Patriotic Fire (7 page)

F
ollowing his retreat from Moscow in the bitter winter of 1813, Napoleon Bonaparte saw his European empire beginning to crumble. His armies were defeated time and again by an allied coalition of Great Britain and most of the other countries of Europe. At the same time Jackson was slaughtering the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend, Paris was captured and Napoleon sent into exile, thus freeing tens of thousands of soldiers of the British empire to deal with the Americans.

Accordingly, by the summer of 1814 some 40,000 British troops had been shipped to the American theater as well as additional numbers of British warships. The Americans, though, could by now themselves muster nearly 45,000 men in uniform, but these were spread all over the land, and no one could know where a British force would strike.

They found out soon enough when a British army from Canada occupied Maine and took control of its public property, while at the same time an armada sailed into the Chesapeake with the intention of taking Washington and Baltimore. News of the British arrival caused alarm in both cities, since everyone recalled the depredations a year earlier when a British force had attacked Hampton, Virginia. In that sorry episode, according to a British officer who was there, “every horror was committed with impunity, rape, murder, pillage, and not a man was punished!”*
 
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Thus, the frightened citizens of Washington and Baltimore wondered, if the British had done that to sleepy little Hampton, what would they do to
them
?

On August 24, 1814, the British landed in southern Maryland and marched on the nation’s capital with 4,500 veterans, many of them veterans of the Napoleonic campaigns, who simply steamrolled over the green 7,000-man American militia that Secretary of War Armstong had hastily assembled.*
 
²⁸
Under the command of Major General Robert Ross and Admiral Alexander Cochrane, the redcoats entered Washington that same evening and set fire to all the public buildings, including the Capitol, the White House, and the Library of Congress. Spared only was the U.S. Patent Office, presumably on the theory that valuable things might be taken from it instead.

The librarian of Congress had quickly grabbed the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the papers of George Washington, and other sacred documents and put them in carts to be taken into the Virginia countryside and, it was hoped, out of danger. (The next time this occurred was on December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, when all important and irreplaceable documents were shipped off in railroad trains to the U.S. gold reserve safes at Fort Knox, Kentucky.)

Administration officials, including President Madison, fled into the countryside, but not before the president’s saucy little wife, Dolley, saved a portrait of George Washington and other historic keepsakes. So hasty was their exit that a full dinner table in the White House dining room, set with china, silver, and crystal, was left with a still-warm meal served on its plates—enjoyed with irony and mirth by British soldiers just before they burned the place down, or so it was said. The inability to defend even its capital city became the conclusive disaster for American arms.

With Washington laid in ashes, and much plunder removed, the British next turned on Baltimore, which they attacked on September 12, after landing about fourteen miles below the city. There, however, things began to go wrong. The Baltimoreans had assembled a militia army estimated at 10,000 to 20,000 men and built up a strong line of earthworks. To the dismay of the British troops, along the route of march General Ross was killed by an American sniper, and no amount of bombarding by His Majesty’s imperial navy could bring Fort McHenry—key to the city—to surrender.*
 
²⁹
When “dawn’s early light” revealed that Fort McHenry was still standing and that the Americans were firmly entrenched in their lines, Admiral Cochrane sourly called off the attack and sailed out of the bay, but not before his men plundered private property, razed churches, and even looted graveyards, prompting a congressman to exclaim that their conduct “would have disgraced cannibals!”

The British operations against Washington and Baltimore were never intended to actually occupy those cities, but rather were intended as a diversion to remove American attention from New Orleans, a port with a population of about 25,000—by far the largest and most important city west of the Appalachians. Nevertheless, the attacks were humiliating for the citizenry, who could not understand how their soldiers had let such things happen. A young minister passing through gloomily described “the traces of devastation and death . . . visible in the half-covered graves along the highway between Baltimore and Washington. The blackened walls of the Capitol at Washington, and the destruction in every part of the city, presented an awful picture of the horrors of war.”

