by Taylor, Alan
Willis’s persistence demonstrated the allure of the British as potential liberators among the restive slaves of the Tidewater. In March 1813 in Mathews County, the slaves who broke into John Ripley’s store called themselves “Englishmen.” In July 1814 in Calvert County, Maryland, a white farmer sought water by visiting a spring. Noting the slaves gathered there, he hid behind a tree and overheard “the negroes belonging to the said John J. Brooke huzzaing for the different British admirals.” Two days later, three of those cheering slaves fled to the warships. A later Chesapeake slave, Frederick Douglass, recalled looking longingly at sailing ships scudding along the bay as “freedom’s swift-winged angels” and vowing, “This very bay shall yet bear me into freedom.” Willis had felt the same way.3
By their enthusiasm for the British as liberators, the Chesapeake slaves made it so, flocking to them in unanticipated numbers that would compel a major rethinking of British strategy. At the start of their first Chesapeake campaign in 1813, the British officers were reluctant to take on more than a few black men as pilots and guides. During their second campaign in 1814, the British would seek and welcome hundreds of runaways, including women and children. Willis and other runaways would not take no for an answer.
Admirals
During 1812 the British proved slow in mustering their naval might against the Americans. Committed to a massive conflict against the mighty Napoléon, the Royal Navy was stretched thin around the globe. To command the undermanned North American squadron, based at Halifax, the Admiralty assigned Vice Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, who was better known for his lavish style of life than for his devotion to active service. Thomas Grenville of the Admiralty considered Warren “good for nothing but fine weather and easy sailing.” But Warren had some experience as a diplomat, and the imperial government empowered him to negotiate peace with the Americans. Keen to concentrate on fighting the French, the British wanted promptly to stop the distracting American war. In June, the empire suspended the Orders in Council, which had restricted American trade with Europe, hoping thereby to mollify the Americans enough to restore peace. Instead, they continued to fight to break up the British alliance with Indians and to seek an end to the impressment of sailors.4 In sum, Warren held two conflicting assignments: as a diplomat charged with seeking peace and as an admiral obliged to inflict the pain of war.
The Admiralty expected too much from Warren, who had too few warships to blockade the long American coast and protect the vulnerable British trade with the West Indies against American privateers. Warren’s squadron also suffered from a shortage of skilled seamen, which reflected the strain of a prolonged global war on the limited manpower of Great Britain. His standing with his superiors in the Admiralty eroded when some of the powerful American frigates slipped out to sea, where they captured or destroyed three British frigates. Used to defeating the French and Spanish, no matter the odds, the British felt shocked at their losses to the Americans. The defeats threatened British morale far beyond their paltry strategic significance. Rather than take the blame, the Admiralty heaped it on Warren.5
In December 1812 the British leaders decided to escalate the war against the Americans, to punish them for rejecting a quick peace. Napoléon’s recent crushing defeats in Russia also persuaded the imperial government that it could afford to divert additional ships and men from Europe to fight the Americans. By the summer of 1813 the Royal Navy had doubled the number of warships in American waters to 129: five times the strength of the American navy. The Admiralty directed Warren to take his warships into Chesapeake Bay to smite Maryland and Virginia, deemed the heart of American resources and the political base for the pro-war Republicans. By blockading trade capturing merchant ships and privateers and by raiding farms and villages, the British hoped to compel the Americans to pull back their troops invading Canada to defend the Chesapeake country instead. After a year’s restraint, the British meant to teach the Americans a bloody, burning lesson: that they should never provoke the empire.6
To promote greater aggression, the Admiralty sent Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn to serve as Warren’s second-in-command. Forty years old, Cockburn was in the prime of his health and nautical career, in contrast to Warren, who had seen his best days. As the son of a wealthy merchant, Cockburn had learned the self-righteous values of self-discipline and hard work, which distinguished his character from the aristocratic Warren. Cockburn entered the Royal Navy as a teenage midshipman. Zealous, able, and courageous, he won the esteem of his superiors, particularly Britain’s greatest admiral, Lord Horatio Nelson, who became his patron. In 1795, at the precocious age of twenty-three, Cockburn took command of a frigate posted in the Mediterranean. In later operations along the Dutch coast, Cockburn developed an expertise in amphibious operations, experience which subsequently served him well in the Chesapeake.7
