by James Laxer
As historian Donald E. Graves points out in his history of the Battle of Lundy’s Lane, the casualty numbers do not tell the full story: “Only the most primitive arrangements existed for the removal of the wounded — there were no ambulances; common supply wagons served instead. The wounded American enlisted personnel had to suffer the agonies of a nearly twenty-mile ride in unsprung and uncovered vehicles to Fort Erie, while the British wounded faced a similar tortuous journey to Fort George.
“. . . The wounded collected by the British were taken to Fort George and placed in the charge of Surgeon William Dunlop of the 89th Foot. When Dunlop inquired where he was to put them, he was ‘shown a ruinous fabric, built of logs’ known as Butler’s Barracks . . . The small buildings were so crowded that the wounded ‘had to be laid on straw on the floor . . .’
“Conditions in these hospitals [at Fort George and elsewhere during the war] were appalling. Lacking any form of anaesthesia, medical personnel could do little to lessen the misery and had to leave the wounded in pain until they lapsed into unconsciousness or died. In 1814 military hospitals after a major battle resembled nothing so much as noisy charnel-houses . . .”13
At Lundy’s Lane, the professionalism of the soldiers on both sides outpaced the professionalism of those running the medical facilities to treat the wounded. The ability of the soldiers to inflict mayhem was increasing more quickly than the ability of the caregivers to cope.
Following Lundy’s Lane, the Americans withdrew to their remaining stronghold on the Canadian side of the frontier, Fort Erie. There, they offered fierce resistance against an assault mounted by three thousand soldiers under the command of Lieutenant General Drummond. Originally a British fort, the small, well-constructed structure had been improved and extended by the Americans to include an earth wall that extended seven hundred yards to the south, bringing it to within fifty yards of the lake.14 The addition was needed to house the twenty-two hundred American troops at the site.
The prospect of unleashing a direct assault on the fort was a daunting one. Instead, Drummond launched a British raid across the Niagara River against Buffalo and Black Rock. If successful, the assault would threaten the American rear, cut off the Americans in Fort Erie from supplies, and force them out of the fort. The raid failed, however, and the U.S. troops stayed put in the fort. On August 15, Drummond launched a three-pronged assault on the American position, with each prong intended to take out one of the American batteries. The British attacks on the fort were intense and bloody, and breakthroughs were nearly achieved at certain points. The siege continued until the middle of September, with fierce assaults launched by both sides. With many of his men suffering from illness and fatigue, and with heavy rain making the conditions even more miserable, Drummond ended the siege, pulling his troops back to the Chippawa River. Despite their success in repelling the British attacks, the Americans found their position untenable for the long term.
On October 15, the British launched the HMS St. Lawrence on Lake Ontario, which prompted Chauncey to pull his vessels off the lake to the safe haven of Sackets Harbor. With this shift in the naval balance, supplying the American force at Fort Erie became too difficult to contemplate. On November 5, Major General George Izard pulled the U.S. troops out of Canada and demolished the fortifications at Fort Erie.
From the beginning of the war until November 1814, the fighting in the Niagara campaigns went on for 125 days, with four major battles, two minor actions, and a large number of skirmishes. It was the toughest and most drawn-out campaign of the War of 1812.
By the time the Niagara campaign was over, Upper Canada had changed. While the U.S. troops still occupied the southwestern corner of the province, any idea that the Americans were liberators was long gone, a casualty of the bitter fighting and the experience of occupation. Upper Canadians were becoming a people in their own right, with that combination of British and American characteristics, filtered through the lens of Canadian experience, that has made the English-Canadian identity so infuriatingly difficult to comprehend.
Chapter 17
Rockets’ Red Glare
THE BRITISH MILITARY STRATEGISTS were well aware that prevailing in ground initiatives alone would not win them the war against the United States. Throughout the conflict, the Royal Navy mounted a blockade along the American coast to deprive the United States of the bounties of commerce with other nations. U.S. exports and imports were both hard hit. For commercial interests and for the country’s port cities and towns, the blockade dealt a devastating blow. In commercial, seafaring New England, the blockade heightened the sullen outlook. Other American seaports, from New York to Baltimore and along the southern seaboard to New Orleans, also felt the pain.
In the summer of 1814, the British decided to strike at the solar plexus of the United States, in the vulnerable area of Chesapeake Bay. The great bay extends from Baltimore, Maryland, in the north almost to Virginia Beach in the south, and its lengthy coastline on both the east and the west was a constant invitation to the British to deploy their superior naval power. The bay also tempted them to strike at the political heart of the enemy, Washington D.C., and in the process to mete out reprisals for the burning and sacking of York and Newark the previous year.
The Americans were slow to assess the threat and take steps to counter it. During much of 1813, with British ships in the Chesapeake,1 a swift strike against the American capital was a live possibility. President James Madison perceived the risk, and on July 1, 1814, he convened an emergency meeting of his cabinet at the President’s House. This mansion was a glittering architectural jewel, an imposing edifice amid the vast spaces of a national capital that was only in the initial stages of construction. Although it was sometimes called the “White House,” that name only became official early in the twentieth century, during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.
