On August 24 and 25, 1814, British forces were in HI possession of Washington; from August 29 to 31 other forces held Alexandria. From September 11 to 14 they were feeling out the defenses of Baltimore. Then the greater part of them vanished out of sight; once the British ships were over the horizon there was almost no means of knowing where they were and far smaller means of knowing what they intended, for by this time the blockade of the Atlantic Coast was highly effective, and there were few ships to bring in news even of the outside world, certainly not of the movements of the British lleet. No one could even be sure that any further offensive movement was meditated, but it was the duty of the American government to act on the hypothesis that the enemy would attempt to do all the harm possible —and that implied that British movements must be foreseen and guarded against.

America’s darkest hour had both come and gone, but while the one fact was apparent the other was not. The same clay ih.it the British forces had begun their move on Baltimore, Macclonough had won his victory on Lake Champlain, putting an end to any possibility of secession on the part of the New England states. The same month Armstrong was expelled from the Cabinet and James Monroe assumed the duties of secretary of war in addition to those of secretary of state and began vigorously to strengthen American defenses, not flinching from the contemplation of the possibility that the war might continue for many more years. But the Hartford Convention still lay in the future; the British Navy held undisputed mastery of the sea, and apparently the British Army could be recruited to any extent and employed freely in any quarter of the globe. Not even a shrewd individual like Monroe could guess at the increasing hollowness of the secession movement, nor (handicapped as he was by slow and inadequate communications) could he know that the rapidly detei iorating European situation was certain to handicap the British effort across the Atlantic. He had to set himself to defend his country against a tremendous and possibly mortal thrust, a thrust, moreover, which he had to parry blindfold, as it were, thanks to the advantage conferred on the British by the command of the sea.

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