When Britain Burned the White House

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When Britain Burned the White House Page 12

by Peter Snow


  ‘Where are the British, Winder, where? And Cockburn where is he?

  D’ye think your men will fight or run, when they the British see?

  Armstrong and Rush, stay here in camp I’m sure you’re not afraid –

  Ourself will now return, and you Monroe shall be our aid.

  And Winder do not fire your guns, nor let your trumpets play,

  Till we are out of sight – Forsooth my horse will run away.’

  And so on.

  Joshua Barney and his sailors and marines had been the only real American stalwarts in a disgraceful day on the battlefield. They and the relentless heat of the sun had drained the last ounce of energy from the victorious British army, to which Ross now granted a couple of hours’ rest. But with the American militia fled from the field and from all approaches to the capital, the road to Washington was now wide open.

  9

  Save that painting!

  24 August, evening

  THE GREAT WAVE of fleeing American soldiers that swept into and then quickly out the other side of Washington that evening caused more than alarm among the civilians waiting anxiously for news. It triggered a surge of resentment. Margaret Bayard Smith was appalled by the American army’s abandonment of any defence of the capital. ‘Our men were all eager for a fight … more than 2000 had not fired their muskets, when Winder and Armstrong gave their order for a retreat … The English officers have told some of our citizens that they could not have stood more than 10 minutes longer, that they had marched that day 13 miles, and were exhausted with thirst, heat and fatigue.’

  Margaret Bayard Smith had already moved out of the city; others risked staying. One of them was Dr James Ewell, one of the city’s few doctors and another pillar of Washington society, close to James and Dolley Madison. James Ewell was a plump, amiable man with a florid complexion and open manner: he had large, expressive blue eyes and a warm smile for everyone. He was also a man of letters and he wrote with immense pride of the young city of Washington, which he compared with ‘the noblest cities of the ancient world’. He lived in a very grand house on Capitol Hill. His neighbours were used to the clunk of the large knocker on his front door as anxious patients sought his attention. In recent days many of those neighbours had expressed to him their alarm at the prospect of a British attack on the city, but he’d dismissed their fears: ‘What! To make an attack on the metropolis of the United States … Will they ever dream of attacking Washington? No never!’

  But the British had come, and now Ewell was as frightened as his next-door neighbours. In the hour between twelve and one he and his wife and family, standing on the third floor of their house, had heard the roar of cannon and watched the rockets shooting into the sky. When the firing stopped, ‘my feelings were left in fearful fluctuation, fondly hoping that my countrymen had prevailed, then awfully fearing that all was lost’. He wasn’t kept in suspense for long. ‘I soon discovered the dust beginning to rise above the forests in thick clouds … rapidly advancing…’ He immediately knew the ‘dismal fate that awaited us’, and the next thing he saw was ‘the unfortunate Secretary of War with his suite in full flight followed by crowds of gentlemen on horseback, some of whom loudly bawled out as they came on: “Fly, fly! The ruffians are at hand. If you cannot get away yourselves, for God’s sake send off your wives and daughters, for the ruffians are at hand!”’ Ewell was well aware of George Cockburn’s reputation for wrecking, burning and looting. ‘I felt myself palsied with horror, and … my wife standing by my side with looks wild with terror, as though she beheld the enemy in sight, cried out: “Oh what shall we do? What shall we do? Yonder they are coming!”, and fell into convulsions, my daughters shrieking by her side.’ The doctor looked around desperately for a cart to transport his family to the country. There was none in sight, so he escorted his wife and daughters down the street to the home of one of his patients, Mrs Orr, who was gravely ill. Her husband and servants had panicked and deserted her, so she’d sent for the doctor’s help. Ewell also hoped the British would find her so unwell that they’d leave her house alone.

  Ewell was appalled by the conduct of the militia who had, he said, dropped their guns and fled ‘like frightened sheep in every direction, except, indeed, towards the enemy’. He said one man had confronted the militia in full flight: ‘“What,” says he, “soldiers, you are not running?” “Oh, no!” exclaimed some of them, “we have done our duty, our ammunition is spent. We gave it to them, boys, didn’t we?” “Yes,” returned his comrades, “we peppered the rascals; we strewed the damned redcoats…”’ At which the man, suspicious, stole a look at their cartridge boxes and noticed they hadn’t used a single one.

