The Burning of the White House

by Jane Hampton Cook

  As night approached, Brooke ordered his men to camp on the battlefield near the Methodist Meeting House, which had become a hospital for the wounded on both sides.

  The next morning, September 13, brought the start of something new for Cockburn: American obstruction. The British cared for their wounded, broke camp, and marched toward Baltimore, only to find that the Americans had cut down trees and created other obstacles to slow their march. Stop. Start. Clear the road. The pattern persisted and delayed their arrival.

  When they did arrive, they beheld earthen works and a line of redoubts stretching a mile in length. How did Cockburn respond? He chomped at the bit to attack. Surely, even with these obstacles and this sizable force of multiple thousands, the Americans would flee, wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they? Had they really changed?

  Yet, he had quickly figured out that Colonel Brooke was cut from a similar cloth as General Ross. Caution guided him. But unlike Ross, Cockburn had not yet earned Brooke’s trust. He hadn’t had time to court him or whisper in his ear.

  What Cockburn didn’t know in that moment was the fallout from his arson. By burning the U.S. Capitol and White House, he had ignited an uncontrollable fire of American patriotism. The redoubts were tangible evidence that the Americans had extinguished all doubt about this war. Fight they would. To the death. They were not about to let the Brits conquer them and force them into rule by a king once again.

  Now all Cockburn could do was submit to a mere colonel’s choices. The prospects for a British victory seemed to fade with each passing hour.

  Fort McHenry was the defensive star in Baltimore’s crown. Fearing an attack by the British in 1776, the people of Baltimore constructed an earthen fort in the shape of a star. They named it Fort Whetstone. The British smartly left Baltimore alone. Nearly two decades later, in 1794, Napoleon launched a war against England. Congress decided to construct a series of forts along the coast. French engineers began construction on the star-shaped fort protecting Baltimore’s harbor in 1798. The fort was named for Fort McHenry after James McHenry, the nation’s second war secretary. During the first year of Madison’s administration, the U.S. Army organized its first light artillery unit at the fort.

  Fort McHenry’s location was ideal because it overlooked the Patapsco River at the place where it divided into two forks, the northwest branch leading to the city’s harbor and the Ferry Branch. Thanks to the efforts of Commodore Rodgers and others, the Americans sealed off the northwest branch through a line of armed barges.

  Twelve days had passed since he’d first approached President Madison about rescuing Beanes. By the morning of September 13, Key knew something was imminent. Cochrane had ordered him and Skinner off the Surprise and onto the truce boat they had taken to find the fleet. Then the admiral left the larger Tonnant and made the small Surprise his flagship.

  Another sign that things were changing was Dr. Beanes, who had now joined them aboard the truce boat. A nearby armed ship kept them under surveillance, ready to fire if the truce boat tried to slip away. This, too, was another indication that the British were reading for an imminent attack.

  At six o’clock a.m. Cochrane ordered five bomb ships—the Aetna, Devastation, Meteor, Terror, and Volcano—and other war vessels to move into a line less than three miles away but facing Fort McHenry.

  Fire! The order came. The shots dispersed, but they were too far away to hit the fort. Move closer! The ships moved closer; two miles away. This distance would have to do. The fort’s long guns prevented the British rockets from getting any closer without risk of cannonballs crushing their planks.

  From his position eight miles away, Key could hear the shots. With a spyglass he could also see them. The blasts continued with a near rhythmic consistent pace. Each bomb ship hurled five bombs an hour. These bombs were spherical ten- and thirteen-inch shells that showered shrapnel upon exploding. Some fell short; some long. Others burst directly over the fort.

  Key could see additional weapons besides the bombs. The British schooner Cockchafer and the rocket ship Erebus also fired rockets. At 8:40 a.m. U.S. artillery hurled cannonballs into the Cockchafer’s main sail and ripped it to pieces. What did Cochrane do? He wisely withdrew the Cockchafer.

  What Key couldn’t ascertain was how many men Major Armistead, Fort McHenry’s commander, oversaw. Though the Americans clearly returned fire, their guns couldn’t reach the ships. While he couldn’t know what was going on in the fort or how many bombs were reaching the fort, he could discern that a white flag of surrender hadn’t appeared above the fort. All he could see was a small U.S. flag, a speck in the distance.

  From his position camped with the land troops two miles from the Baltimore defenses, Cockburn received a letter from Cochrane the night of September 13. The news disappointed him more than it surprised him. With Ross gone, he had lost his influence. Cochrane’s letter proved it.

  “It is impossible for the ships to render you any assistance—the town is so far retired within the forts,” Cochrane wrote to Cockburn. The Americans had sunk so many ships that Cochrane couldn’t get a bomb ship through the channel to attack the U.S. land trenches.

  “It is for Colonel Brooke to consider under such circumstances whether he has force sufficient to defeat so large a number as it [is] said the enemy has collected; say 20,000 strong or even a less number and to take the town,” he explained, clearly designating Brooke as the ultimate decision-maker, not Cockburn.

