1812 by David Nevin

Author:David Nevin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2011-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

18

THE WHITE HOUSE Summer, 1814

Captain Joshua Barney came into Madison’s office ahead of Ned Coles like a squall breaking over the Chesapeake. The President was drawn to the fiery sailor, a burly man now in his middle fifties who’d gone to sea at thirteen and taken command of a merchant vessel at fifteen when the skipper died. In the infant U.S. Navy he’d made a fighting reputation during the Revolution, and afterward fought for the French Navy. Madison admired in about equal parts Barney’s experience in the art of war and his healthy hatred of the Union Jack.

Barney came to rigid attention. “Sir! I figured I’d better get in here and report.”

“At ease, Captain. Do sit down.”

“Thank you, sir.” He sat stiffly, still at semi-attention. Ned took a seat behind him. “Mr. President, things ain’t going worth a fiddler’s fart! That’s my report, and I figured it’s high time you hear about it.”

Madison kept the dismay out of his face. “Tell me your own situation.”

“Looks like I’ll have to burn my vessels to keep ‘em out of British hands. Royal Navy frigate’s been nosing around the Patuxent, you know. But I got m’guns ashore and I’m turning five hundred sailors into a fighting artillery unit to give ’em a reception when they come.”

“And you’ve reported this to General Winder?”

“Hell’s fire, that’s the problem. I can’t even find him, and as far as I can tell, he ain’t doing a blessed thing.”

Madison had been afraid of this. He rarely saw Winder, who was active as a whirlwind and perhaps no more effective. The man spoke with vigor that sounded more nervous than forceful, and struck Madison as more the lawyer he had been than the officer he was. He was only about forty but seemed old for his age, with his little potbelly and miserly mustache. Madison remembered young Scott’s reticence on the subject of Winder, who’d been involved in the fatal decision to stop the advance on the Niagara, just before he was captured. In Scott, reticence usually meant disapproval, and Madison had found the young officer one of the few men whose military judgments he could trust.

And his own instinct, too, told him Winder was no soldier. There was confusion and contradiction in the few discussions of plans they’d had, the man’s voice hurried, his gaze roving around the room to fix finally on the President with hangdog supplication. Nor had his family connection with the Maryland governor, which had tipped the balance for his appointment, paid any dividends as yet. To all cousinly pleas for militia, Governor Winder had turned a deaf ear.

“I’ve been all over looking for the General,” Barney said, “but everywhere I go, he’s just gone somewhere else. He needs to take a lesson from Baltimore. Ol’ Sam Smith is working day and night. I wish we could get him over here.”

Madison saw Ned Coles start to speak and raised a restraining hand. Smith, just now leaving the Senate, was his harshest critic—nothing bites harder than the apostate’s venom—and he raised a combative fury in Ned.

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