By Land and by SeaBy Land and by Sea
THE DESTRUCTION OF HAVRE DE GRACE marked a new phase in the British campaign in the Chesapeake, and in the war as a whole. For more than a year America had enjoyed almost unlimited success at sea. American frigates had scored impressive, morale-boosting victories in one-on-one fights with British warships while American privateers bedeviled British merchant shipping. On the Great Lakes, Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry worked to build a squadron to control Lake Erie while Capt. Isaac Chauncey attempted to build another to fight for Lake Ontario. Both lakes would be the scenes of future campaigns. On land, however, the war had been disastrous for America.
The United States launched four invasions of Canada, all of which ended in failure. The latest defeat came almost the same day Admiral Cockburn burned Havre de Grace. Henry Dearborn, an aging veteran of the Revolutionary War, led an army over Lake Ontario in a bid to capture the crucial city of Kingston, which would give America control of the lake. Dearborn assembled a force of 1,700 Regulars and volunteers that embarked and sailed up Lake Ontario without incident, arriving off York (present-day Toronto) before daybreak on April 27. After a nasty battle in which the American tactical commander, Brig. Gen. Zebulon Pike, the explorer of the American Southwest, was killed, the Americans managed to take the city. The losses were heavy on both sides—almost 20 percent of each army. With General Pike dead, the American troops got out of hand and looted and burned the public buildings and destroyed the provincial records, something the British never forgot. The success was short lived because the British soon pushed Dearborn’s force out of the town.1
In the west, a relatively small British army, in concert with Native American tribes under the incomparable leader Tecumseh, had taken the strategic town of Detroit and systematically chased the Yankees back to the Indiana border. President Madison sacked Gen. William Hull, who had surrendered Detroit, and replaced him with Indian Wars hero William Henry Harrison. The change in command at first did little to improve the fortunes of the Army of the West. Harrison could do nothing more than read incoming reports in horror from his base in Ohio after Indians wiped out a unit of Kentucky militia that surrendered at Frenchtown in Michigan Territory, an act that both frightened and enraged Americans living in the west. “Remember the River Raisin,” became a rallying cry for the U.S. units that fought to retake the Northwest Territory. The massacre at Frenchtown, combined with other defeats, forced Harrison to retreat into Ohio and Indiana. He established a supply base at Sandusky, Ohio, while pinning his defense on Fort Meigs on the Maumee River, near present-day Perrysburg, Ohio.2
The continued reverses forced Madison finally to realize that the conflict was a real, knockdown war. He fired bumbling Secretary of War William Eustis and replaced him with John Armstrong, a Revolutionary War veteran who kept his eyes firmly fixed on the north and west, much to the chagrin of Governor Levin Winder of Maryland.
The burning of Havre de Grace, the poor showing of the state militia, and the destruction of an important foundry capable of forging artillery convinced Winder he had to do something—anything—to bolster the defenses of Maryland. The British blockade had all but completely closed the Chesapeake to trade, preventing much-needed arms shipments from arriving and also cutting off one of the state’s main sources of income. Winder had turned to Washington for both arms and money, but the federal government, at least in the governor’s eyes, did not care about Maryland.
At the beginning of May 1813 Winder told the Maryland legislature that federal armories had shipped only five hundred new muskets to the state since the outbreak of the war, which did not come close to meeting the needs and requests from regiments up and down the bay. “The United States refuses to aid us,” Winder raged to Brig. Gen. Thomas Foreman, who commanded the militia from Harford and Cecil Counties. “The treasury is now empty.”
