The Burning of the White House

by Jane Hampton Cook

  He agreed to Cochrane’s assessment of the Americans. “Their government authorizes and directs a most destructive war to be carried on against our commerce and we have no means of retaliating but on shore.”

  Cockburn loved Cochrane’s desire for retribution because he shared it wholeheartedly: Cochrane had written, “They must be made to feel in their property, what our merchants do in having their ships destroyed at sea; and taught to know that they are at the mercy of an invading foe.”

  Cockburn fully agreed. If they could keep the enemy in constant alarm through raids and create a considerable diversion in the Chesapeake Bay, then the U.S. government would be unable to recruit soldiers from the Eastern states or send them to the border. “This is now more necessary in order to draw off their attention from Canada, where I am told they are sending their whole military force,” Cochrane had relayed.

  What stood out was Cochrane’s motive. While the strategy was to distract the U.S. military’s attention from Canada, the British now claimed a new reason for doing so: retribution.

  Just a few months earlier, Admiral Warren had called the burning of Newark in Upper Canada a “system of retaliation threatened by King Madison.” A wide-eyed Cockburn read Cochrane’s latest assessment. “Their seaport towns laid in ashes and the country wasted will be some sort of a retaliation for their savage conduct in Canada; where they have destroyed our towns, in the most inclement seasons of the year.”

  Then Cockburn read the words he most longed to hear. His new boss shared his longing to attack Washington City. “It is therefore but just, that retaliation shall be made near to the seat of their government from whence those orders emanated.”

  Cockburn couldn’t have agreed more. He used flattery to win over his new boss. “Allow me in the first instance to offer you my congratulations on your appointment to this command,” he responded.

  One question worried him, though. Would he get to join in the fun? Did the admiralty intend to relieve him of his post, as they had done to Warren? Fretting about the very real possibility, he picked up his pen and asked Cochrane. Did the admiralty intend to give him leave to visit his family? Or was he to stay and serve? He promised to maintain “all your views and wishes so long as I continue on this station.” Though he wanted to stay, Warren’s removal worried him.

  “But the conduct of the admiralty towards me, inclines me rather to think that they are not very anxious I should remain here.” Then Cockburn used a face-saving technique by saying, “and induces me to take the liberty of asking you direct whether they have not empowered you to make arrangements for me to return home in the event of my wishing it?”

  Another question, even more critical to the cause, surfaced in his mind. Where would he get more men to accomplish their ambitious plans? The answer would soon take everyone, both the British and the Americans, by surprise.

  National and local news in the spring of 1814 stalled Joshua Barney’s plans to build a fleet of barges to protect the Chesapeake Bay. Solomon Frazier, his lieutenant tasked with recruiting men and boats for what was nicknamed the mosquito fleet, gave him a discouraging report, which Barney conveyed to Secretary Jones.

  “I have just heard from Mr. Frazier, he complains that men cannot be procured on the Eastern shore for that both parties discourage enlistments.”

  What was the reason for weak recruiting? Local party politics were interfering: “Each wishing to keep the men, for the next elections, as they are so equally divided, that the loss of a few votes would throw the balance into the hands of the other party.”

  Barney did his best by assuring leaders of small Maryland towns that their men would be available to vote in the upcoming local October elections. Local politics were not the only pests, however. National politics also plagued him and stalled his recruiting efforts. As Barney said, “We were doing very well in procuring men, until the news of raising the embargo arrived.”

  Deciding that the plan wasn’t working, Madison had asked Congress to repeal a recent trade embargo. Little did they know that the embargo had negatively affected the British military’s ability to acquire rope, cotton, and other supplies. Admiral Warren in Bermuda had secretly called the embargo “severe” in a letter to a captain tasked with blockading the U.S. coast: “I suppose whatever supplies you now procure as the embargo is so severe must be by force.”

  As Barney absorbed the news of Congress lifting the latest embargo, he realized that sailors now preferred making money over serving their country in his fleet. Yet, he had recruited some thirty men to aid him.

  Two weeks later, Barney tapped additional political power to help his efforts. “I enclose you the copy of a letter from Governor Wright to the secretary at war respecting the sea fencibles,” he explained to Navy Secretary Jones of the Maryland governor’s efforts asking the War Department for help. “I do not know what effect it will have, but I wish to leave no stone unturned to obtain men; after this effort I am done, and the blame will lay on the right person.”

  He seemed skeptical that Armstrong would respond favorably. Though Barney’s recruits increased—including the addition of former slave Charles Ball who had walked from Georgia to Baltimore to regain his freedom—failures by the War Department were problematic. Blame would become the name of the political game infesting not just Barney but, soon, all of those living in the swamp known as Washington City.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Not Your Average News Day

  “There will be no peace,” Armstrong boldly proclaimed.

  A shocked Senator King recorded their April 5, 1814, conversation into his journal.

  “You have then changed your opinion which was lately favorable to the expectation of an early peace?” King challenged.

  This time the pair discussed politics in Europe, where the allies of six nations were successfully pushing Napoleon and his Grande Armée back to Paris. Senator King believed that if Napoleon lost, then the British government’s need to impress or take American sailors from ships and force them to fight in the Royal Navy would be gone.

