Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1851-07-03
Slavery and the Capture of Wash
ington City in 1914.

Those who have attentively read the history
of our last war with Great Britain, may have
noted, that when the British in the Chesapeake
evinced their intention of making descent on
either Baltimore or Washington, the President
and his Cabinet ordered the regular force to be
stationed at the Patuxent for the protection Of
the former, and made requsition on Pennsyiva-
MIA, Maryland and Virginia for 10000 militia for
thedefence of the latter, the number apportioned
to Maryland being 5000, and to Virginia, for
soHIe reGoon otber, bnt 1000 men. And they
may have further observed, that when the Amer
lean forces made, near Bladinsburgh, their
stand against the British who had now shown
their destination to be the National Capital the
Virginia militia, though known many days pre-
vious, to have been on their way, and within so
miles Of the scene Of action, were still unac-
countably absent, and so continued until our
army, being unable, for want Of numbers, to
cope with the enemy, fell back towards George.
town, when one Virginia regiment not number
ing, probably, over one fourth of the required
1000, for the first time, reached the ground, but
constituted both too small and too late an acces.
sion to be of any service in saving the Capitol
from the vandal conAagration that followed.
In reading the history of this humiliating
event. we used to wonder, as have doubtless
many others, where were the militia of the once
gallant old Dominion, that they did not fly, at
the first alarm, to the defence of the monaced
Capital, which stood so directly on her borders !;
and we were never able to find any solution to
the mystery till we subsequently became tenn
porary resident of the Northern part of Virgin
ia, the section upon which the requisition for
the above mentioned number of militia had been
made. Here we learned from the concurrent
testimony of the best informed, the following
fact, which, as nothing of the kind has ever been
published, we must be content to state on our
own responsibility;
When the requistion on Virginia reached,
through her Governor, General Madison, who
was brother of President Madison andswho
was, at the time, the commandant of that divis-
ion of the militia whose services were required
he promptly issued his orders. collected his quo
ia and commenced his march for the scene of
action. Scarcely, however, had his force passed
from Orange, Culpepper, Madison, and other
adjoining Counties, from which it had been
principally raised, before the slaves in all that
section were seen to be in commoton. ru-
NOR, i appeared, the source of which nobody
knew, had suddenly spread everywhere among
them, that some powerful Foreign Prince, from
Africa, we believe they had it, with sufficient
force to accomplish his purpose, had arrived on
the coast to give freedom to the slaves of Vir-
gina. This rumor soon becoming confirmed
news with them, they simultaneously quilted
work, and without manllesting the least dispo-
sition to njure the whites, began, in their joyful
excitement to run from plantation to plantation,
collect in bodies, and prepare TO go off to meet
their expected deliverers.
The white inhabitants, in the mean time, who.
as has ever been the case with the whole South,
were sensitively alive to the fear of slave in
surrection, and were now thoroughly alarmed
by this movement among the blacks, as harmless
as was the shape it had taken, sent off express
after express to General Madison, whose force
had made temporary halt in the vicinity of the
Potomac, from which it was upon the point of
moving on to Washington, and begged him to
return with his troops to quell the apprehended
insunection of the slaves. This at once COM
pletely paruyzed the movements of General
Madison. He Immediately marched back with
the principal part of his force, leaving the rest,
we believe, to remain on the spot to await the
event, and be in readiness to return also, if wan
ted. Finding, however, in a few days, that the
forces with which he had returned, were sufi-
cient to over-awe the slaves though he dare not
again withdraw them from the injected district,
ne hnaly sent orders to the remnant he had left
on the Potomac TO move on TO Washington, as
they then did, but reached the place, as before
stated, too late to be of anyservice.
II the opinions of the military men of the dav
in deeming the battle of Bladensburgh to be- Of
an lndeciSive character, and in considering that