P
recisely what the British intentions were regarding Louisiana will probably never be known, but some of the facts and questions follow. The British government never considered Napoleon the legitimate ruler of France, and so whatever transactions he made while in power—including selling the lands of the Louisiana Purchase to the United States in 1803—were deemed null and void. That having been said, the British claimed to be anxious to conclude the war and entered into peace negotiations with the Madison administration at the very time that Cochrane’s fleet was sailing west to sack and burn the American capital. The American and British peace commissioners got down to business at Ghent, a town in western Belgium, but negotiations quickly stalled just about the time the British foreign secretary made his threat about burning the cities of the East Coast, capturing New Orleans, and turning the United States into an island upon which the Americans would be prisoners. Shortly afterward, however, the British prime minister, Lord Liverpool, wrote his foreign secretary to the effect that Britain should “not continue the war for the purpose of obtaining or securing any acquisition of territory.”

The American peace commission wasn’t so sure, however, as one of its members wrote: “It is impossible to tell what is the real intentn. of the British Govt. on the question of Peace or War. They probably mean to be govd. by events.” In fact, the American suspicions were not unjustified; England then was on the verge of becoming the greatest imperialist power on earth, and her foreign policy tended to be shifty and opportunistic. Who is to say that if, as expected, the British army crushed the New Orleans militia as they had the militia at Washington, and took the city, they would not then declare the Louisiana Purchase void and plant the Union Jack in that priceless territory, comprising all of the American land west of the Mississippi—an area larger than the United States itself prior to the purchase. That certainly seems to have been the object, for Cochrane’s orders stated explicitly that he was not to be governed by any events arising from the peace commission then sitting at Ghent. Historian and Jackson biographer Robert V. Remini believes the British plan was “to occupy a large stretch of important and valuable territory . . . that could be demanded as the price of peace.” In other words, once New Orleans was conquered, British terms for ending the war would include the Americans ceding the Louisiana Purchase territory over to them.

In any event, no sooner had Cochrane’s ships departed the Chesapeake than he received orders from the Admiralty to proceed with the 4,000-man army southward to the Caribbean, and once there to rendevous at Jamaica with an even larger fleet embarking from Portsmouth and from Bordeaux, containing an army of the Duke of Wellington’s veterans of the Peninsular campaign. At the time they wrote the orders, Imperial Army headquarters in London had assumed that General Ross would command this combined force; while dismayed to learn of his death, in his stead they hurried off Lieutenant General Sir Edward Pakenham, Wellington’s brother-in-law, to catch up with the armada, already at sea, and lead it against New Orleans.

Wellington himself had just been tapped to take overall charge of the American war, but he remained pessimistic. “I don’t promise myself much success there,” he told the prime minister. Still in Europe trying to tidy up affairs after his defeat of the French, Wellington also tried to persuade the British to tone down the proposed peace terms with the United States, and, as we shall see, disapproved of the operation to take New Orleans.

Unquestionably, both nations were growing weary of war. The British had at first embraced the American conflict with fire-breathing newspaper editorials and much shouting and foot-stamping in Parliament, but they soon became appalled at the prospect of renewed taxes to finance it, especially because of the costliness of the recent wars against Napoleon. In America, where the war had never been popular in the first place, by now things were far, far worse.

For one thing, the economy was almost in paralysis; the U.S. Treasury was bankrupt and the government had defaulted on the national debt. Pay for the army was months in arrears and desertions were rising.*
 
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The financial situation had gotten so bad that there wasn’t even enough money to pay for firewood to heat the newly built cadets’ quarters at West Point, and the students had taken to stealing rails from nearby farmers’ fences, causing an uproar in the area. America’s once-prosperous trade in agricultural products became almost nonexistent because of the British blockade. There was some blockade-running, of course, but the skyrocketing cost of maritime insurance made this problematic. All the bountiful American cash crops—cotton, tobacco, sugar, grains for flour—had become worthless to plant. Corn farmers had begun feeding their crops to cows and pigs.

