This last he learns from a rapid visit to the city itself (which he enters unchallenged, so ill organized is its defense), together with the news that Winder has rejected that proposal. The general fears it will be the British who attack that night, to nullify his advantage in cavalry and artillery; he has therefore withdrawn his army from Long Old Fields back into the city, where they lie exhausted in the navy yard. There is no order; the place is pitifully exposed; the approach bridges across the east branch of the Potomac have not even been mined; only a few trunkfuls of government records have been packed out of town for safekeeping. There is a token guard at the President’s House, which Andrew approaches without difficulty. He chats with the guards; they cheerfully inform him that Madison has rejected the idea of blowing up the Capitol before it falls to the British: it will “stir the country more,” he has decided, if the enemy themselves destroy it. Incredibly, through a window of the house he catches sight of James and Dolley Madison themselves! Someone is gesticulating at the little man, who wearily shakes his head. Dolley, turning a wineglass in her fingers, seems to be directing servants; with her free hand she briefly touches her husband’s shoulder. People come and go with messages, advice.
The streets are empty. Andrew rides out of town about midnight with a defense party dispatched at last to burn the Potomac bridges. They tell him that a slave revolt is rumored to be in progress throughout Maryland and Virginia; that the British have armed 2,000 blacks with specific instructions to rape all white females regardless of age and station; that the non-defense of Washington is New England’s revenge on Madison for sending up southern generals to lose the Canadian campaign, which if successful would have added more non-slaveholding states to the Union. Holding his peace, Andrew passes with them through the sentries at the river. Except for a force of militia at Bladensburg, the northeastern approach to the city, there are no American troops beyond those sentries. So far from fearing capture in the five-mile ride back to the British camp, Andrew suffers from loneliness on the vacant country road, where “nothing stirr’d save the owls, and their prey.” Nevertheless, the night is sweet after the oppressive afternoon; he takes his time. As he finds Ross’s and Cockburn’s quarters, about 3:00 A.M., he sees a glow behind him from the burning bridges.
The general and the admiral are up and pacing about outside. Lieutenant Scott stands by with other aides, his letter delivered uneaten — and evidently undigested by the addressee. The tableau is clear: Ross shakes his head like Madison; Cockburn gesticulates, expostulates, curses, coaxes. Ross points to the fire-glow; no matter, Cockburn replies, we will attack by way of Bladensburg, a better approach anyhow, since the river there is shallow enough to ford if the bridge is blown. The local militia will never stand against Wellington’s Invincibles, who after their victory will surely be renamed Ross’s Invincibles. On the other hand, Earl Bathurst and the prince regent will be furious to learn that such an easy, spectacular plum has been left unplucked, should we turn back now.
The decision must be Ross’s, and he cannot make it. Cockburn looks about, rolling his eyes. A whippoorwill starts, the first voice that Wednesday morning besides their own. Andrew himself, remembering Dolley Madison’s hand on her husband’s shoulder and missing Andrée (but perhaps mindful also of a third tableau: Andrée walking and talking with Tecumseh at Castines Hundred), decides to grant this much to the American, at least the Maryland, line of his descent: if his advice is solicited, he will point out that symbolic losses meant to demoralize can sometimes have the reverse effect: if they do not crush your adversary’s spirit, as the loss of Tecumseh dispirited the Indian confederacy, they may unify and inspirit him instead.
There is a pause. Ross looks his way but does not ask, may not even recognize Andrew in the darkness. Then he claps his brow, “as reluctant a conqueror as ever conquer’d,” and declares to Cockburn, Yes, all right, very well, God help us, let it be, we will proceed. On to Bladensburg—
& Washington!
I write these pages, Henry, in my air-conditioned office on Redmans Neck, on another torrid tidewater Wednesday. The leaves I decipher and transcribe — and must now, alas, more and more summarize (the afternoon is done; I have business of my own in Washington tomorrow, which I will enter as Ross’s army did, via the Baltimore Pike through Bladensburg) — our ancestor ciphered on a milder July 16 on the orlop deck of Bellerophon, where Napoleon surrendered the morning previous to escape arrest, after his second abdication, by officers of the restored Bourbons. Andrew will not explain until his next letter (August 6, 1815) what has fetched him to Rochefort; how it comes that he has not only witnessed the emperor’s surrender but is about to dash overland to Le Havre and London with Allied dispatch couriers to negotiate British passports to America for Napoleon and his suite. He merely announces, in this letter, that such is the case, and that he must therefore leave “to another day, or another Muse,” the full singing of the fall of Washington, the bombardment of Baltimore, and his own “death & resurrection.”
It is a song, Henry, your father had thought to sing himself, in the years before I turned (to cite the motto of this border state) from parole femine to fatti maschii: from “womanly words” to “manly deeds,” or from the registration of our times to their turning: my Marylandiad!
Sing of wee scholarly Madison’s kissing Dolley farewell that Wednesday morning, buckling on the brace of big dueling pistols given him by his treasury secretary (who has quit and left town in disgust), riding bravely out to Bladensburg, right through the center of his troops drawn up for battle… and almost into the British columns assembling just below the rise! Sing of the heat of that August forenoon: temperature and humidity both in the high 90’s, and the redcoats dropping already of heat exhaustion as they quickstep to Bladensburg. Half a canto then to the confusion and contradiction among the Americans, now some 6,000 strong as new units rush in at last from Annapolis, from Baltimore, and opposing an attack force of no more than 1,500 British. But those are Wellington’s Invincibles, the Scourge of Spain, under clear and unified command, where these are farmers, watermen, tradesmen, ordered here by General Winder, there by General Stansbury, elsewhere by Secretary Monroe, elsewhere again by Francis Scott Key, the Georgetown lawyer who wanders up now full of advice for Winder, his fellow attorney. Some units are in the others’ line of fire; many do not know that the rest are there, and think themselves alone against Ross’s regulars; many have disapproved of the war from its outset, or believe it intentionally mismanaged; most have never seen combat before.
Half a canto therefore — and no more, and not without sympathy — to the “Bladensburg Races.” The battle is joined; men begin to die. Unbelievably, the Americans have not blown the Bladensburg bridge; it must be seized at once. For the last time, Ross wavers — homespun militia or not, it seems to him a very large number of Yankees over there, defending after all their own capital city — and for the fifth, sixth, seventh time Cockburn cries Attack, attack. Between artillery blasts from the American earthworks the British race across the bridge and take cover; lacking artillery themselves, they open up on the Americans’ second line of defense with Congreve rockets fetched in from the fleet. Marvelously inaccurate but fearsome to behold, the Congreves fall among the soldiers, the horses, the crowds of spectators come out from Washington and Georgetown to see the show. The rockets are easily and quickly launched, from a simple tube; flight follows flight of them, sputtering and shrieking, as the bright British bayonets move toward the front line — and suddenly all is panic. Horses whinny and bolt, onlookers scream and run; the whole center breaks, and the left, and the right, and the second line, not a quarter hour after the first redcoat crosses the bridge. Cannon are left behind unspiked, muskets thrown away; the swift trample the slow; Madison’s party is swept back in the general rout. General Ross looks astonished: the battle has not yet properly commenced, and the Americans run, run, run for their lives. Some will not stop till they reach Virginia, or western Maryland. Everyone runs!