Winder also had no answers for Brig. Gen. Caleb Hawkins of Charles County. After Hawkins wrote the governor explaining the poor state of readiness of his troops, Winder replied, “We understand a considerable part of your brigade is very miserably supplied. . . . The Arsenal is now empty.” Winder told his subordinate that his ability to procure arms depended on his receiving authority to borrow money. To Hawkins and anyone else who would listen Winder described his position as “utterly impossible.”3
Maryland had borne all of the costs for maintaining its militia—pay, subsistence, uniforms, camp equipment, arms, and ammunition—and the state had yet to receive its money’s worth. The abysmal performance of the militia tasked with defending Havre de Grace was particularly galling to the governor. He told General Foreman, “The conduct of the officers to whom the defense of Havre de Grace was committed was in the highest degree culpable, and as such ought to subject them to a trial . . . ascertain upon what charges.”4
Although the militia’s performance infuriated the soldier in Winder, the politician knew his troops needed more support than his state could provide. The embattled governor sent a committee to Washington in May to take the state’s case directly to President Madison. Winder ordered his delegation to confront the president personally and press the case for Maryland’s dire need for money and arms. When the committee met with Madison and remonstrated with him over the lack of support, Madison pointed out that Virginia, where there was widespread support for the war, continued to send men and materiel to the war and to the Canadian frontier, and New York “was peculiarly exposed to the invasion of the enemy,” and both also required federal resources.5
Winder’s representatives pressed Madison for a written answer, but he shunted them to John Armstrong. The new secretary of war said he understood Winder’s desire “to ascertain . . . what further protection will be afforded by the General Government against the common enemy,” as well as to know “what provisions may be expected to liquidate the expenditures which have been or may be incurred in providing against their aggressions.” However, he had only bad news for the governor. “I can but subjoin in assurance, that every attention to the special defense of Maryland, that may be compatible with the just claims of the other parts of the Union, shall be promptly and cordially given.” As for financial help, Armstrong said, “As far as expenditures have arisen or shall arise for militia calls by the state, without the participation of the United States, no provision [for reimbursement] is found to exist under the present laws.” In other words, so long as Maryland kept its militia at home for local defense, Washington would provide no help for its expenses.6
The news was devastating to Winder, who called a special session of the legislature to ask for permission to borrow money to fund the state’s defense. Federalists controlled the House of Delegates, and they spent most of their time passing resolutions demanding an end to the war. Even the Federalists, however, could see the need to bolster the state’s defenses, and they put their antiwar sentiments aside long enough to approve a measure that allowed Winder to borrow money from the state’s banks so he could purchase weapons and pay the militia. True to form, though, they tacked on yet another call for the U.S. Congress to end the war. The state Senate also approved the measure, although its main focus was on passing a resolution laying the responsibility for continuation of the war on Britain. The House of Delegates rejected the Senate’s resolution but passed one of its own demanding an end to the war by a 43 to 15 vote.7
That Governor Winder managed to keep the militia, especially units on the Eastern Shore, willing to serve Maryland and oppose the British is astonishing. The success had less to do with his position as the state militia’s commander in chief than it did with the relationships he had built up while commander of the Eastern Shore–based 2nd Division. Winder could tug on the patriotic bonds between the various regimental and brigade commanders that had been forged while all were young lieutenants enduring the hardships and early defeats of the Revolutionary War. No matter how hard he tugged on those bonds, however, Winder could not ensure that his amateur state troops would stand up to Cockburn’s hardened professionals, a fact that tortured the governor throughout the Chesapeake campaign.8
The lack of military support from Washington concerned the inhabitants of the upper and lower Chesapeake just as it did their elected leaders, but of even more concern in the Tidewater region of the bay was where the astoundingly nimble British sailors and Royal Marines would appear next. Cockburn’s tactic of using ships’ boats to screen the advance of his mosquito fleet of tenders, which in turn screened the main British force of frigates and 74-gun ships of the line, had proved wildly successful. The cutters and barges could operate just about anywhere, while the larger Royal Navy vessels prevented the Americans from mounting any type of seaborne defense. For the people of the Eastern Shore, shouts of sails on the horizon brought fear and panic.
The success of the British campaign in the spring of 1813 also had a profound impact on the slave population, who believed the British were already triumphant in the war. Desertions became more numerous and more frequent, and those who succeeded in reaching the British ships often returned ashore to enlist their friends. The fact that it was planting season encouraged the flow of runaway slaves, who came by the canoe load. One man whose master had badly mistreated him reached the British only to ask to go back to retrieve his wife. On returning to the house he found that the master had locked her in the same room in which he slept. The escaped slave waited two days before he succeeded in slipping his wife out of the house and then made his way successfully back to the British.9
The escaped slaves enhanced the British force’s mobility because they could guide small boats through the labyrinth of creeks, rivers, inlets, bays, and marshes along the coast. They also proved adept at leading British raiding parties as much as ten miles inland, where they stole livestock, robbed postmen, and attacked isolated militia outposts.10
The next communities to experience the terror of Cockburn’s seagoing marauders were Georgetown and Fredericktown, two small farming towns that sat on opposite sides of the Sassafras River along one of the main roads leading north to Elkton. Georgetown lay on the south bank of the Sassafras in Kent County, and Fredericktown was on the north bank in Cecil County. Georgetown was the larger of the two and contained a few dozen buildings. Fort Duffy on the Cecil County side of the river and entrenchments at Pearce Point on the Kent County side guarded the approaches. Cockburn, on May 5, “sent the boats and Marines of the squadron” to destroy the two towns.11 Well aware of the psychological effects of the destruction of Havre de Grace, he sent a warning along with them.
