by Robert Booth
The forlorn hope was over. The nation that they had fought for—the visionary republic of Chile—was not to be.*
On the night of November 2, the new royal captain-general of Chile, Mariano Osorio, began his reign of terror. Forty of Chile’s leading citizens were dragged from their homes and hauled into the Santiago prison yard to be transported to the coast and shipped 200 miles to the island of Juan Fernandez. Hundreds more patriots would be hunted down throughout the country and incarcerated hundreds of miles away at Valdivia and in prisons built at Valparaiso and Santiago. With a stroke of the pen, Osorio reinstated the old order exactly as before, from slavery to church fees to exclusion of foreign commerce. Large numbers of Spaniards arrived to fill the offices of the bureaucracy and to rule the Chileans as a captive population forbidden to own a pistol, walk with a cane, or go abroad in the streets at night.
At Mendoza, of the six revolutionary heroes—O’Higgins, Mackenna, Manuel Rodriguez, and the three Carreras—just two would be alive by the autumn of 1818, and only one would see Chile again.
On October 14, 1814, José Miguel Carrera and the remnants of his army arrived at Uspallata, the pass through the mountains that led to Mendoza. General San Martin was waiting for him. Since the victory at Maipu in early September, Carrera, as head of state, had banished many of his rivals over the Andes to Mendoza, where they had deluged San Martin with accusations against Carrera and his fellow officers, confirmed by San Martin’s new friend, the exiled general Juan Mackenna. San Martin was an Argentinian and a soldier. He loathed politics and stayed away from the capital city of Buenos Aires as much as possible, because its juntos were hardly worthy of the brave freedom fighters he commanded on the frontiers. It was easy for him to conclude that Carrera was the same sort of divisive and self-absorbed politician, especially since San Martin had already clashed with General Juan José Carrera during the latter’s banishment by Lastra while his brothers were in prison. Resentful of San Martin’s patronizing attitude and his assumption that independence could not be achieved by Chileans, Carrera had warned San Martin to stay out of Chile, saying that it was not his war to fight, that brother José Miguel was commander-in-chief, and that Chilenos would liberate themselves, perhaps with San Martin’s help but not at his command.
José Miguel Carrera now found himself in a hellish exile, surrounded by “intrigue, ignorance, vengeance, and power.” The disaster at Rancagua haunted everyone. O’Higgins blamed the Carreras for not fighting their way in, while the Carreras blamed O’Higgins for disobeying the order to withdraw.* Beyond Rancagua, there was the larger and more tragic decision that O’Higgins had made in marching on José Miguel Carrera at Santiago rather than making common cause to drive Gainza out of Talca. At Mendoza, in the misery of defeat and the bitterness of old feuds and new recriminations, there was little chance of reconciliation. Those whom Carrera had defeated at Maipu were now San Martin’s favorites, and the agents of the dictatorship, Lastra and the Larrains, were treated with respect. Carrera’s victories and his many sacrifices were of no interest to San Martin—it was all moot now, part of a failed movement, a history that had led to a dead end on the wrong side of the Andes.
San Martin regarded himself as “the instrument of justice and agent of destiny,” fated to conquer all of southern Spanish America and to rule from the throne of the viceroy’s palace at Lima. He had already decided that O’Higgins, so useful to the former Supreme Director Lastra, was the perfect figurehead for Chile in the new order he envisioned.
In the meantime, something had to be done with Carrera and his men. San Martin moved them away from Mendoza into separate barracks and placed them under Colonel Balcarce. Carrera requested passports for Coquimbo. San Martin ignored him and offered Carrera’s soldiers the opportunity to join the army of the United Provinces, but they scoffed at him and said they would only fight under the flag of Chile. Erupting in fury, San Martin had Balcarce evict the soldiers from their quarters and throw their possessions in the street. He then arrested José Miguel and Juan José Carrera and their colonels. José Miguel, defiant, was told to behave. “Behave?” said Carrera. “I make the Spanish behave, in shackles, in my prisons.” The four officers were kept under guard until they were sent east with an escort of thirty dragoons.
