The Burning of the White House

by Jane Hampton Cook

  It wasn’t that Cochrane failed to recognize Baltimore’s value. In fact, he considered it “the most democratic town and I believe the richest in the country” and added that “this town ought to be laid in ashes.”

  He also had another reason for delaying besides the weather. Cochrane had detected reluctance in General Ross’s heart. Indeed. Ross had told the officer that he sent a messenger to London to tell the admiralty he wouldn’t attack Baltimore.

  As he read his new orders, Cockburn may have wondered if Cochrane now regretted isolating Ross from his influence. Ross didn’t seem inclined to punish the sins of the Americans. Neither Cochrane nor Cockburn doubted Ross’s loyalty and zeal to England, but they saw a lack of passion for warfare in the general. The man seemed to long for home, for his wife and children, more than fighting. He’d had enough of that in Europe against Napoleon.

  Cochrane put Ross’s reluctance to attack the U.S.A. crassly: “When he is better acquainted with the American character he will possibly see, as I do, that like spaniels they must be treated with great severity before you ever make them tractable.”

  Hence, as Cockburn came to grips with his superior officer’s decision to leave the Chesapeake and send him to Bermuda, all he could do was obey and hope that something would change Cochrane’s mind and change it quickly. Because of his earlier disobedience, he had to tread lightly.

  No matter the era, grief is a natural process, a cycling and recycling of shock, anger, depression, and acceptance. One of Madison’s friends reported that “he looks shaken and woe-bygone. In short, he looked as if his heart was broken.” Yes, his heart was broken for his country, but he wasn’t the only one. Dolley, too, was dispirited and longing for a multitude to defend America’s shores.

  “Mrs. M. seem’d much depress’d, she could scarcely speak without tears. . . . Mrs. M. lost all her own property,” wrote a friend who visited Dolley not long after her return to Washington.

  Indeed, Dolley revealed to another friend, “In short, it would fatigue you to read the list of my losses, or an account of the general dismay, or particular distresses of your acquaintance. . . . but I cannot tell you what I felt on re-entering it [Washington City]—such destruction—such confusion!!”

  Anna Marie Thornton, wife of the Capitol’s architect, also visited Dolley shortly after her return. She saw her grief first hand. “We stepped in to see Mrs. Madison, she was very violent against the English—wished we had 10,000 such men as were passing (a few troopers) to sink our enemy to the bottomless pit.”

  Mrs. Thornton also showed her Federalist leanings. After all, her husband William was possibly the one who revealed the location of Gales’s newspaper to Admiral Cockburn. “She had better attribute the loss of her palace to the right cause, viz want of proper defense in time. . . . The Secretary of State said they were all d____’d Rascals from highest to lowest.”

  Grief was a frequent companion for Dolley that autumn. What would bring her out of it? She would have to find a new purpose in life.

  The dinner aboard the admiral’s ship on the afternoon of September 7, 1814, was the most surreal that Francis Key had ever experienced. He had expected to meet with an officer or two, perhaps the captain of the ship, but not with the supreme commander. Now he was here with his American counterpart, Mr. Skinner. Together they dined with Admiral Cochrane and General Ross aboard the admiral’s flagship, the Tonnant.

  The day before, in a small boat carrying a flag of truce, Key and Skinner had swept alongside a smaller British vessel, the Royal Oak. From there they had followed the Royal Oak to find the admiral’s flagship further south in the Chesapeake Bay. Cochrane learned of their intentions right before his dinner on September 7. Not wanting to delay and in a hospitable mood, Cochrane invited them to join him and General Ross.

  At first all was pleasantries. They engaged in small talk while they ate. And given the circumstances, what else could they discuss? Finally, the captain of the fleet hurled an insult at America. Skinner fired back. Key was unimpressed, as he later wrote: “Never was a man more disappointed in his expectations than I have been as to the character of British officers. With some exceptions they appeared to be illiberal, ignorant, and vulgar, and seem filled with a spirit of malignity against everything American. Perhaps, however, I saw them in unfavorable circumstances.” Indeed he did.

