John Barth - Letters

Andrew goes first to Kalorama, to advise Ruth Barlow (through an old servant-friend from the rue de Vaugirard; Ruth will not receive him) to place her valuables and herself under the diplomatic immunity of her former tenant, the French Ambassador Sérurier. By the simple expedient of installing himself then in the lobby of McKeowin’s Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, where orders and counterorders come and go like transient guests, he quickly ascertains that no serious measures of defense have been accomplished. Of the 1,000 regulars and 15,000 militia authorized by Armstrong for the district, only 500 of the former and 1,600 of the latter actually exist, most of them in Baltimore, which the secretary still believes to be the British target. The rest, but for Barney’s flotilla, are scattered all over southern Maryland; the city is virtually open. Only Madison and Monroe appear to believe that Washington is truly in danger; they seem about to take its defense into their own hands, but as of the Perseid meteor shower on August 12, they have not yet done so.

Thus Andrew’s report to Cockburn, Cochrane, and General Ross aboard the Tonnant on August 15, Napoleon’s 45th birthday. As Cockburn foretold, Cochrane’s resolution has faltered en route from Bermuda: their 5,000 men are insufficient to assault a capital city some 40 miles inland, in absolutely equatorial summer heat. Ross inclines to agree: they will do better to pack it in and head north to Rhode Island. Only Andrew’s report (together with a little demonstration raid up the St. Mary’s River for Ross’s benefit, and a final review of the options open to them if any real resistance should materialize) saves Cockburn’s plan. On the 17th the final strategy is outlined to the assembled captains: a squadron of eight ships to go at once up the Potomac, destroy its fortifications to clear an alternate route for the army’s retreat if the Patuxent should be cut off, and capture Alexandria. Byron’s cousin to take the Menelaus up the Bay, make a reconnaissance feint at Baltimore and the upper Eastern Shore as if to cut off the roads to Philadelphia and New York. The rest of the force to navigate as far up the Patuxent as possible and march on from there. On Thursday the 18th, Andrew with them, they labor up the narrowing river against contrary winds and tides; by anchoring time, at steamy sunset, they are strung out for nine miles, from Benedict to Broom Island, the deeper-draft ships farthest down. The Patuxent, its high handsome wooded banks, are deserted. Tomorrow the troops will disembark with three days’ rations for the 40-mile overland march to Nottingham, to Upper Marlboro…

& Washington!

Here Andrew interrupts his narrative to quote a New York Post editorial published some dozen days later: “Certain it is, that when General Ross’ official account of the battle and the capture and destruction of our CAPITOL is published in England, it will hardly be credited by Englishmen. Even here it is still considered a dream.” He goes on to invoke Andrée: Give me the words, Muse to whom these words are all addrest, to tell that dream, your dream come true: Prevost’s revenge for York, ours for Tecumseh!

As if to repersuade himself that his conviction is firm, he reviews the moments when he might have “undream’d the dream”: a forged letter from Madison to Armstrong, say, urging him to “maintain his pretense of indifference & confusion, till the enemy may be cut off from all retreat,” would have alarmed Ross and Cochrane past all of Cockburn’s suasion. A tip to Secretary Monroe, to place sharpshooters at Benedict to pick off Cockburn the moment he steps ashore — the fleet would be altogether demoralized.

Now in the three days’ march from Benedict come new such cruxes. The tidewater August weather is unnerving; hardened veterans of the Peninsular Wars fall out by the dozens as anvil clouds pile up through the afternoon, then huddle awed as a furious American thunderstorm, like nothing they’ve seen in Britain or Spain, shocks their first night’s bivouac in Maryland. A bit of a night ambush on the heels of it, by a hundred or so militiamen painted like Indians, and Ross would have packed his army back to more civilized carnage. On Sunday the 21st, permitted to reconnoiter on his own, Andrew crosses paths with James Monroe himself, alone on horseback, down below their encampment! Frustrated by inaction and discrepant reports, Monroe has persuaded the President to let him leave the State Department, saddle up, and scout the enemy personally — the first and last time a cabinet officer has ever done so — and he has got himself behind the enemy he is trying to locate. Andrew makes no sign, either to warn Monroe or to capture him. By that same Sunday evening Ross is fretful at the slowness of their advance, their distance from the fleet; he has half a mind to forgo even their immediate target, Joshua Barney’s flotilla at Pig Point. Cockburn must be at him incessantly with encouragements, till Ross agrees to give that objective one more day. When Cockburn leaves him on the Monday to lead a little force of attack barges up to Pig Point, Andrew considers telling Ross that Barney has already fused his ships for scuttling and removed their cannons to defend the approaches to Washington. He refrains; the boats are blown; Ross settles down nervously with his army for the night at Upper Marlboro.

Seven miles away, at Long Old Fields, the American defenders are noisily encamped under General Winder, a Baltimore attorney. The threat to Washington is clear now to everyone except the secretary of war, and a bit of defense is beginning confusedly to rally: 3,000 infantry, mostly militia, and above 400 cavalry — of which Ross has none — are strengthened now by Barney’s 500 flotillamen and their artillery. Andrew contemplates the map. An open road shortcuts from Long Old Fields and under Upper Marlboro to the Patuxent: in one hour Winder’s cavalry could cut off the British rear while his infantry move against their left. Even if the attack cannot be sustained, it will move Ross to withdraw, the more readily now that his token objective has been accomplished. Andrew says nothing.

Even so, General Ross is so inclined to retreat that his junior officers secretly send for Cockburn again to give their commander another pep talk. It would be no problem to have the admiral ambuscado’d en route to Dr. Beanes’s house, where Ross is billeted… The fact is, Earl Bathurst’s orders to the general explicitly forbid his engaging in “any extended operations at any distance from the coast”; it is Cockburn’s task, and those ambitious junior officers’, to persuade Ross that Bathurst himself would rescind that order before such an opportunity. For the moment they succeed: Andrew and one of Cockburn’s lieutenants are dispatched on the 23rd back to Cochrane’s flagship at Benedict to report the destruction of Barney’s flotilla, the taking of 13 schooners full of prize tobacco (which the Royal Marines are now sending downriver), and the army’s intention to move on Washington next day.

Here is Andrew’s last, best chance. As apprehensive as General Ross, Admiral Cochrane seizes upon the news. He too has been looking at the map: how easily a modest force of cavalry could cut off the army’s rear and — more alarming! — how easily a few barges, scuttled across the lower Patuxent channel, could bottle up his fleet, make them sitting ducks for artillery mounted on the riverbanks! They have accomplished something, with very small loss; who knows but what Barney’s boats and those tobacco schooners might have been a choice bait to lead them so vulnerably far upriver? He gives Andrew and Lieutenant Scott an emphatic and unambiguous letter for Cockburn, to be eaten if they are in danger of capture and delivered orally should they escape: he and Ross have done enough; they are to return to the fleet at once. Under no circumstances are they to march on to Washington!