At Buenos Aires, the capital of rebel Argentina, Carrera conferred with his lieutenants Manuel Rodriguez, Diego Benavente, and Julian Uribe; his brothers Lucho and Juan José; and other officers and adherents. A few days after arriving, former General Luis Carrera, twenty-three, crossed paths with former General Juan Mackenna, twenty years older, and challenged him for grossly abusing his family in the report written for Lastra. Mackenna replied that he had told the truth and that indeed the Carrera family had been the cause of all of Chile’s problems. In a duel the next day, November 21, Carrera shot and killed Mackenna.
José Miguel Carrera, banished president of a country that no longer existed, did not give up on his vision of the republic of Chile. In his imagination, the tricolor flag would once again wave over Santiago, and he would liberate his father and the other political prisoners. After all the battles, political triumphs, imprisonment, escapes, and betrayals, Chile’s future remained his only concern—and he remained Chile’s only hope for an independent republic. But he had no money and no political base, and San Martin intended to use O’Higgins for the reconquista.
There was no time to lose if Carrera wanted to start a new liberation movement. Having listened to Poinsett for two years, he knew what was needed: a navy and a formal alliance with the enemy of O’Higgins’s friends the British. It was not too late to liberate his people, if only he could make his way to the paradise of all nations, the United States of America.
*The description of the Carreras’ betrayal and imprisonment at Chillan, and of their journey to Talca and Santiago and their revolution against Lastra, is taken from José Miguel Carrera’s diary, kept faithfully from March 1813 through October 1814. After José’s death, the diary descended in the family and was first published in 1900 as the Diario Militar de José Miguel Carrera. It remains the only dependable day-by-day account of the Carreras and their activities, and of many of the events relating to the effort to create and sustain the republic of Chile.
*From this time forward, the period of the Chilean revolution and struggle for independence would be known as La Patria Vieja, roughly “the old homeland” or “the first nation.”
*Carrera would always contend that O’Higgins, having formed a square inside Rancagua and thereby allowed his force to be surrounded, had a duty to fight his own way out, and that it would have done no good for the third division—the only reserve corps left to Carrera—to have fought its way into Rancagua only to become part of that square, crushed on all sides by a larger, better-armed force.
Chapter Fifteen
Reverberations
In the roasting heat and thick haze of midsummer 1814, British warships sailed on the Chesapeake Bay below Baltimore unopposed, as they had for more than a year. So common a sight were they that no one noticed the arrival of several transports, and lookouts were slow to spot the large British army that landed and began marching south from the Patuxent River toward Washington.
On August 19, 1814, David Porter was in New York working on his book, plying the newspaper editors, playing with friends, staying away from his wife and children, and trying to stay calm while attending the navy’s court of inquiry into the loss of his ship. He was not unduly anxious, for he had already been promised a large frigate under construction and nearly completed at the Washington Navy Yard; the forty-four-gun Columbia would be renamed Essex. Porter opened an envelope from Navy Secretary Jones and responded by taking out a newspaper ad: “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights. To the crew of the old Essex: Sailors, the enemy is about attempting the destruction of your new ship at Washington and I am ordered there to defend her. I shall proceed immediately, and all disposed to accompany me will meet me at three o’clock this afternoon, at th
e Navy agent’s office.” This seemed like a good idea to their captain, but not to those who had survived long service with Porter.
Money, as much as fame and obsession, had driven Porter into the Pacific, pursuing whalers when so much else might have been done. The calculations he had made while competing with the memory of Anson had proved to be fantasies. His projected $2.5 million for captured vessels and sperm-whale oil came to a grand total of zero—every one of the ships he had taken, and all of their oil, went back to England. The Royal Navy had retaken all of them except the Seringapatam, which was sailed from Nukuhiva to London by her English captors. Worse still, Porter actually doubled the amount of sperm oil that got back to Britain, for nearly all of the ten American whalers that had been trapped at Talcahuano, hoping for the convoy that Porter never provided, were captured in the Atlantic before reaching port.
