The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 Part 6

I now sent for the officers of division to consult them and what was my surprise to find only acting Lieutenant Stephen Decatur M'Knight remaining... . I was informed that the c.o.c.kpit, the steerage, the wardroom, and the berth deck could contain no more wounded, that the wounded were killed while the surgeons were dressing them, and that if something was not speedily done to prevent it, the s.h.i.+p would soon sink from the number of shot holes in her bottom. On sending for the carpenter he informed me that all his crew had been killed or wounded.

The enemy, from the impossibility of reaching him with our carronades and the little apprehension that was excited by our fire, which had now become much slackened, was enabled to take aim at us as at a target; his shot never missed our hull and my s.h.i.+p was cut up in a manner which was perhaps never before witnessed; in fine, I saw no hope of saving her, and at twenty minutes after 6 P.M. I gave the painful order to strike the colors. Seventy-five men including officers were all that remained of my whole crew after the action, many of them severely wounded, some of whom have since died.

The enemy still continued his fire and my brave, though unfortunate companions were still falling about me. I directed an opposite gun to be fired to show them we intended no further resistance but they did not desist. Four men were killed at my side and others at different parts of the s.h.i.+p. I now believed he intended to show us no quarter, that it would be as well to die with my flag flying as struck, and was on the point of again hoisting it when about ten minutes after hauling down the colors he ceased firing.

... We have been unfortunate but not disgraced-the defense of the Ess.e.x has not been less honorable to her officers and crew than the capture of an equal force; and I now consider my situation less unpleasant than that of Captain Hillyar, who in violation of every principle of honor and generosity, and regardless of the rights of nations, attacked the Ess.e.x in her crippled state within pistol shot of a neutral sh.o.r.e, when for six weeks I had daily offered him fair and honorable combat on terms greatly to his advantage.

The behavior of Captain Hillyar after the surrender, however, was most humane and courteous, and lapse of time has dispelled somewhat of the bitterness of the American opinion of him. If he was not as chivalrous as his Yankee foemen had expected, it must be remembered that there was a heavy grudge and a long score to pay in the havoc wrought among British merchantmen and whalers and that in those days the rights of South American neutrals were rather lightly regarded.

CHAPTER IX

VICTORY ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN

Spectacular as were the exploits of the American navy on the sea, they were of far less immediate consequence in deciding the destinies of the war than were the naval battles fought on fresh water between hastily improvised squadrons. On Lake Erie Perry's victory had recovered a lost empire and had made the West secure against invasion. Macdonough's handful of little vessels on Lake Champlain compelled the retreat of ten thousand British veterans of Wellington's campaigns who had marched down from Canada with every promise of crus.h.i.+ng American resistance. This was the last and most formidable attempt on the part of the enemy to conquer territory and to wrest a decision by means of a sustained offensive. Its collapse marked the beginning of the end, and such events as the capture of Was.h.i.+ngton and the battle of New Orleans were in the nature of episodes.

That September day of 1814, when Macdonough won his niche in the naval hall of fame, was also the climax and the conclusion of the long struggle of the American armies on the northern frontier, a confused record of defeat, vacillation, and crumbling forces, which was redeemed towards the end by troops who had learned how to fight and by new leaders who restored the honor of the flag at Chippawa and Lundy's Lane. Although the ambitious attempts against Canada, so often repeated, were so much wasted effort until the very end, they ceased to be inglorious. The tide turned in the summer of 1814 with the renewal of the struggle for the Niagara region where the British had won a foothold upon American soil.

In command of a vigorous and disciplined American army was General Jacob Brown, that stout-hearted volunteer who had proved his worth when the enemy landed at Sackett's Harbor. He was not a professional soldier but his troops had been trained and organized by Winfield Scott who was now a brigadier. After two years of dismal reverses, the United States was learning how to wage war. Incompetency was no longer the badge of high military rank. A general was supposed to know something about his trade and to have a will of his own.

