THE BRITISH CAMPAIGN in the Chesapeake failed to accomplish its main goal of relieving pressure on the Canadian frontier. In fact, it failed to divert a single American soldier from heading north, including Regular Army and volunteer units from Maryland and Virginia. It also failed to prevent the United States from consolidating its hold over the vast swath of territory acquired from France, an area Britain wanted to see remain in Native American hands as a bulwark against American expansion. The Admiralty laid those failures, and one more, squarely on the shoulders of Adm. Sir John Borlase Warren.
The force of soldiers, sailors, and marines that once marched with pride on towns from Elkton to Norfolk was now merely a group of worn-out men. Weeks of confinement on board ship had taken a massive toll on morale and discipline. Throughout the long, hot summer months on the Chesapeake, the Admiralty received a litany of requests for transfers as junior officers invented reasons for a move away from Maryland. Sickness was rampant because mosquitoes transmitted numerous diseases, including the dreaded yellow fever. When Capt. George Paterson of the Fox contracted the fever, there were no doctors available to treat him because so many other men throughout the squadron were sick. Paterson died a week later.1
Morale was also extremely low. Every day, sailors and marines, either singly or in small groups, looked for ways to desert. One group of five tried to steal the ship’s barge off the Conflict, but an astute guard caught them. Warren summarily ordered the five men hanged and made the entire squadron watch the executions.2
When news of what was happening in the Chesapeake reached London, the Admiralty took the step of rebuking its North American Station commander. In a stern letter the commissioners of the Admiralty dressed Warren down not only for the harshness of the punishments but for failing to keep accurate records of the proceedings he used in handing down the executions. At the same time, John W. Croker, the secretary of the Admiralty, never a supporter of Warren, wrote to the admiral relieving him of command. Neither letter would reach Warren until January 1814.3
Unaware of developments in England, Warren left the Chesapeake on September 6 with most of the fleet and all of the troops. Sir George Prevost, the British commander in chief in Canada, welcomed the arrival of the two battalions of Royal Marines and Napier’s 102nd Infantry Regiment as much-needed reinforcements. For the soldiers and marines, the transition from the bay, where the temperature hit 96° on the day they left, to the cold hills of Nova Scotia, where temperatures at night dipped to 36°, was jarring. “In the morning it is a concert to hear 1600 men’s teeth chattering and it screws up my wounded cheek wonderfully,” Napier said. Napier’s men, at least, had only a brief sojourn in Canada before they left for Bermuda; the marines and Beckwith moved to Montreal to augment the city’s garrison.4
Rear Admiral Cockburn also left the Chesapeake on September 6, sailing for Bermuda with his flagship, the ship of the line Sceptre, as well as a small group of frigates, brigs, and tenders, with orders to take overall command of the British blockade from the Delaware Capes to Savannah, Georgia. The Admiralty also put Cockburn in charge of the Bermuda station.5
The departure of Warren and Cockburn left Capt. Robert Barrie of the Dragon in charge of a greatly reduced blockade. Although he now had command of his own flotilla, Barrie was unhappy about having to remain in the Chesapeake. He confided to his mother, “This blockading affair is a sad disappointment to me who expected a cruise off New York,” where Commodore John Rodgers, a Marylander, commanded a small U.S. Navy squadron that included the 44-gun frigate President. Despite his disappointment on missing out on potential ship-to-ship combat, Barrie had hopes of capturing prizes: “If the Americans venture to run any of their French traders during the winter I hope to catch a few of them. . . . Nathan [a derogatory British term for Americans, along with “Jonathan”] has not had any trade whatever during the summer. I hope he will dash a little now the bad weather is coming in.”6
Poor weather and slow-moving news made the early autumn dull for Barrie. His flotilla was tiny compared with the force that had once bottled up the bay. Barrie had his flagship, the 74-gun ship of the line Dragon; two frigates, the Armide and the Lacedaemonian; the brigs Acteon and Mohawk; and the tenders Cockchafer, Snapdragon, Hampton, and Liberty; but few if any American vessels tested the blockade. Winds on the Chesapeake are notoriously fickle in the late summer and early fall, and no captain wanted his ship to get caught in the afternoon calms that often plague the bay. Instead, Barrie kept his men busy looking for “coasters,” small schooners or sloops that carried produce or cargo in the shallow areas of the bay. The British also engaged American militia in a cat-and-mouse conflict over water. The Americans had grown increasingly adroit at ambushing British watering parties, and the two sides clashed in a series of skirmishes.
