British Burns Washington, D.C.

This series has five easy 5 minute installments. This first installment: Inadequate Preparations of the United States Army.

Introduction
James Madison was a great constitutional thinker but a terrible war leader. He was just not up to the demands of The War of 1812. The British emphatically demonstrated this point when they captured the capital city of the United States and burned it.

The stories of Dolly Madison saving precious paintings and other treasured national artifacts make for heroic stories while we consider that such heroism should not have been made necessary to begin with. With the US navy wiped from the seas only the British forces being tied down with the war in Europe, kept the US from defeat.

Meanwhile, unknown to both sides, a general who could have saved the United States was about to make his international debut. This would be next year.

In 1814, President Madison chose General W. H. Winder, a tried officer, lately released from long detention in Canada as a prisoner of war. He took command of the district in June. The defenses of Washington were very weak — no forts nor guns, and only a few hundred men. Such additional preparations as could be made were wholly inadequate. Meanwhile the British were marshalling their forces for a movement against the capital.

The selections are from:

• The History of the United States of America by Richard Hildreth published in 1880.
• Campaigns of the British Army in Washington and New Orleans by George R. Gleig published in 1821.

For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

There’s 3.5 installments by Richard Hildreth and 1.5 installments by George R. Gleig.

We begin with Richard Hildreth (1807-1865). He was a journalist and a historian. He also wrote against slavery.

Time: August 24, 1814
Place: USA Capital City

The forces assigned to Winder, on taking the command of his new military district, were some fragments of regulars, less than 500, mostly raw recruits in and about Washington, including the garrison of the fort of that name below Alexandria; the militia of the District of Columbia, some 2000 strong; and an authority, in case of actual or menaced invasion, to call upon the State of Maryland for 6000 militia, the whole of her lately assigned quota, upon Virginia for 2000, and upon Pennsylvania for 5000. Winder proposed to call out at once a part of this militia, and to place them in a central camp, whence they might march to Washington, Annapolis, or Baltimore, either of which might be approached so near by water as to be liable to be struck at before a force could be collected. The President seemed inclined to this plan, but it was opposed by Armstrong, who objected to it that militia were always the most effective when first called out. Baltimore, he thought, could defend itself; Washington he did not believe would be attacked.

Calls for militia were freely made to garrison Buffalo and Sackett’s Harbor, and thereby to sustain Brown’s invasion of Canada but Armstrong hesitated at the additional expense of the calls proposed by Winder and, in the existing state of the finances, not without reason. Of the loan of twenty-five million dollars, sole resource for conducting the campaign, the Government had yet asked for but ten million. This amount had been subscribed at the former rate of 88 per cent., not without difficulty, and a condition, as to half of it, that the contractors should participate in any more favorable terms granted to any future lenders. Even on these terms there had been failures of payment by the contractors to the extent of two million dollars, so that Armstrong’s hesitation on the score of expense is not so remarkable. Winder, being thus left to his own responsibility, and cautioned besides to avoid unnecessary calls for militia, of course made none till the emergency became unquestionable. Nor was this reluctance of Armstrong the only difficulty. The Governor of Maryland, on receiving the President’s proclamation, hesitated, at this moment of danger, to ask volunteers from the eastern shore. He doubted if, under the militia law of the State, a draft would be effectual, and the War Department finally agreed to accept, in lieu of the quota to be detached by Maryland, the troops already called out by the State authority for the defense of Baltimore, thus reducing the quota of that State to less than three thousand men.

The Governor of Virginia had already ordered twenty regiments of militia to hold themselves in constant readiness for the field; and a correspondence backward and forward, as to whether these orders did not substantially meet the proclamation, consumed the time which ought to have been employed in having the quota ready to march. The Legislature of Pennsylvania, at their last session, had passed an act for the reorganization of the militia, which vacated all existing commissions after August 1st, but, strange to say, without any provision for completing the proposed reorganization before the end of October; thus leaving the State for two months without any legal militia at all, and rendering it impossible to make the detachment which the President had ordered.

So things stood when news reached Washington that a new and large British fleet had arrived in the Chesapeake. This was Cochrane, from Bermuda, with General Ross on board, and a division, some four thousand strong, of Wellington’s late army. To this fleet Cockburn’s blockading squadron soon joined itself, adding to Ross’s force a thousand marines, and a hundred armed and disciplined negroes, deserters from the plantations bordering on the Chesapeake. As the ships passed the Potomac some of the frigates entered that river, but the main fleet, some sixty vessels in all, stood on for the Patuxent, which they ascended to Benedict, where the frith begins to narrow. There, some fifty miles from Washington, the troops were landed without a sign of opposition, though there were several detachments of Maryland militia, under State orders, at points not far distant. As Ross had no horses, his men, some four thousand five hundred in all, were organized into a light infantry corps. Three pieces of light artillery were dragged along by a hundred sailors. As many more transported munitions. The soldiers carried at their backs eighty rounds of ammunition and three days’ provisions.

Enervated as the troops had been by the close confinement of the voyage, and wilting under the burning sun of that season, it was with difficulty, at first, that they staggered along. Nothing but the constant efforts of their officers prevented them from dissolving into a long train of stragglers. The felling of a few trees, where the road crossed the frequent streams and swamps, would have seriously delayed, if not effectually have stopped, them. But in that part of Maryland, a level region of cornfields and pine forests, the slave population exceeded the whites, and the frightened planters thought of little except to save their own throats from insurgent knives, and their human property from English seduction.

In the slaves the British had good friends and sure means of information. With the trained negroes in front, they advanced cautiously, the first day only six miles, but still without encountering the slightest opposition, feeling their way up the left bank of the Patuxent — a route which threatened Barney’s squadron in front, Alexandria and Washington on the left, and Annapolis and Baltimore on the right. Cockburn accompanied the army, and from his dashing, buccaneering spirit, and long experience in that neighborhood, became the soul of the enterprise.

George R. Gleig begins here.

More information here and here and below.

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