by Peter Snow
Montpelier, the Madisons’ mansion in rural Virginia, eighty miles south of Washington. After James’s death, Dolley had to sell the house to pay her bills. Earlier, when the Madisons flourished, the Montpelier estate housed 120 slaves.
Author’s Note
I was inspired to examine this remarkable story when I discovered how few people knew it had ever happened. What made me write it went way beyond that. The events themselves are astonishing enough: just as striking is the richness and abundance of eyewitness accounts on both sides. The clarity, humanity and wit of British and American men and women who were there bring the story alive as if it had happened today. I have listed in the Bibliography all those who provide the most vivid material. The Notes refer to these books and other accounts by their authors’ names. Many of the sources I found readily available in the United States National Archives and the Library of Congress in Washington and in the British Library in London and the Public Record Office in Kew. Many of the older volumes are also available online, but I have always referred to the original titles for those who prefer to handle the old books themselves. I have received valuable help from a whole range of other libraries and research institutions in North America and Britain. I am grateful too to the many individuals who have pointed me towards key source material and shown me the buildings and the countryside in which the action took place.
The most notable memory I have of two detailed research visits to the United States is of the burn marks still visible on the masonry of the White House. My thanks to Bill Allman, the White House curator, for allowing me to see them. Bill also provided me with a copy of the report on the current state of the George Washington portrait which Dolley Madison had removed from the White House Dining Room. Ed Furgol guided me round the Washington Navy Yard and its treasure house of exhibits and memories of the 1812 war. Ralph Eshelman, an encyclopaedic expert on the 1814 campaign, took me on an exhaustive tour of Bladensburg battlefield and the Maryland tidewater. We explored the Patuxent River by boat and saw where Joshua Barney had tucked away his barges in St Leonard’s Creek. Scott Sheads, writer and commentator on the Baltimore campaign and resident historian at Fort McHenry, gave me a thorough tour of the North Point peninsula and access to eyewitness evidence in the fort’s library.
I had prompt personal help from researchers and librarians in a number of places in the US – in particular from Jeffrey Flannery, Head of Research in the Manuscripts Division in the Library of Congress, Ted O’Reilly at the New York Historical Society, John Buchtel and Scott Taylor at the Georgetown University Library, Janet Bloom at the Clements Library at the University of Michigan, David Haugaard at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Ann Southwell at the University of Virginia Library, Barbara Wolanin at the Capitol, Yvonne Carignan at the Washington Historical Society, Maria Downs at the White House Historical Association, Scott Scholz at the Dumbarton House Museum, David Sullivan at the Company of Military Historians, Dan Hinchen of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and Nathan Ochsner and Iris Bierlein of the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore. I was also warmly received by Nora Hoffmann-White of the Sewell-Belmont Museum, Pauline Nathan at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and Tom Chapman and Tiffany Cole at James and Dolley Madison’s mansion at Montpelier. I am also hugely indebted to Susan Strange, my Washington researcher, who left no file unturned to dig out some more telling quotations. In Canada Peter Gubbins took me on an exhaustive tour of Fort York in Toronto.
In the UK I must thank Martin Salmon, who helped me find manuscripts at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, Arnold Hunt of the British Library, who helped me decipher manuscripts, Peter Duckers at the KSLI Museum in Shropshire, Matthew Sheldon, Heather Johnson and Margaret Newman at the Portsmouth Naval Museum Library, Lucas Elkin at Cambridge University Library, Mike Dowell, archivist at the Devon Record Office, Lee Duncan of Richmond Library, Sandy Leishman of the Royal Scots Fusiliers Museum, Daniel Sherman of the Royal United Services Institute, and the staff at the Public Record Office in Northern Ireland who found me all the letters of Robert Ross. Lord Brookeborough, his wife Janet and Juliana Grose (née Brooke) were very kind in pointing me to family memories of Colonel Arthur Brooke. I am immensely grateful to Kevin Chambers of the National Archives at Kew who has lent me his massive dossier of correspondence and despatches on the British campaign including the letters of British government ministers and the Duke of Wellington. A great friend and colleague at the BBC, Andrew Green, kindly rummaged through the Newspaper Archives at Colindale for the articles in British newspapers. I owe a lot to the inspiration, valuable advice and hospitality I received from John McCavitt, the leading Irish expert on Major General Robert Ross and his family. He was most generous with his time and through him I met Steven and Jackie Campbell, descendants of Robert Ross, who have a very fine portrait of him in their hall. I am grateful too to Phil Mowat of the Ulster American Folk Park who let me handle Colonel Brooke’s leather-bound diary of the American campaign. Another member of the Ross family, Lieutenant General Sir Robin Ross, has been full of ideas and advice, as has Francis Hamilton, who has a fine collection of Ross memorabilia at his lovely home at Melrose in the Scottish borders.