  Armstrong disagreed, telling King, “I have altered my opinion. I think the late and great success of the allies will indispose Britain; their terms will be too hard.” He believed that Parliament wouldn’t make peace with the United States even if England and the allies defeated Napoleon. He concluded that the peace talks between the U.S. and Britain scheduled to take place in Sweden would break off and “a war pulse will be excited” in Britain. His resolve of what America should do was clear: prosecute the war in the North with vigor.

  “In this case we must take Canada and Nova Scotia,” Armstrong declared.

  “Are you not mistaken about your expected war pulse?” King replied with as much shock as anger. “What reason have you to conclude that your cabinet will not descend as G.B. [Great Britain] rises? And in case of a failure at Göteborg [Sweden], is it not probable that another mission will be dispatched to sue again for peace?”

  “It cannot, or rather ought not to be expected.”

  Unhappy with what he was hearing, King challenged Armstrong further, hitting him in the gut with a direct salvo, one that struck Armstrong’s greatest desire—military glory in Canada. He also struck at Armstrong’s greatest insecurity—his distrust of Virginian politicians Madison and Monroe.

  “Do you believe, and if you do, are you not deceived, that you or any other man of talents from the East will be permitted to acquire the credit of conquering Canada, or of rendering any other important service to the country?” Though seeing Armstrong’s temper rise, King did not give him a chance to respond.

  “I do not wait for a reply, but express my own opinion that the Virginia dynasty will never allow to you an opportunity to take Canada. Peace is the order, and the object, of the day,” King said. “It is to be sought for, and accepted upon the best terms which can be attained. But peace must be had upon any terms.”

  Armstrong’s anger over the insult was so obvious that the senator abrupt
ly ended their conversation. King wrote that he “was at no loss to interpret the feelings of the S.W. [secretary of war] and broke off the conference.”

  King was incredulous. Why couldn’t the administration see that it needed to end the war, and end it quickly, not escalate it? Madison’s imbecility continued, in his view. What to do? He decided to push his views with another member of the cabinet.

  The next day King held a conversation with Secretary Monroe. As he did with Armstrong, he pressed the secretary of state on the effect of Napoleon’s demise on America’s war with England.

  “If there be a reasonable hope of peace, why proceed immediately to fill up the army—Why invade Canada, when the status quo ante bellum will restore it, should you have taken it?” the prying senator asked. He saw no reason to go after Canada if its prewar—antebellum—boundaries with the United States would be restored anyway.

  “If Congress remain two or three weeks in session, something important from Europe may be expected,” Monroe replied, hinting that big news was coming from Paris.

  Monroe explained that the president had sent instructions to Gallatin through a ship that should have arrived in Europe by now. The hope was that England would follow through on negotiating directly with America in Sweden by appointing delegates or ministers. “If ministers be immediately appointed to proceed to Göteborg, [Sweden], and evidence shows itself of the expectation of an early peace, we shall learn it. We shall know it shortly.”

  Secretary Monroe then shared his hopes that the news about Napoleon would soon provide a positive change for America. “Moreover dispatches from the continent may be soon expected.”

  “I hope that if peace be expected the evils of war may be diminished as much as possible,” King replied, strongly expressing his displeasure over the administration’s myopic focus on Canada.

  While the senator was cordial with Monroe, he knew that this Virginian had his eye on the presidency. After all, though he hadn’t received any electoral votes, Monroe had been on the ballot for president in the 1808 election. It was up to King and the Federalists to stop a southerner from winning the 1816 election. Oh how they must defeat Madison’s plans, and in so doing, defeat Monroe’s candidacy.

  More than preventing Monroe from becoming president and trying to defeat Madison every chance he got, King hoped an armistice would soon arrive. Instead, word came of another proclamation, one designed to shake up Marylanders and Virginians up and down the coast.

  Montpelier had been many things to James Madison. First and foremost, it had been his family’s home for more than fifty years. Many memories filled his mind when he thought of Montpelier. This estate was the place where he had made the decision as a teenager to defy expectations for a male of his family’s founding stature. Instead of attending the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, Madison opted for the faraway college later known as Princeton, in New Jersey.

  Influenced by his tutors who had gone to school there, he paved his own path, which paid off. The ties Madison made with college men from Pennsylvania and New Jersey broadened his perspective beyond Virginia, which gave him an advantage when he was a member of the Continental Congress. Though pro-Virginia, he became pro-Union above all else.

  Montpelier had also been the place he had in mind when, years earlier, Madison had worried over Spain’s attempt to keep America from navigating and trading at the mouth of the Mississippi River at New Orleans. With such a grand view of the West and the mountains of the Blue Ridge at Montpelier, he knew that trade out West and along the Mississippi was vital to the financial future of Virginia and America. In fact, he had been fearful when John Jay nearly negotiated these rights away in a treaty with Spain years earlier. U.S. rights to the Mississippi prevailed then, and Madison was as firm now on the subject as Blue Ridge mountain rock.