When Congress convened in September, it was understandably shocked at the ruins of what had been the shining capital city. Some members even demanded moving the capital elsewhere—back to Philadelphia or up to New York. And
everybody,
Federalist and Democratic Republican alike, was furious at Madison, who now was lampooned on both sides of the Atlantic. Administration officials began to resign, including Secretary of War Armstrong, who was blamed for the Washington disaster. In his place was put Secretary of State James Monroe, who concluded that it would take at least 100,000 regular soldiers to win the war at some point in an uncertain future—and this with not a cent in the Treasury to pay them.

Especially troublesome was the situation in New England, which had opposed the war from the outset and now, predictably, was perhaps the hardest hit. Its vital shipping industry was at a standstill, with both ships and cargoes rotting at the wharves. Unemployment had soared to the point that many citizens were forced to resort to public relief or even beggary. So fervent was the disaffection that many New Englanders defied the embargo against trading with the enemy and began an open commerce in livestock and other goods across the Canadian border. The circumstances became so inflammatory that in the early autumn of 1814 the New England state legislatures (minus, of course, what is now Maine, which had been occupied by the British) voted to convene at Hartford, Connecticut, to discuss a formal secession from the Union.*
 
³¹

Not even during the darkest days of the Revolution was there more doomsaying, hand-wringing, and despair across the land. Citizens began to wonder if their country really was second-rate; certainly there was little to be proud of at present. Then came word that a large British fleet and its accompanying army were on their way to the practically defenseless Gulf Coast—to do who knew what? The disheartenment wasn’t limited to just New England; there was talk of upheaval, disaffection, even disunion across the country—in the taverns, newspapers, legislatures, churches, parlors, and streets and even in the Congress.

O
n August 22, Jackson established his headquarters at Mobile. Though word of the British attacks on Washington and Baltimore would not reach him for some time, Old Hickory in any case felt he had sufficient cause to march into Spanish Florida, which he considered to be in cahoots with England.

This put an unfortunate kink in his plan to reunite with Rachel, whom he hadn’t seen for most of the year. It had been his intention that Rachel, bringing Andrew Jr., join him in Mobile, where the family could enjoy the hospitality of that quaint French-Spanish city by the bay. After arranging for a new carriage and “a good pair of horses” for the trip, Jackson proceeded to instruct his wife in the proper comportment for her newfound status: “You must recollect that you are now a Major Generals lady in the service of the U.S. and as such you must appear elegant and plain, not extravagant, but in such state as Strangers expect to see you.”

Shortly after his arrival in Mobile, however, Jackson’s spies told him that a British squadron had arrived at the port city of Pensacola on the Gulf of Mexico, about forty miles east. With not so much as a by-your-leave, the British commander, Colonel Edward Nicholls, escorted by a force of redcoats, had marched up to the quarters of the Spanish governor and informed him that the British would be using the city as a base of operations against the Americans. With an unctuous acquiescence from the Spanish
comandante,
the British raised their flag to equal height with that of the Spanish colors, and Colonel Nicholls got down to business. He installed his troops in several large Spanish fortifications and began recruiting an army of disaffected Indians—many of them leftovers from the Red Stick War—promising to reverse the Treaty of Fort Jackson and restore their lands, as well as, more materially, promising them firewater.*
 
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They were to be armed with a shipload of twenty thousand weapons sent by Admiral Cochrane, then to speed southward for his rendezvous and the anticipated attack on New Orleans.

On August 29, Nicholls issued a windy “proclamation” and ordered it distributed to the “Natives of Louisiana” (by which he meant Frenchmen and Spaniards and their offspring, who comprised the majority of that state’s white population). This document called for them to “assist in liberating from a faithless, imbecile government [meaning the Madison administration] your paternal soil.” In case they chose to disagree, Nicholls went on to threaten them: “I am at the head of a large body of Indians, well armed, disciplined and commanded by British officers [and] a good train of artillery [as well as] numerous British and Spanish squadrons of ships and vessels of war,” and then concluded, “The American usurpation in this country must be abolished.”