On September 21, militia under Lt. Col. Kendall Addison attacked a force of eighty-five sailors and Royal Marines under Lt. Richard Maw who were trying to cut out a schooner they had spotted in Cherrystone Inlet on the Virginia Eastern Shore. Maw’s force managed to board the schooner and two other boats, but Addison’s men, numbering about two hundred with a pair of 12-pounder field guns, lined both sides of the shore and drove off the British. The raiders set fire to the boats, but the militiamen quickly doused the flames. The British suffered one dead and two wounded while the Americans had no casualties.7
Winter commenced early that year, with fierce storms lashing the Chesapeake in early October. Barrie pulled his force back to the shelter of Lynnhaven Bay but could not escape the harsh weather. The Liberty foundered and sank, and the Hampton suffered so much damage in one storm that the British simply broke her up. The Mohawk also suffered extensive damage, but Barrie could not afford to send her to Bermuda for repairs until he received a replacement ship.8
The bad weather continued throughout October. It rarely hampered the blockade, although an early October snowstorm supplied cover for fifteen schooners to run the British gauntlet. Capt. Samuel Jackson gave chase with the Lacedaemonian, but the schooners disappeared into the storm. Those ships were the exception, however. Barrie claimed seventy-two prizes from the day he took over the blockade to the end of year as the blockade continued to choke American commerce.9
The British also continued to terrorize the local population. On October 30 Barrie anchored the Dragon off St. George Island on the Maryland side of the Potomac River to search for water. A landing party dug twenty shallow wells that yielded plentiful clean water, and the entire squadron soon moved to the island. The few inhabitants of the island fled, and the British pillaged their homes and then burned houses, barns, and crops—everything they could find. As American militia moved into the area to harass the watering operation, the British grew nastier, destroying fences and cutting down most of the trees to use as lumber or kindling on board the ship.10
The British had problems other than the near-continuous sniping of American militiamen. Morale remained low in the reduced squadron, and five men took the opportunity to take “French leave,” running off into the brush. Barrie’s marines and sailors spent five days scouring the island for them, and although the search party found and stole numerous hogs and chickens, they had to resort to setting the marsh grasses on fire and literally scorching the island before the deserters gave up.11
On November 5 Barrie dispatched Lt. George Pedlar and thirty-five men in five armed barges to capture three ships anchored in St. Inigoes Creek located off the bay in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Pedlar and his men, guided by a British sympathizer, quickly found and seized the ships. American militia who were lying in wait engaged the small party with musket and cannon fire. The British boarding party returned fire and managed to bring off one of the boats, the 350-ton, copper-bottomed schooner Quintessence, and set fire to the other two. Barrie took the captured vessel into British service as a tender.12
Late on the night of November 21, one of the more unusual ships to leave Baltimore slipped past Barrie’s entire squadron, which was patrolling off Cape Charles at the mouth of the Chesapeake. The Ultor was a three-masted xebec, a type of ship common in the Mediterranean but almost unheard of in American waters. Rigged with lateen sails, the Ultor cut an unlikely figure among the brigs and schooners that plied the Chesapeake. Her rig, however, made her nimble in light winds and easy to maneuver. The British were already familiar with the Ultor. In October the xebec, under the command of Capt. John Cook, had tried to run the blockade. The Lacedaemonian gave chase, but the square-rigged British warship could not match the speedy Ultor in the prevailing winds, and the American ship easily avoided capture. Several weeks later Cook tried again, with Barrie fuming as the Ultor easily sailed past the Dragon bound for Cape Henry and the Atlantic. Something, however, caused Cook to turn back at the last moment, and the last thing Barrie saw that day was the xebec again sailing past his ship.
