Here Andrew interrupts his narrative to quote a New York
As if to repersuade himself that his conviction is firm, he reviews the moments when he might have “undream’d the dream”: a forged letter from Madison to Armstrong, say, urging him to “maintain his pretense of indifference & confusion, till the enemy may be cut off from all retreat,” would have alarmed Ross and Cochrane past all of Cockburn’s suasion. A tip to Secretary Monroe, to place sharpshooters at Benedict to pick off Cockburn the moment he steps ashore — the fleet would be altogether demoralized.
Now in the three days’ march from Benedict come new such cruxes. The tidewater August weather is unnerving; hardened veterans of the Peninsular Wars fall out by the dozens as anvil clouds pile up through the afternoon, then huddle awed as a furious American thunderstorm, like nothing they’ve seen in Britain or Spain, shocks their first night’s bivouac in Maryland. A bit of a night ambush on the heels of it, by a hundred or so militiamen painted like Indians, and Ross would have packed his army back to more civilized carnage. On Sunday the 21st, permitted to reconnoiter on his own, Andrew crosses paths with James Monroe himself, alone on horseback, down below their encampment! Frustrated by inaction and discrepant reports, Monroe has persuaded the President to let him leave the State Department, saddle up, and scout the enemy personally — the first and last time a cabinet officer has ever done so — and he has got himself behind the enemy he is trying to locate. Andrew makes no sign, either to warn Monroe or to capture him. By that same Sunday evening Ross is fretful at the slowness of their advance, their distance from the fleet; he has half a mind to forgo even their immediate target, Joshua Barney’s flotilla at Pig Point. Cockburn must be at him incessantly with encouragements, till Ross agrees to give
Seven miles away, at Long Old Fields, the American defenders are noisily encamped under General Winder, a Baltimore attorney. The threat to Washington is clear now to everyone except the secretary of war, and a bit of defense is beginning confusedly to rally: 3,000 infantry, mostly militia, and above 400 cavalry — of which Ross has none — are strengthened now by Barney’s 500 flotillamen and their artillery. Andrew contemplates the map. An open road shortcuts from Long Old Fields and under Upper Marlboro to the Patuxent: in one hour Winder’s cavalry could cut off the British rear while his infantry move against their left. Even if the attack cannot be sustained, it will move Ross to withdraw, the more readily now that his token objective has been accomplished. Andrew says nothing.
Even so, General Ross is so inclined to retreat that his junior officers secretly send for Cockburn again to give their commander another pep talk. It would be no problem to have the admiral ambuscado’d en route to Dr. Beanes’s house, where Ross is billeted… The fact is, Earl Bathurst’s orders to the general explicitly forbid his engaging in “any extended operations at any distance from the coast”; it is Cockburn’s task, and those ambitious junior officers’, to persuade Ross that Bathurst himself would rescind that order before such an opportunity. For the moment they succeed: Andrew and one of Cockburn’s lieutenants are dispatched on the 23rd back to Cochrane’s flagship at Benedict to report the destruction of Barney’s flotilla, the taking of 13 schooners full of prize tobacco (which the Royal Marines are now sending downriver), and the army’s intention to move on Washington next day.
