It was August 1814, in the second year of the second and little-remembered U.S. war with the British. That war is memorable for many Americans because Francis Scott Key commemorated the defense of Baltimore by composing a poetic tribute that has become the national anthem. But who Key was and how he came to be an observer of the events he immortalized is lesser known. And the fact that Key was by no means the principal actor in those events is even more obscure.
In Upper Marlboro, Maryland, a road by the name of William Beanes Road runs parallel to the four-lane extension of Pennsylvania Avenue. Who was this William Beanes, and why is Upper Marlboro's principal showpiece a grave enclosed by an iron fence with brick cornerposts—the grave of Dr. William Beanes? Had U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Francis Scott Key not been appointed by President James Madison to negotiate with the British for the release of Dr. Beanes (whom the British had taken prisoner in violation of the existing rules of war), Key would not have been an observer of the bombardment of Fort McHenry and therefore would never have had the stimulating experience that he commemorated poetically in "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Beanes and Key were two of the three principal actors in the sequence of events that spawned the anthem. The third was Commodore Joshua Barney, a naval hero whose gallant action at the Battle of Bladensburg ultimately provided Key and his fellow negotiator, Colonel John Skinner, with letters from British who had been wounded by his guns, letters that influenced the reluctant British commander to release Dr. Beanes, whom he felt had been taken prisoner justifiably.
An important goal of the British war strategy was to capture and burn Washington in retaliation for the U.S. burning of London Town (Toronto) the previous year. To that end, a major naval force under the command of Vice Admiral Sir William Cochrane was assigned to convoy transports carrying a force of Redcoats to a rendezvous in the Chesapeake Bay, where they could launch their campaign.
When the fleet entered the Bay, it was joined by a force of raiders led by Vice Admiral Sir George Cockburn. For the previous two years, the raiders had terrorized and plundered towns and villages with impunity in the lower Bay area. In the course of these operations Admiral Cockburn had become familiar with the geography, as well as the U.S. defense potential in the region. In their first council of war, Cockburn advised Cochrane, who was the overall commander of the operation, that it would be risky to try an attack on Washington by way of the Potomac River, because strong forts just above Mount Vernon commanded the narrowest point of that river. He proposed a less obvious scheme: Go up the parallel Patuxent River as far as Upper Marlboro. From there, he pointed out, good roads led to Washington, Baltimore, and Annapolis. In Cockburn's view, this tactic would keep the enemy guessing about the final British objective and also would give his troops good overland access to Washington.
Cockburn had another reason for wanting to go up the Patuxent. His raiding operations in the lower bay had of late been harassed by a small fleet of shallow-draft gunboats, commanded skillfully by Commodore Barney, an old enemy from the War of Independence days and from operations of French fleet units, in which Barney had served with distinction. Cockburn had been unable to come to grips with Barney, but with the arrival of the main British fleet, Barney had withdrawn his little force up the Patuxent. There Cockburn felt he had him trapped, since north of Upper Marlboro the Patuxent was too narrow and shallow for any escape.
Cochrane bought his colleague's advice. He did send a small flotilla up the Potomac as a diversion, but he sailed the main fleet another 20 miles north to Solomons Island, where he bore off to the west and entered the mouth of the Patuxent.
For 20 more miles the fleet had easy sailing, since the lower Patuxent is broad enough and deep enough for vessels of almost any size. When they reached the little tobacco port of Benedict on 19 August, however, Cochrane's men made a major readjustment to deal with the narrow and too-shallow river. There, the troops were landed to march the remaining 30 miles to Upper Marlboro, while, to Cockburn's satisfaction, he was given command of a small but well-armed flotilla of schooners, cutters, and gunboats. His mission was to give support to the troops in the event that they were attacked on the march, and of course, to settle Barney's hash when they caught him.
Barney was well-known to the British Navy. A dedicated sailor from an early age and Baltimore-bred, he had gone to sea when he was 13 years old, had taken command of a storm-battered merchantman at age 15 when the captain had died unexpectedly, had sailed the ship into Gibraltar, negotiated a loan for necessary repairs, sold the cargo profitably in Nice, France, earned additional profits for the owners by chartering the vessel for the transport of Spanish troops to North Africa, taken on a new cargo, and sailed back across the Atlantic, where he delivered ship, cargo, and earnings to the owners before his 16th birthday.