On November 21 the Ultor, now under the command of Sailing Master James Matthews, once more dared the blockade as she sought to break out into the Atlantic. First the Lacedaemonian and then the Cockchafer chased the xebec to no avail. As Barrie looked on from the Dragon, the Ultor outran both British warships, rounded Cape Charles, and disappeared. She would go on to have an exceptionally active though not very profitable career.13
The Admiralty might have been more sympathetic toward Warren had they known just how badly the British blockade was hurting the American economy. James Madison certainly knew how effective Warren’s blockade had been. Exports, which totaled $75 million in 1812, dropped to $45 million in 1813. Customs duties on imports, which provided the federal government with its chief source of income, went from $96 million in 1812 to slightly more than $13 million in 1813.14
The lack of income forced Madison to get approval from Congress to secure loans just to keep the government afloat. Congress approved borrowing $27 million, but even that was not enough. The cost of the war hit $24 million in 1813 as U.S. forces fought from Canada to Alabama.15 In a somewhat gloomy assessment for 1814, the Treasury Department expected the cost of the conflict to increase to more than $32 million, with all expenses for the federal government topping $45 million. Without more income the government would go broke by October 1814, and expenses mounted daily.16 Each time Madison’s government called up and federalized state militia, the War Department had to pay to feed, clothe, arm, and equip the troops while they were in federal service. Present-day Department of Commerce estimates put the costs of the militia alone at 2.7 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.17
The Indian uprisings in the South came as a particularly nasty shock to Madison. The Creeks, who lived in western Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, had lived peacefully with the European Americans for several generations. In 1812, with British backing, Tecumseh convinced a band of Creeks to rise up against American encroachment. The uprising turned into a civil war when other bands of Creeks refused to take part. The governors of Georgia and Tennessee allied with the “loyal” Creeks and called out their militias. Because the Army had no troops to send, the state troops operated under a federal mandate and were put on the War Department payroll, adding to the costs of the war.18
The economic situation Madison faced was similar to that of Governor Winder of Maryland and, to a lesser extent, Governor Barbour of Virginia. Winder also had to take the extraordinary step of getting legislative approval to take out loans so he could pay for and try to equip the militia. Those expenses would eventually be passed on to the federal government, but that was small consolation to Winder as 1813 turned into 1814. Maryland and Virginia needed their militias, and not just to repel the British.
As Warren and Cockburn operated on the Chesapeake, fears of a slave uprising grew. Capt. Charles Napier, cousin of the colonel of the 102nd Regiment, boasted that he could assemble a slave army of more than 100,000 that could seize control of the entire Chesapeake region.19 Robert Barrie, commanding the blockade in Cockburn’s absence, came to believe the region’s slaves offered a valuable source of manpower and intelligence. “There is no doubt but that the blacks of Virginia and Maryland would cheerfully take up arms and join us against the Americans,” he wrote to Warren.20 Although the British had strict orders not to foment a revolt, rumors and whispers mounted with every British raid. Both Winder and Barbour had their militia out not only to fight the British but also to keep a careful watch on the restive population in chains.
The constant loss of slaves seeking freedom was already a drain on the local economy. Crops needed to be planted and harvested. The shipping industry used slave labor to move cargo to wharves. The fishing industry depended heavily on slaves, as did shipbuilding, at least for its raw materials. Landowners who provided the lumber for building ships often used slave labor to harvest the wood.21 Like the country as a whole, the Chesapeake region teetered on economic collapse as the British choked American trade.