The Sassafras is a long and tortuous river with sharp horseshoe bends blocked by long sandbars and many deceptive side channels. In the dark, without pilots, it took the British more than eight hours to row the eight-mile course. Capt. Henry Byng of the Mohawk led the expedition. He captured two mulatto men in a small boat about two miles south of the towns and ordered them to row ahead of the British force to “warn their countrymen against acting in the same rash manner as the people of Havre de Grace; assuring them, that if they did, their towns would inevitably meet a similar fate.” Those who offered no resistance would suffer no harm.12 The two men made their way to the towns and gave the militia commanders Cockburn’s ultimatum, but the commander of the Georgetown garrison, Lt. Col. Thomas Veazy, nevertheless mustered four hundred men of the 49th Militia Regiment and prepared to engage the British.13
Almost as soon as the messengers gave Veazy the British ultimatum, Cockburn ordered his forces to advance up the river. John Thomas, an eyewitness, reported that fifteen barges and three smaller boats formed a column four abreast and several hundred yards long. The admiral’s barge took the van, allowing those in the rear to close ranks. The red uniforms of the marines added a splendid touch in the bright sun.14
As the British approached Georgetown, Veazy readied his defenders. Although he did have one cannon, he had only one round for it. When he judged the distance to be right, he fired his lone round in a somewhat futile gesture. The British responded with a salvo of Congreve rockets and a volley of canister and grapeshot from their carronades. The Americans opened up with musket fire, which the British returned. The resulting din panicked half of the militiamen, who fled into the woods. Nearly all the rest of the defenders ran off as the British charged, leaving only Veazy and thirty-five men to defend the area.15
Cockburn and the marines pushed ashore north of the two militia defenses, isolating the towns. As the marines fixed bayonets, Veazy and his thirty-five stalwarts lost heart and also fled to the woods, leaving the towns wide open. A witness said, “Whether it was from their political aversion to the present war, their dislike of shedding blood or actually through fear, I cannot determine.” Cockburn quipped that the militia’s new position would allow the Americans to witness the destruction of their homes.16
In Fredericktown, Cockburn ordered his troops to search for the homes of the militiamen who had opposed him. As he questioned the inhabitants he became increasingly frustrated. Although everyone with whom he spoke knew the men, none seemed to be from in or around Fredericktown. Byng, leading thirty or forty men, tried to catch up with the fleeing militia. He managed to find the home of one militiaman, Cpl. Joshua Ward, and posted a guard in the hope Ward might try to sneak home after fleeing the battlefield. When he did not show, Byng’s men sacked the house and the Mohawk’s captain himself set fire to the structure. It was the first of many fires that evening.17
Cockburn, meanwhile, had spoken with John Allen, a former sea captain who owned a house, warehouse, and large farm in Fredericktown. Allen gave Cockburn as much information as he had about the militia and told the admiral he had taken no part in the resistance, expecting the British officer to live up to his promise to spare the property of noncombatants. Cockburn countered by asking Allen how much poultry he had and what stores were in the warehouse. Allen replied that he had none at the moment, at which point Cockburn damned Allen and burned his house and granary. Turning to his officers as the rest of the town also went up in flames, Cockburn observed, “Well, my lads, this looks well,” and ordered his force to return to the boats to cross the river to Georgetown.18
The British, whom Niles’ Weekly Register, a Baltimore news magazine, dubbed the “Water Winnebagoes” after a fierce Indian tribe, then fell on Georgetown, which lay undefended. Dr. Edward Scott, who owned a farm in Galena, about two miles from Georgetown, saw the result of the British attack. “It was the order of the Admiral as acknowledged by his officers, to destroy every house, but some were spared at the entreaty of the women and aged, and the fire extinguished in some others after the enemy had abandoned them. . . . Georgetown contained a meeting house, tavern, one or two mechanic’s shops, as many old store houses and granaries, with 30 dwellings. All of the buildings but the meeting house and 11 houses with their outhouses are reduced to ashes.”19
Burning was only half the story. Scott reported the British went on an orgy of destruction. “Women and children and even blacks were plundered nearly to their all. Beds were cut open and the feathers scattered abroad. Desks, looking glasses, cupboards, tables, chairs, clocks, etc., were shivered to fragments. Even Bibles were taken off for the avowed purpose of making cartridges. With the honorable exception of a Capt. Byng and one or two others, Admiral Cockburn’s officers behaved in the same inhuman, indecent style.”20
