Had the President been fully apprized of the elaborate plans of the British War Office, his anxieties would have been multiplied many times. For what resources had the Government to meet invasion on three frontiers? The Treasury was again depleted; new loans brought in insufficient funds to meet current expenses; recruiting was slack because the Government could not compete with the larger bounties offered by the States; by summer the number of effective regular troops was only twenty-seven thousand all told. With this slender force, supplemented by State levies, the military authorities were asked to repel invasion. The Administration had not yet drunk the bitter dregs of the cup of humiliation.
That some part of the invading British forces might be detailed to attack the Capital was vaguely divined by the President and his Cabinet; but no adequate measures had been taken for the defense of the city when, on a fatal August day, the British army marched upon it. The humiliating story of the battle of Bladensburg has been told elsewhere. The disorganized mob which had been hastily assembled to check the advance of the British was utterly routed almost under the eyes of the President, who with feelings not easily described found himself obliged to join the troops fleeing through the city. No personal humiliation was spared the President and his family. Dolly Madison, never once doubting that the noise of battle which reached the White House meant an American victory, stayed calmly indoors until the rush of troops warned her of danger. She and her friends were then swept along in the general rout. She was forced to leave her personal effects behind, but her presence of mind saved one treasure in the White House—a large portrait of General Washington painted by Gilbert Stuart. That priceless portrait and the plate were all that survived. The fleeing militiamen had presence of mind enough to save a large quantity of the wine by drinking it, and what was left, together with the dinner on the table, was consumed by Admiral Cockburn and his staff. By nightfall the White House, the Treasury, and the War Office were in flames, and only a severe thunderstorm checked the conflagration.*
* Before passing judgment on the conduct of British officers
and men in the capital, the reader should recall the equally
indefensible outrages committed by American troops under
General Dearborn in 1813, when the Houses of Parliament and
other public buildings at York (Toronto) were pillaged and
burned. See Kingsford's "History of Canada," VIII, pp. 259-
61.
Heartsick and utterly weary, the President crossed the Potomac at about six o'clock in the evening and started westward in a carriage toward Montpelier. He had been in the saddle since early morning and was nearly spent. To fatigue was added humiliation, for he was forced to travel with a crowd of embittered fugitives and sleep in a forlorn house by the wayside. Next morning he overtook Mrs. Madison at an inn some sixteen miles from the Capital. Here they passed another day of humiliation, for refugees who had followed the same line of flight reviled the President for betraying them and the city. At midnight, alarmed at a report that the British were approaching, the President fled to another miserable refuge deeper in the Virginia woods. This fear of capture was quite unfounded, however, for the British troops had already evacuated the city and were marching in the opposite direction.
Two days later the President returned to the capital to collect his Cabinet and repair his shattered Government. He found public sentiment hot against the Administration for having failed to protect the city. He had even to fear personal violence, but he remained "tranquil as usual... though much distressed by the dreadful event which had taken place." He was still more distressed, however, by the insistent popular clamor for a victim for punishment. All fingers pointed at Armstrong as the man responsible for the capture of the city. Armstrong offered to resign at once, but the President in distress would not hear of resignation. He would advise only "a temporary retirement" from the city to placate the inhabitants. So Armstrong departed, but by the time he reached Baltimore he realized the impossibility of his situation and sent his resignation to the President. The victim had been offered up. At his own request Monroe was now made Secretary of War, though he continued also to discharge the not very heavy duties of the State Department.
It was a disillusioned group of Congressmen who gathered in September, 1814, in special session at the President's call. Among those who gazed sadly at the charred ruins of the Capitol were Calhoun, Cheves, and Grundy, whose voices had been loud for war and who had pictured their armies overrunning the British possessions. Clay was at this moment endeavoring to avert a humiliating surrender of American claims at Ghent. To the sting of defeated hopes was added physical discomfort. The only public building which had escaped the general conflagration was the Post and Patent Office. In these cramped quarters the two houses awaited the President's message.
A visitor from another planet would have been strangely puzzled to make the President's words tally with the havoc wrought by the enemy on every side. A series of achievements had given new luster to the American arms; "the pride of our naval arms had been amply supported"; the American people had "rushed with enthusiasm to the scenes where danger and duty call." Not a syllable about the disaster at Washington! Not a word about the withdrawal of the Connecticut militia from national service, and the refusal of the Governor of Vermont to call out the militia just at the moment when Sir George Prevost began his invasion of New York; not a word about the general suspension of specie payment by all banks outside of New England; not a word about the failure of the last loan and the imminent bankruptcy of the Government. Only a single sentence betrayed the anxiety which was gnawing Madison's heart: "It is not to be disguised that the situation of our country calls for its greatest efforts." What the situation demanded, he left his secretaries to say.
The new Secretary of War seemed to be the one member of the Administration who was prepared to grapple with reality and who had the courage of his convictions. While Jefferson was warning him that it was nonsense to talk about a regular army, Monroe told Congress flatly that no reliance could be pled in the militia and that a permanent force of one hundred thousand men must be raised—raised by conscription if necessary. Throwing Virginian and Jeffersonian principles to the winds, he affirmed the constitutional right of Congress to draft citizens. The educational value of war must have been very great to bring Monroe to this conclusion, but Congress had not traveled so far. One by one Monroe's alternative plans were laid aside; and the country, like a rudderless ship, drifted on.
An insuperable obstacle, indeed, prevented the establishment of any efficient national army at this time. Every plan encountered ultimately the inexorable fact that the Treasury was practically empty and the credit of the Government gone. Secretary Campbell's report was a confession of failure to sustain public credit. Some seventy-four millions would be needed to carry the existing civil and military establishments for another year, and of this sum, vast indeed in those days, only twenty-four millions were in sight. Where the remaining fifty millions were to be found, the Secretary could not say. With this admission of incompetence Campbell resigned from office. On the 9th of November his successor, A. J. Dallas, notified holders of government securities at Boston that the Treasury could not meet its obligations.
It was at this crisis, when bankruptcy stared the Government in the face, that the Legislature of Massachusetts appointed delegates to confer with delegates from other New England legislatures on their common grievances and dangers and to devise means of security and defense. The Legislatures of Connecticut and Rhode Island responded promptly by appointing delegates to meet at Hartford on the 15th of December; and the proposed convention seemed to receive popular indorsement in the congressional elections, for with but two exceptions all the Congressmen chosen were Federalists. Hot-heads were discussing without any attempt at concealment the possibility of reconstructing the Federal Union. A new union of the good old Thirteen States on terms set by New England was believed to be well within the bounds of possibility. News-sheets referred enthusiastically to the erection of a new Federal edifice which should exclude the Western States. Little wonder that the harassed President in distant Washington was obsessed with the idea that New England was on the verge of secession.