During 1813 the Constitution took the Java; the Hornet sank the Peacock; the Enterprise captured the Boxer off Portland, Maine.  These and many more made up the list of American victories.  But there were British victories also.  The Argus, after destroying twenty-seven vessels in the English Channel, was taken by the Pelican; the Essex, after a marvelous cruise around South America, was captured by two frigates.  The Chesapeake was forced to strike to the Shannon.

The Chesapeake was at anchor in Boston harbor, in command of James Lawrence, when the British frigate Shannon ran in and challenged her.  Lawrence went out at once, and after a short, fierce fight was defeated and killed.  As his men were carrying him below, mortally wounded, he cried, “Don’t give up the ship!” words which Perry, as we have seen, afterwards put on his flag, and which his countrymen have never since forgotten.[1]

[Footnote 1:  On the naval war read Maclay’s History of the Navy, Part Third; Roosevelt’s Naval War of 1812; McMaster, Vol.  IV., pp. 70-108.]

%268.  The British blockade the Coast.%—­Never, in the course of her existence, had England suffered such a series of defeats as we inflicted on her navy in 1812 and 1813.  The record of those years caused a tremendous excitement in Great Britain, all the vessels she could spare were sent over, and with the opening of 1814, the whole coast of the United States was declared to be in a state of blockade.[1] In New England, Eastport (Moose Island) and Nantucket Island quickly fell.  A British force went up the Penobscot to Hampden, and burned the Adams.  The eastern half of Maine was seized, and Stonington, in Connecticut, was bombarded.

[Footnote 1:  All except New England had been blockaded since 1812; and in 1813 the coast of Chesapeake Bay had been ravaged.]

%269.  Burning of Washington.%—­Further down the coast a great fleet and army from Bermuda, under General Ross and Admiral Cockburn, came up the Chesapeake Bay, landed in Maryland, and marched to Washington.  At Bladensburg, a little hamlet near the capital, the Americans made a feeble show of resistance, but soon fled; and about dark on an August night, 1814, a detachment of the British reached Washington, marched to the Capitol, fired a volley through the windows, entered, and set fire to the building.  When the fire began to burn brightly, Ross and Cockburn led the troops to the President’s house, which was sacked and burned.  Next morning the torch was applied to the Treasury building and to the Departments of State and War.  Several private houses and a printing office were also destroyed before the British began a hasty retreat to the Chesapeake.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Adams’s History, Vol.  VIII., Chaps. 5, 6; McMaster’s History, Vol.  IV., pp. 135-148; Memoirs of Dolly Madison, Chap. 8.]