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The Battle for Baltimore: 1814
Explores the efforts of Baltimore's citizen army, the social and political conditions in the city, and the significance of the battle
- GenresHistoryMilitary History
262 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1997
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June 13, 2022
The Battle of Baltimore was a singularly important moment from the War of 1812, and it gave the United States of America its national anthem. Yet the engagement in which American forces repulsed British incursions against Baltimore – by land and sea, over three days in September of 1814 – had larger echoes in terms of subsequent relations between Great Britain and the United States, as Joseph W.A. Whitehorne suggests in his 1997 book The Battle for Baltimore: 1814.
Whitehorne, an author from Cedarville, Virginia, opens by suggesting that the War of 1812 remains, relatively speaking, a “forgotten war.” His claim is valid: my British father-in-law learned a great deal, as a boy in Essex, about British valour in the Napoleonic Wars, but was told nothing about his birth country having fought the United States around the same time. As Great Britain and the United States are such staunch allies now, perhaps many people on both sides of the pond have long had, for varying reasons, an interest in forgetting about the war as much as possible.
But the war came – in the context of bitter political division within the United States, and at a time when U.S. military readiness was at a low ebb. Great Britain was able to use its naval superiority to seal off the American coast, and to facilitate British raids on towns up and down the Chesapeake. British Rear Admiral George Cockburn believed in the power of such raids as an effective way of carrying the war to the enemy.
Having worked in Cecil County, at the head of Chesapeake Bay, I have seen many of the sites from the initial British raid on the upper Chesapeake in 1813, when the British destroyed the Principio Foundry and the gun barrels under construction there. The British raiders burned warehouses and ships in the Kent County community of Georgetown, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and the flames spread and destroyed much of the town. But one Georgetown woman stood up to the worst the British had to offer:
Catherine “Kitty” Knight had not fled, as she was determined to prevent the destruction of her house and that of an invalid neighbor in her care. She refused to leave when a fire party approached, brazening it out first with the young officer in charge and finally with Cockburn himself. With the strange gallantry he often displayed, the admiral acknowledged her courage and ordered her house and that of her neighbor to be spared. (p. 50).
Whatever utility the raids may have had in revealing the vulnerability of the Chesapeake region to future British depredations, Whitehorne emphasizes well that the raids also caused “a shift in public opinion….There was a growing dislike for the British, and many previously neutral or indifferent Americans now openly opposed them” (p. 50).
Admiral Cockburn was also interested in seeking retaliation for an American raid that had destroyed much of the Canadian town of Dover, Ontario, in May of 1814. “On 14 July, he had written Lord Bathurst and identified Washington and Baltimore as the most sensitive spots in the region, adding that such attacks also would influence recruiting from the slave population while adding to American fears. He added, ‘I have it at heart to give them a complete drubbing before peace is made’” (p. 102).
That “complete drubbing” of Washington and Baltimore that Cockburn had in mind seemed at first to go according to plan. The British forces moved efficiently up the Patuxent River, establishing a strong point from which to move against the U.S. capital at Washington, D.C., and then routed the American defense forces at Bladensburg, Maryland, in a victory so complete that the British subsequently referred to the Battle of Bladensburg as the “Bladensburg Races.” From there, the British Army moved into Washington, where they burned the capital’s public buildings in retaliation for American burnings of Ontarian towns – a grave embarrassment for the young republic.
And the British might have given Baltimore worse treatment, had they gotten there. Whitehorne explains clearly the factors that made the campaign against Baltimore a personal matter for many of the British:
There was a bitter feeling amongst the British against Baltimore because of its aggressive and damaging support for the war and its notorious pro-French, anti-British attitude. Royal Navy officers were painfully aware that it was the most active privateering base on the American coast. Ships from the city began taking prizes within a month of the declaration of war, and this symbolized to the British all of the costs and frustrations of this kind of war….Baltimore’s successes made it the center of privateering, and most richly deserving of chastisement. Its destruction was one of the most desirable objectives considered in the naval officers’ planning. (p. 160)
But that destruction, of course, never happened. With the lessons of Bladensburg and Washington firmly in mind, General Samuel Smith methodically prepared an effective defense against the likely British lines of attack by both land and sea. One can still follow the route of the British land attack, from North Point State Park up through modern-day Dundalk and into the city of Baltimore, where American forces successfully held the defense at Rodgers’ Bastion (modern Patterson Park) and compelled a British retreat.
The simultaneous and better-known naval attack at Fort McHenry, with “the rockets’ red glare” and “bombs bursting in air,” was likewise unsuccessful, though Whitehorne’s focus on tactical details does not seem to give him much time for the drama of Francis Scott Key witnessing the battle from a British flag-of-truce boat and being inspired to write a patriotic poem. Poor Key gets only one sentence near the bottom of page 191 of a 234-page book.
In the book’s conclusion, Whitehorne sums up well the larger significance of the Battle of Baltimore. From the American standpoint, “The success at Baltimore…was seen as a vindication of republican institutions, proving that a people schooled in self-rule could find the means to resist without compromising their political values. Baltimore’s performance confirmed the hope that a republican government could survive the stress of war intact” (p. 202).