  With insults flowing faster than the wine at that dinner, General Ross intervened and offered to speak privately with Mr. Skinner about Mr. Beanes. This disappointment left Key out of a key conversation. All he could do was wait and hope that Skinner could prevail upon Ross to release Beanes.

  He knew, however, that Mason had given them a good strategy. If Ross argued that Beanes had violated his pledge to refrain from hostile acts, then Skinner would respond that Ross’s first withdrawal from Marlborough had relieved him of that pledge. The next strategy was to present letters from wounded British officers and soldiers testifying to the humane treatment they were receiving from the Americans. In this way, Ross could release Beanes in the name of good will.

  If those strategies failed, then Skinner and Key were authorized to give Ross a receipt for Beanes as if he were a prisoner of war and release a British war prisoner in return. This approach, however, could open a Pandora’s box by giving the British permission or justification to start hauling off other unarmed citizens for the sole purpose of releasing genuine British prisoners.

  Key later learned what happened during Skinner’s and Ross’s meeting. Skinner presented the case for releasing Dr. Beanes. Ross silently read the letters from General Mason and the British wounded.

  “Dr. Beanes . . . shall be released to return with you,” Ross replied, pleased with the treatment the British wounded were receiving from the Americans.

  Ross wrote a letter to Mason. “Dr. Beanes having acted hostilely towards certain soldiers under my command, by making them prisoners when proceeding to join the army, and having attempted to justify his conduct when I spoke to him on the subject, I conceived myself authorized and called upon to cause his being detained as a prisoner,” he explained, not backing down from his original claims.

  Then he acknowledged civility. “The friendly treatment, however, experienced by the wounded officers and men of the British army left at Bladensburg enables me to meet your wishes regarding that gentleman.”

  Ross promised to release him, though he believed he was justified in retaining him. “I shall accordingly give directions for his being released . . . but purely in proof of the obligation which I feel for the attention with which the wounded have been treated.”

  Skinner’s and Key’s joy at securing the release of Dr. Beanes lasted only a second or two. Earlier that morning, Cochrane had made a decision. He was going to attack Baltimore. Why the change? The promise of plunder and intelligence made the difference. After the attack on Washington, he’d sent out another British raiding party to rural Maryland. Though the commander, Sir Peter Parker, had been killed, his men brought back valuable plunder and supplies. They also brought intelligence that attacking Baltimore would be easy. The American will to fight was weak.

  Hence, while Mr. Beanes would be released to them, Key and Skinner couldn’t leave until after the attack on Baltimore. Cochrane said to them, “Ah, Mr. Skinner, after discussing so freely our preparation and plans, you could hardly expect us to let you go on shore in advance of us.”

  With no room left on the crowded Tonnant, Cochrane put Key and Skinner aboard the vessel Surprise, which tugged their truce boat. For now they were stuck, held hostage in a British convoy and witnesses to the next attack.

  As one who didn’t support the war, Key felt conflicted. Baltimore was not his favorite place. He despised the pro-war riot that took place there at the start of the war and led to the deaths of Revolutionary War veterans who opposed the war.

  “Sometimes when I remembered it was there the declaration of this abominable war was received with public rejoicings, I could not feel a hope t
hat they would escape,” Key later recalled.

  But Baltimore was a family place, too. He knew it was filled with innocent women and children and Americans seeking to live quiet lives.

  What worried him was Cochrane’s pledge to give Baltimore the Havre de Grace and Washington treatment. “To make my feelings still more acute, the admiral had intimated his fears that the town [Baltimore] must be burned, and I was sure that if taken it would have been given up to plunder. I have reason to believe that such a promise was given to their soldiers. It was filled with women and children.”

  All he could do was wait, watch, and pray.