Supremely self-confident, he was a flamboyant performer of command who delighted in military pageantry. Another officer described Cockburn as “very fond of Parade & shew, 60 men therefore to parade every morning” with “the Band playing ‘God Save the King.’” A great wit and remarkably calm under fire, he inculcated an esprit among his subordinate officers, who found his dash and activity contagious. Cockburn also encouraged and promoted talented young officers, who became deeply devoted to their patron. One midshipman fondly recalled “that undaunted seaman, Rear-Admiral George Cockburn, with his sun-burned visage, and his rusty gold-laced hat—an officer who never spared himself, either night or day, but shared on every occasion, the same toil, danger, and privation” as the petty officers.8
Devoted to his king and empire, Cockburn disdained the Americans, for indirectly helping the French and for harboring British deserters. He shared the contempt of all British officers for the American declaration of war as cowardly and treacherous because made at a critical moment in the empire’s desperate struggle against Napoléon. One officer complained that the Americans “snarled at us like curs, when a bull is being baited; for while we were tossing the [French] dogs in front, they took the opportunity of biting our heels.” The British officers longed to punish the Americans for their temerity. Once humbled by defeat, surely they would reject the Republicans, restore the Federalists to power, and accept British leadership in commerce and diplomacy.9
Raids
While ravaging the Chesapeake shores and shipping, admirals Cockburn and Warren were supposed to avoid great risks, for the empire could ill afford any losses of men or ships. Instead of mounting mass assaults on strongly fortified positions, the admirals were supposed to make smaller and safer raids on poorly defended places. British leaders remembered the catastrophic defeats on land that had cost them Burgoyne’s and Cornwallis’s armies during the last unhappy war in America. To avoid repeating the humiliations of the American Revolution, the British avoided major battles and probes deep inland where their precious men might get ambushed in the woods, picked off by riflemen, and surrounded by superior numbers. One officer concluded, “To penetrate up the country amidst pathless forests and boundless deserts, and to aim at permanent conquest is out of the question.” The British came to harass rather than to conquer America.10
The British perceived the vast American landscape as an unconquerable foe. Coming from a mild, rainy, compact, and cultivated island, they felt awed by the bigger, wilder land and volatile climate of the Chesapeake. “Low, flat, sandy banks covered with pines is all we see,” Rear Admiral Edward Codrington reported from his warship. The naval officers regarded the riverside farms and plantations as pleasant oases in the midst of “the boundless forests” of massive trees that stretched around and behind them. And the British suffered from the blistering summer sun and clouds of mosquitoes. Lieutenant James Scott recalled faces “bloated, swelled, and disfigured by the smarting, itching incisions of . . . these bloodthirsty devils. The heat was suffocating.” And the sudden, violent storms of summer sometimes capsized barges and smaller warships. After one storm of thunder, rain, and wind, a naval c
aptain reported, “we saw immense trees torn up by the roots, [and] barns blown down like the card houses of children.” Codrington concluded, “This Chesapeake is like a new world.” It was a strange and frightful new world for men of the sea from a distant island.11
Rather than invade the daunting land, the British usually kept close to the security of their warships during the campaign of 1813. Cockburn insisted that the Americans’ “Rifles & the thickness of their Woods . . . constitute their principal, if not their only, Strength.” When the British did venture inland, their operations often went badly awry owing to faulty information. “We have [a] nasty sort of fighting here amongst creeks and bushes, and lose men without show. . . . It is an inglorious warfare,” lamented a British officer. In August, Sir Sidney Beckwith sadly reported that his troops became confused when fired upon while “moving thro’ the thick wood” about four miles from the bay. After his spooked men shot three of their own by mistake, Beckwith decried “the extreme imprudence of risking such Troops” in the American woods. A Tidewater man happily noted, “The enemy does not like to put his feet on our shores, as many parts thereof are covered with pine & they know not what force we may have.”12