News of Napoleon’s abdication had reached Washington by the time Madison called the cabinet into session. At the end of June, the president received dispatches from American diplomats in Europe warning that Britain could soon send thousands of experienced veterans to fight in North America. Present at the cabinet meeting were Madison’s confidants: Secretary of State James Monroe, Attorney General Richard Rush, and Secretary of the Navy William Jones. Also in attendance were the secretary of the treasury, the ailing George Campbell, and Secretary of War John Armstrong, a man whose strident manner repelled the others.2
At the time of the meeting, the national capital was much more an aspiration than an accomplished fact. In 1810, Washington’s population numbered a mere 8,200 citizens. Among them were 5,900 whites, fewer than 900 free blacks, and 1,400 slaves. By then, the town boasted more inhabitants than long-established and better-appointed Georgetown, five kilometres away. Many congressmen preferred to reside in Georgetown and commute to the capital. In 1810, Georgetown was inhabited by just under five thousand people, and over eleven hundred of them were slaves.3
The District of Columbia had been carved out of the marshy lowlands adjacent to the Potomac River. In addition to the President’s House on Pennsylvania Avenue, a mile away on a modest rise in the otherwise flat landscape, the magnificent Capitol was under construction.****
Madison, as he told the members of his cabinet, believed a British attack was imminent and recommended positioning several thousand men between the capital and the marine approaches to it along Chesapeake Bay. As a further precaution, he wanted ten to twelve thousand militiamen placed on standby in D.C., Maryland, and the neighbouring regions of Virginia. Those present at the emergency council agreed that the British were threatening to attack, but they had differing views on which city would be the primary target.
The problem for the U.S. was that few regular soldiers were available in the threatened region. Most of the regulars were deployed along the Niagara border and at various points as far south as New Orleans. The regulars were vastly better trained than t
he militia and would be a much more formidable match for British veterans should the time come for a serious battle.
The day after the cabinet met, the 10th Military District was created to cover the areas believed to be at risk.4 The government appointed Brigadier General William H. Winder to organize the defence of the new military district.5 A thirty-nine-year-old Baltimore lawyer whose uncle, Levin Winder, was the governor of Maryland, the brigadier general had landed the quintessential political appointment. His military experience was slight, though it did include having been captured at the Battle of Stoney Creek the previous year.
Winder rushed around his district, putting energy, if not effectiveness, into action. He badly needed troops and was not getting enough of them. The expiration of a military law in Pennsylvania deprived him of a potential force from that quarter. The new militia law in that state was not to take effect until October, leaving a large hole in Winder’s potential to mobilize effectively.6
To make matters worse, Winder was in constant conflict with Secretary of War John Armstrong, who dismissed the very idea that the British were planning an attack on Washington. On the afternoon of July 14, the lead ships of the British armada sailed into Chesapeake Bay. Even with this clear signal of aggression, the secretary of war scornfully told the head of the Washington militia, “By God, they would not come with such a fleet without meaning to strike somewhere. But they certainly will not come here! What the devil will they do here? No! No! Baltimore is the place, Sir. That is of so much more consequence.”7 To Armstrong, it seemed logical that the British would deliver a blow against the great commercial port rather than the country’s capital, which was still a raw town.
Sir Alexander Cochrane, the fifty-six-year-old commander-in-chief of the North American Station, was in charge of the British expeditionary force. The British plan was to strike first at Washington and then to take aim at Annapolis and Baltimore. In a letter to his superiors in London, he asserted that the U.S. capital could be “either destroyed or laid under contribution.”8 For months prior to the arrival of the British fleet, Rear Admiral George Cockburn, Cochrane’s subordinate, had acquired considerable experience commanding his own flotilla and laying waste to settlements in raids along the Chesapeake. He was so detested that one American offered a cash prize in exchange for his head and each of his ears.9
Cockburn’s harsh unwillingness to spare settlements and homes that fell under his sway distressed even the officers who served under him. On one occasion, Cockburn, along with British soldiers who included fellow officer Sir Peter Parker, entered a Maryland village and encountered three young women who had remained at their home to beg for it to be spared. Cockburn, oblivious to their pleas, told the women he knew their father was a colonel serving in the state militia. He announced that their house would be burned down in ten minutes, and that they could remove their possessions within that time. While the sisters and their sixteen-year-old brother pleaded with Cockburn, Parker joined in to protest the demolition. Unmoved, the admiral counted down the minutes on his watch and called in his men to set the building alight. Parker wept along with the family members as the house burned to the ground.10
Cockburn believed that Washington could be taken easily. He wrote to Cochrane that seizing a capital city was “always so great a blow to the government of a country.”11 He recommended landing at Benedict, on the Patuxent River, located less than eighty kilometres southeast of Washington. He reasoned that the British could live off the bounties of the countryside by commandeering the food they needed and acquiring horses to haul their cannon to Washington.
