A History of the National Capital from Its Foundation Through the Period of the Adoption of the Organic ACT Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1914 Excerpt: ... was primarily to destroy the little fleet of gunboats of the American navy under the command of Captain Joshua Barney. As the only means of protection in the great extent of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries these small and slight vessels were inadequate, as they were unable to cope with the British men-of-war. They were chased from the bay and up into the Patuxent, and when the enemy continued its pursuit the American vessels took refuge in the shallower waters of St. Leonard's Bay, an arm of the Patuxent a few miles above its mouth. During one of the intervals when the British ships had left the Patuxent, Barney's vessels slipped out of this place of safety, and passed up the Patuxent beyond Benedict, which was at the head of the ship navigation of the stream, to the vicinity of Nottingham. Here they were anchored, when on the 20th of August the British army, leaving their vessels at Benedict, fifteen miles from the mouth of the Patuxent, began that march which ended four days later in the battle of Bladensburg and the destruction of the city. But Captain Barney, finding that he was liable to capture, as Admiral Cockburn and a force of men in barges kept abreast of the columns of the land force, blew up his boats, and turning his sailors into a land force, joined the advance outpost of the American army at Old Fields, some seven miles east from Washington and at the intersection of two roads, one from Queen Ann on the Patuxent to the ferry opposite Alexandria and the other from upper Marlboro to Washington. The only opposition the enemy encountered during the entire period from their first appearance in the Patuxent the early part of June to the last of August, when the troops returning from Washington were taken on board the vessels and sought a new...