There is a wealth of reading available about this remarkable episode in the War of 1812, much of it still in print. Two essential primary sources are old stalwarts from the Peninsular War campaign under Wellington, Harry Smith, whose Autobiography is a classic of wit and acerbic commentary, and George Gleig, who wrote no fewer than three detailed accounts, his diary, his memoir A Subaltern in America and The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans. The last was recently republished by Leonaur under the title Fire and Blood. James Scott, Rear Admiral George Cockburn’s ADC, provides a boisterous and sometimes exaggerated account of his boss’s adventures. Cockburn himself and the other commanders, Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, Major General Robert Ross and Colonel Arthur Brooke, left letters, diaries and despatches that give us their accounts of what happened. On the American side three women, Dolley Madison, the President’s wife, and two other Washington socialites, Margaret Bayard Smith and Anna Maria Thornton, revealed their feelings throughout the crisis in their personal letters and diaries. John Pendleton Kennedy’s biography has the best first-hand account of the ordinary American militiaman’s story, and the US commanders at all levels in Washington and Baltimore have given us their accounts in great detail in their reports and correspondence. Much of it is usefully preserved in the Congress report on the invasion of Washington which is published online – see the Bibliography. Another valuable resource, a short-cut to much of the manuscript material on both sides, is volume 3 of The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History. The words of James Madison and James Monroe are published in books of their writings and may also be found in their abundant MSS in the Library of Congress. I have corrected the spelling and punctuation in primary source material where it would simply be a distraction to leave it. Wherever the misspelling seems to me to add character or colour, I have left it.
Of the many secondary sources who have written about these events, I have listed the ones I have made use of in the Bibliography, but I would mention in particular the remarkably vivid and well-researched account by Anthony S. Pitch in The Burning of Washington published in 1998 and Ralph Ketcham’s excellent recent biography of James Madison. The best American account of the whole War of 1812 is by Professor Donald R. Hickey of Nebraska’s Wayne State College, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. As this book went to the printers I got a glimpse of Through the Perilous Fight, a lively and detailed account of the events of August–September 1814 by the Washington Post’s Steve Vogel.
This book would not exist but for the support and perceptive advice of both my agent, Julian Alexander, and Roland Philipps, who found time to edit the book as well as to manage John Murray, the publishers. I am again grateful to the production team who made such a success of To War with Wellington which was published in 2010 – Beck
y Walsh and Lyndsey Ng at John Murray, my painstaking cartographer Rodney Paull, my tireless picture researcher Juliet Brightmore and the best copy editor in the business, Peter James. I have had the usual backing of my talented family, my historian son Dan, author of the finest book on Wolfe’s victory in Canada in 1759 and a fount of knowledge and good judgement, my mother-in-law Eluned MacMillan, my sister-in-law Margaret MacMillan, who has been busy with her own book on the causes of the First World War whose centenary coincides with the bicentenary of Britain’s burning of Washington – and of course my wife Ann, journalist and managing editor of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in London, who has been as tireless as ever with her editorial skill and personal encouragement.
Notes and References
Please note that some of the links referenced in this work are no longer active.
The authors’ names refer to their alphabetical listing in the Bibliography.
I have used the following abbreviations for references used frequently:
AMT
Anna Maria Thornton, ‘Diary’, in Bryan, ed.