  Commodore John Rodgers arrived in Baltimore on September 9, 1814. As he wrote to another commodore, “I reached here the evening before last direct from Washington. There are now upwards of 15,000 regulars and militia exclusive of about 1,000 seamen and marines, which I have formed into a brigade consisting of two regiments, and now encamped in the environs of this town.”

  Rodgers witnessed the fruits of the labor of the phoenix multitude. Newspapers had called on the scattered militia to reconvene. Residents near and far had given supplies, such as pickaxes, hay, and wagons, to the cause. Bankers had contributed more than $660,000, and individuals had given smaller amounts. Young and old, free and slave, all had mustered to build a line of earthen works to protect the city’s most vulnerable places on land.

  “Forts, redoubts, and entrenchments are thrown up all round the town and the place now has nothing to fear, even should the enemy make his appearance tomorrow,” Rodgers reported of Hampstead Hill.

  The defensive barriers stretched more than a mile from the harbor to the road on the East leading to Philadelphia. Rodgers and his men held the center of the barriers. Located on a hill, they built a redoubt called Rodgers’s bastion. The fortification held sixteen cannon, including twelve and six pounders.

  Then suddenly, their efforts seemed all for naught. Word of the British leaving the vicinity spread like wildfire through the ranks.

  “It is understood however that he has descended the bay and whatever might have been his intentions that he will not now attempt an attack on this place with any such force as he can command at present,” Rodgers wrote.

  His hasty departure from Washington City and all of Smith’s preparations now seemed anticlimactic. According to the latest reports, Cochrane and his fleet were sailing away from Baltimore, not toward it. Fatigued, Rodgers began to wonder where he should go next: “I hope to leave here in two or three days for Philadelphia, as I begin to feel tired of playing soldier, and more particularly as there will not be any occasion for our services.”

  How wrong he was.

  Finally. He was here, on his way to attack Baltimore. What was Cockburn to do? Nothing but smile from ear to ear.

  Early in the morning, around three o’clock a.m. on September 12, the British landed their force of more than 4,000 at North Point just outside of Baltimore. Cockburn and Ross led the advance guard of fifty men. Behind them was Colonel Arthur Brooke, who led the rest. Among them were 600 of Cockburn’s marines.

  After starting his journey down the Chesapeake toward Bermuda a few days earlier, Cockburn had learned that Cochrane had changed his mind. Fortunately, he had gone only eight miles. He’d turned around his ship and joined Cochrane’s convoy as they headed for the Potomac River.

  Cochrane had one more thing he needed to do before attacking Baltimore. He had to learn the outcome of Captain James Alexander Gordon’s expedition to Alexandria, where he’d destroyed all of the town’s military installations after taking Fort Washington. Soon Gordon met them with twenty-one ships loaded with prizes, including more than 13,000 barrels of flour.

  Meanwhile Cockburn and Cochrane continued to disagree on strategy. They specifically differed on whether the main assault should come by land or sea. Cockburn favored having marines and sailors lead a water assault against Fort McHenry. A land assault should support the water bombardment. Cochrane disagreed. He favored placing more men in the land assault aided by ships in the water.

  As the superior officer, Admiral Cochrane won the debate and set up the troops to go ashore at North Point and attack Baltimore by land. Bomb ships and frigates would get as close as they could to the fort to support the land assault.

  Despite their strategic differences, Cockburn came out smiling like a pirate. If they captured Baltimore, they would have dozens, if not hundreds, of ships filled with valuable goods to take back to Bermuda. Best of all, if Baltimore fell, Philadelphia would soon follow. What started out as an attempt to harass America’s east coast could turn into capturing it.

  Once again under overwhelming heat, they marched the morning of September 12 toward the city of Baltimore. Cockburn continued to relish riding on a charger horse and wearing his gold-laced hat, which made him an obvious target. He rode along the line and often trotted from left to right at a foot pace, which increased his odds for being hit. He and Scott marveled at how often enemy fire came at him but missed.

  Soon they came across a house. They burned it and carved a Union Jack in the mantel of another dwelling.

