the last moment.
It could not be expected that a mass of raw militia, hastily called together, and hardly knowing by whom they were commanded, would stand long, even in an advantageous position, before the onset of veteran troops. "Come, General Armstrong, come, Colonel Monroe," said the President, "let us go, and leave it to the commanding General." So Mr. Madison and his Cabinet left the field, and it was not long before the militia followed their illustrious example.
The ground on the eastern side of the river, where the British approached, was low and clear. On the western it rose in a gradual slope, and along the stream was fringed with willows and larches. A body of American riflemen was posted in the shrubbery that lined the bank. Three hundred yards up the slope was a slight earthwork, mounting six guns, supported by two companies of Baltimore volunteers. General Stansbury had posted three regiments to the right of it, but Secretary Monroe had moved them to a point in the rear of the battery and five hundred yards farther up the slope. At the top of the hill, one mile from the bridge, was formed a line consisting of Maryland militia on the right, Barney's seamen and marines in the centre, a detachment of regular troops and a regiment of District militia on the left, with a battery of six guns and a company of riflemen in front.
The enemy entered the village of Bladensburg soon after noon of the 24th, and was at once subjected to a fire that compelled him to seek the shelter of the houses. At one o'clock the advance column rushed at the double quick upon the bridge, where it met a concentrated fire from the American batteries and riflemen, and almost entirely melted away. A remnant, however, succeeded in crossing, deployed at once, and advanced upon the first line, which fell back and permitted two guns to be lost.
Elated at this success, the thin line of British troops threw off their knapsacks and advanced toward the second line, without waiting for another column to cross the bridge to their support. When General Winder saw their error, he placed himself at the head of a regiment of Baltimore volunteers, gave them an effective volley, and then made a charge, and at the point of the bayonet drove them down to the very brink of the river, where with difficulty they maintained their foothold under the trees till another brigade had crossed the bridge to their relief.
One regiment of these fresh troops turned the left of the American line, and threw in some Congreve rockets, which so frightened the militia on that flank that they broke at once and fled in confusion. The regiment headed by Winder stood firm till both its flanks were turned, when it retired, its retreat being covered by the riflemen.
The enemy then attacked the remainder of the line, all of which soon gave way, except Barney's men, who kept them in check for half an hour, and with the fire of four pieces of artillery ploughed their ranks through and through. But when the militia broke, the teamsters stampeded, without stopping to unhitch their horses from the ammunition wagons. Barney was thus left with but a single round of ammunition, while the enemy was gradually gaining a position upon his flank; and though many of his men were acting as infantry and behaved admirably, charging several times with great effect, he was obliged to order a retreat. He himself had been severely wounded, while two of his principal officers were killed, and two others wounded. He fell into the hands of the enemy, who took him to their hospital at Bladensburg. In this action the Americans had lost seventy-seven men killed or wounded; the British, more than five hundred. Ross's entire loss, including deserters, prisoners, and those who succumbed to the weather, was said to be nearly a thousand.
But no serious obstacle now stood in the way of General Ross's purpose to destroy the capital; and with that portion of his force which had not been engaged, he marched thither without the loss of an hour, arriving at eight o'clock that evening.
The most valuable portion of the public archives had been removed to a place of safety, and Mrs. Madison had managed to carry away the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, a portrait of Washington that hung in the White House, and a few other articles which could not have been replaced. The magazines and shipping at the Navy Yard had already been fired by order of the Secretary of War, and everything there was destroyed.
It is said that General Ross offered to spare the city for a price; but there was no one at hand who could treat with him, if the authorities had been inclined to purchase its safety. He expected to be attacked by a more formidable force than that he had met at Brudensburg, and, as he wrote to Earl Bathurst, "judging it of consequence to complete the destruction of the public buildings with the least possible delay, so that the army might retire without loss of time, he without a moment's delay burned and destroyed everything in the most distant degree connected with the government." There was one notable exception. At the intercession of Dr. Thornton, who superintended the Patent Office, the building containing that and the Post Office was spared; because, as the doctor represented, it contained great numbers of models and papers which were of value to the whole scientific world. The jail, one hotel, and a few dwellings also escaped. All else, including the President's house, the public libraries, and the new Capitol—of which only the wings had been built—was given to the flames. The commanders of the expedition distinguished themselves personally in this vandalism. Admiral Cochrane, who had a spite against the National Intelligencer because of its strictures upon his marauding exploits along the coast, caused the office to be sacked and the type thrown into, the street, and with his own hand set the building on fire. Admiral Cockburn is said to have led his men into the hall of the House of Representatives, where he leaped into the Speaker's chair and shouted, "Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned? All for it will say, Aye!"
In the night of the 25th, Ross silently withdrew from the city, leaving his camp-fires burning, for he expected and feared pursuit-, and marched with all that remained of his force to Benedict, where they reëmbarked.
A division of the enemy's fleet, consisting of eight vessels, ascended the Potomac to attack the city of Alexandria. Fort Warburton, a small work intended for its defence, was destroyed by the garrison at the approach of the ships, and with no opposition they passed up and laid the town under their guns. A parley was had, the result of which was that the dwellings were left unmolested, the condition being, "the immediate delivery [to the enemy] of all public and private naval and ordnance stores; of all shipping, and the furniture necessary to their equipment then in port; of all the merchandise of every description, whether in the town or removed from it since the 19th of the month; that such merchandise should be put on board the shipping at the expense of the owners; and that all vessels which might have been sunk upon the approach of the fleet should be raised by the merchants and delivered up with all their apparatus." These conditions, hard as they were, were complied with, and on the 6th of September the fleet, loaded with booty, returned down the river. Two batteries on the shore—at White House and Indian Head, commanded by Captains Porter and Perry, of the navy—damaged it considerably as it passed, but were not able to stop it.
