When Washington Burned by Arnold Blumberg

Author:Arnold Blumberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612001135
Publisher: Casemate Publishers (Ignition)

Upon learning that Dearborn had been replaced by Major-General James Wilkinson, an army wag quipped that “age and fatuity were being replaced by age and imbecility.” James Wilkinson—a confident man in uniform, as well as being a paid agent of Spain—was born in Maryland on January 1, 1757. Present with Benedict Arnold during his Quebec Expedition, then a captain in the Continental Army, he was made brevet Brigadier-General in 1777 after working on Horatio Gates' staff. Charges of financial corruption caused him to leave the Army in 1781, whereupon he moved to Kentucky, then New Orleans, where he worked as a spy for the Spanish in return for being allowed by them a trade monopoly. Returning to the US Army in 1792, he was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel, then Brigadier-General in 1796—the most senior army officer in the country. As governor of the Missouri Territory he renewed his ties as a Spanish agent and plotted to create a breakaway state allied to Spain in the southwest. As head of the Seventh Military District at New Orleans, he occupied Mobile for the United States in April 1813. In July of that year he was promoted Major-General and tasked with conducting a campaign against Montreal.

The offensive was planned by Armstrong who envisioned a two-thrust operation: Wilkinson moving from Sackets Harbor in a flotilla of small craft that would transit the St. Lawrence River, while a second column marched up the Champlain River Valley into Lower Canada to rendezvous with him. The forces would then unite for the drive on Montreal, which along with Quebec, was the most important British supply and staging area in North America. The commander of the second prong of the offensive was Major-General Wade Hampton, whose hatred of Wilkinson only made the already quixotic attempt on Montreal more misguided.

Raised in South Carolina, Hampton had fought as a partisan during the Revolutionary War, distinguishing himself at the battle of Eutaw Springs. After that conflict, he amassed a huge fortune selling cotton. He won a seat in the US House of Representatives, and was then made Colonel of the Regiment of Light Dragoons. In 1809, he became a Brigadier-General and succeeded Wilkinson as commander in New Orleans, where he and Winfield Scott gained his predecessor's enmity by exposing the poor administration of his command. In March 1813 he was promoted to Major-General and was transferred from Norfolk, Virginia to Burlington, New York in preparation for an eventual attack on Lower Canada. Flatly refusing to obey orders from Wilkinson who was his senior, Hampton was talked into cooperating with him only by being promised that his orders would come through Secretary of War Armstrong.

The operation was held in abeyance until the American troops under General Boyd at Fort George could be ferried to Sackets Harbor. That was made possible after a daylong sparring match between the ships of Chauncey and Yeo's squadrons on September 28 near Burlington Bay, which resulted in the British retreat to Kingston, thus giving temporary control of Lake Ontario to the United States.

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