  Another person who was in no hurry to leave Washington was the intrepid Dolley Madison, the President’s wife. She had promised her husband James that she would await his return from a visit to the front two days earlier and she had every intention of doing the same that Wednesday. ‘I confess that I was so unfeminine as to be free from fear and willing to remain in the castle. If I could have had a cannon through every window, but alas! those who should have placed them there fled before me. And my heart mourned for my country.’ She had received a distraught note from her sister, Anna Cutts: ‘Tell me for God’s sake where you are and what [you are] going to do…’ Anna told Dolley that she was packing up her piano and anything else she could fit on a wagon to take off to safety.

  Dolley was more concerned about her husband. She spent the Wednesday morning staring out of the White House windows ‘turning my spy glass in every direction and watching with unwearied anxiety, hoping to discern the approach of my dear husband and his friends’. But all she could see was ‘groups of military wandering in all directions, as if there was a lack of arms, or of spirit to fight for their own firesides’. By three o’clock in the afternoon she was still waiting. ‘Mr Madison comes not; may God protect him!’ But by now she had heard of the outcome of the Battle of Bladensburg. ‘Two messengers, covered with dust, come to bid me fly; but I wait for him.’ She told her sister she’d procured a wagon which she would load up with the most precious White House valuables, and as many state papers as she could cram in. Still with her were a group of loyal servants, Sukey, her personal maid, Paul Jennings, James Madison’s manservant, and Jean Pierre Sioussat, the White House chief steward, known affectionately as ‘French John’. Sioussat had served in the French navy before jumping ship in New York and using his native charm to sweet-talk his way into domestic service. Jennings had served the Madisons since he was fifteen. He was setting out the meal which Dolley and James Madison had ordered to be ready for the President’s party when they returned later in the day. He laid a tablecloth, napkins and the full White House dinner service of cutlery, glasses and plates for forty people. The President’s White House chef had meat roasting on a spit. Bottles of the President’s favourite Madeira wine, a very fashionable drink at the time, were laid on the sideboard. French John suggested to Dolley Madison that he could lay a trail of gunpowder to explode if the British tried to enter the house. She told him not to.

  One of the family friends who turned up to help Dolley load the wagon was Daniel Carroll. He lugged a few armfuls out into the waiting vehicle and then told the President’s wife it was about time she left. The British were not far away and she should be off in her carriage without delay. But she wasn’t leaving yet. She wrote to her sister that Carroll was getting impatient: ‘He is in a very bad humor with me because I insist on waiting until the large picture of General Washington is secured…’ She had suddenly remembered the painting of America’s first President on the wall of the Dining Room where Jennings was laying out the meal. The large picture, by Gilbert Stuart, had been bought for the White House back in 1800 and was now a cherished national icon. ‘Save that painting! Save that painting!’ she exclaimed, ordering it to be unscrewed from the wall. But it proved very difficult to shift the large frame, and it took the resourceful French John to wrench it free. Standing on a ladder h
eld by Paul Jennings, and helped by the White House gardener, Tom Magraw, Sioussat broke the frame and passed down the canvas still stuck on its stretcher. Some accounts suggest that Sioussat, to save time, took a knife out of his pocket and slashed the canvas out of its frame, but an examination of the painting in 1978 could find no sign that the canvas had been cut.

  Carroll by this time had left, piqued that Dolley had ignored his advice to escape. One of the picture’s new rescuers suggested rolling up the canvas to make it easier to carry, but Sioussat told him not to as it would damage the painting. Dolley Madison now finally swept up a few last belongings including the precious red velvet curtains in the drawing room. Then, grabbing a small handbag, she jumped into her carriage with her devoted maid Sukey and was whisked off out of the city. One way or another the precious painting was then carted away to safety by two passers-by who had made a timely offer of help.

  Not long after Dolley had left, James Madison and his attendants returned briefly to the White House, ignored the meal which had been laid out for them and, after a short rest, set off to cross the Potomac into Virginia. Jean Pierre Sioussat was left to shut the place up and carry Dolley Madison’s macaw in its cage to the house of the French Ambassador for safe-keeping.