  Something was different, however. Cockburn found his normally cautious friend General Ross in an unusually cocky mood. It was as if they were twin brothers. Whatever his previous reservations about attacking Baltimore, Ross was committed to their mission, driven by duty.

  Together he and Cockburn came across the farm of Mr. Robert Gorsuch. Emboldened and hungry, they ordered this American farmer to serve them a meal. He complied.

  A conversation ensued about their plans. Soon Ross allegedly boasted to Mr. Gorsuch: “I’ll eat in Baltimore tonight—or in hell.” How right he was, if these legendary words are true.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Dawn’s Early Light

  About the time that Ross and Cockburn enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, a member of their advance guard captured three Americans, who were part of General John Stricker’s advance of 150 light troops. A British soldier escorted them to the general and admiral. When Ross asked them how many American forces were in Baltimore, they boasted: twenty thousand. Yet the number was closer to 16,000.

  “They are mainly militia, I presume?” Ross supposedly inquired.

  When the Americans confirmed the information, Ross may have repeated this mantra: “I don’t care if it rains militia.”

  Cockburn couldn’t have said it better himself, and perhaps he did say it instead of Ross. But what the Americans didn’t say was far more important than what they did report. They didn’t tell Ross and Cockburn that Stricker’s brigade of more than 3,000 was only four miles away, camped near a Methodist meetinghouse.

  After eating at Gorsuch’s, Cockburn, Ross, and their officers rode along a road covered by a thick wood. By this point they were about five miles from the place where their ships had landed. Suddenly they came across Stricker’s advance unit of American riflemen and artillerymen. Shots broke out immediately. The British returned it. Back and forth the firing went until the Americans fled into the woods and the British chased them.

  A British officer estimated the number of Americans in this unit was about 400. Surprised at such strength from the enemy, Ross decided that his advance party needed more men for protection. He would go back and get them.

  “I’ll bring up the column,” Ross offered to Cockburn.

  Soon a ball passed through Ross’s arm and entered his chest. He fell from his horse. Coming quickly to his friend’s side, Cockburn made arrangements for Ross to be returned to a British ship. He died on the way.

  “It is with the most heartfelt sorrow I have to add that in this short and desultory skirmish, my gallant and highly valued friend, the major general, received a musket ball through his arm into his breast, which proved fatal to him on his way to the water side for re-embarkation,” Cockburn later wrote to Cochrane.

  With Ross dead, who was in charge of the land forces? Cockburn couldn’t officially lead on land because he was an admiral. Henc
e, Colonel Brooke was now in command. Cockburn joined Brooke as he advanced from their landing point at North Point.

  Later they came across General Stricker’s force of thousands divided into five regiments: the 5th, 6th, 27th, 39th, and 51st Regiments of Maryland. They were a portion of General Smith’s army. Because these Americans wore uniforms, Brooke mistakenly assumed they were regular U.S. army soldiers, not militia.

  Stricker’s force occupied the woods and began firing against the British from the thicket. This was the very dastardly warfare that Cockburn had long despised and scorned at Havre de Grace. To him such tactics were cowardly, albeit effective.

  Brooke responded by ordering an attack. They fired artillery. They fired Congreve rockets. The Americans returned the assault. But as the British attacked with an intention to surround them, the American line gave way and fled. The British casualties included fewer than fifty killed and nearly 300 wounded. The Americans lost two dozen killed and nearly 140 wounded.

  To Cockburn and the Royal Military, the route was akin to the dispersion of the Americans at Bladensburg. To the Americans, the outcome of North Point was different. Yes, they had lost this battle. Yes, they had retreated. But unlike Bladensburg, they had regrouped immediately. A creek gave them a protected place to rally.

  After the battle of North Point, Cockburn and many of the British forces stopped by a stream to fill their canteens and water their horses. As the admiral’s horse drank from this clean pool of water, he heard a loud volley coming down from above. The fire killed several men and struck his horse in the shoulder. Once again, he was unhurt. Such was the charmed life of Admiral Cockburn.