ner of consultations, and imploring the Governors of
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to send militia.

The British army was less than five thousand strong. To oppose them
General Winder hastily scrambled together between five and six thousand
men, mostly militia with a sprinkling of regulars and four hundred
sailors from Barney's flotilla. During the night before the alleged
battle the camp was a scene of such confusion as may be imagined while
futile councils of war were held. The troops when reviewed by President
Madison realized Jefferson's ideal of a citizen soldiery, unskilled but
strong in their love of home, flying to arms to oppose an invader.
General Jacob Brown and Winfield Scott at Lundy's Lane, which was fought
within the same month, could have pointed out, in language quite
emphatic, that a large difference existed between the raw material and
the finished product.

On the 24th of August the British army advanced to Bladensburg, five
miles from Washington, where a bridge spanned the eastern branch of the
Potomac. Here the hilly banks offered the Americans an excellent line of
defense. The Cabinet had gone to the Washington Navy Yard, by request
of General Winder, to tell him what he ought to do, but this final
conference was cut short by the news that the enemy was in motion. The
American forces were still mobilizing in helter-skelter fashion, and
there was a wild race to the scene of action by militiamen, volunteers,
unattached regulars, sailors, generals, citizens at large, Cabinet
members, and President Madison himself.

Some Maryland militia hastily joined the Baltimore troops on the ridge
behind the village of Bladensburg, but part of General Winder's own
forces were still on the march and had not yet been assigned positions
when the advance column of British light infantry were seen to rush down
the slope across the river and charge straight for the bridge. They
bothered not to seek a ford or to turn a flank but made straight for the
American center. It was here that Winder's artillery and his steadiest
regiments were placed and they offered a stiff resistance, ripping up
the British vanguard with grapeshot and mowing men down right and left.
But these hardened British campaigners had seen many worse days than
this on the bloody fields of Spain, and they pushed forward, closing the
gaps in their ranks, until they had crossed the bridge and could find a
brief respite under cover of the trees whi