As his crewmen had long discussed, Porter could have avoided Hillyar altogether and chosen a very different way of concluding their Pacific adventure. He could have sailed west from the Marquesas, sold his prizes and oil in Asia, and perhaps returned to the United States as a proud captain with his ship and a full crew, and not as a paranoid captive on board a cartel of shattered survivors. The navy was kind enough to purchase the Essex Junior for the handsome price of $25,000, which was the only prize money Porter’s men would receive. Divided according to the rules, it paid Porter $3,750 and the deckhands or their widows about $100 apiece.
The survivors of the Essex had further reason to regret serving under Porter, for they were forgotten as soon as they went ashore. Within ten days at New York, still unpaid, they were all strapped for cash. On July 20, Enoch Milay of Marblehead and six other crewmen “without one cent in our pockets” sent a letter to Porter at his mansion on the Delaware. “It gives us extreme pain,” they wrote, “to be under the necessity of intruding on the quiet you are about to enjoy with your family, and which you are so justly entitled to after your well earned laurels, but merely to request that you will see that justice done us, which we, who have in our station equally defended the honor of our country, deem ourselves entitled to.” Out of patience and out of confidence, they asserted that they were “men, sir, who tho’ not in so high a station in life as you are, have some feelings of pride about us, and cannot bear to be dependent on strangers.” They concluded by asking, “Is this the reward, sir, we expected to meet from our country, the conduct for men to receive who have been at all times willing to shed their blood in defense of that country’s rights?” Navy Secretary Jones soon heard from Porter, and on July 25 he made $30,000 available to the long-suffering crew of the former American frigate Essex.
Lieutenant Edward Barnewall, Doctor Richard Hoffman, and some of his men joined Porter at half past three on August 20 as he headed south to turn away the enemy and save his new ship. Secretary Jones and other Washington officials waited in vain for the arrival of John Rodgers, Stephen Decatur, and David Porter. On August 22, Jones rode to the riverbank and watched six British ships slowly ascending the Potomac, grounding in the mud from time to time, shifting their cannon, and then moving on. Jones ordered Commander John O. Creighton to take a fast gig and a crew to reconnoiter and ascertain whether the enemy had transports and troops. In the meantime, Captain Joshua Barney, commander of the much-harried American flotilla on the Chesapeake Bay, had abandoned his vessels and marched his men toward Washington to meet the fast-moving English army under General Robert Ross. Porter, with a small force, arrived at his hometown of Baltimore and placed himself under Commodore John Rodgers. Secretary Jones tried to find them on August 23, with orders to proceed to Bladensburg, Maryland, where Barney and the local militia general, William Winder, were massing their troops “to preserve the national capital and its invaluable establishments from the ruthless hands of a vengeful foe.”
The British had already won the world war. With Napoleon in exile, America became the target, and London sent some top generals with 20,000 veteran troops across the Atlantic. The invasion of the Chesapeake was the first of three operations intended to finish things off and commence a global Pax Britannica. On August 24, General Ross and his army routed the local forces and rolled into Washington, from which President Madison, Vice President Gerry, Secretary Jones, members of Congress, and all the others who, two years before, had declared war on Great Britain fled into the countryside. Ross had his men set fire to most of the federal buildings, including the Capitol and the White House, and take possession of the Washington Navy Yard with its new vessels and its many tons of material and ammunition. Captain Tingey, the yard’s commandant, was too quick for them and torched the whole place, destroying property worth $417,000, including the new Essex.
On the run and without navy vessels on the Chesapeake Bay, Secretary Jones could do little to save Baltimore or to stop the British armada. On August 27, Royal Navy bomb ships caused the destruction of Fort Washington on the Maryland shore, below Washington, which now lay undefended on the river, as did the prosperous seaport of Alexandria on the Virginia side. There, merchants had scuttled twenty-one vessels to the river bottom to prevent their capture and form a barrier to the wharves. Possessing only two cannon, Alexandria’s citizens were terrified that their city would be sacked and burned like Washington. As the Royal Navy frigate Seahorse came gliding in to the town’s main anchorage, Mayor Charles Simms welcomed her commander, Captain J.A. Gordon, and readily agreed to refloat the merchant vessels, replace their sails and furnishings, and fill each one with produce and goods.