During the Revolutionary War, Barney served with distinction in a succession of Navy ships, finally taking command of a Pennsylvania State Navy armed merchant ship, the Hyder Ally, from which he conducted an action that naval historians describe as "one of the most brilliant that ever occurred under the American flag." Out-gunned and out-manned by a British ship, the General Monk, Barney maneuvered his ship cleverly across the enemy's bow so close that the bowsprit of the British ship became entangled in the Hyder Ally's rigging. In this position it was impossible for the Monk to fire her broadsides on Barney's ship, while he was able to rake the Monk's decks from stem to stern with his own. Within 20 minutes, the British commander surrendered.
Barney served from 1796 to 1802 in the French Navy, conducting a number of successful engagements against British shipping, then returned to the United States, retired, and turned to shore-based business ventures. Immediately upon the outbreak of hostilities in 1812, however, he offered his services to the U.S. Navy. In July 1814 he was placed in command of the flotilla of 17 heavily armed, shallow-draft barges and light gunboats, with which he so skillfully harassed Cockburn's raiders in the lower Chesapeake. Cockburn was understandably delighted at this chance to trap the flotilla in the Patuxent.
The stamina of the British regulars was admirable. They marched during the next three days under Maryland's mid-August sun, along the thickly wooded, narrow, and dusty country road from Benedict to Upper Marlboro in their red-coated uniforms of the day, with full packs and heavy muskets (they had, of course, no land transport). Why did no U.S. troops try to block the road by felling trees across it, or why did they not attempt to ambush the exposed British column, Indian-style, from the shelter of the woods? No one knows. The fact is that the British reached Upper Marlboro without encountering the slightest sign of resistance.
Cockburn and his skippers did a remarkable job of navigating the river. North of Benedict, the Patuxent is a winding, tidal river, bordered by dense marshes, with a strong, southerly flow on the falling tide. While a northwest wind—the prevailing one—would have been helpful to the northward-bound British flotilla, it also tended to push the tide down river, thus creating shoals and mud flats and greatly reducing maneuver room for sailing vessels. Yet through skillful seamanship, and in all probability by having well-manned longboats tow the larger vessels in places too narrow for effective tacking, Cockburn and his force kept abreast of the troops all the way without mishap.
As they approached Upper Marlboro, however, Cockburn suffered a major disappointment. Plumes of smoke billowed up from behind the euphoniously named Pig Point, just north of the town. Old fox Barney had dismounted his guns, and was at the moment of the British arrival transporting them overland to the proposed U.S. defense line at Bladensburg. He had left a small rearguard, with instructions to set fire to the boats when the British came in sight. This they did, leaving charred embers as Cockburn's only prize.
The British troop commander was Major General Robert Ross, a veteran of the Peninsula campaign. The feisty Cockburn had a further objective in personally commanding the naval elements supporting General Ross. He knew Ross to be a capable but a cautious commander and felt (with some justification) that the General might need the kind of aggressive encouragement of which he was a master, if Ross was to be kept offensively disposed.
Late on the 22nd, Ross's troops reached Upper Marlboro, less than 20 miles from their goal. The Army promptly requisitioned as overnight quarters for the General and the Admiral the finest residence in town, the home of a prominent local surgeon and planter, Dr. William Beanes. Lieutenant George Gleig of the British 85th reported in a published postwar memorandum of the campaign that the doctor was a recent immigrant from Scotland and that he was strongly opposed to the war and consequently most hospitable to his distinguished guests. The British commanders also were influenced by the doctor's apparent sympathy, and both felt that during their overnight stay they had received his assurance that he would take no hostile action against British forces.
But Dr. Beanes was no recent immigrant. His great grandfather was the first American Beanes. Thus, the doctor was a third-generation American. He himself was a distinguished surgeon who had in fact campaigned against the British in the Revolutionary battles of Germantown and Brandywine as surgeon in a unit with the happy name of the Maryland Marching Militia. He was a substantial land owner, a trustee of St. John's College in Annapolis, and a generally well-known and respected person throughout the region.
When the British moved into his Upper Marlboro house, the doctor was 65 years old. Doubtless his hospitality came in part from his personal opposition to the war as a Federalist, but the fact that there were more than 3,000 well-armed Redcoats camped just outside must also have tempered his sense of heroics. In any case, he gave his British guests the strong impression that he was a trustworthy sympathizer.
On the morning of 23 August, the British forces pushed on westward to their rendezvous the following day at Bladensburg with the would-be defenders of Washington. The story of that "darkest day" in U.S. military history, and of the subsequent capture and partial burning of Washington by the British invaders has been told well by several authors. Of interest here was the gallant defense by Barney's naval gunners and their supporting Marines. This little unit stood firm when the rest of the U.S. defenders turned tail and ran, and they surrendered only when completely surrounded by the British attackers and after Barney and the Marine commander, Captain Samuel Miller, both had been wounded. But when the battlefield was cleared, the hospital and nursing facilities in Bladensburg were full of wounded Redcoats, too, most of whom had fallen before the withering fire of Barney's 18-pounders.