With thirty-five hundred men, Jacob Brown made a resolute advance to find and join battle with the British forces of General Riall which garrisoned the forts of St. George's, Niagara, Erie, Queenston, and Chippawa. Early in the morning of July 3, 1814, the American troops in two divisions crossed the river and promptly captured Fort Erie. They then pushed ahead fifteen miles until they encountered the British defensive line on the Chippawa River where it flows into the Niagara.

The field was like a park, with open, gra.s.sy s.p.a.ces and a belt of woodland which served as a green curtain to screen the movements of both armies. Riall boldly a.s.sumed the offensive, although he was aware that he had fewer men. His instructions intimated that liberties might be taken with the Americans which would seem hazardous "to a military man unacquainted with the character of the enemy he had to contend with, or with the events of the last two campaigns on that frontier." The deduction was unflattering but very much after the fact.

The British attack was unlooked for. It was the Fourth of July and in celebration Winfield Scott had given his men the best dinner that the commissary could supply and was marching them into a meadow in the cool of the summer afternoon for drill and review. The celebration, however, was interrupted by firing and confusion among the militia who happened to be in front, and Scott rushed his brigade forward to take the brunt of the heavy a.s.sault. General Jacob Brown rode by at a gallop, waving his hat and cheerily shouting, "You will have a battle." He was hurrying to bring up his other forces, but meanwhile Scott's column crossed a bridge at the double-quick and faced the enemy's batteries.

Exposed, taken by surprise, and outnumbered, Winfield Scott and his regiments were nevertheless equal to the occasion. A battalion was sent to cover one flank in the dense woodland, while the main body drove straight for the columns of British infantry and then charged with bayonets at sixty paces. The American ranks were steady and unbroken although they were pelted with musketry fire, and they smashed a British counter-charge by three regiments before it gained momentum. Handsomely fought and won, it was not a decisive battle and might be called no more than a skirmish but its significance was highly important, for at Chippawa there was displayed a new spirit in the American army.

Riall retreated with his red-coated regulars to a stronger line at Queenston, while Jacob Brown was sending anxious messages to Commodore Chauncey begging him to use his fleet in cooperation and so break the power of the enemy in Upper Canada. "For G.o.d's sake, let me see you," he implored. But again the American s.h.i.+ps on Lake Ontario failed to seize an opportunity, and in this instance Chauncey's inactivity dismayed not only General Brown but also the Government at Was.h.i.+ngton. The fleet remained at Sackett's Harbor with excuses which appeared inadequate: certain changes were being made among the officers and crews, and again "the squadron had been prevented being earlier fitted for sea in consequence of the delay in obtaining blocks and iron-work." Chauncey subsequently fell ill, which may have had something to do with his lapse of energy. The whole career of this naval commander on Lake Ontario had disappointed expectations, even though the Secretary had commended his "zeal, talent, constancy, courage, and prudence of the highest order." The trouble was that Chauncey let slip one chance after another to win the control of Lake Ontario in pitched battle. Always too intent on building more s.h.i.+ps instead of fighting with those he had, he is therefore not remembered in the glorious companions.h.i.+p of Perry and Macdonough.

This failure to act at the moment when Jacob Brown was so valiantly endeavoring to wrest from the British the precious Niagara peninsula was responsible for the desperate and inconclusive battle of Lundy's Lane. Winfield Scott frankly blamed the unsuccessful result upon the freedom with which the British troops and supplies were moved on Lake Ontario. For ten days Jacob Brown had remained in a painful state of suspense and perplexity, until finally the word came that n.o.body knew when the American fleet would sail. As he had feared, the British command, able to move its troops unmolested across the lake, planned to attack him in the rear and to cut his communications on the New York side of the Niagara River. For this purpose two enemy brigs were filled with troops and were sent over to Fort Niagara with more to follow.

It was to parry this threat that Brown moved his forces and brought about the clash at Lundy's Lane. "As it appeared," he explained, "that the enemy with his increased strength was about to avail himself of the hazard under which our baggage and stores were on our side of the Niagara, I conceived the most effectual method of recalling him from the object was to put myself in motion towards Queenston. General Scott with his brigade were accordingly put in march on the road leading thither."