The U.S. Navy had done nothing to prevent Gordon’s long, slow parade up the Potomac, but Secretary Jones hoped to improvise some batteries on the heights “to annoy or destroy the enemy on his return down the river,” an assignment given to Rodgers to be executed by him or by Porter. Rodgers responded by sending Porter with 100 men to Washington, mainly to prevent looting. Rodgers declared that he would stay at Baltimore, where the people had “patriotic spirit” and a feisty militia general, Samuel Smith. Perhaps they would do better than the militia had at Washington. If not, Philadelphia was next.
The navy men focused on stopping Gordon. He had two frigates, three bomb ships, a rocket ship, and the merchant vessels. His fleet, twice the size of Porter’s in the Pacific, was an easy target, but the Americans had no guns and no ships. At Alexandria, the British picked up the pace with the hope of sailing by the end of August. Porter was to build batteries and earthworks downriver at White House Point, opposite the battery of Captain Oliver H. Perry, still without cannons.
Porter and his new friend Creighton crossed on horseback to the Virginia side of the river, along with a Lieutenant Charles Platt, and headed for the newly constructed battery downstream. The two captains were furious at having lost their new vessels in the Navy Yard fire—they could not stop talking about it—and now, in striking distance of the enemy, Porter had the crazy impulse to lash out at the British in Alexandria. Somehow he and his friends would wreak terrible vengeance on these invaders. Neither Creighton nor Platt understood the suicidal nature of Porter’s mania, or, if they did, they were too afraid to oppose him. Before they knew it, they were galloping down a dirt road into the city, then charging down a cobblestone street toward the waterfront. Creighton, large and powerful, was the one who first spotted British Midshipman John Went Fraser, not much bigger than Gatty Farragut, busy on a wharf while his boat’s crew waited in the dock.
It was a strange moment in the history of warfare, as two naval captains on horseback charged murderously onward through the middle of a city held by the enemy. Alexandria, defenseless before a squadron of British battleships, might be blown apart and burned down for any provocation. Creighton, charging onto the wharf, leaned down and grabbed the uniformed teenager by his collar and yanked him stunned across the pommel. They rode back up the street with the boy bucking and struggling and Creighton grasping him by his neckerchief. Suddenly it came unknotted, and Fraser fell from the horse, regained his feet, and lit out for the waterfront. T
he Americans tried again, gave up, and rode off through the suburbs, across the fields, and into the woods leading toward White House Point, still furious, still unavenged.
It was by luck alone that Fraser was not killed and that Porter and Creighton, designated leaders of a major operation against an enemy flotilla, were not captured. It was by something other than luck that the city of Alexandria was preserved from destruction. Hearing of the brutal treatment of his midshipman, Captain Gordon immediately raised his battle flag on the Seahorse and had his drummers beat the crew to quarters. Fortunately, Mayor Simms was on site and pleaded for a chance to explain. As he wrote to his wife, Nancy, safe at a farm, “your fear that something might occur to provoke them to fire the town was not unfounded.” The “naval officers rode into town like Saracens and seized on a poor unarmed midshipman, a mere stripling, and would have carried him off or killed him had not his neck handkerchief broke. This rash act excited the greatest alarm among the inhabitants of the town, women and children running and screaming through the streets, and hundreds of them laid out[side] that night without shelter,” thinking that their houses would be destroyed. As Simms prepared a message to Gordon, “one of the captains rushed into the parlor with the strongest expressions of rage on his countenance, bringing with him the midshipman who had been so valiantly assaulted by those gallant naval officers.” Despite Porter and Creighton, Simms saved his city.
Porter, Creighton, and Pratt arrived at the Virginia battery on White House Point that evening, September 1, and were joined by Secretary of State James Monroe and two militia generals. On the heights above the river, militiamen were chopping down trees and building earthworks atop a cliff, but no big guns had arrived. An eighteen-gun British brig sailed past and fired a broadside up toward the men. With two small four-pounders, Porter opened “a brisk fire” on the brig, which continued to blast away and made a leisurely escape down the Potomac. Porter did not tell Secretary Monroe about his earlier adventure in Alexandria. The battery consisted of three long eighteens and two long twelves in addition to six six-pounders and the two four-pounders, but most of the cannons were not properly mounted in carriages.