Although the British occupied Washington virtually without opposition, they lacked the logistical support they would have needed for further operations ashore, and General Ross concluded that nothing was to be gained by staying in the capital. Consequently, on the night of the 25th, after they had visited their revenge on Washington by chasing the President and most of the government out of town, dining in the White House on the dinner prepared for the Madisons and their guests, and burning most of the government buildings, the British forces commenced a withdrawal, screened carefully so as to diminish the possibility of attacks on their rear.
Returning by the same route over which they had advanced, they passed through Upper Marlboro without a halt, and by the evening of the 28th, the Admiral and the General with the main body of the troops reached their support ships at the village of Nottingham some 15 miles down river.
Since their army had no transport, in their swift retreat the British had been obliged to leave behind the officers and men who had been wounded at Bladensburg. It also appears that during the retreat, a number of stragglers, unable or unwilling to keep up with their units, were bent chiefly on plunder. Five of these reportedly barged into Dr. Beanes's garden, where he was entertaining two or three local dignitaries, including former Maryland governor Oden Bowie. These gentlemen promptly armed themselves, captured the Redcoats, and carted them off, together with two others who were deserters, to a local jail at Queen Anne, a few miles north of Upper Marlboro.
One of the prisoners managed to escape and make his way to the main body of the British force at Nottingham, where he gave Admiral Cockburn and General Ross a highly colored report, including the accusation that some of the British had been put to death by the doctor and his associates. Cockburn and Ross were furious at this news. Ross immediately ordered a party of dragoons, commanded by Major George de Lacey Evans (and probably mounted at least in part on horses commandeered from Dr. Beanes's stables), to return post-haste to Upper Marlboro, to demand the immediate release of the prisoners, and to seize Dr. Beanes and his friends.
Evans and his dragoons galloped into Upper Marlboro sometime after midnight on the 29th. They rousted the doctor and his guests out of bed and into their clothes "with such speed," according to one chronicler, "that the doctor failed to locate his eyeglasses." Evans also made it known to other Marlborans that unless the prisoners in Queen Anne were delivered into his hands by noon that day, he would burn the town to the ground. A townsman named John Hodges and his brother promptly took it upon themselves to release the prisoners from the jail and turn them over to Evans, "in order to save the town from burning, and to obtain the release of one who is deservedly dear to all." For this initiative, Hodges was brought to trial after the war, charged with high treason for aiding and abetting the enemy, but fortunately acquitted.
When the British prisoners were returned to the fleet, Ross ordered the release of Governor Bowie and Dr. Beanes's other allies, Dr. James Hill, and Philip Weems, but he refused to release Dr. Beanes, whom he proposed to bring to trial as a traitorous British subject.
Upper Marlborans were very much disturbed at this turn of events. That evening a leading citizen of the town, Richard W. West, a patient and close friend of Dr. Beanes, made a hurried trip to Georgetown, just west of Washington, to urge his brother-in-law, the influential Washington lawyer, Francis Scott Key, to arrange a mission to the British to seek the release of the doctor.
Immediately, Key was concerned too. He knew Dr. Beanes socially, both had interest in St. John's College, of which Key was an alumnus and Dr. Beanes a member of the Board of Governors, and his brother-in law, Richard West, was a close friend of the doctor. A legal issue was involved in this case as well. It was a time when generally observed rules of war prevailed. Britain and the United States formally had signed what was called a Cartel, according to the terms of which each had agreed not to take civilians prisoners unless designated under the provisions of the Cartel as prisoners of war. Dr. Beanes had not been so designated.
President Madison, who had just returned to Washington, listened to Key's story with interest. Whether he knew Dr. Beanes no one knows, but he was concerned over what he recognized as a British violation of the Cartel. He felt that if the United States let the British get away with seizing one noncombatant, no U.S. civilian would be safe. Therefore, he requested General John Mason, the Commissary General of Prisoners, to issue orders authorizing Key to visit the headquarters of Ross to negotiate the release of Dr. Beanes. In his note to Mason, the President urged that Key be accompanied by Colonel John S. Skinner, who was in charge of prisoner exchange under the General and who had in that capacity negotiated on numerous occasions with senior officers of the British forces.
