Steve and I plan to do a driving tour of these battlefields this September! There were about four battles of any merit within the Chesapeake Bay area: Bladensburg, North Point/Fort McHenry, and one on the eastern shore off MD I have been to them, such as they are. The burning of Havre de Grace and bombarding of St Michaels are non-events for wargaming, as were the other coastal incursions. Non-events for the *traditional* wargame. But this is more of a political/guerilla war situation. It is Napoleon at Bay without armies, except the Americans have a number of vedette-like "guerilla" units that pop up to cut the British LOC. Remember the Chesapeake was a British lake in 1813 and 1814. That's why we don't need to look at the naval aspect. The British LOC is assured if they control the ports. The real problem for the British was logistics. They had to feed off the local plantations, markets and towns, hense the standing order, of don't fire on the landing party and they won't burn your house, town or market down. There were some instances where the local militia would form up to fight the approaching landing party and the plantation owner would come out and plead with the American soldiers to go away, since he knew the these militia would run away at the first British fire anyway and his house would burn. That same landowner probably had British sympathies in the Revolution. Maryland plantation owners managed to hold onto their land at the end of the Revolution, unlike in many other states. The Americans, on the other hand, had another problem. This area was military district 10. There were 510 troops in the district just prior to the British 1814 "invasion". Somehow manpower had to be located, organized and sent to the right areas that were threatened. General Winder did a supurb job of organizing the militia, and actually was able to field 15,000 men in August. He was not much of a tactical fighting general but he was not selected for that reason. He was a hard working staff officer who did his job. Someone else should have been picked to oversee the battlefield. Sam Smith - the local hero- was never really tested. Bladensburg was a comedy of errors, and not completely his fault. What would you do, if the Secretary of War and the President were, in turn, acting as army scouts and placing men on the field while you were trying to get to the battlefield yourself - without a horse! There is no reason that the British should have won at Bladensburg - but they did. Back to OSG News August 1999 Table of Contents Back to OSG News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Operational Studies Group. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com