If the importance of General Ross's exploit was overrated by the Americans, who naturally felt chagrined that so small an invading force should have destroyed their capital and momentarily dispersed their Government, it was enormously exaggerated by the English journals. By confounding the capital of the country with its metropolis, they led their readers to believe that the chief city of the United States had been laid in ashes; whereas Washington was but a straggling place of eight thousand inhabitants, which had been made the seat of the Federal Government but a dozen years before. Taking it for granted that what would have befallen England or France with London or Paris in the possession of a foreign enemy, had actually befallen the United States, the London Times proceeded to say: "The ill-organized association is on the eve of dissolution, and the world is speedily to be delivered of the mischievous example of the existence of a government founded on democratic rebellion." In another issue, October 9th, 1814, it said: "Next to the annihilation of the late military despotism in Europe, the subversion of that system of fraud and malignity which constitutes the whole policy of the Jeffersonian school, was an event to be devoutly wished by every man in either hemisphere who regards rational liberty or the honorable intercourse of nations. It was an event to which we should have bent, and yet must bend, all our energies. The American Government must be displaced, or it will sooner or later plant its poisoned dagger in the heart of the parent state." In a speech in Parliament, Sir Gilbert Heathcote naively said, "it appeared to him that we feared the rising power of America, and wished to curtail it." Which, as the Scottish captain in the story said, was "a verra just remark."
In the night of August 30th, Sir Peter Parker, commander of the frigate Menelaus, who had been blockading Baltimore with that and another vessel, landed on the Eastern Shore, with two hundred and thirty men, intending to surprise and capture a small body of Maryland volunteers at Moorfields. But the Maryland men were ready for them, and after a sharp fight of about an hour the British retreated, leaving sixteen of their men killed or wounded on the field, and bearing away seventeen others, among whom was Sir Peter, who died almost as soon as he reached his ship. Three of the Americans were wounded.
Rightly conjecturing that Baltimore would be the next place at which the enemy would strike, the people of that city had made haste to provide for its defence. The fortifications were extended, and manned by about five thousand men. On the 11th of September, forty British war-vessels appeared at the mouth of the Patapsco, and that night eight thousand men, under General Ross, were landed at North Point, a dozen miles below the city. No resistance was offered till they had marched four miles up the little peninsula, when they were met by General John Strivker with three thousand two hundred men, including an artillery company with six small guns, and a detachment of cavalry.
The cavalry and a hundred and fifty riflemen were thrown forward to feel the enemy. General Ross, who had declared that he "did n't care if it rained militia," and had expressed his intention of making winter quarters in Baltimore, put himself at the head of his advance guard, and promptly attacked. But as he rode along the crest of a little knoll, he was shot in the side by an American rifleman, and before his aides could bear him back to the boats, he expired.
Notwithstanding the loss of their leader, the British forces rushed steadily forward, drove the American skirmishers back upon the main line, and brought on a general engagement. The battle lasted two or three hours with varying fortune, till a heavy attack on the American left turned it, when the whole body retreated to an intrenched position near the city.
The British followed the next day, but found their enemy strongly placed and reenforced, whereupon they took advantage of a dark night and retraced their steps. They had lost two hundred and ninety men, killed or wounded, and had inflicted upon the Americans a loss of two hundred and thirteen, including fifty prisoners. This action is known as the battle of North Point, but has sometimes been called the battle of Long-log Lane.
While Ross's men were approaching Baltimore by land, sixteen vessels of the British fleet moved up the bay, and opened fire upon its immediate defences. The shallowness of the water prevented them from getting near enough to bombard the town itself; but for twenty-four hours they poured an almost uninterrupted shower of rockets and shells into Fort McHenry, Fort Covington, and the connecting intrenchments. Most of the firing was at long range; whenever any of the vessels came within reach of the batteries, they were subjected to a fire that quickly drove them back, and in some cases sank them. Fort McHenry, garrisoned by six hundred men under Major George Armistead, bore the brunt of the attack.
At the dead of night the enemy attempted to land a strong force above the forts, for an attack in the rear; but it was discovered and subjected to a concentrated fire of red-hot shot, which speedily drove it off with serious loss. This practically put an end to the attempt to take Baltimore, and a few hours later the fleet withdrew. The loss of the Americans by the bombardment was four killed and twenty-four wounded. The loss in the fleet is unknown.
This bombardment of Fort McHenry gave us one of our national songs. Francis S. Key had gone out to the British fleet in a row-boat, under a flag of truce, to ask for the release on parole of a friend who had been made prisoner. Admiral Cockburn, who had just completed his plans for the attack, detained him, and in his little boat, moored to the side of the flag-ship, he sat and watched the bombardment. When the second morning broke, and he saw that the flag of the fort—which Cockburn had boasted would "yield in a few hours"—was still flying, he took an old letter out of his pocket, and on the back of it wrote the first draft of "The Star-Spangled Banner." The flag is now in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society.