At least one Georgetown resident gained folk hero status when she defied Cockburn’s troops and single-handedly saved an elderly widow’s home. Catharine “Kitty” Knight, thirty-eight, said she watched in horror as Royal Navy sailors began burning the town. She said she followed the British to the house of the widow and pleaded with Cockburn to spare the structure. Sailors had just set the house on fire when Cockburn ordered them to extinguish the blaze. However, the British did set fire to the home next to the widow’s, and the wind blew the flames toward the old lady’s house. Local legend claims Knight remained at the widow’s home, bravely fighting and eventually extinguishing the wind-driven fire with her broom.21
The campaign in the northern Chesapeake cost the British very little: twelve men wounded and two deserters. It cost the Americans much more. The inhabitants of the upper bay, humiliated by their display of military ineptitude and cowardice, unsupported by the federal and state governments, and pillaged by the British, were ready to concede defeat. They believed they were being sacrificed to Madison’s attempt to conquer Canada and were no longer willing to support the war. While he was still on the Sassafras, Cockburn received a delegation from Charlestown, a port town on the Northeast River of the Maryland Eastern Shore, who told him they had no intention of resisting the British or doing anything to aid the American war effort and would not allow any militia to garrison their town. The delegation also told Cockburn that most of the towns on the upper bay that the British had yet to attack had adopted similar resolutions. In the space of just ten days the British had completely shut down the entire Chesapeake.22
Cockburn earned the lasting hatred of many Marylanders, who saw his campaign as wanton destruction. Niles’ Weekly Register railed against the British admiral, claiming, “This Cockburn is one of the vilest wretches in existence, even when a child he had all those propensities to rapine and plunder that so mark his existence. So says a respectable man in Baltimore, who was his school fellow.” The newspaper also tried to turn the burned homes and plundered farms into a rallying cry, grandly but falsely claiming, “The villain deed has raised the honest indignation of every man—no one pretends to justify or excuse it. It has knit the people into a common bond for vengeance on the incendiaries. It has destroyed party; and, by a community of interest, effected what patriotism demanded in vain. . . . Federalist and Democrats have laid their little bickerings . . . this is as it should be.”23
Admiral Warren left for Bermuda on May 17 on his flagship, the San Domingo, taking with him forty of the best prizes his squadron had seized since he arrived in March. He sent another thirty prizes north to Halifax in convoy with the Dragon, Belvidera, and Maidstone. Those vessels were the only ships the British actually wanted. They destroyed just as many others during their assault up the Chesapeake.24 The boat attacks continued unabated as the British attacked isolated militia posts, burned the homes of prowar residents, and stole livestock and crops. They also continued their haul of prize ships. On many days the boat crews captured or burned three or four vessels.25
The continual work took a toll on the Royal Navy crews. Cockburn stripped his larger vessels of crews to man the boats, leaving the ships of the line and frigates without the sailors necessary to even man the warships’ cannon. Cockburn ordered some of his largest ships to remove cannon to reduce their draft and allow them to maneuver in the shallow waters of the Chesapeake. The constant work in the boats left the men exhausted, and although meat and poultry were there for the taking, the British tars had been unable to find the fresh vegetables and fruit they needed to remain healthy. They were in particularly dire need of the commodity that would give them their nickname—limes.
Sailors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who embarked on long cruises required citrus juice to ward off scurvy, a disease resulting from a vitamin C deficiency. Since the 1790s the Royal Navy had made lime and, to a lesser extent, lemon juice part of the basic rations of its sailors. Scurvy caused apathy, weakness, easy bruising, skin blisters, bleeding gums, and swollen legs. By mid-May, Cockburn reported that many of the men in the squadron were showing these symptoms.26
Cockburn sent the Fantome to Delaware Bay in search of the frigate Statira. Her commander, Capt. Hassard Stackpoole, had requisitioned 126 gallons of lime juice from the supply vessel Three Sisters, which had arrived off the Chesapeake at the beginning of May. Cockburn ordered Stackpoole to send half the lime juice he had back to the squadron. The lime juice duly arrived, averting a potentially crippling outbreak of scurvy.27
Watching Cockburn’s every move was Capt. Charles Gordon, commander of the Baltimore Squadron. Observing was about all Gordon could do; his small force stood no chance against the massive British fleet. Gordon had faced long odds almost from the day he took command in Baltimore. When he took office in January 1813, Navy secretary William Jones had reorganized the defenses of the bay, sending the bulk of the Jefferson-era gunboats—including those in Baltimore—to Norfolk before the British clamped down their blockade.