  By this time only the bravest families were left in Washington. The Thorntons, Dr William and his wife Anna Maria, waited until the very last moment. ‘Almost all our acquaintances gone out of town,’ Anna Maria wrote in her diary for 24 August, ‘nearly all the movable property taken away – offices shut up and all business at a stand.’ She and William Thornton walked up to the President’s House, and ‘found that Mrs M— was gone. We sat down to dinner but I couldn’t eat nothing and we dilly dally’d till we saw our retreating army come up the avenue. We then hastened away, and were escorted out of town by our defeated troops.’ They found themselves travelling out of the city alongside the wagon carrying the Washington picture rescued by Dolley Madison.

  Thomas Tingey, the commandant of the US Navy Yard, was facing the gravest crisis of his career. He had faced many in his long naval life. He began as a warrant officer in the Royal Navy in 1771, but when America rebelled against the King he was soon defying his old comrades. In 1799, commanding the US warship Ganges, he found himself challenged by a British frigate and ordered to hand over any ‘British’ sailors on his ship for impressment into the Royal Navy. He retorted that he regarded all sailors on his ship as Americans and would hand none over. What was more, he said, he would resist any effort the British made to search his ship by force. His boldness paid off: the British captain relented and sailed off.

  Now a veteran mariner at sixty-one, Tingey had to make a mortifying decision. He was the guardian of an installation that was the pride of the US navy. Washington’s Navy Yard was magnificently housed in a precinct that had been custom built by Henry Latrobe, who’d supervised the building of the Capitol. The yard was stacked with vital stores and equipment for US ships, large numbers of heavy guns and small arms, two ropewalks for spinning new ropes, and three brand-new ships near completion – a frigate, Columbia, a sloop of war, Argus, and a schooner, Lynx. At 3 p.m. Tingey heard his name shouted by the Navy Secretary William Jones, who turned up outside his door fresh from his morning of meetings with Madison and his military commanders. ‘You will make the necessary preparations’, Jones told him, ‘for destroying the public shipping and all the naval and military stores and provisions at the Navy Yard including everything that may be valuable and useful to the enemy…’ He went on: ‘Having satisfactorily ascertained that the enemy has driven our army and entered the city you will set fire to the [gunpowder] trains and retire in your gig.’

  An hour later Tingey received a message from the Secretary of War John Armstrong, who had witnessed the rout of the US army at Bladensburg. He said he ‘could protect me no longer’, Tingey recalled. Pressure now built up on Tingey from people who were appalled by the Navy Secretary’s order and urged him to ignore it. But Tingey told them there was little he could do unless they could get Jones to rescind his order. He was besieged too by ‘a deputation of the most respectable women’, many of them no doubt anxious that their houses could be consumed by the flames. Tingey told them he would delay the destruction of the yard as long as he could. He now depended on the punctilious Mordecai Booth, and a naval officer, Captain John Creighton, whom he tasked with reporting on the whereabouts of the British. Creighton had the job of finally blowing up the Eastern Branch Bridge – a quite unnecessary precaution, as the entire British army had already crossed the river at Bladensburg. Booth had been conscientiously trying to move more barrels of powder from the Navy Yard to safety. He was just ordering his team to the magazine when they heard the news of Bladensburg, and ‘wagons and men were seen flying in the utmost confusion. Those receiving my orders waited not a moment; but fled with all precipitation.’

  Booth and Creighton then set off to see just how close the British were. Both of them were anxious to do anything they could to dissuade Tingey from torching the Navy Yard prematurely. And for a time they lived in hope. ‘I saw not the appearance of an Englishman,’ Booth wrote in his meticulously detailed report to Tingey. ‘But oh! My country – and I blush, Sir, to tell you – I saw the … fugitive soldiery of our army – running, hobbling, creeping, and apparently panic-struck.’ His hopes were momentarily raised by the fact that he could see no pursuing army. ‘I confess I did believe … that there had been no general defeat but that some gallant spirits had sustained the action, and had checked our foe.’ He was told the army had rallied at the Capitol, but he found only a few men there, resting. Booth – determined ‘at the hazard of my life to ascertain where the British army was’ – rode on up a ridge on the road from Bladensburg, and as the sun was setting he spotted the British and was shot at. He then galloped back to the city centre, checked out the White House where ‘all was silent as a church’, and then went back to the Capitol again, this time with Captain Creighton. They were not left in any doubt: there was no sign of any Americans but a little further on they ran into the advancing British. ‘I gave reins to my horse and Captain Creighton followed me.’

