When Britain Burned the White House Read online

  Ross was a Northern Irishman from Rostrevor in County Down, and he had done Wellington proud in the Peninsula. He had been awarded a medal for his leadership at the Battle of Vitoria the previous summer. He was notably courageous in battle, occasionally reckless: he had a habit of leading from the front and lost a number of horses killed under him. His men were devoted to him: he would occasionally entertain them by playing his violin. An American prisoner who was to meet him later said of Ross that ‘he was the perfect model of the Irish gentleman of easy and beautiful manners, humane and brave … and his prisoners had no reason to regret falling into his hands’.

  It was at the Battle of Orthez in February 1814 that Ross received the near fatal neck wound that brought his wife, Elizabeth – he called her ‘Ly’ – riding on horseback through the snow to look after him. In a letter to her brother, Ned, he made light of his wound: ‘You will be happy to hear that the hit I got in the chops is likely to prove of mere temporary inconvenience.’ But Ross was now worried about the deep depression that had seized Elizabeth when he broke the news that far from coming home he was off to another war in America. ‘The prospect of your unhappiness’, he wrote to his wife in mid-July, ‘dismays me considerably. The care which our young ones require ought to make you consider the care of yourself of the most infinite consequence. Do, my Ly, somehow dispel all those gloomy ideas…’ Concern for Elizabeth was to hang like a dark shadow over Ross throughout the next gruelling weeks. He wrote to reassure her that he believed the contest with America would be over by the end of the year ‘so as to restore my Ly to me. What a joyful meeting after the most melancholy separation we have ever had.’ His letter went on to give a hint that he hoped he would come back with a generous share of any prize money. As the army commander in the operation, he told Elizabeth, ‘any advantage to be derived from it will I trust fall to my lot’. Like his naval colleagues Ross expected the campaign to add handsomely to his earnings.

  Ross was fortunate in two key aides, both still showing the scars of their own wounds in the Peninsula: Harry Smith was one, George de Lacy Evans the other, a lieutenant, one rank junior to Smith. Both of them were burning with ambition and enthusiasm for the mission. Evans was a tearaway young cavalry officer who was given a medal for leading his dragoons in repeated charges at the Battle of Vitoria in 1813. Ross wrote to his wife that he was ‘much pleased’ with his staff officers. ‘In addition to Smith, the Brigade Major, who improves much upon acquaintance, I have a Mr Evans of the Quarter Master General’s department who is an extremely intelligent active fellow and’ [as if that wasn’t commendation enough] ‘an Irishman.’ Both competed energetically to influence Ross, though Smith was less impressed with his chief than was Evans, and Ross may have detected this. Certainly the general went out of his way as the campaign progressed to try to promote George Evans to the same level as Harry Smith. It was enough to inject a touch of jealousy into Smith’s spirit of comradely rivalry with Evans.

  Within minutes of arriving in Chesapeake Bay Ross met the admiral who was to be the driving force of the British blitzkrieg of the next few weeks, Rear Admiral George Cockburn. Cockburn had impressed Nelson with his fierce self-confidence and courage at the Battle of Cape St Vincent off Portugal in 1797 and at several engagements in the Mediterranean. Here in America he had been causing terror and destruction in the Chesapeake for the last eighteen months. People in coastal towns lived in fear of their homes being burned and their tobacco crop and other valuables being seized and sold for profit by Cockburn’s marauding troops. He was often seen accompanying his men ashore – he relished being involved in the action – in his admiral’s two-cornered hat and familiar jet-black uniform jacket with gold epaulettes. By the end of 1813, he was being attacked in the American press for behaviour it described as ‘brutal’ and ‘savage’. The Boston Gazette called him ‘the notorious barbarian Admiral Cockburn … there breathes not in any quarter of the globe a more savage monster than this same British admiral. He is a disgrace to England and to human nature.’ Another newspaper reported the offer of ‘a reward of one thousand dollars for the head of the notorious incendiary and infamous scoundrel, and violator of all laws, the British Admiral Cockburn, or five hundred dollars for each of his ears on delivery’. Cockburn’s aide-de-camp, James Scott, who witnessed much of the fighting, welcomed the raging reaction of the American press. ‘It exposed their weakness in the eyes of the world,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘The abuse and vituperation … out Heroded Herod; there was no crime no outrage however flagitious that was not placed to his account.’ Scott reports that the admiral’s raids did indeed spread fire and destruction and earned piles of prize money, and that Cockburn often put himself in danger by plunging into the middle of the action. To Scott the admiral had always been a hero – from the moment he joined Cockburn’s frigate HMS Phaeton way back in his early teens. And he also claims that Cockburn was renowned for his gentlemanly gallantry. When on one raid his men burst in upon a party of young women and sent them scuttling in panic into a corner of the room, Cockburn arrived and assured them they would come to no harm. ‘The courtly demeanour of the Admiral and promises of protection restored the roses to their smiling countenances and they learned that the enemy and the gentleman may be combined without disparagement to either.’

