Letters

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 ca

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 a

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 A

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 whi

Almost everyone. For who are these rolling in like an alexandrine at the canto’s end, kedging forward against the shameful tide? Jérôme Bonaparte’s old comrade Joshua Barney, with his stranded flotillamen and the 12- and 18-pounders from their scuttled ships! All morning they have ransacked the navy yard for mules and ammunition; the sailors themselves are harnessed to the guns, which they hurriedly place now across the turnpike almost at the District of Columbia line. They know how to aim (no deck so steady as terra firma); they know how to stand and fire (no place to retreat to on a boat, till your officers decide to turn the thing around). Now whole companies of British die, who had survived the horrors Goya drew. Ross’s advance is stopped; Barney’s marines even mount a brief but successful charge against the King’s Own Regiment, driving them back with bayonets and cutlasses and cries of “Board ’em, boys!”—but there is no President’s Own behind them to follow up with a counterattack.

The flotillamen withdraw to their guns, hold on aggressively yet awhile against the regrouping, readvancing, reencircling British. They begin to die now in numbers themselves; they cling to their line for yet another salvo and another, even when their ammunition wagons (driven by scared civilians under contract) desert them. Under Winder’s orders then, reinforced at last by Barney’s own, they spike their guns and go, leaderless. For (also at his own orders) they must leave their wounded commodore behind. Barney has taken a musket ball in the hip, and concealed the wound till he falls. He will die of it after the war, en route to settle in Kentucky like Odysseus wandering inland from the sea. Now he is discovered by his old adversary Admiral Cockburn, who has suspected all along where such accurate resistance came from. “I knew it was the flotillamen!” he cries to Ross. The general pays his respects and forthwith paroles his wounded enemy. The two old sailors congratulate each other on the most effective fighting of the day (those rockets were Cockburn’s idea); the admiral orders the commodore fetched back to Bladensburg for medical care and release, then rejoins Ross to pursue the battle.