Burning of Washington
The burning of Washington (24 August 1814) by a British force was a pivotal moment in the War of 1812 and in US history. Hoping to pull US military resources away from Canada, the British landed at Chesapeake Bay, defeated an American force at Bladensburg, then pushed on to Washington, D.C., where they burned the Capitol Building and White House.
Burning of Washington, D.C.
Paul M. Rapin de Thoyras (Public Domain)
Background
In the summer of 1814, the British-American War of 1812 entered its third year with no satisfactory end in sight. The war had begun as a dispute over the Royal Navy's impressment of American sailors on the high seas, as well as over Britain's support for a burgeoning confederacy of Native American nations hostile to the United States. But by now, circumstances had rendered both of these issues more or less irrelevant; the British had rescinded their 'Orders in Council' that allowed for the capture of US merchant ships, while Tecumseh, the leader of the Native American confederacy, had been killed, ending all hopes for an independent, Anglo-backed Native American state. Despite this, the conflict dragged aimlessly on. As diplomats slowly gathered in the Flemish town of Ghent (in modern Belgium) for peace talks, a US army crossed over into Canada, leading to some of the bloodiest fighting of the war at the Battle of Lundy's Lane (25 July 1814) and the Siege of Fort Erie (4 August to 21 September 1814).
The British were eager to divert American attention away from Canada by striking somewhere on US soil, and for the first time in the war, they had the manpower to do it. In the previous two years, the British and Canadians had been forced to remain on the defensive, since the bulk of Britain's military resources were bogged down in Europe, fighting the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte. But in April 1814, Napoleon finally abdicated and was exiled to the island of Elba, freeing up thousands of battle-hardened British soldiers to be sent to North America. Many of these soldiers were sent first to Bermuda, where Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane was putting together an expedition to strike the US coast. His primary objective, of course, was to force the US to pull its army out of Canada, but a secondary goal was to satisfy British national honor by burning a major American city or town. This would be in retaliation for the burning of several public buildings in York (present-day Toronto), the provincial capital of Upper Canada, by American troops after the Battle of York (27 April 1813). Though the Americans claimed these fires were accidental, they certainly had many other sins to answer for, as American soldiers had also torched the Canadian frontier towns of Newark, Port Dover, and St. Davids.
After consulting with his subordinate, Rear Admiral George Cockburn, Cochrane decided to land at Chesapeake Bay and target the cities of Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland. The first was chosen because it was relatively defenseless and because the fall of the US capital was expected to have a major psychological impact on American citizens. The second was chosen because Baltimore was a major trade hub and was also where many of the American warships were built. Cockburn, who had spent the previous months raiding the Chesapeake region, knew the area well and provided Cochrane with the necessary information. When all was ready, the British set sail and arrived in Chesapeake Bay in mid-August.
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