  Cockburn realized that Cochrane opposed a further land attack for humane reasons: “Without this can be done it will be only throwing the men’s lives away and prevent us from going upon other services.”

  He knew what other services meant. The admiralty had their eye on New Orleans, the lynchpin for controlling the Mississippi River.

  Cockburn read practicality into Cochrane’s assessment. “At any rate a very considerable loss must ensue and as the enemy is daily gaining strength his loss let it be ever so great cannot be equally felt.”

  How could that be? Cockburn had to wonder. These were the same Americans who had fled to the woods in Havre de Grace. They were the same bunch who had done nothing of substance to protect their capital city. They were the ones who’d fled like scared geese out of Bladensburg. Yet, he could see with his own eyes. They’d built impressive entrenchments. They’d taken out General Ross. They’d injured his own horse just the previous day. They had a will to fight after all.

  Cockburn was powerless. Sure, Colonel Brooke had called a war council and had invited him to attend. But too many others supported caution. He was outnumbered. On land, he had to defer to the army commander, no matter rank or experience. All Cockburn could do was wait and watch as he listened to the bombs bursting at the fort nearby.

  After twenty-five hours of ear-piercing terror from bombs, the silence that followed after seven o’clock a.m. on September 14 was welcoming but hardly golden to Francis Scott Key’s ears. What colors would he see as he placed his eye behind the spyglass and pointed it toward the fort? He didn’t know which was worse, beholding the British Union Jack flag above Fort McHenry or the white flag of surrender. Both would mean victory for the British and capitulation once again from his countrymen.

  Suddenly he noticed it. Gone was the American battle flag measuring seventeen by twenty-four feet that had flown over the fort. Instead, he saw the most beautiful colors cast against a canvas of a multi-hue sunrise. The stars and stripes, fifteen of them to represent that nation’s fifteen states that had grown to eighteen by this time, flapped briskly from the fort that morning. The sight could mean only one thing. The Americans still held Fort McHenry.

  The flag that Key saw that morning measured forty-two feet by thirty feet. It was the largest flag ever flown at a U.S. fort. Months earlier General Armistead had requested that Fort McHenry “have a flag so large that the British will have no difficulty in seeing it from a distance.” Commodore Barney and another officer had enlisted the talents of flag maker Mary Pickersgill. She made
two flags, the smaller storm flag and the giant ceremonial flag. On that morning Key saw the larger flag, whose bright stars measured twenty-four inches from point to point. What he couldn’t have heard that morning was the music at the fort. Because America lacked an official national anthem, the band played the popular Yankee Doodle.

  What came next, Key didn’t know. He was still hostage to the British fleet. The word eventually came. Anchors away. Finally, they were free. And as he sailed, his emotion gave way to words, poetic words that fit a familiar pattern. “O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming. . . .” Then the flag took center stage:

  Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,

  O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming!

  And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

  Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

  Suddenly Fort McHenry didn’t just represent Baltimore. It symbolized America, as did the 1,000 men who defended it. And the flag didn’t just soar over Baltimore, it unfurled over the entire United States. “O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

  Four verses poured from Key’s pen, including lesser-known flourishes that reflected faith: “O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand, between their loved homes and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land. Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.” Some were surprising for a man who seemed to oppose the war: “Then conquer we must when our cause it is just, and this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’” Each verse ended with the refrain, “And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”

  Key enlisted the tune “To Anacreon in Heaven.” The melody was familiar to him. After all, he had written lyrics for it years earlier in 1806 in another song called “When the Warrior Returns.” It was the tune for the well-known “Boston Patriotic Song,” which was also called the “Adams and Liberty Song.” Years earlier when John Adams became president, his friend Robert Treat Paine had written lyrics celebrating America and his presidency. Paine chose “To Anacreon in Heaven” as the tune. The song was the theme for a gentlemen’s club in London, the Anacreontic Society, named after Anacreon, a lyric poet from Greece.

  Whether the words flowed easily for Key that day or came to him in bits and pieces to organize into a poetic pattern, one thing is for sure. The result spoke of the emotion that he and so many other Americans felt upon learning that they had once again defeated the British.

  Hope was brighter than ever. Maybe, just maybe, the Royal Navy would soon abandon America’s shores permanently.

  After a sleepless night under the sound of constant fire bombarding the fort, Rodgers could see the British campfires near the Methodist meeting house. But he knew it could be a trick. After all, George Washington had ordered his men to build campfires to cover their retreat at Long Island during the American Revolution in 1776. Ross had ordered his soldiers to build campfires in Washington City to fool the few Washingtonians left in town so his forces could slip away in a night retreat. Was the same thing happening now in Baltimore?

  Rodgers knew the bombing had stopped. He could see that the British bomb ships were departing. Was the full force all retreating? It sure looked like it.

  What Rodgers didn’t know was that Colonel Brooke didn’t want to live with the burden of throwing away the lives of men. He had ordered a retreat. They could not win in Baltimore, not without a larger force. The loss of Ross had dispirited them. They couldn’t get their rockets close enough to Fort McHenry to make a difference. Cochrane’s overnight attempt at victory had also failed. He’d sent a captain and twenty-two vessels to try to land near the fort and distract the Americans defending the land redoubts. One of the Americans saw them coming and opened fire, stopping their attempts.