  Cockburn was not in fact as unscrupulous as he liked his enemy to believe. He applied strict rules of engagement. Towns that surrendered to his raids he would spare; towns that resisted he would burn. Livestock and other food, he insisted, should be paid for, never looted, again always providing there was no opposition. As even one early twentieth-century American historian observed: ‘The harassing of the shores, however, was carried out in a mild and gentlemanly fashion – private property being respected, or if it were levied upon, payment was made unless the owners offered resistance.’ In practice the presence of American militia in many towns made a clash inevitable. And once battle was joined Cockburn abandoned restraint: burning, plunder, confiscation, all were fair game. And the outcome was often so savage that one British officer, Colonel Charles Napier, who served with Cockburn, complained: ‘Strong is my dislike to what is perhaps a necessary part of our job, viz, plundering and ruining the peasantry … it is hateful to see the poor yankees robbed and to be the robber.’ Napier made no secret of his contempt for what he saw as Cockburn’s ‘impetuous’ way of conducting raids. Napier was one of Wellington’s grizzled Peninsular veterans who’d delighted in killing Frenchmen at Bussaco and Badajoz, but he had his doubts about fighting fellow Anglo-Saxons: ‘It is quite shocking to have men who speak our own language brought in wounded; one feels as if they were English peasants and that we are killing our own people.’ To one British seaman, Frederick Chamier, the type of warfare in which he was engaged with George Cockburn was ‘a blot on our escutcheons … We most valiantly set fire to unprotected property and notwithstanding the imploring looks of the old women, we, like a parcel of savages, danced round the wreck.’

  But to most of his men Admiral George Cockburn was a hero. A young British midshipman watched Cockburn’s men rampaging through one town on the Virginia shore, capturing a pile of tobacco and several American schooners. ‘It’s almost impossible to depict my boyish feelings and transport when at the close of this spirit-stirring affair I gazed for the first time in my life on the features of that undaunted seaman, Rear Admiral George Cockburn, with his sun-burnt visage and his rusty gold laced hat – an officer who … on every occasion shared the same toil, danger and privation of the foremost man under his command.’ James Scott, Cockburn’s ADC, recalls one day when the temperature reached 90 degrees, and some of Cockburn’s men threw themselves on the ground saying they couldn’t move a step further. Cockburn jumped off his horse and ‘addressing the brave fellows who lay stretched on the ground in an encouraging tone, he said, “What! Englishmen tired with the morning’s walk like this; here, give me your musket; here, yours my man; your Admiral will carry them for you.”’ Scott, alr
eady scarcely able to stand in the heat, found himself carrying two of the men’s muskets. ‘But it had the desired effect of rousing the men afresh, and, headed by their chief, we reached the boats without one man missing.’

  Ross and Cockburn were under command of a vice admiral who was one rank senior to each of them. He was Sir Alexander Cochrane, whose flag flew on HMS Tonnant, which had retained her French name since she had been seized by the British at the Battle of the Nile. Cochrane had begun this enterprise no less aggressively than the plain-spoken George Cockburn. He had a long-term grudge against the USA. His brother had been killed at Yorktown, the last major battle in the War of Independence with America thirty-three years earlier. Cochrane was somewhat of an expert in the field of amphibious warfare: he had landed an army in Egypt in 1801, and supervised an assault on the island of Martinique in 1809.