Jones correctly believed that when Cockburn and Warren pushed up the Chesapeake in the spring, their mission would be reconnaissance and raiding rather than a set-piece attack on either Baltimore or Annapolis. Jones thought the British were trying to wage a type of reverse economic war, and that their presence in the bay was intended to divert U.S. resources from Canada and the Northwest Territory as well as to clamp down on American privateers, which were a major threat to the British economy. The British knew that the United States could not send effective forces everywhere at once, and by stretching American resources to the breaking point were trying to protect their own economy while placing a huge financial burden for defense on America.28
Gordon probably knew little about Jones’ theories. He did know he was in command of an important station that was essentially defenseless. The only vessel Gordon had in April that was even close to combat-ready was the mortar ketch Spitfire. He also had gunboat No. 138, but she needed repairs.29 He received some good news on April 15 when Jones sent permission to hire and outfit local ships to form a makeshift squadron. Baltimore, Jones said, was home to many “schooners of a class and description suitable for the occasion.” Despite the alarm Warren’s fleet had raised up and down the bay, though, Jones told Gordon he could hire only four ships and warned him that he would have to return any borrowed vessels to the owners “in the same condition in all respects as they were delivered to you.”30
Jones’ orders contained one clause that increased the difficulty of Gordon’s task. Seamen who remained with the hired vessels were to receive standard Navy wages, which were notoriously lower than those merchant seamen normally received.31 That made it nearly impossible for Gordon to entice sailors to serve on his borrowed warships. “For not withstanding the great outcry in vessels and men in abundance . . . I find trouble and difficulty” in recruiting crews, he told Jones, because few merchant seamen were willing to leave the ships on which they served for poor Navy wages.32
It took the squadron commander more than a week to get his force together. The appearance of Cockburn’s and Warren’s combined squadron off Baltimore undoubtedly spurred recruitment of sailors and made shipowners more willing to lend their vessels. Gordon used a fairly persuasive argument to hire three of the best privateers in the city. He simply pointed out to the owners that with the British off the city and at the mouth of the bay, there was little chance of the privateers actually putting to sea. The owners could at least rent their vessels to the Navy. They would not earn what they could make from commerce raiding, but some money was better than none.33
By early May 1813 Gordon’s squadron was coming together. His biggest ship was the Revenge, which carried fourteen 12-pounder carronades, a pair of long 12-pounders, and a long 18-pounder on a pivoting mount. Second was the schooner Patapsco, reputed to be one of the best sailing vessels on the bay. The Patapsco carried a dozen 12-pounder carronades and a pair of long 12-pounders. His third vessel was the Comet, which carried twelve 12-pounder carronades and two long 9-pounders.34 For captains Gordon selected three of the more experienced sailors he could induce to accept Navy pay. Capt. Jacob Mull commanded the Patapsco, Thomas Boyle had the Comet, and Job West was captain of the Revenge.35
Gordon reported problems finding a fourth vessel suitable for the type of action he anticipated. The owners of the other large vessels in port were unwilling to rent their ships to the Navy while they still had cargoes on board. The blockade prevented the ships from bringing those cargoes to other American ports or friendly destinations in the Caribbean as much as it kept them from going out on privateering voyages. Gordon finally settled on the small schooner Wasp, which carried two 12-pounder carronades and a long 9-pounder on a swivel mount. He also had a single U.S. Navy gunboat, No. 138, with her 24-pounder long gun and a pair of 12-pounder carronades.36
His squadron set, Gordon sailed out of Baltimore on May 21 with orders to use his new flotilla to restrict the movement of enemy tenders and boats. If possible, he was to recapture some of “those fine schooners which have recently and unfortunately fallen into [enemy] hands.”37 He dutifully sailed south toward Annapolis, shadowing the British fleet, and spent nearly a month following Warren and Cockburn as they burned their way back down the Chesapeake. Although the British kept their tenders, schooners, barges, and cutters in constant use, the larger Royal Navy ships effectively covered the smaller vessels, a tactic that Gordon said “rendered any offensive operations on our part impractical.”38
His water expended and the Revenge hampered by a sprung mainmast, Gordon returned to Baltimore. Although he had been unable to break the blockade or retake any of the dozens of ships the Royal Navy had captured, Gordon had maintained contact with Warren’s force and reported accurately on the force’s movements, especially as the ships moved south on the bay. As he turned his vessels toward Baltimore, Gordon reported that “after taking every opportunity to reconnoiter and observe the enemy,” he believed their next target would be somewhere south of the Potomac River.39 It was easy enough to guess what that target was.