The action was fought about a mile back from the torrent of the Niagara, below the Falls, where the by-road known as Lundy's Lane joined the main road running parallel with the river. Here Scott's column came suddenly upon a force of British redcoats led by General Drummond. Scott hesitated to attack, because the odds were against his one brigade, but, fearing the effect of a retreat on the divisions behind him, he sent word to Brown that he would hold his ground and try to turn the enemy's left toward the Niagara. It was late in the day and the sun had almost set. Gradually Scott forced the British wing back, and Brown threw in reinforcements until the engagement became general. The fight continued furious even after darkness fell and never have men employed in the business of killing each other shown courage more stubborn. Both sides were equally determined and they fought until exhaustion literally compelled a halt.

Later in the evening fresh troops were hurled in on both sides, and they were at it again with the same impetuosity. A small hill, over which ran Lundy's Lane, was the goal the Americans fought for. They finally stormed it, "in so determined a manner," reported the enemy, "that our artillery men were bayoneted in the act of loading and the muzzles of the enemy's guns were advanced within a few yards of ours." Back and forth flowed the tide of battle in b.l.o.o.d.y waves, until midnight. Then sullenly and in good order the Americans retired three miles to camp at Chippawa. Next day the enemy resumed the position and held it unattacked.

It is fair to call Lundy's Lane a drawn battle. The casualties were something more than eight hundred for each side, and the troops engaged were about twenty-five hundred Americans and a like number of British. Both the shattered columns soon retired behind strong defenses. General Drummond led the British troops into camp at Niagara Falls, and General Ripley, in temporary command of the American brigades, Scott and Brown having been wounded, occupied the unfinished works of Fort Erie, on the Canadian side, just where the waters of Lake Erie enter the Niagara River.

The British determined to bombard these walls and intrenchments with heavy guns and then carry them by infantry a.s.sault. But this plan failed disastrously. On the 15th of August the British charged in three columns the bastions and batteries only to be savagely repulsed at every point with a loss of nine hundred men killed, wounded, or prisoners, while the defenders had only eighty-five casualties. Then Drummond settled down to besiege the place and succeeded in making it so uncomfortable that Jacob Brown, now recovered from his wound, organized a sortie in force which was made on the 17th of September. In the action which followed, the British batteries were overwhelmed and the American militia displayed magnificent steadiness and valor. Jacob Brown proudly informed the Governor of New York that "the militia of New York have redeemed their character-they behaved gallantly. Of those called out by the last requisition, fifteen hundred have crossed the state border to our support. This reinforcement has been of immense importance to us; it doubled our effective strength, and their good conduct cannot but have the happiest effect upon our nation."

This bold stroke ended the Niagara campaign. The British fell back, and the American army was in no condition for pursuit. In ten weeks Jacob Brown had fought four engagements without defeat and, barring the battle of New Orleans, his brief campaign was the one operation of the land war upon which Americans could look back with any degree of satisfaction.

The scene now s.h.i.+fted to Lake Champlain. The main work was the building up of an army to resist the menacing preparations for a British invasion from Montreal. Among the new American generals who had gained promotion by merit instead of favor was George Izard, trained in the military schools of England and Prussia, and an aide to Alexander Hamilton during his command of the army of the United States. Izard had been sent to Plattsburg in May, 1814, on the very eve of the great British campaign, and found everything in a deplorable state of unreadiness and inefficiency. While he was manfully struggling with these difficulties, Secretary Armstrong directed him to send four thousand of his men to the a.s.sistance of Jacob Brown on the Niagara front. General Izard obediently and promptly set out, although the defense of Lake Champlain was thereby deprived of this large body of troops. The expedition was almost barren of results, however, and at a time when every trained soldier was needed to oppose the march of the British veterans, Izard was at Fort Erie, idle, waiting to build winter quarters and writing to the War Department: "I confess I am greatly embarra.s.sed. At the head of the most efficient army the United States have possessed during this war, much must be expected of me; and yet I can discern no object which can be achieved at this point worthy of the risk which will attend its attempt."