  Cochrane had received a letter from Britain’s commander in Canada, General George Prevost, telling him of the ‘outrages’ the Americans were committing in their raids on Canada, and Cochrane promptly responded by ordering his subordinates such as Cockburn to carry ‘retributory justice into the country of our enemy … to destroy and lay waste such towns and districts upon the coast as you may find assailable’. Cockburn of course had been doing that ruthlessly to towns that picked a fight with him for the past year and a half, and was delighted to receive a letter in July asking for his advice about a plan of action for the new task force. Cochrane’s central strategic objective was to cause the Americans so much punishment on the east coast that they would be forced to reduce their pressure on Canada. He had been deliberating for some time about where to attack once Ross’s army arrived from Europe. Annapolis, Baltimore and Washington were all possible targets, perhaps Philadelphia up the Delaware River. ‘I will thank you for your opinion,’ Cochrane wrote to Cockburn. He didn’t have to wait long for his answer. Cockburn made it clear that he had no doubt what the approaching task force should do. It should strike where it would do most damage to the upstart republic’s pride and prestige. The target should be the city that was now the capital of the United States – Washington.

  He had already confidently reported that he had found America to be ‘in general in a horrible state … it only requires a little firm and steady conduct to have it completely at our mercy’. And then in mid-July he despatched a fast schooner with a letter he marked ‘secret’ to Cochrane, who was still building up his force in Bermuda. Cockburn said he now believed it was the perfect opportunity for a thrust at the very heart of the enemy’s power – their seat of government in Washington. And he added: ‘I feel no hesitation in stating to you that I consider the town of Benedict in the Patuxent, to offer advantages for this purpose beyond any other spot within the United States…’ The town, he said was forty-four or forty-five miles from Washington by a good road. And, he went on, within forty-eight hours of landing the troops, ‘the City of Washington might be possessed without difficulty or opposition of any kind’. Cockburn added that Benedict offered a sheltered spot on the Patuxent River at which to unload the troops. In the rich country around it they would find plenty of supplies for the army and horses to drag their heavy guns. What was more, added Cockburn, once the Americans had suffered the blow of losing their capital, the other cities like Annapolis and Baltimore would soon fall as well.

  Cochrane and Ross were not so sure. Nor was another admiral, who joined them from Britain, Edward Codrington. ‘We are now on our way to the Chesapeake,’ Codrington wrote to his wife. ‘(Mind you don’t tell the Yankees!)’ He was the only one of the admirals in America who had fought at Trafalgar nine years earlier. As captain of the Orion, Codrington had received the surrender of the French Intrépide at the cost of only one of his own men against 200 French dead. He was now to command the fleet under Cochrane. The Admiralty had intended to give Cochrane a force of 20,000 men. It had now been reduced to just 4,500. This must have been a shock to the Commander in Chief, who from now on allowed an element of caution to dilute his passionate loathing of the Americans. And in this he found an ally in Codrington. Before he arrived in the Chesapeake Codrington had expressed caution about going all out for a major target like Washington: ‘I feel extremely anxious that we should succeed in the first attack we make; and I should prefer even a minor object with something like certainty, to a point of more consequence which might be doubtful.’ Both men knew that if the Americans could get their act together they would outnumber the British several times over. But Ross’s men were battle-scarred veterans who had thrown the French out of Spain, and they would face untried and poorly trained American militia. Cochrane was inclined at least to give Cockburn’s plan a chance.

  There were actually four British admirals on the fleet assembled in the Chesapeake on 17 August. They included Rear Admiral Pulteney Malcolm, who had led the convoy that brought Ross’s troops across from France. Three of the admirals, confusingly, had names that start with a C. Alexander Cochrane, the vice admiral and Commander in Chief, was to supervise the campaign aboard his flagship, the Tonnant; Edward Codrington, a rank below him, was to be the day-to-day manager of the fleet, often exerting a restraining influence on his chief; the third was the pugnacious George Cockburn, who now relished the prospect of accompanying General Ross on his land operations.