By contrast, while looking at the Chesapeake Campaign and the Battle of Baltimore from the British point of view, Whitehorne concludes that “England had forgotten the size of her former colonies and the impossibility of finding any vital point for a decisive thrust in such an undeveloped country. The British Chesapeake campaign ultimately failed because of the absence of any clear-cut objective, beyond that of harassment.” And Whitehorne may be looking ahead to the Anglo-American “special relationship” of later centuries when he writes that “the opponents developed a new, albeit grudging, respect for each other that ended in a mutual preference for negotiation rather than war” (p. 202). And indeed, from the time that the ink dried on the Treaty of Ghent, Great Britain and the United States of America never made war upon each other again.
The Battle of Baltimore: 1814, with good maps and illustrations, provides a fine introduction to the Chesapeake Campaign and the Battle of Baltimore. As a Marylander and a former resident of the Baltimore area, I read this book about an important part of the history of my home state with particular interest. Yet any person, from Great Britain or the United States of anywhere else, who wants to visit the sites of this campaign and follow in the paths of the opposing forces from that time might want to carry along a copy of Whitehorne’s book as a helpful reference.
Whitehorne, an author from Cedarville, Virginia, opens by suggesting that the War of 1812 remains, relatively speaking, a “forgotten war.” His claim is valid: my British father-in-law learned a great deal, as a boy in Essex, about British valour in the Napoleonic Wars, but was told nothing about his birth country having fought the United States around the same time. As Great Britain and the United States are such staunch allies now, perhaps many people on both sides of the pond have long had, for varying reasons, an interest in forgetting about the war as much as possible.
But the war came – in the context of bitter political division within the United States, and at a time when U.S. military readiness was at a low ebb. Great Britain was able to use its naval superiority to seal off the American coast, and to facilitate British raids on towns up and down the Chesapeake. British Rear Admiral George Cockburn believed in the power of such raids as an effective way of carrying the war to the enemy.
Having worked in Cecil County, at the head of Chesapeake Bay, I have seen many of the sites from the initial British raid on the upper Chesapeake in 1813, when the British destroyed the Principio Foundry and the gun barrels under construction there. The British raiders burned warehouses and ships in the Kent County community of Georgetown, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and the flames spread and destroyed much of the town. But one Georgetown woman stood up to the worst the British had to offer:
Catherine “Kitty” Knight had not fled, as she was determined to prevent the destruction of her house and that of an invalid neighbor in her care. She refused to leave when a fire party approached, brazening it out first with the young officer in charge and finally with Cockburn himself. With the strange gallantry he often displayed, the admiral acknowledged her courage and ordered her house and that of her neighbor to be spared. (p. 50).
Whatever utility the raids may have had in revealing the vulnerability of the Chesapeake region to future British depredations, Whitehorne emphasizes well that the raids also caused “a shift in public opinion….There was a growing dislike for the British, and many previously neutral or indifferent Americans now openly opposed them” (p. 50).
Admiral Cockburn was also interested in seeking retaliation for an American raid that had destroyed much of the Canadian town of Dover, Ontario, in May of 1814. “On 14 July, he had written Lord Bathurst and identified Washington and Baltimore as the most sensitive spots in the region, adding that such attacks also would influence recruiting from the slave population while adding to American fears. He added, ‘I have it at heart to give them a complete drubbing before peace is made’” (p. 102).
That “complete drubbing” of Washington and Baltimore that Cockburn had in mind seemed at first to go according to plan. The British forces moved efficiently up the Patuxent River, establishing a strong point from which to move against the U.S. capital at Washington, D.C., and then routed the American defense forces at Bladensburg, Maryland, in a victory so complete that the British subsequently referred to the Battle of Bladensburg as the “Bladensburg Races.” From there, the British Army moved into Washington, where they burned the capital’s public buildings in retaliation for American burnings of Ontarian towns – a grave embarrassment for the young republic.
And the British might have given Baltimore worse treatment, had they gotten there. Whitehorne explains clearly the factors that made the campaign against Baltimore a personal matter for many of the British:
There was a bitter feeling amongst the British against Baltimore because of its aggressive and damaging support for the war and its notorious pro-French, anti-British attitude. Royal Navy officers were painfully aware that it was the most active privateering base on the American coast. Ships from the city began taking prizes within a month of the declaration of war, and this symbolized to the British all of the costs and frustrations of this kind of war….Baltimore’s successes made it the center of privateering, and most richly deserving of chastisement. Its destruction was one of the most desirable objectives considered in the naval officers’ planning. (p. 160)
But that destruction, of course, never happened. With the lessons of Bladensburg and Washington firmly in mind, General Samuel Smith methodically prepared an effective defense against the likely British lines of attack by both land and sea. One can still follow the route of the British land attack, from North Point State Park up through modern-day Dundalk and into the city of Baltimore, where American forces successfully held the defense at Rodgers’ Bastion (modern Patterson Park) and compelled a British retreat.
