Raid on Alexandria, Virginia

The raid on Alexandria, Virginia, conducted between 28 August and 3 September 1814, was an operation that occurred simultaneously with the burning of Washington and that, in some respects, was even more humiliating for the United States. While Ross’s army burned the capital, Captain James Gordon’s naval squadron ascended the Potomac River, forced Alexandria to surrender without resistance, and extracted a vast quantity of merchandise before withdrawing under fire.

Gordon commanded a small but powerful squadron — the frigates Seahorse (38 guns) and Euryalus (36 guns), plus several bomb vessels and smaller craft. The passage up the Potomac was difficult: the river was shallow in places, the channel was narrow, and the bomb vessels had to be warped through the shallows. The voyage took ten days — a demonstration of determination that the town of Alexandria apparently found more intimidating than encouraging.

When Gordon’s squadron appeared off Alexandria on 28 August, the town’s civic leaders chose not to resist. A deputation met the British and agreed to terms: the town would surrender all naval stores, merchandise in warehouses, and vessels in the harbour. In exchange, private dwellings would not be destroyed.

The terms were executed. The British seized 21 merchant vessels, approximately 16,000 barrels of flour, 1,000 hogsheads of tobacco, and substantial quantities of cotton, sugar, and other goods. The value of the captured merchandise was enormous. The operation was, in effect, a forced commercial transaction at gunpoint — the town’s entire warehouse district emptied by a naval squadron that had sailed past the capital of the United States.

The return passage downriver was more contested. American batteries, hastily erected along the riverbanks, fired on Gordon’s squadron as it withdrew. The British suffered 7 killed and 35 wounded during the return — more than they had lost in the entire capture of Washington. But the squadron escaped with its prizes intact.

The raid on Alexandria produced outrage in the American press that exceeded even the reaction to Washington’s burning. The spectacle of an American town surrendering without a fight and handing over its wealth to the enemy was considered more dishonourable than military defeat. Several American newspapers called for Alexandria’s citizens to be prosecuted for treason.

The episode demonstrated, as forcefully as anything in the war, the consequences of losing control of coastal waters. A naval squadron that could ascend the Potomac to within sight of Washington could do essentially anything it pleased. The American government, which had gone to war partly over maritime rights, could not prevent a British frigate from sailing up the river that ran past its own capital.