  Montpelier had also been the place where, in 1786, he had read the great works of history that led him to create the framework behind the U.S. Constitution. Here he’d studied the Netherlands, where jealousies among the provinces had led to foreign intrigue and influence. Indeed the Netherlands had recently given itself up to Napoleon. These and other similar governmental failures led Madison to conclude that a weak union of states would only lead to disaster. Hence, he favored the stronger Union outlined by the U.S. Constitution. How he hoped the United States would write a different story now, and would survive the current war as a united country.

  While at Montpelier in May 1814, Madison learned of the biggest event to take place on the globe in years. Printed in newspapers around the world, the news came while he relaxed during a brief break after Congress’s winter session ended. Napoleon had unconditionally abdicated his empire and gone into exile to Elba, an Italian island. Europe was at peace.

  A thrilled Madison optimistically wrote Thomas Jefferson, his neighbor, of the news on May 10, 1814. “The turn of recent events in Europe, if truly represented, must sharpen the motives [of the British government] to get rid of the war with us; and their hopes by continuance of it to break down our government must now be more and more damped by occurrence now as they become known there.”

  Oh, how the president hoped that the British negotiators would be willing to treat for a quick peace with the American delegation.

  Within ten days, more news arrived on the steps of Montpelier. “I am just possessed of the intelligence. . . of the proclamation of Cochrane addressed to the blacks,” Madison replied by firing off a letter on May 20, 1814, to General Armstrong.

  Admiral Cochrane had issued a proclamation on April 2, 1814, to encourage slaves to leave their masters and migrate from the United States to England. Those slaves who joined the British would have a choice of entering the king’s military or being sent as free settlers to British territory in North America or the West Indies.

  Madison wasn’t shocked at the news. He had seen the tactic during the American Revolution. Back then the strategy led to both sides creating black corps of fighters. What did surprise him was the timing. If the British intended to treat for peace, as they had signaled and surely would because Napoleon was in exile, why were they now encouraging slaves to join the British and fight against their previous masters?

  “They admonish us to be prepared for the worst, the enemy may be able to effect against us,” a highly concerned Madison warned Armstrong. The proclamation seemed “to indicate the most inveterate spirit against the Southern States . . . within reach of vindictive enterprise.”

  Madison also wasn’t shocked at the tactic because he had proposed a similar measure years earlier during the Revolution. “Would it not be to depend as well to liberate and make soldiers of the blacks themselves as to make them instruments for enlisting white soldiers? It would certainly be more consonant to the principles of liberty which ought never be lost sight of in a contest for liberty.”

  Not only that, but in 1785 Madison had also supported Jefferson’s bill in the Virginia Assembly to follow the example of Pennsylvania and gradually abolish slavery. He had written a relative that he wished “to depend as little as possible on the labor of slaves.” While living in Pennsylvania in the 1780s, he had sold his favored slave Billy because he knew it would lead to his freedom within seven years. If he took him back to Virginia, he would be a slave forever. Yet, despite these acts, he had been unable to overcome the system of slavery and the dependence Montpelier had on it.

  Now the issue factored into the schemes of the British military in the War of 1812. Did they really want peace? Was their goal to sever America from within? Did they want to turn southerners and northerners against each other so New England would secede and rejoin Britain? He knew the slave proclamation had been issued a few days before Napoleon’s abdication and weeks before the news arrived in America. Perhaps the misplaced timing led to a mistake by the British signaling more war instead of peace.

  Nonetheless, Madison couldn’t take any chances. He conveyed to Armstrong his most ominous concern about the British military’s
intended target: “among those the seat of government cannot fail to be a favorite one.”

  Though a scholarly man without significant military experience who had served only briefly in a local militia, Madison knew that capturing a capital city fit within the framework of war. He also knew that Armstrong had ignored requests in 1813 by town leaders, such as John Van Ness, to bolster military defenses along the Potomac south of Washington City. Surely this proclamation was all the proof that Armstrong now needed to get moving on fortifying the nation’s capital as a precaution against invasion. Surely. The question was simple. Did Armstrong see it the same way? Deferring to his cabinet member’s judgment, honor, and patriotism, Madison assumed he did.

  Joseph Gales was literally an average Joe. Though born in Britain, by 1813 this twenty-seven-year-old was living the American dream in Washington City, where he operated his own newspaper business, the National Intelligencer. Gales had learned the trade from his father, who brought Joseph and his family to North Carolina after fleeing Britain.

  Gales came to Washington City in 1807 and began reporting on Congress for the National Intelligencer. Three years later he bought the newspaper and managed it with his tall, handsome brother-in-law, William Seaton. Gales was a short chubby cheeked man, but what he lacked in good looks he overcame with manners, warmth, and insight. He often drew people to him by taking an interest in them and asking intelligent questions.

  There was an exception, a limit to his affability. Gales had often raised the ire of Admiral Cockburn, who disdainfully called him “Dear Josey.” Cockburn didn’t understand the concept of freedom of the press. The English crown controlled newspapers in London. Napoleon had controlled newspapers in Paris. How could America be any different?