Key and Skinner were furnished then with letters of authorization, including a personal letter to Ross from Mason, in which he requested the release of Dr. Beanes, "unarmed and of entirely non-combatant character, . . . seized and carried off . . . (in a) departure from the known uses of civilized warfare." In addition, Skinner wisely had visited the British wounded in Bladensburg and obtained letters from them to their colleagues and families and promised to deliver them to the British fleet. Armed with these documents, they boarded a small vessel flying a flag of truce and sailed down the Potomac to the bay, where they found the British fleet rendezvoused at Tangier Island. Received courteously aboard the flagship, they explained their mission and presented Mason's letter to Ross.
At first, neither Ross nor Cockburn would consider the release of the doctor. Cockburn, in particular, insisted that Beanes deserved no sympathy from the British, and he stated that they intended to take him to Halifax for trial before a British court and appropriate punishment.
But as the discussion continued, Skinner played his trump card. He handed to Ross the letters from the wounded British soldiers at Bladensburg, in which they had described in most appreciative terms the care they were receiving in U.S. hands. This turned the tide. Replying to Mason, Ross wrote:
The friendly treatment . . . experienced by the wounded officers and men of the British army left at Bladensburg, enables me to meet your wishes regarding that gentleman; I shall accordingly give directions for his being released, not from an opinion of his not being justifiably detained, nor from any favorable sentiment of his merit, as far as the cause of his detention is to be considered, but purely in proof of the obligation which I feel for the attention with which the wounded have been treated.
Thereupon, Dr. Beanes was released from the miserable solitary confinement in which he had been held and given over to the custody of Key and Skinner. The British Admiral, however, then informed the Americans that he would allow no one to leave the fleet at that time, since they were about to make sail for the head of the bay where they planned to attack Baltimore, "the hornets' nest" whence had originated many of the privateers that were harassing British shipping.
As the fleet sailed up the bay, Key, Skinner, and Dr. Beanes stayed on board the flagship as honored, though restrained, guests. But as the ships reached the mouth of the Patapsco River and the entrance to Baltimore Harbor, and when preparations for the attack got under way, the Marylanders were returned to their truce vessel, which was anchored with the supply and other noncombatant ships of the fleet in Old Roads Bay, about eight miles down river.
The U.S. forces in Baltimore, however, were determined to spare their city the shame of what had happened at Bladensburg. With keen foresight the defenders had sunk several ships across the access channel to the harbor, thereby preventing the British naval forces from sailing past Fort McHenry to support the army's assault on the defenses of the city from a landing on North Point. When he saw that his progress would be halted directly under the guns of the fort, Cochrane, the fleet commander, prudently withdrew his ships two miles down river to a position beyond the range of the guns of Fort McHenry. From that distance the British could fire only their own guns at maximum range, which was inaccurate for any guns of the time. Other weapons they used were Congreve rockets, which burst in the air over their targets, but they were even less accurate than the naval guns firing at long range. As dramatic as the bombardment appeared to the onlookers, it was singularly ineffective. Major George Armistead, the commander of the fort, estimated afterward that of 1,500 to 1,800 shells and rockets fired, only about 400 landed even within the perimeter of the fort. Anyone who has visited Fort McHenry knows that the defense area of the fort covers a large piece of territory. Losses to the U.S. forces from two days of continuous shelling amounted to 4 killed and 24 wounded.
To Key, Skinner, and Beanes, watching anxiously from the deck of their sloop eight miles away, the sound of the steady bombardment was fearsome, while the air bursts of the Congreve rockets—easily visible "by the dawn's early light"—must have looked awesome indeed.
But by the morning of 14 September, the British land forces, lacking the expected support from the guns of the fleet, facing a determined line of resistance across the narrow neck of the peninsula on which they had landed, and devastated by the death of their commander, General Ross—who had been killed by a U.S. sniper—abandoned their attack and retreated to their boats. Consequently, at 0730 Cochrane ordered all firing ceased, and the entire British force commenced its withdrawal. In triumph, Armistead lowered the small flag that had flown over the fort during the battle and hoisted in its place a much larger flag, which had been hand-sewn by a Baltimore lady and her daughter, "a flag so large that the British will have no difficulty in seeing it from a distance."
Not only was the huge flag visible to the British; Key, on the deck of the truce ship, gazing through what was reportedly the only available spyglass on board, saw it too, to his joy. In the inspiration of the moment, he was moved to poetry, which he began to rough out on the back of an envelope that he had in his pocket. Meanwhile, Skinner and Beanes, watching with him, awaited his report eagerly. Someone—could it not logically have been Beanes, who had been rushed off without his spectacles?—must have spoken the immortal words, "Say. Can you see?"
As the British withdrew, the Americans sailed into Baltimore Harbor and sought well-earned rest in the Fountain Inn, where Key finished the poem, one that not only celebrated a victory but became the national anthem of the United States.