“To distract and divide the enemy” as the British army marched on Washington from the east, Cockburn favoured sending ships up the Potomac River to threaten the capital and devastate its approaches from the south.12 The assault was aided by local residents, including runaway slaves, who could be bribed or cajoled into providing pertinent information. During their campaign in the Chesapeake, the British issued proclamations declaring that slaves who joined their ranks would be set free and resettled on British territory.13
In mid-August, Cochrane’s ships anchored close to the mouths of the Patuxent and Potomac Rivers so he could hold a council of war with his subordinates. Cockburn would direct operations on the water. On land, Major General Robert Ross, an Irish-born forty-eight-year-old seasoned officer who had been picked for his role in North America by the Duke of Wellington, would direct the armed forces. Respected, even beloved, by his soldiers for his valour in combat, Ross was preternaturally more cautious than his naval counterpart.
Once the mission shifted from water to land, Ross would outrank Cockburn, which could engender friction between the two, since Cockburn was far from deferential. Indeed, later in his career, Cockburn was chosen for the ticklish task of escorting Napoleon Bonaparte by ship to his second, and final, place of exile, the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic. Bonaparte discovered in his personal relations with Cockburn that the bristly British admiral had no problem standing up to the dethroned emperor. Napoleon and Cockburn paced the deck of the ship and played cards on their long voyage. “It is clear he is still inclined to act the sovereign occasionally, but I cannot allow it,” Cockburn noted in his diary.14
Compounding American confusion about the true goals of the operation, the British made it appear as though they were primarily intent on crushing the minor American naval presence on the Chesapeake, under the command of Commodore Joshua Barney. A hero of the Revolutionary War, Barney specialized in harassing British ships on the Chesapeake.15 Pursuing Barney’s ships into the dead end of the Patuxent River would allow the British to make quick work of this persistent adversary. More important, it would position British troops not more than two days’ march from Washington.16
The British conceived a two-pronged plan of attack. Four thousand troops, the strike force, would be on board the ships heading up the Patuxent River. Meanwhile, a squadron of vessels armed with rockets and bombs would venture into the Potomac. Under the command of Captain James Gordon, who had lost a leg during a naval engagement in the war against Napoleon, this latter force would attempt to destroy Fort Warburton, which guarded the approaches to the District of Columbia. Then Gordon’s troops would provide cover for the British units during their withdrawal from Washington, after the planned seizure and destruction of the federal government’s public buildings.17
The initial target of the flotilla that sailed up the Patuxent was the settlement of Benedict, which had been established to export tobacco to Britain from the earliest days of European settlement, and so was equipped with wharves and warehouses. Two frigates negotiated the shallow waters, drawing close to the village, while the heavier ships of the line had to drop anchor miles short. Beginning at 2:00 a.m. on August 19, boats were lowered over the side of the heavy ships to ferry the troops upstream. After rowing for a couple of miles, the soldiers boarded the lighter frigates.
Those who had long been penned up on the stiflingly hot ships were glad to come ashore. Disobeying their orders not to take anything from farmers without paying for it, many made off with pigs, chickens, and sheep. Some found fresh milk and cream abandoned in houses. Shooting wild birds and hares soon became great sport for men who were happy to stretch their legs and enjoy the fertile countryside.
To proceed with the attack on Washington, two hundred men dragged ashore the heavy assault equipment, which included rockets, ammunition, two 3-pounders, a 9-pounder, and a 5 1/2-inch howitzer.18
With members of the top American leadership still disagreeing about whether Washington or Baltimore was the first British target, Secretary of State James Monroe decided to scout the area himself that same day. Accompanied by a small party of men on horseback, the former cavalry colonel rode off in the direction of Benedict. To his alarm, he witnessed British soldiers advancing through the woods with no U.S. abatis to block them.19
By the afternoon of Aug
ust 20, having encountered no American resistance, British soldiers were marching in three columns upstream toward Nottingham, about thirty-two kilometres distant. Each was equipped with three days’ worth of rations, which amounted to three pounds of pork and two and a half pounds of biscuit. They were accompanied by small craft on the adjacent Patuxent. The stifling heat, the poor condition of the men after months on board ships, and a heavy thunderstorm during the first night of the advance made the going slow and difficult. On the late afternoon of August 21, the troops reached Nottingham. The hard-driving Cockburn was already there, and he set out the following day in pursuit of Barney’s flotilla. Farther upstream, at Pig Point, Cockburn and his men came upon the sorry remains of the American naval unit. Sixteen of Barney’s seventeen craft had been blown up under his orders, leaving only one to be captured.
Winder sent no troops forward to slow the British advance. He had managed to assemble a force of about two thousand soldiers, including three hundred regulars, at Bladensburg, a few miles northeast of Washington. In command there was Brigadier General Tobias Stansbury.
On August 22, panic hit Washington. Much of the citizenry abandoned the city, and by the following evening few women and children were still in residence. Uncertain about what course to follow, Winder pulled back the troops directly under his command to Old Fields. At this location, about thirteen kilometres from the capital and the same distance from Bladensburg, the brigadier general was reinforced by the arrival of Barney and his four hundred sailors, now without ships.
Having ordered most records of the federal government to be removed from Washington — they were taken in linen bags on carts and wagons to a house in Leesburg, Virginia, about fifty-six kilometres distant — President Madison decided to visit the troops to raise morale.20 The diminutive chief executive looked anything but martial when he turned up at Stansbury’s camp with two duelling pistols strapped around his middle.
