Letters

That word carries the day: it is audaciousness, exactly, which Prevost & Co. — even Wellington himself! — are short on, and which Cockburn and his friend the prince regent admire even in their adversaries. Old Bonaparte, damn him, has it aplenty; likewise the Yankee Commodore Joshua Barney, whose Baltimore flotilla of scows and barges has effectively hampered Cockburn’s Chesapeake activities this season. He Cockburn fancies himself not altogether without some audaciousness too, and is encouraged to fellow feeling, if not to unreserved trust, by the plain evidence of that trait in our ancestor.

To the audacious man, Andrew ventures further, the settling of old scores is as agreeable as the taking of prizes. He himself has a little grudge against Josh Barney (at whose house in Baltimore their mutual friend Jérôme Bonaparte was introduced to Miss Betsy Patterson) for nearly capturing the St. Lawrence en route to this present conversation. Like the picaroon Joseph Whaland before him, Barney strikes quickly and then runs his shoal-draft boats up into creeks too shallow for his pursuers to follow. Moreover, the fellow has good tactical sense: the current presence of his flotilla in the upper Patuxent argues that he anticipates an attack on Washington. Let him then be hoist with his own petard: along with other diversionary maneuvers, let the main landing force go ashore at Benedict on the Patuxent and strike first at Barney’s boats, which Cockburn’s fleet will prevent from escaping. The Americans thus will be kept from guessing until the last possible moment whether Baltimore, Washington, or A

Cockburn is now clapping Andrew about the shoulders like dear dead Barlow, eager to be on with it. July is ru

Shall Andrew fetch the plan to Cochrane himself, to insure its effective delivery? Cockburn smiles: Mr. Cook will remain where he is, to insure its accurate delivery. Once the St. Lawrence is safely out of the Chesapeake, he may either begin his campaign of sowing the Eastern Seaboard with doctored letters, or join the Royal Marines in their sporting raids upon the Maryland tobacco crop.

Andrew opts to do a bit of both: on July 27 he drafts an anonymous letter to President Madison, informing him plainly of the British plan (the same classical tactic used by my father in 1941 vis-à-vis Pearl Harbor), and with Cockburn’s approval “smuggles” it ashore to be mailed.

Your enemy have in agitation an attack on the capital of the United States. The ma

(Signed) Friend

A few days later he lands with a foraging party from H.M.S. Dauntless near the village of Tobacco Stick (since renamed Madison after the addressee of the foregoing), thinking to make his way to the place where in 1694, having escaped death at the hands of the Bloodsworth Island Ahatchwhoops, his ancestor Ebenezer Cooke was reunited with his twin sister. Andrew wants to review his own position from that perspective, to reassure himself that he really means to aid the destruction of Washington rather than its preservation. His woolgathering separates him from Lieutenant Phipps’s party, who are guided by a liberated slave woman. The tender leaves without him, runs aground in the Little Choptank, and is captured by the local militia, who jail the 18 Britishers and return the black woman to the mercies of her former owner. Andrew must make his way back to the fleet via Bloodsworth Island and a stolen bateau.

He confides to Andrée that Cockburn’s confidence in him is not increased by this episode, and while he does not report any change in his own attitude, he sees that he must do something to reestablish his credibility. Cockburn grants his request to make an intelligence-gathering visit to the capital, charging him specifically to report whether Madison and Monroe have managed to prod Secretary Armstrong into any real measures of defense since the receipt of Andrew’s letter: if not, then either the Americans still doubt that Washington is the target, or they plan not to resist its capture, or their plans mean nothing. If on the other hand real defense measures are at last being taken, their strength must be expertly assessed before Ross and Cochrane’s arrival.

Where are you, Henry?

On August 1, as Andrew’s false true warning is postmarked from New York, Madison’s Peace Commission (now in London) are being depressed by the tremendous joint celebration there of Napoleon’s exile to Elba, the 100th a

Andrew goes first to Kalorama, to advise Ruth Barlow (through an old servant-friend from the rue de Vaugirard; Ruth will not receive him) to place her valuables and herself under the diplomatic immunity of her former tenant, the French Ambassador Sérurier. By the simple expedient of installing himself then in the lobby of McKeowin’s Hotel on Pe

Thus Andrew’s report to Cockburn, Cochrane, and General Ross aboard the To