The simultaneous and better-known naval attack at Fort McHenry, with “the rockets’ red glare” and “bombs bursting in air,” was likewise unsuccessful, though Whitehorne’s focus on tactical details does not seem to give him much time for the drama of Francis Scott Key witnessing the battle from a British flag-of-truce boat and being inspired to write a patriotic poem. Poor Key gets only one sentence near the bottom of page 191 of a 234-page book.
In the book’s conclusion, Whitehorne sums up well the larger significance of the Battle of Baltimore. From the American standpoint, “The success at Baltimore…was seen as a vindication of republican institutions, proving that a people schooled in self-rule could find the means to resist without compromising their political values. Baltimore’s performance confirmed the hope that a republican government could survive the stress of war intact” (p. 202).
By contrast, while looking at the Chesapeake Campaign and the Battle of Baltimore from the British point of view, Whitehorne concludes that “England had forgotten the size of her former colonies and the impossibility of finding any vital point for a decisive thrust in such an undeveloped country. The British Chesapeake campaign ultimately failed because of the absence of any clear-cut objective, beyond that of harassment.” And Whitehorne may be looking ahead to the Anglo-American “special relationship” of later centuries when he writes that “the opponents developed a new, albeit grudging, respect for each other that ended in a mutual preference for negotiation rather than war” (p. 202). And indeed, from the time that the ink dried on the Treaty of Ghent, Great Britain and the United States of America never made war upon each other again.
The Battle of Baltimore: 1814, with good maps and illustrations, provides a fine introduction to the Chesapeake Campaign and the Battle of Baltimore. As a Marylander and a former resident of the Baltimore area, I read this book about an important part of the history of my home state with particular interest. Yet any person, from Great Britain or the United States of anywhere else, who wants to visit the sites of this campaign and follow in the paths of the opposing forces from that time might want to carry along a copy of Whitehorne’s book as a helpful reference.
February 27, 2018
I am a native of Baltimore who currently lives in South Central Pa. This book just resonated with me because the authors detailed description of the battles and their location in and around the city just fascinated me and put me on the road or in fort McHenry with his prose. He talked about the August heat that the British had to cope with and I know it well having lived in the city during a pre-air conditioning time.
Beyond the fulfillment provided me by his descriptions, the author did an excellent job of providing background and insightful narrative about the thoughts and strategies of the British invaders. The lead up to the battle in Baltimore was the burning of Washington and the Battle of Bladensburg, as described by the author these defeats inspired the leadership of Baltimores defense to ensure that the result would be different. He also pointed out that the federal government was quite ineffective and it took State militia from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania to save the day in Baltimore. The description of militia marching from Pennsylvania in the summer heat and than being drilled into something that resembled soldiers was thought provoking. How and why did these volunteers do it is a question I have trouble answering. Certainly patriotism, yet, it had to be more, maybe just the fellowship of conrads in arms, who knows, yet, these young men and boys deserve a nations gratitude, while having gained an experience that lived with them for the balance of their lives.
If you are from this area of the country and have an interest in the dynamics of this brief war, than read this book, it is well done and can captivate your imagination, and this is the reason why we read!
Beyond the fulfillment provided me by his descriptions, the author did an excellent job of providing background and insightful narrative about the thoughts and strategies of the British invaders. The lead up to the battle in Baltimore was the burning of Washington and the Battle of Bladensburg, as described by the author these defeats inspired the leadership of Baltimores defense to ensure that the result would be different. He also pointed out that the federal government was quite ineffective and it took State militia from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania to save the day in Baltimore. The description of militia marching from Pennsylvania in the summer heat and than being drilled into something that resembled soldiers was thought provoking. How and why did these volunteers do it is a question I have trouble answering. Certainly patriotism, yet, it had to be more, maybe just the fellowship of conrads in arms, who knows, yet, these young men and boys deserve a nations gratitude, while having gained an experience that lived with them for the balance of their lives.
If you are from this area of the country and have an interest in the dynamics of this brief war, than read this book, it is well done and can captivate your imagination, and this is the reason why we read!
March 24, 2017
A comprehensive and well-researched history of the Chesapeake campaigns.
Whitehorne provides great descriptions of all the battles in this theater and does a good job placing them into their strategic context. He describes the blockade and the raids conducted by the British and argues that their main goals was relieve pressure on Canada, while destroying the region’s privateers and shipping was secondary. He also describes how the American government continued to ignore the region and focused on Canada instead.
A well-written and balanced introductory work, although the typos are annoying.
Whitehorne provides great descriptions of all the battles in this theater and does a good job placing them into their strategic context. He describes the blockade and the raids conducted by the British and argues that their main goals was relieve pressure on Canada, while destroying the region’s privateers and shipping was secondary. He also describes how the American government continued to ignore the region and focused on Canada instead.
A well-written and balanced introductory work, although the typos are annoying.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews