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1814: A Dark Hour Before the Dawn Harry L. Coles National Response to the Sack of Washington Paul Woehrmann Response to Crisis: Baltimore in 1814 Frank A. Cassell Christopher Hughes, Jr. at Ghent, 1814 Chester G. Dunham ^•PIPR^$&^. "^UUI Fall, 1971 QUARTERLY PUBLISHED BY THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY GOVERNING COUNCIL OF THE SOCIETY GEORGE L. RADCLIFFE, Chairman of the Council SAMUEL HOPKINS, President J. GILMAN D'ARCY PAUL, Vice President C. A. PORTER HOPKINS, Vice President H. H. WALKER LEWIS, Vice President EDWARD G. HOWARD, Vice President JOHN G. EVANS, Treasurer MRS. WILLIAM D. GROFF, JR., Recording Secretary A. RUSSELL SLAGLE, Corresponding Secretary HON. FREDERICK W. BRUNE, Past President WILLIAM B. MARYE, Secretary Emeritus CHARLES P. CRANE, Membership LEONARD C. CREWE, Gallery DR. RHODA M. DORSEY, Publications LUDLOW H. BALDWIN, Darnall Young People's Museum MRS. BRYDEN B. HYDE, Women's CHARLES L. MARBURG, Athenaeum ROBERT G. MERRICK, Finance ABBOTT L. PENNIMAN, JR., Athenaeum DR. THOMAS G. PULLEN, JR., Education FREDERICK L. WEHR, Maritime DR. HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS, Library HAROLD R. MANAKEE, Director BOARD OF EDITORS JEAN BAKER Goucher College RHODA M. DORSEY, Chairman Goucher College JACK P. GREENE Johns Hopkins University FRANCIS C. HABER University of Maryland AUBREY C. LAND University of Georgia BENJAMIN QUARLES Morgan State College MORRIS L. RADOFF Maryland State Archivist A. RUSSELL SLAGLE Baltimore RICHARD WALSH Georgetown University FORMER EDITORS WILLIAM HAND BROWNE 1906-1909 LOUIS H. DIELMAN 1910-1937 JAMES W. FOSTER 1938-1949, 1950-1951 HARRY AMMON 1950 FRED SHELLEY 1951-1955 FRANCIS C. HABER 1955-1958 RICHARD WALSH 1958-1967 M6A SC 588M-^3 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE VOL. 66, No. 3 FALL, 1971 CONTENTS PAGE 1814: A Dark Hour Before the Dawn Harry L. Coles 219 National Response to the Sack of Washington Paul Woehrmann 222 Response to Crisis: Baltimore in 1814 Frank A. Cassell 261 Christopher Hughes, Jr. at Ghent, 1814 Chester G. Dunham 288 Notes on the Maryland Historical Society Manuscript Collections 300 Nancy G. Boles, Curator of Manuscripts Genealogical Notes 307 A. Russell Slagle, Genealogy Representative, Library Committee Reviews of Recent Books 310 Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A Biography, by John B. Boles. Liebling, The Earl of Louisiana, by Allen E. Begnaud. Van Deusen, Thurlow Weed: Wizard of the Lobby, by Charles R. Schultz. Cooper, A Documentary History of the Union Trust Company of Maryland, Baltimore, and Its Predecessor Institutions, Bank of Baltimore and the National Bank of Baltimore: 1795-1969, by Eleanor S. Bruchey. Garrison, Curtis W., ed.. Guide to the Microfilm Edition of James Monroe Papers in Virginia Repositories, by Dorothy M. Brown. Wainwright, Guide to the Microfilm Edition of the Thomas Penn Papers. Studley, et al, eds., Guide to the Microfilm Edition of the Stevens Family Papers, by P. W. Filby. Featherstonhaugh, A Canoe Voyage up the Minnay Sotor: With an Account of the Lead and Copper Deposits in Wisconsin; of Gold Regions in the Cherokee Country; and Sketches of Popular Manners, by Richard T. Farrell. Durnbaugh, ed.. The Church of the Brethren Past and Present, by W. Harrison Daniel. Trial of Samuel Chase, by Clare Lynn Dusek. Daly, ed., Aboard the USS Florida: 1863-65, by Robert H. Burgess. Notes and Queries 324 Members of the Society, June 30, 1971 326 Annual Subscription to the Magazine, $5.00. Each issue $1.25. The Magazine assumes no responsibility for statements or opinions expressed in its pages. Richard R. Duncan, Editor David Sullivan, Assistant Editor Published quarterly by the Maryland Historical Society, 201 W. Monument Street, Baltimore, Md. Second-Class postage paid at Baltimore, Md. CONTRIBUTORS FRANK A. CASSELL is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Professor Cassell has contributed numerous articles to such journals as the New England Quarterly, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, the Wisconsin Magazine of History, the Florida Historical Quarterly, and the Georgia Historical Quarterly. His article, "General Samuel Smith and the Election of 1800," appeared in the December, 1968 issue of this Magazine. The University of Wisconsin Press will publish his book. Merchant Congressman in the Young Republic: Samuel Smith of Maryland, 1752-1839, this fall. HARRY L. COLES is Professor of History at The Ohio State Uni- versity and is chairman of his department. Recently, he was elected a Senior Associate Member of St. Anthony's College, Oxford, for the Trinity Term, 1970. He is author of The War of 1812, published by the University of Chicago Press, as well as other monographs on military history and articles in such journals as the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History. Recently, the Indiana Historical Society published his "New Interpretations of Jeffersonian America," in Lectures, 1970. CHESTER G. DUNHAM is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona and is a former Foreign Service Officer of the Department of State. His dissertation, "The Diplomatic Career of Christopher Hughes," was completed in December, 1968 under the direction of Professor Harry L. Coles at Ohio State University. PAUL WOEHRMANN is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee, Nashville. Recently, he was -the recipient of a fellowship from the National Historical Publications Commission to work on the Papers of Henry Clay. Professor Woehrmann is the author of Fort Wayne, Indiana Territory, 1794-1819, published by the Indiana Historical Society, as well as articles in the Northwest Ohio Quarterly. MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE A Quarterly Volume 66 FALL, 1971 Number 3 1814: A DARK HOUR BEFORE THE DAWN BY HARRY L. COLES THE Treaty of Ghent, concluded on Christmas eve 1814, marked the completion of American independence. True, the famous declaration of 1776, out of a decent respect to the opinions of mankind, had set forth the reasons for assuming a separate and equal station, and after seven years of war England formally recognized the United States as a new nation. But it was one thing to declare independence and even to affirm it by force and quite another to develop viable institutions and the unity of spirit necessary to survive in a competitive, con- tentious, and cruel world. In the period from 1776 to 1815 American statesmen often referred to the new nation as an "experiment," and even the most sanguine realized there would be substantial difficulties in making the experiment work. After 1815 the concept of "experiment" disappears, even from the vocabulary of America's hostile critics. A century of national expansion, economic growth, and political isolation followed the War of 1812. There are of course no sharp breaks in history: the past is a continuum. But occasionally one can point to a particular year and say that during these twelve months or so certain contend- 219 220 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE ing forces, certain competing issues were brought to a resolu- tion, and after this date things were never quite the same. In American history the years 1776, 1781, 1789, 1800 and 1814 would be examples of this sort of turning point. If the year 1814 ended on a happy note, it began on a sad one. The twelve months preceding the Peace of Christmas Eve had been full of pitfalls and perils. The United States was at war with the greatest military power in the world and its capital had been sacked by the enemy. All the major ships of the United States Navy had been bottled up and the coast effectively block- aded from Maine to the mouth of the Mississippi. The treasury was empty and the government unable either through taxation or borrowing to raise enough money to finance the war. Though faced with invasion from the north, east, and south. Congress was powerless to raise an army adequate to the defense of the country. In desperation the Secretary of War suggested a draft but many, including ex-President Jefferson, who fervently sup- ported the war, dismissed the notion as a dream. By November the nation was so war weary, exhausted, and divided that some New England Federalists talked openly of secession and a sep- arate peace with the enemy. The political and military state of the nation was indeed a sorry one but even so, from the point of view of Great Britain, the situation was far from promising. When in March the Allies victoriously entered Paris, Great Britain was at last free to turn her attention to the war in America and her leaders looked forward to "giving Jonathan a drubbing." Spending her treasure lavishly, England sent some of her best regiments and some of her best generals to achieve victory in America. One fine army of over 10,000 veterans of the European wars marched down from Canada at the end of August. When a British flotilla on Lake Champlain was defeated. General Prevost, unwilling to venture farther without naval control of the lake, marched back to Canada with a dispirited army. Farther west on the Canadian border the war had long since arrived at a condition of stalemate. In the vicinity of the Niagara River, at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane, American troops under first-rate leaders such as Jacob Brown and Winfield Scott fought like regulars and won local victories. But in the whole course of the War of 1812 neither side could achieve decisive results in a major cam- 1814: A DARK HOUR BEFORE THE DAWN 221 paign. While General Prevost was retreating to Canada, other large British forces were assembling in Jamaica to attack New Orleans. They would be faced by General Andrew Jackson, who had already deprived the British of potential allies by defeating the Creek Indians. The British defeat at New Orleans did not come until after the peace treaty was signed, but even if it had been known in Whitehall, it would only have confirmed what British statesmen had already decided: the continuation of the war promised no gain commensurate with the cost.

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