Izard had already predicted that the withdrawal of his forces from Plattsburg would leave northeastern New York at the mercy of the British and he spoke the truth. No sooner had his divisions started westward than the British army, ten thousand strong, under General Prevost, crossed the frontier and marched rapidly toward the Saranac River and then straight on to Plattsburg. Possession of this trading town the British particularly desired because through it pa.s.sed an enormous amount of illicit traffic with Canada. Both Izard and Prevost agreed in the statement that the British army was almost entirely fed on supplies drawn from New York and Vermont by way of Lake Champlain. "Two thirds of the army in Canada are supplied with beef by American contractors," wrote Prevost, and there were not enough highways to accommodate the herds of cattle which were driven across the border.

To protect this source of supply by conquering the region was the task a.s.signed the splendid army of British regulars who had fought under Wellington. The conclusion of the Peninsular campaign had released them for service in America, and England was now able for the first time to throw her military strength against the feeble forces of the United States. It was announced as the intention of the British Government to take and hold the lakes, from Champlain to Erie, as territorial waters and a permanent barrier. To oppose the large and seasoned army which was to effect these projects, there was an American force of only fifteen hundred men, led by Brigadier General Alexander Macomb. All he could do was to try to hold the defensive works at Plattsburg and to send forward small skirmis.h.i.+ng parties to annoy the British army which advanced in solid column, without taking the trouble to deploy.

On the 6th of September Sir George Prevost with his army reached Plattsburg and encamped just outside the town. From a ridge the British leader beheld the redoubts, strong field works, and blockhouses, and at anchor in the bay the little American fleet of Commodore Thomas Macdonough. To Prevost it looked like a costly business to attempt to carry these defenses by a.s.sault and he therefore decided to await the arrival of the British s.h.i.+ps of Captain George Downie. A combined attack by land and sea, he believed, should find no difficulty in wiping out American resistance.

Such was the situation and the weighty responsibility which confronted Macdonough and his sailors. It was the most critical moment of the war. With a seaman's eye for defense Macdonough met it by stationing his vessels in a carefully chosen position and prepared with a seaman's foresight for every contingency. Plattsburg Bay is about two miles wide and two long and lies open to the southward, with a cape called c.u.mberland Head bounding it on the east. It was in this sheltered water that Macdonough awaited attack, his s.h.i.+ps riding about a mile from the American sh.o.r.e batteries. These guns were to be captured by the British army and turned against him, according to the plans of General Prevost, who was urging Captain Downie to hasten with his fleet and undertake a joint action, for, as he said, "it is of the highest importance that the s.h.i.+ps, vessels, and gunboats of your command should combine a cooperation with the division of the army under my command. I only wait for your arrival to proceed against General Macomb's last position on the south bank of the Saranac."

These demands became more and more insistent, although the largest British s.h.i.+p, the Confiance, had been launched only a few days before and the mechanics were still toiling night and day to fit her for action. She was a formidable frigate, of the size of the American Chesapeake, and was expected to be more than a match for Macdonough's entire fleet. Captain Downie certainly expected the support of the army, which he failed to receive, for he clearly stated his position before the naval battle. "When the batteries are stormed and taken possession of by the British land forces, which the commander of the land forces has promised to do at the moment the naval action commences, the enemy will be obliged to quit their position, whereby we shall obtain decided advantage over them during the confusion. I would otherwise prefer fighting them on the lake and would wait until our force is in an efficient state but I fear they would take shelter up the lake and would not meet me on equal terms."

Compelled to seek and offer battle in Plattsburg Bay, the British vessels rounded c.u.mberland Head on the morning of the 11th of September and hove to while Captain Downie went ahead in a boat to observe the American position. He perceived that Macdonough had anch.o.r.ed his fleet in line in this order: the brig Eagle, twenty guns, the flags.h.i.+p Saratoga, twenty-six guns, the schooner Ticonderoga, seven guns, and the sloop Preble, seven guns. There was also a considerable squadron of little gunboats, or galleys, propelled by oars and mounting one gun. Opposed to this force was the stately Confiance, with her three hundred men and thirty-seven guns, such a s.h.i.+p as might have dared to engage the Const.i.tution on blue water, and the Chub, Linnet, and Finch, much like Macdonough's three smaller vessels, besides a flotilla of the tiny, impudent gunboats which were like so many hornets.

Macdonough was a youngster of twenty-eight years to whom was granted this opportunity denied the officers who had grown gray in the service. The navy, which was also very young, had set its own stamp upon him, and his advancement he had won by sheer ability. Self-reliant and indomitable, like Oliver Hazard Perry, he had wrestled with obstacles and was ready to meet the enemy in spite of them. His fame among naval men outs.h.i.+nes Perry's, and he is rated as the greatest fighting sailor who flew the American flag until Farragut surpa.s.sed them all.

The battle of Plattsburg Bay was contested straight from the shoulder with little chance for such evolutions as seeking the weather gage or wearing s.h.i.+p. With one fleet at anchor, as Nelson demonstrated at the Nile, the proper business of the other was to drive ahead and try to break the line or turn an end of it. This Captain Downie proceeded to attempt in a brave and highly skillful manner, with the Confiance leading into the bay and proposing to smash the Eagle with her first broadsides. The wind failed, however, and the British frigate dropped anchor within close range of the Saratoga, which displayed Macdonough's pennant, and pounded this vessel so accurately that forty American seamen, or one-fifth of the crew, were struck down by the first blast of the British guns.

Meanwhile the Linnet had reached her a.s.signed berth and fought the American Eagle so successfully that the latter was disabled and had to leave the line. To balance this the Chub was so badly damaged that she drifted helpless among the American s.h.i.+ps and was compelled to haul down her colors. The Finch committed a blunder of seamans.h.i.+p and by failing to keep close enough to the wind, which soon died away, she finally went aground and took no part in the battle. The Preble was driven from her anchorage and ran ash.o.r.e under the Plattsburg batteries, and the Ticonderoga played no heavier part than to beat off the little British galleys.

The decisive battle was therefore fought by four s.h.i.+ps, the American Saratoga and Eagle, and the British Confiance and Linnet. It was then that Macdonough acquitted himself as a man who did not know when he was beaten. The Confiance, which must have towered like a s.h.i.+p of the line, had so cruelly mauled the Saratoga that she seemed doomed to be blown out of water. So many of his gunners were killed by the double-shotted broadsides that Macdonough jumped from the quarter-deck to take a hand himself and encourage the survivors. He was sighting a gun when a round shot cut the spanker boom, and a fragment of the heavy spar knocked him senseless.

Recovering his wits, however, he returned to his gun. But another shot tore off the head of the gun captain and flung it in Macdonough's face with such force that he was hurled across the deck. At length all but one of the guns along the side exposed to the Confiance had been smashed or dismounted, and this last gun broke its fastening bolts, leaped from its carriage with the heavy recoil, and plunged into the main hatch. Silenced, shot through and through, her decks strewn with dead, the Saratoga might then have struck her colors with honor. But Macdonough had not begun to fight. Prepared for such an emergency, he let go a stern anchor, cut his bow cable, and "winded" or turned his s.h.i.+p around so that her other side with its uninjured row of guns was presented to the Confiance. Captain Downie had by this time been killed, and the acting commander of the British flags.h.i.+p endeavored to execute the same maneuver, but the Confiance was too badly crippled to be swung about. While she floundered, the Saratoga reduced her to submission. One of the surviving officers stated that "the s.h.i.+p's company declared they would no longer stand to their quarters nor could the officers with their utmost exertions rally them." The s.h.i.+p was sinking, with more than a hundred ragged holes in her hull and fivescore men dead or hurt. Fifteen minutes later the plucky Linnet surrendered after a long and desperate duel with the Eagle. The British galleys escaped from the bay under sail and oar because no American s.h.i.+ps were fit to chase them, but the Royal Navy had ceased to exist on Lake Champlain. For more than two hours the battle had been fought with a bulldog endurance not often equaled in the grim pages of naval history. And more nearly than any other incident of the War of 1812 it could be called decisive.

