"On the 6th of August (1814) the small British squadron in the Chesapeake was reinforced by a fleet of twenty-one vessels under Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, the senior commander on the American station. These were soon joined by another under Commodore Sir Charles Malcolm. These vessels bore several thousand land troops commanded by General Ross, an Irish officer, and one of Wellington's most active leaders. Washington and Baltimore appear to have been chosen objects of attack simultaneously. A part of the British naval force, under Sir Peter Parker, went up the Chesapeake toward Baltimore, and another portion, under Captain Gordon, went up the Potomac.
"At that time Commodore Barney, with a flotilla of thirteen armed barges and the schooner Scorpion, with an aggregate of about five hundred men, was in the Patuxent river. His vessels had been chased out of the Chesapeake, and blockaded in St. Leonard's Bay. Of this confinement they were relieved by some artillery under Colonel Henry Carbery, with which he drove away the Loire, the blockading frigate, when the released flotilla went up the Patuxent, first to Benedict, and then to Nottingham, that it might be within co-operating distance of both Washington and Baltimore.
"Seeing this, the British determined to capture or destroy it, and on the 18th of August a force of a little more than five thousand men, composed of regulars, marines, and negroes went up the Patuxent, and landed at Benedict with three cannon, under cover of an armed brig. Most of the other large British vessels were below, some of them aground, and all too heavy to ascend the comparatively shallow stream.
"Barney, then at Nottingham, promptly informed the Navy Department of the movement, and of a boast of the British admiral that he would destroy the American flotilla, and dine in Washington on the following Sunday. General Winder, by direction of the War Department, immediately ordered General Samuel Smith's division (the Third) of the Maryland militia into actual service. He also called upon General John P. Van Ness, commander of the militia of the District of Columbia, for two brigades, to be encamped near Alexandria; and he sent a circular letter to all the brigadiers of the Maryland militia, asking for volunteers to the amount of one-half their respective commands.
"By his orders, his adjutant-general, Hite, issued a stirring appeal to the citizens to come forward, 'without regard to sacrifices and privation,' in defense of the national capital. Winder also asked General Stricker, of Baltimore, to send to Washington his volunteer regiments of infantry and his rifle battalion.
"The veteran patriot, General Smith, promptly responded to the call of the government. He at once issued a division order, in which he gave notice of the invasion, and directed the whole of General Stansbury's brigade to be held in readiness for active service, adding, 'the third brigade is now under the pay of the United States, in its service, and subject to the Articles of War.' That corps General Smith declared to be 'the finest set of men he ever saw.' They paraded at four o'clock the same day, and on the following morning General Stansbury left Baltimore for Washington with thirteen hundred of his corps. Another force, under Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Sterett, consisting of the Fifth Regiment of Baltimore Volunteers, Major Pinkney's rifle battalion, and the artillery companies of Captains Myers and Magruder, left Baltimore on the evening of the 20th, and joined Stansbury on the evening of the 23d.
"With wise precaution, General Smith ordered the Eleventh brigade and Colonel Moore's cavalry to hold themselves in readiness to march to Baltimore at a moment's warning, for it seemed probable that the enemy would strike at both cities simultaneously.
"The British in the meantime had moved up the Patuxent from Benedict, the land troops being accompanied by a flotilla of launches and barges that kept abreast of them. The naval forces were under the command of the notorious marauder, Cockburn. They reached Lower Marlborough on the 21st, when Barney's flotilla, then in charge of Lieutenant Frazier and a sufficient number of men to destroy it if necessary, moved up to Pig Point, where some of the vessels grounded in the shallow water.
"For the defense of Washington the whole force was about seven thousand strong, of whom nine hundred were enlisted men. The cavalry did not exceed four hundred in number. The little army had twenty-six pieces of cannon, of which twenty were only six-pounders. This force, if concentrated, would have been competent to roll back the invasion had the commanding officer been untrammeled by the interference of the President and his Cabinet."
All that was written when the facts of the case were well known, and now the story shall be taken up as I wrote it when a boy.
It was not all plain sailing from Nottingham to Pig Point, for the water was shallow, and there were many places where it was necessary to handle even a pungy very tenderly in order to avoid taking the ground.
While Darius was not well acquainted with the stream, he had a sailorly eye for bad places, and never made the mistake of trying to jump the little vessel where she was likely to be held hard and fast.
Many times were we forced to take to the canoe in order to pull the Avenger's nose around more sharply than could be done by the helm, and when it came to such labor of pulling and hauling the commodore lent a hand as if we had been his equal in station.
And we did work lively, for a fact, hoping to have our anchor down before any other craft could arrive, therefore no one complained when Darius called on us for labor which might have been saved at the expense of three or four minutes in time.
The commander was even more eager than were we, to arrive at the appointed rendezvous speedily, and we could readily guess that some big change was to be made in the general plans, although what it might be we came far from guessing, since all of us, save Darius Thorpe, believed he was simply running away from the enemy.
Well, we succeeded in doing as we wished in regard to beating out the remainder of the fleet, for when we came to anchor off the point and snugged everything down Bristol fashion, there were no signs that a single craft was following.
Commodore Barney was chafing because of the delay, as could be seen by the way in which he paced the deck, rubbing his hands from time to time as he gazed down stream in vain for some token of the laggards.