A Very Exposed CoastA Very Exposed Coast
THE UNITED STATES was woefully unprepared for war with Great Britain in June 1812. The Regular Army had an authorized strength of 9,160 privates and noncommissioned officers and more than 500 officers. Had that force gathered in one place, it would have mustered barely enough men to equal the single division the British army had fighting in Spain under Wellington. The authorized strength of an infantry company was 106 privates and noncommissioned officers and 4 officers. Each regiment had 10 companies, giving an infantry regiment an authorized strength of 1,060 soldiers and 40 officers, plus the regimental command.1 The infantry alone, then, should have had at least 7,420 privates and noncommissioned officers. The Army’s lone artillery regiment was set up as an infantry regiment—it had the same authorized size, but with officers and enlisted men also assigned to cannon, which decreased the overall company strength.2 The regiment of cavalry, or light dragoons, had an authorized strength of 10 companies of 68 privates and noncommissioned officers.3
The actual strength of the U.S. Army in January 1812, however, was just 6,686 officers and men split into 7 infantry regiments, an artillery regiment, and a regiment of light dragoons.4 None of the units authorized by Congress was at full strength. In January 1812 Congress authorized the expansion of the Army to 35,600 officers and men divided into 18 regiments of infantry, 2 of artillery, 1 of dragoons, and 1 of riflemen. More than 15,000 of these troops, however, were to enlist for just 18 months. The short-term enlistments allowed members of Congress opposed to a large standing army to justify the increase but did little to immediately augment the nation’s land forces.5 Despite the authorized increase, the actual strength of the Army never approached its allowed maximum. In June 1812, when Congress declared war, the Army numbered 11,744 officers and men, about 3,000 of whom were new recruits.6
The Regular Army also did not operate as an army. There was no general staff, and the senior commander, Maj. Gen. James Wilkinson, and the secretary of war, William Eustis, owed their positions to politics, not competence.7 The Army’s regiments rarely operated above a company level. Units garrisoned a series of forts along the Canadian border from Fort Michilimackinac, on the strait between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, to Fort Dearborn, on the site of what is now Chicago, and Fort Detroit and Fort Niagara, at the mouth of the Niagara River on Lake Ontario. Other companies garrisoned forts that protected major cities on the East Coast. Some units guarded the routes pioneers used to move west into the new territories. Companies from the same regiment often never saw one another for months at a time.8 No unit commander then in the Army had experience leading more than a few companies of Regulars supplemented with local militia in battle. As war grew more and more certain, the lack of preparations, coupled with the small number of Regulars available and readily assembled and the dearth of experience among the officers in leading large bodies of soldiers, placed the United States at a distinct disadvantage.9
Although spread out, the companies of the Regular Army did have combat experience from the ongoing wars with Native American tribes. One of the major reasons prowar politicians used to defend the conflict was Britain’s support of Indian raids in the new territories of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Louisiana. It was the hard-marching Regulars, often in company with local militia, who fought off the native tribes and attempted to wrest control of the still untamed Northwest Territory from their hands.
The situation was a little better at sea. The U.S. Navy had fifteen ships ready for war in January 1812.10 Five of the vessels were battle-tested frigates: the 44-gun warships Constitution, United States, and President; the 36-gun Congress; and the 32-gun Essex. The Navy also had three sloops—ship-rigged vessels smaller than a frigate: the 20-gun John Adams and a pair of 18-gun vessels, the Hornet and the Wasp. Finally, there were seven brigs ranging in size from 16 to 10 guns: the Argus, Syren, Nautilus, Vixen, Enterprise, Oneida, and Viper. Four other frigates were in ordinary.11
More important, the officer corps of the Navy was nearly unparalleled. Their names are legendary in the pantheon of U.S. naval heroes—Stephen Decatur Jr., Charles Stewart, Isaac Hull, James Lawrence, William Bainbridge, Oliver Hazard Perry, and Thomas Macdonough. All were veterans of Commodore Edward Preble’s 1803–4 campaign against the Barbary pirates, and all except Bainbridge had grown into command under Preble.12
Despite their skills as sailors, however, none of the officers could overcome the financial constraints a penny-pinching Congress continued to use to shackle the military. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate continually cut appropriations for the Navy. In his 1809 appropriations request to Congress, Navy secretary Paul Hamilton reported the service needed at least $180,000 more per year just to maintain the Navy’s current strength of nineteen ships and its fleet of gunboats.13 The brainchild of President Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. Navy’s gunboats were probably among the worst ideas ever forced on the military. Jefferson became enamored with gunboats in 1805 after reading the reports of Edward Preble’s success against the Barbary Pirates in Tripoli, when Preble borrowed a half-dozen gunboats and two mortar boats from the Kingdom of Naples and carried his assault literally to the walls of Tripoli castle.14
Jefferson and his political allies viewed gunboats as a cost-effective means of national defense; the Navy could build and stockpile gunboats for times of emergency while using small groups of them for harbor patrol. There would be no need for the larger, much more costly to maintain frigates, which the Navy could place in ordinary until a need for them arose. Jefferson pointed out that the cost of building one gunboat at five thousand dollars was eight times less than the cost of maintaining a 44-gun frigate for one year.15
The Navy built and launched its first gunboat at the Washington Navy Yard in 1805. Capt. John Rodgers oversaw the construction of the vessel, dubbed gunboat No. 1. The gunboats ranged in size from 60 to 71 feet and varied in rig. Some had a lateen rig, others a schooner rig, and others a sloop or Bermuda rig. Their armament also varied; some carried 32-pound cannon and small swivel guns, others two long guns, and others a mix of long guns and carronades. The differences in the boats were the result of the opinions of their captains and the shipwrights who built them.16 Even Jefferson offered design tips.17 What the gunboats had in common was their poor performance in open water. Lt. James Lawrence had the unenviable task of taking gunboat No. 6 to the Mediterranean as part of a flotilla of gunboats going to Syracuse on the island of Sicily. Lawrence, who reported to No. 6 in New York in May 1805, later admitted he did not believe the frail craft would ever reach the Mediterranean, or anywhere else.18
Much to Lawrence’s surprise, all but one of the gunboats survived the journey. Only gunboat No. 7 failed to reach Syracuse. It sank somewhere on its voyage. When Lawrence arrived off Gibraltar after a harrowing Atlantic crossing, he reported that the British frigate Lapwing offered No. 6 assistance, believing the little boat to be a wreck.19
When gunboat No. 1 swamped in a storm and washed ashore on a coastal farm, it was a source of amusement from Charleston to Boston. One newspaper ran an editorial advising, “Let her rest there and she will grow into a ship of the line”; while a popular toast immediately after the mishap was, “To gunboat No. 1: If our gunboats are of no use on the water, may they be best on land.”20 The gunboats, however, remained in service. By January 1, 1812, the Navy had 170 gunboats, all in varying states of readiness. In his annual report to Congress, Navy secretary Hamilton noted that fewer than 20 of the vessels were in fact combat ready.21
One of the reasons the gunboat policy remained in force was its resonance with politicians and citizens who shared Jefferson’s belief in the third arm of national defense—the militia. Nothing could fire imaginations like the legendary picture of the patriotic farmer dropping his plow, picking up his musket, and chasing the British redcoats from America’s shores. Jefferson argued that the gunboats could form the backbone of a naval militia. The port towns the gunboats were to defend had ample seamen who could man the vessels, meaning each boat would require just a handful of artillerists, which the land militia could provide.22
The belief in militia was ingrained in the American psyche. Although somewhat better prepared in 1812 than in 1775, America’s militia remained a poor substitute for Regulars. Training, discipline, equipment, and uniforms all varied widely from state to state and unit to unit. It was up to each state to oversee the readiness of its own militia, and although Congress, in 1807 and 1809, debated adopting national standards for militia, the local forces remained largely unprepared for war.
The military situation along the Chesapeake Bay largely mirrored that of the country. A handful of Regulars manned forts in Baltimore and Norfolk while a mix of Marines and Army troops garrisoned the national capital at Washington, D.C. All other defense rested on the unsteady soldiers of the militia.
Governor Levin Winder, a Federalist, commanded the Maryland militia. Winder had been elected in 1812 before the war began. A veteran of the Revolutionary War and a native of Somerset County on the Eastern Shore, Winder personally commanded the 2nd Division, which encompassed all of the Eastern Shore as well as Cecil and Harford Counties, which wrapped around the bay to Baltimore County. Although opposed to the conflict, he nevertheless began preparing his state’s troops for battle.23
The task was daunting. The Chesapeake Bay covers an area of 3,237 square miles. From its mouth at Norfolk, Virginia, the bay runs 195 miles north, past Annapolis and Baltimore, to its terminus at Elkton. The bay is an estuary formed mainly by three rivers—the Susquehanna, Potomac, and James—but the Severn, Patapsco, Patuxent, Anacostia, and Chester Rivers all flow into the Chesapeake as well. In all, 419 creeks and rivers feed the bay, creating a total of 4,600 miles of shoreline. Winder had to defend this vast area with only his militia.
On paper, the Maryland militia consisted of three divisions. Each division comprised four to five brigades, and each brigade had four regiments of two battalions. An infantry regiment had an authorized strength of eight hundred men, but few managed to reach that number. Only in Baltimore city and in the state’s 3rd Division, under Maj. Gen. Samuel Smith, did units approach their authorized strength.24
In addition to the three infantry divisions, the Maryland militia had—on paper—eleven cavalry regiments that reported to the infantry brigade commanders. Normally, each infantry regiment in a brigade was assigned a troop of cavalry to act as scouts and couriers. Cavalry was neither trained nor used to provide battlefield support. Artillery was also a brigade function, with one company usually assigned to each regiment, although some regiments appear to have had additional volunteer artillery companies that were recruited locally.25
THE NAVAL WAR OF 1812: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY, VOL. 3: 1814–1815 CHESAPEAKE BAY, NORTHERN LAKES, AND PACIFIC OCEAN, PT. 2 OF 7, NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER, DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY, WASHINGTON, D.C. 2002
The Maryland militia was in a real sense a resident army of volunteers. They were the sons, brothers, cousins, and friends of their officers, who were landowners, businessmen, and public servants within the territories they protected. Any commander who needlessly imperiled his men knew his friends and neighbors would hold him accountable. Cowardice and bravery were equally exposed to community view.
Only a few militia companies had regulation uniforms, and the British moving into the Chesapeake often took these properly attired units for Regulars—at least until the shooting started. Members of Regular Army units wore a single-breasted blue coat with a high choker collar; facings of white, red, or buff denoted infantry, artillery, and cavalry, respectively. White trousers, leather leggings over black shoes, crossed white shoulder belts that held cartridge boxes and equipment bags, and a black leather shako completed the uniform. Regulation uniforms for field officers of the cavalry were dark blue with silver epaulettes and a red sash, in addition to a cape trimmed with silver braid, yellow gloves, calf-length boots with silver spurs, and a black cap with a long white plume in front held in place by a silver eagle. Cavalry carried swords and pistols for arms.26
Militia units rarely had such elaborate uniforms. Most men wore a round hat cocked on one side and a homemade greenish smock known as a rifleman’s shirt. The smock had small capes over the shoulders and red fringe trim. Some units also wore white overalls and black shakos.27
The lack of uniforms often entertained the well-dressed British forces moving into the Chesapeake. “Persons in England . . . find it difficult to consider as soldiers, men neither embodied nor dressed in regimentals. . . . The fact is, everyman is a militiaman . . . to be drilled or trained. He had always in his possession either a musket or a rifle-barrel piece . . . and with it . . . could do as much execution in a smock frock or plain coat as if he wore the most splendid uniform.”28
On the other hand, when three visiting American officers from Virginia’s Eastern Shore appeared in imaginative homemade uniforms, their British hosts found them ludicrous. “They were in regimentals,” recalled Lt. James Scott, “but certainly the fashion and cut of them rendered their exact rank and calling somewhat dubious. The trio sported red coats, silver epaulettes, and silver-mounted side arms, white linen waistcoats, and trousers of the same material, Hessian [knee-length] boots which claim no knowledge of acquaintance [with shoe polish], old fashioned French cocked hats, with feathers that might, from their towering height, have served as sky-scraper, completed their attire.”29
Weapons varied as much as uniforms. The standard-issue musket of the day was the .69-caliber Springfield pattern 1795 musket. A copy of the French infantry weapon, the Springfield was a smoothbore musket that used a flintlock to fire. The weapon took its name from the Springfield Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts, although the armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, also produced the Springfield. Notoriously inaccurate, muskets were usually employed en masse, with long lines of troops blasting away at one another until one side or the other got close enough to use bayonets.