ASP
American State Papers, Military Affairs, Capture of the City of Washington, Report to the House of Representatives, 29 November 1814
DPM
Dolley Payne Madison
F and B
Fire and Blood, a book by George Gleig
LC
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
MB
Mary Barney, author of Biographical Memoir of Joshua Barney
MBS
Margaret Bayard Smith, letters in Forty Years of Washington Society
MHM
Maryland Historical Magazine published by the Maryland Historical Society
NA
Natioinal Archives, Kew, London
NARA
National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC
NMM
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
NW
The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History, vol. 3, ed. Crawford
PRONI
Public Record Office Northern Ireland
Sub
A Subaltern in America, a book by George Gleig
WSD
Wellington, Supplementary Despatches
1: Introduction
tasted like ‘nectar’: Scott, p. 304
‘ancestors had got up to’: White House transcript, 14/3/2012
‘kind of late – but sorry!’: Tony Blair, speech to Congress, 17/7/2003
Chapter 1: 17 August – Eager souls panting for fame
very heart of the United States: Swann to Armstrong, 17/8/1814, quoted in the American and Commercial Daily Advertiser, Baltimore, 20/8/1814
‘homeless and defenceless’: letter to editor of the Virginia Patriot, 17/8/1814
‘Spain and Portugal’: Barrett, ‘Naval Recollections’, p. 457
was George Gleig: Gleig, Diary, 15/8/1814
‘good drubbing’: Torrens to Murray, 14/4/1814, NA W03/607
‘mere matter of marching’: Jefferson to William Duane, 4/8/1812, Thomas Jefferson Papers, LC, online http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mtj.mtjbib021175. This boast soon became a classic, because the United States ended the war with not an inch of Canadian territory. As one Canadian historian remarked, ‘Canadian and British historians have been dining out on that quote ever since’
‘against the Americans’: The Times, 15/4/1814
‘laurels even in America’: Gleig, F and B, p. 14
‘heart was ready to burst’: Smith, Autobiography, p. 182
‘insensible and in a faint’: ibid., p. 188
‘falling into his hands’: Arnold, pp. 150–1
‘temporary inconvenience’: Ross to Ned Glascock, 12/3/1814, in Ross, ‘Memoir’, p. 413
‘all those gloomy ideas’: Ross to wife, 10/7/1814, PRONID20041a/3/3
handsomely to his earnings: Ross to wife, 30/7/14, PRONI D2004/1a/3/7
‘an Irishman’: Ross to wife, 22/6/1814, PRONI D2004/1A/3/2
‘and to human nature’: Marine, p. 23
‘each of his ears on delivery’: in Niles’ Weekly Register, 21/8/1813
‘placed to his account’: Scott, p. 114
‘without disparagement to either’: ibid., p. 165
‘owners offered resistance’: Babcock, p. 119. See also Baltimore Patriot, 26/8/1814, under the title ‘From our own correspondent’. It says: ‘we have talked with a Mr Bayley a US mail contractor’ who was in Washington and who reported, ‘All private property was respected and two soldiers caught plundering received 100 lashes each’
‘killing our own people’: William Napier, Life and Opinions, vol. 1, pp. 224–5
‘danced round the wreck’: Chamier, vol. 2, pp. 125 and 135
‘man under his command’: Barrett, ‘Naval Recollections’, p. 456
‘without one man missing’: Scott, pp. 261–2
‘you may find assailable’: Cochrane to commanding officers of the North American station, 18/7/1814, NW, p. 140
Cochrane wrote to Cockburn: Cochrane to Cockburn, 1/7/1814, NW, p. 129
‘completely at our mercy’: Cockburn to Cochrane, 25/6/1814, NW, p. 116
‘spot within the United States…’: Cockburn to Cochrane, 17/7/1814, NW, p. 137
‘don’t tell the Yankees!’: Codrington to wife, 3/8/1814, in Codrington, Memoir, abridged edn, p. 228
‘which might be doubtful’: Codrington to wife, 29/7/1814, in Codrington, Memoir, 1875 edn, vol. 1, p. 312
Chapter 2: 17 August – The great little Madison
‘weak and barren country’: Richard Rush to John Adams, 5/9/1814, Richard Rush Papers, LC
the President’s House: the first newspaper to name the President’s House as the White House appears to be the Baltimore Whig of 22/11/1810. See Freidel and Pencak, p. 23, which cites numerous examples of the use of the term ‘White House’ before August 1814. See also Seale, p. 157. There is also a chirpy quote in the Federal Republican newspaper of 10/2/1813 – sixteen months before the invasion of 1814 – which reads: ‘If the despatches from France and the news from the Chesapeake and Virginia don’t drive the poor little Viceroy in the White House crazy, he must be as tough as a pine knot.’ It was President Theodore Roosevelt who made the name, the White House, official in 1901
‘withered little apple-john’: Irving to Brevoort, 13/1/1811, in Washington Irving, Letters, vol. 1, p. 23
‘up for a funeral’: Winslow Marston Watson, In memoriam: Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, LC Washington 1872, p. 118 http://archive.org/details/inmemoriambenjam00wats
‘hearts of the Quaker lads’: Cote, p. 259
‘staring at thee’: Cutts, p. 14
‘the great little Madison’: ibid., p. 15
‘curl would escape’: ibid.