Politically, the country continued to tear at itself. Federalists and Democrats remained locked in a bitter debate over the war. Connecticut, which at the end of 1813 was the only New England state under blockade, continued to refuse to send troops to Canada or anywhere else. Merchants fumed when the British extended the blockade to include all of New England, but the brunt of the blame fell on Madison. New Englanders castigated the president for his inability to safeguard the American coast and for the costs the states incurred in erecting batteries, calling out militia, and commissioning warships to protect their shores. The British blockade also spawned a call among New Englanders to strike their own deal with Great Britain in which New England would essentially declare regional neutrality while the rest of the country continued the war. By the end of 1814 this unorthodox idea had morphed into a call for secession, although that idea never gained widespread support.22
Diplomatically, time was not on America’s side. Napoleon was in retreat everywhere, and it was just a matter of time before the British-led allied forces defeated and dethroned the French emperor.23 Madison was eager to end the war before Britain could bring the full weight of its military to bear on the United States. When Alexander I of Russia offered to mediate, Madison jumped at the chance, sending Albert Gallatin to St. Petersburg as part of a peace delegation. Gallatin arrived in July 1813 and for the next six months cooled his heels as the Russians tried to convince the English to join in the peace talks. The Russian czar had never been happy about the American war. He wanted nothing to distract Britain from the war in France.
What Alexander did not take into account was Britain’s desire for revenge against the United States. British newspapers railed against Madison and slaveholders in particular, likening the American declaration of war to a stab in the back. The British viewed their war against Napoleon as a war against a global tyranny, and if any country should support a war of freedom, Britain believed it was the new United States. The American declaration of war, as the British saw it, showed support for Napoleon. By the onset of spring 1814, Britain smelled blood—Napoleon’s and Madison’s. As victory over Napoleon became a foregone conclusion, England turned its focus on America. Although Britain had to keep the bulk of its forces in France to maintain order and prevent insurrection, four brigades of Wellington’s army were made available for duty in North America. The peace talks went nowhere, and in April 1814, just days after Napoleon abdicated, Gallatin wrote to Madison, “To use their own language they mean to inflict on America a chastisement that will teach her that war is not to be declared against Great Britain with impunity.”24
After sacking Warren in November 1813, the Admiralty turned to Vice Adm. Sir Alexander Forrester Inglis Cochrane, an officer with a known hatred of America. The sixth son of an impoverished minor Scottish noble, Cochrane entered the Royal Navy in 1776 at the age of fifteen as a midshipman and steadily advanced through the ranks thanks to the sponsorship of Adm. Sir George Rodney. He served in North America during the Revolutionary War and gained his first reason to despise Americans when his older brother, Charles, died in combat at Yorktown.25
As the war came to a close in 1783, Cochrane was serving on a ship stationed in New York. He met many loyalists who were hurriedly packing their belongings to flee the city along with the British forces. Cochrane had American relatives who had remained loyal to the king during the Revolution, and they were among the many preparing to leave New York. He also met his future wife, Maria Shaw, while on duty in New York. Shaw was from a prominent loyalist family who would lose their fortune when they left New York and “patriots” confiscated their property. It was the same for Cochrane’s family and many other loyalist families. Bands of “patriots” roamed New York searching for loyalists, whom they robbed, beat, and abused.26
By 1794 Cochrane was a full captain in command of the frigate Thetis, operating out of Halifax. He found his in-laws and his own relatives living in relative poverty after the United States reneged on its Treaty of Paris obligations to compensate loyalists for their lost property. That enraged Cochrane and deepened his hatred of America. Also deepening his hatred was an incident that occurred in the summer of 1794 after the Thetis was caught in a storm while operating off Norfolk. When he brought the ship into port for repairs, he came in contact with numerous slaves and slaveholders and witnessed firsthand the brutal nature of slavery and the burning desire of the slaves to be free.27 These experiences led Cochrane to despise Americans, whom he called a “perfidious enemy. . . . They are a whining, canting race much like the spaniel and require the same treatment—must be drubbed into good manners.”28