Instead, the admirals exploited the superior mobility of their ships to mount hit-and-run raids before the land-bound American militia respond in force. To maximize impact and minimize risk, the warships roamed up and down the bay, alarming all shores and making, in Warren’s words, “sudden & secret attacks at those points in which the Enemy is most vulnerable.” The American secretary of the navy aptly attributed the British strategy to “our extensive and navigable waters and their great naval superiority.”13
By targeting shipping and exposed villages, the British took many prizes while suffering few casualties. “Never was there a finer opportunity to make our fortunes,” one officer exulted. While the big ships of the line and frigates kept to the deeper waters in the middle of the bay, the shallower-draft sloops and schooners probed up the rivers, “searching out, capturing, and destroying every vessel or craft floating on the waters,” as Lieutenant Scott put it. The British burned the older ships but loaded the better ones with loot and sent them off to Bermuda and Halifax for sale, with the prize money divided among the capturing officers and crews.14
Barges filled with armed sailors and marines also landed to plunder exposed farms, plantations, and villages, but the British fled to their ships as soon as the local militia assembled in threatening numbers. In a game of cat and mouse, the British warships and barges would approach a point, attracting a concentration of alarmed militia, before sailing away to an unguarded point to raid. Scott exulted, “Our business was generally achieved before they could possibly reach us, from the circuitous track they were obliged to pursue. . . . The poor militiamen were fairly worried out of their lives, [for] they knew no repose by night or by day” as the British raiders “were here, and there, and everywhere.” One British officer aptly called the strategy a “species of milito-nautico-guerilla-plundering warfare.”15
Civil War
The dirty secret of the Chesapeake operation was that the Royal Navy depended on local help to sustain the blockade, for their crews needed fresh water and provisions from the farms and plantations along the shore. The British also relied on American pilots to guide them around the treacherous shoals and up the shallow rivers. In addition, the naval officers paid informants to reveal the strong and weak points of the American defenses. Deftly deploying flattery, trickery, and money, Cockburn cultivated suppliers, guides, pilots, and spies. He learned much simply by reading the American newspapers, which reported military deployments in surprising detail. A visitor noted that the admiral routinely received “newspapers, smoking from the press, and every other information they could obtain to our strength, dispositions of force, &c.”16
Many Americans readily sold their wares and principles for British gold. Loading their vessels with cattle, poultry, sheep, hogs, and vegetables, they sailed straight for British warships while flying a white flag. By Cockburn’s prearrangement, the British “captured” the ships, took off the cargo, but then generously paid the captains and released their ships to return home with a phony story. One canny captain damaged his sails, “to shew when he went home, that he had been fired at and compelled (sorely against his will!) to go along-side one of the enemy’s ships.” In another trick, the merchant captain hid a cargo of provisions beneath a load of lumber. After buying the food, Cockburn gave the obliging captain a pass to sail unmolested through the British fleet to another American port to sell the lumber, thereby making a double profit.17
On islands and exposed points where resistance was futile, the inhabitants sold livestock and provisions to the raiders. In April 1813 the British landed in force on Spesutie Island, Maryland, and threatened to burn homes. “This had the desired effect & we procured a prodigious quantity of everything,” Major Marmaduke Wybourn reported. In August on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a militia commander complained that the illicit trade with the enemy “was so great, as to be highly criminal.”18
The British cooperated with the tender consciences and cunning evasions of their new friends, who wanted to keep secret their assistance to the enemy. A British officer explained, “The plan agreed on was this: they were to drive [their cattle] down to a certain point, where we were to land and take possession; for the inhabitants being all militiamen, and having too much patriotism to sell food to ‘King George’s men,’ they used to say, ‘put the money under such a stone or tree, pointing to it, and then we can pick it up, and say we found it.’” Sometimes the raiders left payment in a cupboard for the poultry or livestock of a cooperative farmer.19