  While the silence continued, intelligence brought Rodgers clarity. From his position behind his bastion, he fired off a letter to Navy Secretary Jones on Wednesday, September 14. “The enemy has been severely drubbed as well his army as his navy and is now retiring down the river after expending many rounds of shot from 1,800 to 2,000 shells and at least seven or eight hundred rockets,” he wrote.

  Only 400 actually landed in the fort, damaging the walls, killing four, and wounding twenty-four.

  Rodgers added a postscript. “I shall give you a more particular account as soon as I get a little rest. General Ross of the British Army is said to be mortally wounded.”

  Fatigued but no longer heavy hearted, Rodgers couldn’t have been prouder. They had rallied at Baltimore and defeated the British. Washington had been avenged. The destiny of the nation seemed bright once again. The question was this: What would happen to Washington City? Would it remain the nation’s capital?

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Relocating the Capital City

  “The destruction of the President’s House cannot be said to be a great loss in one point of view, as we hope, it will put an end to drawing rooms and levees; the resort of the idle and the encouragers of spies and traitors.” So printed the New York Evening Post on September 19.

  They’d forgotten one thing: the patriotic determination of a Quaker socialite and her scholarly husband. Perhaps by proving the Post wrong, Dolley could find her purpose in the aftermath.

  Cockburn knew it was true. They’d let too much time pass between burning Washington and attacking Baltimore. Foolish it was. Scott later put their defeat at Fort McHenry into perspective this way: “Unfortunately the lapse of eighteen days gave the enemy an opportunity of perfecting their defenses and collecting a large body of troops from the surrounding country. . . . The advantages this unfortunate delay gave to the enemy were incalculable.”

  Cockburn was careful to measure his assessment, knowing that it was presumptuous for a junior officer to “arraign the conduct of a respected commander-in-chief,” but he blamed Cochrane without naming him. “It is easy to pronounce judgment at the conclusion of a game of chess, when the moves of the opponents have passed in review before you; the bystanders can then with facility point out the erroneous move that led to the defeat of one of the parties.”

  Four days after their defeat at Baltimore, Cockburn and Scott headed to Bermuda while Cochrane took a convoy to Halifax, in Nova Scotia in Canada. They would regroup, with Cockburn heading back to the east coast to harass and keep an eye on America’s southern states, such as Georgia. The bulk of the British would go even further south and west, sweeping into the Gulf Coast and New Orleans.

  Until a peace treaty received Madison’s signature, the war was not over, and the political war would soon take center stage.

  As a congressman, Madison had initially opposed having a permanent capital at all.

  In 1783, while a member of the Continental Congress, Madison had objected to establishing a permanent capital at that time because “our acts are not those of the Medes and Persians, unalterable.”

  Southern members thought they had Pennsylvania delegates on their side. Instead, eastern members convinced Pennsylvania members to agree to let New York become the temporary seat by agreeing to vote for the Susquehanna as the permanent one.

  The issue became part of the discussions of the first Congress under the U.S. Constitution in 1789. Madison was a congressman in that first Congress. In fact, he’d beaten his distant neighbor, James Monroe, for the seat.

  Madison called the issue “the puzzling question as to the precise jurisdiction of Congress over the permanent seat.”

  Because communication methods were slow, Madison concluded that the seat of government would be an advantage to those who were geographically closest to it. The telegraph had yet to be invented, and he foresaw the need for instant communication to broadcast the laws of the new federal government to the states.

  “If it were poss
ible to promulgate laws, by some instantaneous operation, it would be of less consequence in that point of view where the government might be placed,” he’d observed, knowing that without better technology, news would travel by days and weeks through newspapers carried by passengers on stage carriages or messengers on horseback to different parts of the nation. Madison also knew the Virginia-Maryland border along the Potomac was ideal because it was the geographic center of the thirteen original states. Madison had possibly written anonymous newspaper editorials on the issue.

  He also knew that President George Washington played no documented role in the debate over the capital. Though his longtime preference for the Potomac River was widely known, Washington had allowed congressmen from Virginia, such as Madison, to fight for it for him. This allowed Washington to be a quiet force.

  President Washington’s first recorded mention of the issue in his diary didn’t come until July 12, 1790, when he wrote about the bill that Congress had just sent to him. It was “an act for establishing the temporary and permanent seat of the government of the United States.”

  Twenty-four years later, in the fall of 1814, the question facing James Madison was this. Now that he was president, what would his role be? Would he follow the George Washington model and say nothing publicly? Would he take an active role? Or would he take a stealth one? What mattered most was the outcome, saving Washington as the nation’s capital. He couldn’t keep the British out, but could he keep the politicians in?

  Was the news true? With the destruction of the U.S. Capitol and President’s House, would the nation’s capital city be relocated to Philadelphia? Temporarily? Permanently? Surely this was gossip. Surely it wasn’t news. Surely it was the bluster of political winds taking advantage of precarious circumstances.