  By the time the American government in Washington did know that the British had arrived in force, Cockburn, in two days of meetings on the Tonnant, swept away any doubts that remained in the minds of Ross and Cochrane. Washington it would be. They would sail as far as they could up the Patuxent River on Thursday 18 August, land the army at Benedict and march on the American capital. Two other diversionary moves would be made. One force would sail up the Potomac, another into the northern reaches of Chesapeake Bay. Anything to confuse the enemy, divide their forces and keep them guessing about the real target. Would the British attack the city of Baltimore, Annapolis – or Washington?

  2

  The great little Madison

  17 August

  AMERICA’S CAPITAL WAS still little more than an oversized village with only 8,000 inhabitants. ‘To a Bostonian, or a Philadelphian,’ wrote one of Madison’s cabinet ministers, ‘Washington appears like what it really is, a meagre village; a place with a few bad houses and extensive swamps, hanging upon the skirts … of a thinly-peopled, weak and barren country.’

  But it was a village with monumental pretensions. It had been chosen by America’s first President, George Washington, to be the capital of the new nation. The broad avenues and imposing buildings of state were already partly in place. The two wings of the great stone Capitol – the Senate on the north side and the House of Representatives on the south side – were complete, lavishly adorned with vaults and columns in the classical style and topped with domes. Next to them stood the Library of Congress with more than 3,000 leather-bound volumes in a chamber eighty feet long. Way off to the west along the still largely bare but broad Pennsylvania Avenue stood another group of palatial buildings: the executive offices, the Treasury Building and, in the centre, in solitary grandeur with a generous space around it, the White House, usually referred to at that time as the President’s House.* An ornate whitewashed Georgian mansion, it looked very much as it does today – but without the north and south porticos. It is a striking fact that what is arguably the world’s most iconic building, the seat of today’s most powerful leader, has changed little in size and shape from the time it was built.

  America’s second President, John Adams, moved into the mansion briefly on its completion in 1800, and was succeeded by Thomas Jefferson in 1801. Jefferson was one of America’s most esteemed Presidents but he was unmarried and had no taste for grand social occasions. It was his successor, his close friend and Secretary of State James Madison, and his wife Dolley, who brought the place alive. It was a curious paradox because Madison was anything but a flamboyant personality. He had a slight, almost shrivelled frame no more than five foot four inches tall. He dressed usually in
black, looked rather severe and had a thin and rather diffident voice. ‘As to Jemmy Madison,’ wrote the waggish American author Washington Irving, ‘ah poor Jemmy! He is but a withered little apple-john.’ Another said he was like ‘a schoolmaster dressed up for a funeral’. Madison was a studious man. He was unostentatious and unassuming when in company. But he had a charming smile, and eyes that were penetrating and expressive. His conversation sparkled with wit and anecdote and he had a fluent command of language, which had people listening to him in fascination. He was recognised as the intellectual force behind the US constitution: he had played a central role in designing the new republic.

  His wife Dolley could hardly have been more different. She was a buxom, warm-hearted woman with twinkling eyes – eyes that one observer said ‘wrought havoc with the hearts of the Quaker lads’. She was a natural hostess. She radiated an open bonhomie and disarming friendliness that made her White House the centre of Washington society from the moment James Madison became President in 1809. Dolley was born a Quaker, but by her mid-twenties she had left her modest upbringing behind her and was a vivacious and highly eligible widow in Philadelphia. Her first husband had died of yellow fever when she was twenty-five, leaving her with a small son, John Payne Todd. Young men would stop in the street to admire the ‘Widow Todd’. ‘Really, Dolley,’ said her friend Elizabeth Collins, ‘thou must hide thy face, there are so many staring at thee.’ Only a few months after her first husband had died, Dolley wrote excitedly to another friend that she was about to be introduced to ‘the great little Madison’. She wore a mulberry-coloured dress for the occasion with an ‘an exquisitely dainty little cap from which an occasional uncropped curl would escape’. James Madison, the intense, unmagnetic but already celebrated political genius, was immediately captivated. He fell for her – passionately. He told Dolley’s cousin Catherine Coles that he thought so much of Dolley in the daytime that he ‘lost his tongue’, and ‘at night he dreams of you’.