The British suffered some stinting periods of short rations but in general, their squadron derived plenty to eat from the shores of the Chesapeake. Lieutenant Scott concluded, “Fish, flesh, and fowl were obtained in abundance on the Chesapeake station.” Warren exulted, “I never saw a country so vulnerable, open to attack, or that affords the means of support to an enemy’s force, as the [United] States.” In late 1813 the official newspaper of the Madison administration, the National Intelligencer, warned that the enemy could not be defeated “while we continue to feed his armies and fleet.” In pursuit of profits, many Americans supplied the national enemy.20
In addition to the slaves, the Americans faced another internal enemy: themselves. A Baltimore newspaper lamented, “Certainly no country was ever cursed with so many traitors as we have.” Because the American law of treason required at least two witnesses to an overt act of war, prosecutors failed to convict any of the accused suppliers of provisions and information to Cockburn. At best, officials could harass the suspected traitors with arrests and brief stints in jail pending trial.21
By driving up the costs of war and ruining those who resisted, the British hoped to promote political divisions and perhaps even a civil war within the United States. Warren predicted, “It is possible that the increasing Demands for cash & consequently Taxes may occasion convulsion & Disorder among the several States.” He reasoned that Americans had to learn harsh lessons before they would renounce their unjust war and oust their bumbling Republican leaders, embracing instead the pro-British Federalists. Another officer explained that the Americans needed to “experience the real handicaps and miseries of warfare. . . . So it is with democracy at war. Burn their houses, plunder their property, block up their harbours, and destroy their shipping,” then but only then “you will be stopped by entreaties for peace.”22
Although waged by distinct governments, the War of 1812 was also a civil war between kindred people sharing the same language and cultural heritage. Indeed, combatants often struggled to tell friend from foe. A British officer of marines recalled that during night attacks on the Chesapeake shores, the British sailors had to wear “white bands round their arms & hats, to distinguish English from Americans.”23
Americans and Britons waged the war with familiar words as well as with weapons. A
ppealing to similar values of freedom and Christianity, the two sides employed persuasion to weaken their enemy by making converts. Admiral Warren complained that American captors politically seduced their British prisoners: “every art [is] practiced to persuade them to become American Citizens, which, from the peculiar situation of the two Countries speaking the same Language is more easy to accomplish than in any other part of the world.” While the Americans enticed deserters from the Royal Navy, the British worked to divide the Americans by rewarding Federalists and punishing the Republicans. British sailors could become Americans by deserting; Federalists could become British allies by supplying the blockading ships.24
Both sides regarded the war as a second act in a drama launched by the American Revolution. During the new war, some British officers called the Americans “rebels,” as if they had not truly won their independence and the revolution was not yet lost to the empire. Because of the cultural overlap between Americans and Britons, similar people fought on both sides. British immigrants lived throughout the United States, and British forces included many sons of the Loyalist refugees from the revolution. “It is quite shocking to have men who speak our own language brought in wounded; one feels as if they were English peasants, and that we are killing our own people,” declared one British officer posted in the Chesapeake. He added, “There are numbers of officers, of the navy in particular, whose families are American, and their fathers in one or two instances are absolutely living in the very towns we are trying to burn.” For example, the British general Sir Sidney Beckwith had cousins in Virginia.25
Although a fierce supporter of the war, St. George Tucker had relatives from Bermuda holding high commands in the British military. His nephew John G. P. Tucker became a colonel in the British army and fought against the Americans on the Niagara front. During the war, Colonel Tucker wrote to his uncle, “Altho we are politically the most determined Enemies, yet our private feelings can never cease to impel us to acts of friendship & kindness” provided they did not contradict “the first duty which we owe to our Country.” He signed, “Your affectionate nephew.” Another Tucker nephew commanded HMS Cherub, which helped to capture a powerful American frigate, but he suffered severe wounds in the battle. St. George Tucker and his brother Thomas felt tormented by the tension between their intense family ties and their equally fervid patriotism. Thomas consoled St. George: “How lamentable, how distressing, my beloved brother, that friends so truly dear to us shou’d be engaged in the service of the enemy. I have always depreciated the consequences of a war in which the nearest & dearest relatives are engaged on opposite sides, & liable to become the murderers of each other.”26
