This battle of the War of 1812 decided the fate of Washington, DC. An invading British army under Major General Robert Ross threatened the American capital. The actual fighting took place on the afternoon of August 24, 1814, across the Anacostia River from the town of Bladensburg in present-day Colmar Manor and Cottage City, Maryland.

The American force of around 6,200 men consisted mainly of militia, mostly from Maryland, under the command of Brig. Gen. William H. Winder, U.S. Army. Winder, nephew of Maryland's Federalist governor Levin Winder, was a political appointee with little experience in battle. He had been captured by the British at the Battle of Stoney Creek in Canada in the summer of 1813 and only recently exchanged. His Maryland troops were supported by Washington, DC, militia, a few militiamen from Virginia, U.S. regulars (largely untested newly recruited troops), and 400 U.S. marines and sailors under Commodore Joshua Barney.

General Ross's army numbered about 4,000 men made up of four British Army regiments, two brigades of Royal Marines, and sailors. Also among the British troops was a force of around 200 former African-American slaves who had been trained by the British as Colonial Marines on Tangier Island. Their enlistment following a proclamation by British commander-in-chief Sir Alexander Cochrane on April 2, 1814, offering land in British possessions or places in British forces for any former able-bodied male slaves who were willing to fight for the Crown.

President James Madison and his cabinet were on the battlefield. Madison, though he took no real part in the battle, can be credited with being the only sitting president who served as "commander-in-chief" in battle. Both Francis Scott Key, an aide to the District of Columbia's militia commander, General Walter Smith, and future president and then-Secretary of State James Monroe are credited with changing troop positions.

The Marylanders took the brunt of the initial British attack as the British regiments stormed the bridge over the Anacostia, then termed the Eastern Branch of the Potomac. Pushed back by the British light troops, mainly from the 85th Regiment, and unnerved by the British Congreve rockets, the Americans first fell back and then fled toward Georgetown after being instructed to retreat by General Winder. The second American line of Washington militia, U.S. regulars, and Joshua Barney's sailors and marines, also broke. British casualties amounted to 249, including 56 dead, while the Americans only had 50 killed and wounded. The flight of the militia would earn the battle the nickname "The Bladensburg Races" from a satirical poem of 1816.

That evening, the British marched into Washington and burned the public buildings, including the U.S. Capitol and White House. They stayed until the next evening, August 25, when they decamped and marched back to their ships at Benedict on the Patuxent. The arrest of Upper Marlboro physician Dr. William Beanes led to the writing of the "Star-Spangled Banner" by Francis Scott Key, three weeks later during the Battle of Baltimore, where British General Ross was killed and the Americans won a great defensive victory.

George, Christopher T. Terror on the Chesapeake: The War of 1812 on the Bay. Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane Publishing Co., 2001.

Lord, Walter. The Dawn's Early Light. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Pitch, Anthony S. The Burning of Washington. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998.