Cochrane’s expertise in amphibious operations was even more dangerous to America than his hatred. In 1800 he had trained two hundred officers to command an immense amphibious force of seventy flat-bottomed boats and dozens of barges. On March 1, 1801, he personally led a division of this force ashore at Aboukir Bay in Egypt in the face of stiff resistance from 30,000 French infantry and artillery. He landed his entire force of 16,000 over the next 3 days along with artillery, baggage, and supplies from a fleet of 70 warships plus transports lying 7 miles offshore.29
Cochrane became commander of the Leeward Islands Station in the Caribbean in 1805, and played a central role in the British victory over a French squadron at the Battle of Santo Domingo on February 6, 1806. Cochrane, acting under the command of Adm. Sir John Thomas Duckworth, helped smash the French battle line, driving the enemy’s flagship, the Imperial, and another ship of the line, the Diomede, aground. Cochrane deployed his marines and sailors in ships’ boats to seize the two vessels before the French could set them on fire. His men beat off the French, but neither ship was seaworthy and the British completed the destruction of both. He was awarded a knighthood for his role in the battle and was promoted to vice admiral in 1809 after he led the force that captured the French island of Martinique. By 1812 he was governor of Guadeloupe, although he returned to London late in 1813. On December 27, 1813, the Admiralty’s orders officially put Cochrane in command of a reorganized North America Station that now ran from Halifax to Bermuda.30
While in England, Cochrane apparently read a paper British foreign secretary Robert Stewart Lord Castlereagh wrote on the coming campaign in North America. Castlereagh envisioned recruiting a land and sea force of 15,000 men in Canada that would take control of the Great Lakes. He also advocated the annexation of U.S. territory south of the lakes to create a buffer zone that would protect Canada; the capture of New Orleans and “freeing” of all the land America had acquired in the Louisiana Purchase; arming and equipping all of the Indian tribes west of the Appalachian Mountains and turning them into a force capable of blunting any further American expansion; and undertaking a campaign to sever New England from the rest of the country and allow it to become an independent nation.31
Although somewhat fanciful, the Castlereagh paper had a direct influence on Cochrane’s plans because the capture of New Orleans was one of his main goals as well. Cochrane, however, added to the foreign secretary’s plan, requesting arms and uniforms for freed slaves he planned to enlist into a corps of Colonial Marines. Current British policy mandated the Royal Navy to resettle to Trinidad any slaves who fled their masters. Now they were to become soldiers for the Crown in return for their freedom.32
At first, Cochrane planned to recruit slaves only from Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia as punishment for those states’ continuing support for Madison and the war. The British government expanded on Cochrane’s idea, telling the admiral he should recruit and free slaves from any U.S. state. Slaves who preferred resettlement to service were to receive transport, with “northern slaves” going to Nova Scotia and “southern slaves” traveling to Trinidad. The government’s orders, however, failed to define the difference between a northern slave and a southern one.33
Cochrane arrived in Bermuda on March 6 and quickly set about formulating his plan to make Jonathan regret declaring war on England. He wrote Lord Melville on March 10 that he believed “all the country southwest of the Chesapeake might be restored to the dominion of Great Britain, if under the command of enterprising generals.”34 Two weeks later his schemes included kidnapping political leaders close to the Madison administration. On March 25 he envisioned an attack on the Portsmouth Navy Yard in New Hampshire that would occur in conjunction with an invasion from the north under Sir George Prevost, all with the goal of severing New England from the rest of the country. As for the Chesapeake, the admiral believed disaffected blacks could be recruited to fight the Americans on the doorstep of their own capital.35
Throughout his time in command Cochrane remained committed to the freeing and recruiting of slaves to aid England’s war effort. On March 28 he ordered Cockburn, who had spent the winter in Bermuda, to return to the Chesapeake and set up a fortified base on Tangier Island, where he was to begin accepting black recruits for the Colonial Marines. He also ordered Cockburn to map the mouth of the Patuxent River in southern Maryland and search for a suitable place to land a large force of soldiers. On April 1 Cochrane extended the British blockade to cover both New England and New Orleans.36