  It was 8.20 p.m. Tingey had set himself a deadline of 8.30: if there was no sign of his two men by then, he would carry out his orders to set light to the Navy Yard. And then with just ten minutes to go Creighton and Booth arrived. Tingey recalled how the two men rode up and reported to him that they’d been exposed to enemy fire and that ‘the enemy was in complete possession of the city’. It was an exaggeration, but within less than an hour it was all too true.

  * * *

  It was nearly dusk when Ross decided that his men were sufficiently rested for him to take an advance party into Washington. Leaving most of the troops who had fought at Bladensburg to follow on behind him, Ross led the 21st Fusiliers and a party of sailors expert in demolition into the city. By the time they were approaching the Capitol it was dark. There was no sign of any enemy. Ross and his staff were in the lead. George Cockburn was at his side, determined not to miss any action. George de Lacy Evans and Harry Smith were with them, with James Scott just behind, attending on the admiral, and a guard of some 100 light infantrymen on either side of them.

  What followed was a series of spectacular acts of destruction which sharply divided opinion not just in the civilised world but within Ross’s own staff. Harry Smith was in no doubt that Ross and Cockburn ‘entered Washington for the barbarous purpose of destroying the city’. Indeed he believed Cockburn would have burned not just the public buildings but the whole city. Smith believed neither of them contemplated negotiation. Gleig and others, however, were convinced that Ross intended ‘to lay it [the city] under contribution’. The ‘contribution’ would be a hefty payment of ransom in return for sparing the city’s property. Scott talks of the ‘various parleys sounded by the General before our entrance’, which suggested to him that Ross would have been ready for some kind of negotiated arrangement. But the prospect of any such d
eal was swept away by a burst of fire at a crossroads just short of the Capitol. It was directed at Ross personally. His horse, which had carried him through the Peninsular War in Spain and France, was killed instantly. An American eyewitness claimed that one British soldier was killed and three wounded. Scott says the fire came from houses on either side and from the Capitol building itself. ‘After this wanton show of hostility the Americans cheered, and retreated down the Capitol hill into the principal avenue leading towards the President’s palace.’ ‘Every thought of accommodation was instantly laid aside,’ wrote Gleig. ‘They proceeded without a moment’s delay to burn and destroy everything in the most distant degree connected with government.’

  Both Ross and Cockburn had no doubt that violent resistance would justify them in torching the enemy’s public buildings. But would they really have stopped short of that if the Americans had offered some kind of payment? Britain had, after all, also promised to avenge the burning of the parliament buildings at York, the capital of Upper Canada, a year earlier. And there is the blatant threat in Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane’s letter of 18 August to Secretary of State James Monroe, in which Cochrane says his men will ‘destroy and lay waste’ American towns in retaliation for US depredations in Canada unless the Americans paid compensation. Monroe and Madison were incensed that the letter was not actually handed to them until 31 August, a week after the event, with the clear implication that Cochrane wanted to present a justification for the destruction of Washington but did not want to forewarn them that it would happen. Monroe replied that full reparation had already been made for irresponsible US actions in Canada. But this episode, as some report it, does suggest that Ross might have held back from igniting the devastating conflagration that followed. Whether Cockburn would have been so scrupulous we can only guess. The shots that rang out just after eight o’clock that night removed all doubt. British troops promptly stormed the house from which the shots had been fired and it was burned down. Gleig says some Americans were caught and put to the sword, but Scott, who was there, says all the Americans escaped. Samuel Davies, a midshipman on Cockburn’s flagship HMS Albion, was the man who led a small squad of four sailors into the house to set light to it. The young firebrand dashed off a quick letter to his mother a week later telling her he was working directly to the orders of George Cockburn. ‘We sent a flag of truce to know whether the town had surrendered or not … on entering the damn rascals fired out of a most elegant house and hollowed [sic] out here comes the English Buggers … I and 4 sailors burnt this house with everything in it by order of Cockburn.’

 

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