f being foremost in
exposure and danger. At length he surrendered. "Her colors," said the
British commander, "were not struck until the loss in killed and wounded
was so awfully great, and her shattered condition so seriously bad, as to
render further resistance unavailing."

* * *

Fresh bitterness was added to the struggle about the close of 1813 by the
imprudent and inhuman action of General McClure, the American commander
at Fort George, in setting fire to the Canadian village of Newark in
almost the depth of winter and turning out the inhabitants homeless
wanderers in the snow. This outrage provoked but did not justify the
massacre by the British of the helpless sick and unresisting at Fort
Niagara, and the wasting of villages and settlements on the American side
of the frontier. The invasion of Canada in 1814 by the Americans under
General Jacob Brown proved little more than a border raid, although the
Americans won a well-fought battle at Chippewa and a costly victory at
Lundy's Lane, on both of which occasions General Winfield Scott gained
merited distinction. The tide of war rolled back and forth a good deal
like the old border strife between Scotland and England. Each side felt
that it had wrongs to avenge, and wounds were inflicted by petty raids
and skirmishes deeper and more rankling than those of a regular campaign.
While these were the conditions on the northern frontier, the shores of
the Republic were harassed by the fleet of Admiral Cockburn from Delaware
Bay to Florida. Villages were plundered, plantations devastated and
slaves carried off under the false promise of freedom, to be sold in the
West Indies. The people living on and near the coast were kept in
ceaseless alarm by these marauders, who descended in unexpected places,
and inflicted all the damage within their power.

The overthrow of Napoleon in 1814, left the United States alone in
hostility to Napoleon's triumphant foe, and the British government
prepared to carry on the war vigorously. A powerful fleet appeared in
Chesapeake Bay, and landed an army of about five thousand men under the
command of General Robert Ross. The authorities at Washington were
entirely unprepared for the attack, and the British, after defeating an
American force, more like a mob than an army, at the battle of
Bladensburg, marched into Washington. There, in a manner worthy of
vandals, the public buildings, including the Ca