Cochrane conducted all of his scheming without knowing the size of the force he would have to work with. He convinced himself he would receive at least 15,000 of Wellington’s “Invincibles,” as the Peninsular War force was known. On some days he expected up to 20,000 men.37 Above all, he continued to expect and plan for massive slave defections to the British. “The great point to be attained,” he wrote to Cockburn on July 1, “is the cordial support of the black population. With them properly armed and backed with 10,000 British troops, Mr. Madison will be hurled from his throne.”38
Meanwhile, events in Europe and England were developing without Cochrane’s knowledge. Lord Castlereagh wanted to send a total of 25,000 soldiers to North America; he got just 10,000. Wellington, who was never a supporter of the war with America, refused to release any of his light infantry for duty in Canada and said he needed the bulk of his forces to maintain order in France. On April 11 Lord Bathurst, the secretary of state for war and colonies, ordered 7,000 men to Canada. On May 18 Bathurst requested the Admiralty to transport three regiments from France to Bermuda for operations in the Chesapeake. Two days later Bathurst named Maj. Gen. Robert Ross to command the troops bound for the bay. All told, 2,814 men from the 4th, 44th, and 85th Regiments of Foot boarded transports in Bordeaux. Led by the 74-gun ship of the line HMS Royal Oak, the convoy of fourteen warships and three transports set off for Bermuda and, from there, to America.39
Ross was a popular choice as a land commander. The forty-seven-year-old Irishman had forged a reputation as both a stern disciplinarian and a soldier’s soldier. At the Battle of Coruna in Spain, he personally led his 20th Foot in action, losing fewer men than any other regiment despite being in the thick of the battle. At Pamplona, two horses were shot out from under him and he was wounded twice, yet he remained on the field. He was the type of leader the hard-bitten men from Wellington’s army appreciated.40
Bathurst’s orders to Ross, transmitted through Cochrane, were strikingly similar to those under which Warren and Beckwith had operated in 1813. Ross would command the land forces, but Cochrane was to pick the targets. Bathurst told the Peninsular War veteran “to effect a diversion on the coast of the United States of America in favor of the army to be employed in the defense of Upper Canada.” He warned Ross, “This force will not permit you to engage in extended operations at a distance from the coast,” although Ross could use his own discretion to “decline engaging in any operations which he feels may either fail or expose his troops to losses disproportionate to any potential advantages.”41
Finally, Bathurst told Ross, “You will not encourage any disposition which may be manifested by the Negroes to rise upon their masters. The humanity which ever influences His Royal Highness . . . [forbids] the atrocities inseparable from commotions of such a description.” Ross, in keeping with Cochrane’s plans, could enlist any slaves who desired British protection and who wished to serve, but he had to provide transportation to Trinidad for any who simply wished to be free and not to serve.42
Ross did not arrive in Bermuda until late June. By then Cochrane had already moved forward with his plan to arm runaway slaves and use them against their former masters. On April 2, 1814, he issued a proclamation directly to the slaves, promising “That All Those who May be Disposed to Emigrate from the United States Will, with Their Families, be Received on Board of His Majesty’s Ships Or Vessels of War . . . when They Will Have Their Choice of Either Entering Into His Majesty’s Sea Or Land Forces, Or Being Sent as Free Settlers to the British Possessions in North America Or the West Indies.”43
The proclamation sent a clear signal that Cochrane intended to wreck the economy of the southern states by encouraging slaves to run away. It also came close to violating Bathurst’s order not to foment a slave rebellion. Although Cochrane never called on slaves to rise up against their masters, his Colonial Marines raised the specter of a slave revolt among southern whites. American papers vilified Cochrane and his proclamation, and Governor Winder warned Maryland militia commanders, “Should we be attacked there will be great danger of the blacks rising, and to prevent this, patrols are very necessary, to keep them in awe.”44
When he learned of the proclamation on May 20, President Madison fired off a note to Secretary of War Armstrong asking for advice. Although Madison, a slaveholder, did not address his own concerns about a slave uprising, he did write of his concerns for the capital—his first such admission since the scare of 1813. “I am just possessed of the intelligence last from Great Britain and France and the proclamation of Cochrane addressed to the blacks,” Madison wrote. “They admonish to be prepared for the worst the enemy may be able to effect against us. The date concurs with the measure proclaiming to indicate inveterate ferocity against the Southern states and which may be expected to show itself against every object within the vindictive enterprise. Among these the seat of government cannot fail to be a favorable one.”45