American militia also carried rifles—some of them homemade, others military grade. The typical rifle fired a .40-caliber round ball. Although far more accurate than muskets, rifles could not carry bayonets because the muzzle was too wide. Rifles also took slightly longer to load than muskets because more force was required to push the ball down the barrel, which had rifling grooves. Once a rifleman fired, he was essentially helpless to defend himself if an enemy charged with bayonets.30
Militarily, Talbot County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, under the command of Brig. Gen. Perry Benson, was one of the better-organized and -equipped areas. Benson had several uniformed infantry companies in his command, units that had distinctive names such the “Light Infantry Blue,” “Easton Fencibles” (named for the town of Easton, Md.), “Mechanic Volunteers,” “St. Michaels Patriotic Blues,” and “Hearts of Oak.” Even in Talbot County, however, poorly trained officers, many of them ignorant of infantry tactics, trained the militia. Arms were so scarce that muskets were transferred from company to company depending on the need. Even the best-equipped units often had to use “wooden snappers”—fake guns—to drill. Benson, sensing the danger the poorly defended coast presented, begged for more arms, ammunition, and at least some Regulars to defend the new armory the government had recently built in Easton. Governor Winder replied that he could not “give to the inhabitants of that place further security,” while Secretary of War John Armstrong said, “In this case it might be well to remove the armory.”31
Complicating the situation for Winder and his militia commanders was the omnipresent specter of politics. The backlash over the Baltimore riots in June had created a surge of Federalist sentiment in Maryland, which President James Madison greatly resented. As the British gathered off the Chesapeake, Winder begged Washington for Regular Army reinforcements, but Madison’s government pretended not to hear the pleas and allocated troops to Virginia rather than Maryland. Federalists lambasted Madison with charges of favoritism: “Virginia has but to ask and she receives; but Maryland, for her political disobedience, is denied.”32 Winder would eventually have to convene a special session in May 1813 to raise money to pay the state’s militia.33
At sea, the defense of the Chesapeake rested on whatever vessels were at the bay’s two principal ports, Norfolk and Baltimore. The frigate Constellation was fitting out in Norfolk for an Atlantic cruise, and Madison’s government moved quickly to protect her. Capt. Charles Stewart, who commanded the frigate, proceeded to upgrade the defenses around Norfolk, erecting batteries while trying to get the port’s handful of the hated gunboats seaworthy enough for action.
Baltimore’s defenses were even worse. Fort McHenry, manned by a small group of Regular Army engineers and artillerymen, stood as the lone guardian of the port city. There were a few gunboats, but they were not ready for action, nor did they have crews. To help organize the sea defenses, Navy secretary Hamilton ordered Capt. Charles Gordon to take command of the “Baltimore Squadron.”
Gordon, still recovering from the wound he suffered two years earlier in his duel with Hanson, did not have much to organize. His “squadron” consisted of four privateers—two brigs and two schooners—he had managed to borrow from their owners, with the caveat that he would release the boats on request so they could plunder British shipping. He also had a few Navy gunboats.34
Chesapeake Bay was an obvious target for the British. In addition to being home to Baltimore, which the British knew was a hotbed of prowar sentiment, the bay offered the most direct route to the nation’s capital. The Chesapeake watershed was an important supply area, sending poultry, grain, iron ore, and fish to other parts of the country. At first, however, the English took a defensive stance. Already embroiled in a titanic struggle with Napoleonic France, the last thing Britain wanted to do was detract from that effort. Britain’s North Atlantic Squadron, which had responsibility for the waters from Nova Scotia to the Caribbean, consisted of just six ships of the line, thirty-one frigates, and thirty-three smaller vessels.35 Rather than become bogged down in a land campaign, the British decided to blockade selected areas—New York, the Delaware River (and Philadelphia), and the Chesapeake. Although it took nearly six months to assemble a blockade force, by the time the Royal Navy arrived off Norfolk in February 1813, it had another reason for being there—to stop American privateers.
Two weeks after declaring war on England, Congress approved “An Act concerning Letters of Marque, Prizes and Prize Goods.” The law allowed any shipowner who received a letter of marque to legally attack and capture British merchant vessels. For the shipowners of Baltimore, languishing under the British Orders in Council and the U.S. Embargo Act, the law allowing privateers was a godsend. Hundreds of owners lined up for letters of marque, seeing privateering as a way to recoup the financial losses they suffered under the English and American laws. Captured vessels and their cargoes were sold, with the bulk of the proceeds going to captain and crew, although the government also took a cut.
Brigs, sloops, and above all schooners—the famed Baltimore clippers—fanned out from the Chesapeake across the Atlantic Ocean searching for prey. They had no trouble finding it. Joshua Barney in the privateer Rossie, among the first captains to set out from Baltimore, cleared Fells Point on July 11 and returned on October 22 after capturing 18 vessels worth $1.5 million and taking 217 prisoners.36
Richard Moon, another privateer captain who set out in July 1812, exemplified the spirit of the fiery Baltimore watermen. In August, Moon, commanding the privateer Sarah Ann, fell in with the British ship Elizabeth off the Bahamas. Moon’s vessel carried just one cannon—a long 9-pounder mounted on a swivel. The Elizabeth carried ten 12-pound carronades. Although completely outgunned, Moon chased the Elizabeth for three hours before closing and boarding the ship, taking her at a cost of just two wounded. He sailed into Savannah, Georgia, with his prize laden with coffee and sugar.37
All told, 126 shipowners in Baltimore snapped up letters of marque or commissioned privateers, capturing or destroying 556 British merchantmen by the war’s end.38 Shipping insurance rates at Lloyd’s of London skyrocketed.39 Unsurprisingly, the success of Baltimore’s armed vessels played a major role in Britain’s decision to send forces into the Chesapeake.