The American victory made the position of Prevost's army wholly untenable. With the control of Lake Champlain in Macdonough's hands, the British line of communication would be continually menaced. For the ten thousand veterans of Wellington's campaigns there was nothing to do but retreat, nor did they linger until they had marched across the Canada border. Though the way had lain open before them, they had not fought a battle, but were turned out of the United States, evicted, one might say, by a few small s.h.i.+ps manned by several hundred American sailors. As Perry had regained the vast Northwest for his nation so, more momentously, did Macdonough avert from New York and New England a tide of invasion which could not otherwise have been stemmed.

THOMAS MACDONOUGH

Painting by J. W. Jarvis. In the City Hall, New York, owned by the Corporation. Reproduced by courtesy of the Munic.i.p.al Art Commission of the City of New York.

JACOB BROWN

Painting by J. W. Jarvis. In the City Hall, New York, owned by the Corporation. Reproduced by courtesy of the Munic.i.p.al Art Commission of the City of New York.

CHAPTER X

PEACE WITH HONOR

The raids of the British navy on the American sea-coast through the last two years of the war were so many efforts to make effective the blockade which began with the proclamation of December, 1812, closing Chesapeake and Delaware bays. Successive orders in 1813 closed practically all the seaports from New London, Connecticut, to the Florida boundary, and the last sweeping proclamation of May, 1814, placed under strict blockade "all the ports, harbors, bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, outlets, islands, and seacoasts of the United States." It was the blockade of ports of the Middle States which caused such widespread ruin among merchants and s.h.i.+ppers and which finally brought the Government itself to the verge of bankruptcy.

The first serious alarm was caused in the spring of 1813 by the appearance of a British fleet, under command of Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren and Rear-Admiral George c.o.c.kburn, in the Chesapeake and Delaware bays. Apparently it had not occurred to the people of the seaboard that the war might make life unpleasant for them, and they had undertaken no measures of defense. Unmolested, c.o.c.kburn cruised up Chesapeake Bay to the mouth of the Susquehanna in the spring of 1813 and established a pleasant camp on an island from which five hundred sailors and marines harried the country at their pleasure, looting and burning such prosperous little towns as Havre de Grace and Fredericktown. The men of Maryland and Virginia proceeded to hide their chattels and to move their families inland. Panic took hold of these proud and powerful commonwealths. c.o.c.kburn had no scruples about setting the torch to private houses, "to cause the proprietors who had deserted them and formed part of the militia which had fled to the woods to understand and feel what they were liable to bring upon themselves by building forts and acting toward us with so much useless rancor." Though c.o.c.kburn was an officer of the British navy, he was also an unmitigated ruffian in his behavior toward non-combatants, and his own countrymen could not regard his career with satisfaction.

Admiral Warren had more justification in attacking Norfolk, which had a navy yard and forts and was therefore frankly belligerent. Unluckily for him the most important battery was manned by a hundred sailors from the Constellation and fifty marines. Seven hundred British seamen tried to land in barges, but the battery shattered three of the boats with heavy loss of life. Somewhat ruffled, Admiral Warren decided to go elsewhere and made a foray upon the defenseless village of Hampton during which he permitted his men to indulge in wanton pillage and destruction. Part of his fleet then sailed up to the Potomac and created a most distressing hysteria in Was.h.i.+ngton. The movement was a feint, however, and after frightening Baltimore and Annapolis, the s.h.i.+ps cruised and blockaded the bay for several months.

