WAR STORIES THE EMBATTLED PRESIDENT
It was close to noon on August 24, 1814, when a 4,500-man British army finally marched within sight of Bladensburg, Maryland, nine miles northeast of Washington, D.C. As the army’s 1st Brigade approached the seemingly vacant river town, it mounted nearby Lowndes Hill, giving Major General Robert Ross a commanding view of the American forces deployed just across the river. There were lots of them, and they clearly aimed to defend a 90-foot wooden bridge over the Eastern Branch of the Potomac River.
Suddenly, with the British troops in proximity, President James Madison galloped onto the scene, his entourage in tow. Madison proceeded to ride across a ridge overlooking the entire battlefield, past a line of raw militiamen posted in an orchard, and then well past the front line where an earthwork shielded riflemen and artillery pieces that had been moved down from Baltimore, which Secretary of War John Armstrong Jr. had deemed Ross’s likeliest target.
The battle was a monumental military disaster for the fledgling United States.
That morning, on the other side of the river, William Simmons, a civilian, had been scouting the enemy’s progress. He’d been anxiously scanning the river road when, through the heat-warped summer air, the dense British columns finally appeared. As the enemy troops marched into Bladensburg, Simmons realized that he had better cross over to the American side of the river. As he reached the bridge he was startled to encounter President Madison’s party, evidently intent on