‘he dreams of you’: Cote, p. 118
‘a queen of hearts’: ibid., p. 128
‘partner I’ve ever had’: Boller, p. 37
‘support to her husband’: Cutts, p. 26
‘Mr Madison alone’: Boller, p. 38
a crippling $4 a yard: Gerry, p. 181
never forgot a name: Cote, p. 321
‘like a queen’: ibid., p. 258, and MBS, p. 62
‘pleasant word for everybody’: Irving to Brevoort, 13/1/1811, in Washington Irving, Letters, vol. 1, p. 23
‘mouth for him to kiss’: Mrs Frances Few, Diary, 3/3/1809, Georgia Dept of Archives and History, virtual vault, ad hoc collection, p. 10
‘an overseer to do it’: Jennings, p. 15
‘knows better than yourself’: Albert Gallatin to Henry Clay, 22/4/1814, written from London, in Adams, ed., Gallatin, vol. 1, pp. 606–7
‘modeling the government’: Cobbett’s Weekly Register, 7/5/1814
to parade her in the streets: Kent, p. 77
any threat Cockburn might make: DPM to Edward Coles, 13/5/1813, in Allgor, pp. 306–7
‘determined to stay with him’: DPM to Hannah Gallatin, 28/7/1814, in ibid., pp.
310–11
she offered her cheek: MB, p. 137
‘all eyes will be upon you’: Jones to Barney, 18/2/1814, in NW, p. 33
Barney replied: Footner, pp. 264–5
‘with whom one cannot treat’: Napoleon to Cadore, in Adams, History, vol. 5, p. 229
‘not be a spot on it’: Goodwin, p. 136
‘republican party and cause’: Monroe to Madison, 27/12/1813, James Madison papers, Series 2, Additional correspondence, LC
‘magnitude of the achievement’: Rush letter to Congress, 15/11/1814, in ASP, p. 541
‘a favourite one’: Madison to Armstrong, 20/5/1814, Madison Papers, LC
‘a more prompt compliance’: Boileau to Winder, 27/8/1814, in ASP, p. 551
on the nation’s cities: Stagg, p. 412
‘already have given his blow’: Winder to Armstrong, in ASP, p. 543
‘on the spur of the moment’: Winder to Congress, in ASP, p. 552
‘an attack by the enemy’: Van Ness to Congress, in ASP, p. 580,
‘ought to be protected…?’: Burr to Nourse, 5/7/1814, Nourse Family Papers, 3490-a, University of Virginia
Chapter 3: 18–19 August – Into the Patuxent
he found it a bearable 83: Codrington to wife, 12/8/1814, in Codrington, Memoir, abridged edn, p. 228
‘tipped with foam’: Gleig, F and B, p. 65
‘upon opposite tacks’: Chesterton, vol. 1, p. 114
‘stalking through a wood’: Smith, Autobiography, p. 197
‘the cultivation so rich’: Gleig, Diary, 18/8/1814
‘which formed a background…’: Gleig, Sub, p. 66
‘this favoured country’: Barrett, ‘Naval Recollections’, p. 457