In September of the following year another British division hara.s.sed the coast of Maine, first capturing Eastport and then landing at Belfast, Bangor, and Castine, and extorting large ransoms in money and supplies. New England was wildly alarmed. In a few weeks all of Maine east of the Pen.o.bscot had been invaded, conquered, and formally annexed to New Brunswick, although two counties alone might easily have furnished twelve thousand fighting men to resist the small parties of British sailors who operated in leisurely security. The people of the coastwise towns gave up their sheep and bullocks to these rude trespa.s.sers, cut the corn and dug the potatoes for them, handed over all their powder and firearms, and agreed to finish and deliver schooners that were on the stocks.

Cape Cod was next to suffer, for two men-of-war levied contributions of thousands of dollars from Wellfleet, Brewster, and Eastham, and robbed and destroyed other towns. Farther south another fleet entered Long Island Sound, bombarded Stonington, and laid it in ruins. The pretext for all this havoc was a raid made by a few American troops who had crossed to Long Point on Lake Erie, May 15, 1814, and had burned some Canadian mills and a few dwellings. The expedition was promptly disowned by the American Government as unauthorized, but in retaliation the British navy was ordered to lay waste all towns on the Atlantic coast which were a.s.sailable, sparing only the lives of the unarmed citizens.

Included in the British plan of campaign for 1814 was a coastal attack important enough to divert American efforts from the Canadian frontier. This was why an army under General Ross was loaded into transports at Bermuda and escorted by a fleet to Chesapeake Bay. The raids against small coastwise ports, though lucrative, had no military value beyond shaking the morale of the population. The objective of this larger operation was undecided. Either Baltimore or Was.h.i.+ngton was tempting. But first the British had to dispose of the annoying gunboat flotilla of Commodore Joshua Barney, who had made his name mightily respected as a seaman of the Revolution and who had never been known to shake in his shoes at sight of a dozen British ensigns. He had found shelter for his armed scows, for they were no more than this, in the Patuxent River, but as he could not hope to defend them against a combined attack by British s.h.i.+ps and troops he wisely blew them up. This turn of affairs left a fine British army all landed and with nothing else to do than promenade through a pleasant region with n.o.body to interfere. The generals and admirals discussed the matter and decided to saunter on to Was.h.i.+ngton instead of to Baltimore. In the heat of August the British regiments tramped along the highways, frequently halting to rest in the shade, until they were within ten miles of the capital of the nation. There they found the American outposts in a strong position on high ground, but these tarried not, and the invaders sauntered on another mile before making camp for the night. It is difficult to regard the capture of Was.h.i.+ngton with the seriousness which that lamentable episode deserves. The city was greatly surprised to learn that the enemy actually intended a discourtesy so gross, and the Government was pained beyond expression. But beyond this display of emotion nothing was done. The war was now two years old but no steps whatever had been taken to defend Was.h.i.+ngton, although there was no room for doubt that a British naval force could ascend the river whenever it pleased.

The disagreeable tidings that fifty of the enemy's s.h.i.+ps had anch.o.r.ed off the Potomac, however, reminded the President and his advisers that not a single ditch or rampart had been even planned, that no troops were at hand, that it was rather late for advice which seemed to be the only ammunition that was plentiful. Quite harmoniously, the soldier in command was General Winder who could not lose his head, even in this dire emergency, because he had none to lose. His record for inept.i.tude on the fighting front had, no doubt, recommended him for this place. He ran about Was.h.i.+ngton, ordering the construction of defenses which there was no time to build, listening to a million frenzied suggestions, holding all manner of consultations, and imploring the Governors of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to send militia.

The British army was less than five thousand strong. To oppose them General Winder hastily scrambled together between five and six thousand men, mostly militia with a sprinkling of regulars and four hundred sailors from Barney's flotilla. During the night before the alleged battle the camp was a scene of such confusion as may be imagined while futile councils of war were held. The troops when reviewed by President Madison realized Jefferson's ideal of a citizen soldiery, unskilled but strong in their love of home, flying to arms to oppose an invader. General Jacob Brown and Winfield Scott at Lundy's Lane, which was fought within the same month, could have pointed out, in language quite emphatic, that a large difference existed between the raw material and the finished product.