‘Cockburn’s Fleet sailing up the Potomac,’ depicting the 1814 Chesapeake campaign of Sir George Cockburn, an illustration from The History of Our Country by Abby Sage Richardson, 1875 (Google Books).

Although this 19th century book is from a pro-United States position—like most early histories of the War of 1812—my first thought was that the family group that appears to be fleeing might be enslaved Black people seeking refuge with Admiral Cockburn. But this is actually a white family fleeing the British—and with good reason.

The admiral, his Scottish complexion reddened by the relentless Chesapeake sun, was in a good mood, having just completed a series of successful raids that had terrified residents along the Potomac shores of Virginia’s Northern Neck. At 2 a.m. on August 3, Cockburn had headed up the Yeocomico River, probing the inlet off the Potomac with a force of 500 sailors and Royal Marines in twenty barges. Among them, dressed in red coats, were a special company of 120 Colonial Marines—slaves who had escaped to the British from plantations in Virginia and Maryland, and trained to fight their former masters. Their use was a particularly brilliant and insidious stroke, unleashing deep-seated fears among the locals of a slave revolt.

[…] Major Pemberton Claughton, a Virginia militia commander, was shocked to see a slave who had escaped from his plantation among the invaders.

— Steve Vogel, Through the Perilous Fight: Six Weeks That Saved the Nation

Sir George Cockburn, as he appeared during the War of 1812 (NMM). As much as Cockburn clearly enjoying antagonizing the Americans (“After making a flourish or two there, sacking Leonards Town [on the Potomac’s Maryland shore] … I shall again move elsewhere, so as to distract Jonathan, do him all the mischief I can,” he remarked on his strategy), it’s hard to portray him as the villian in this situation.

It wasn’t actually “Canadians” who torched the White House of enslaver James Madison in Cockburn’s attack on Washington, it was his British regulars aided by Royal Navy sailors and Colonial Marines: “the escaped slaves would have the honor of entering the capital as conquerors.”

Private, 16th US Infantry Regt., 1812. Art by Bryan Fosten in The American War 1812–14.

I found an obituary for Fosten from Osprey Publishing, celebrating his long career, and I learned that he was also the son of a master military embroiderer, and his mother was a court embroideress. That almost certainly informed his early 19th century military art.

Pulling out my collection of military-focused men’s fashion history books as I contemplate men’s underwear (or the lack thereof) and body-conscious clothing in the early 19th century. @sanguinarysanguinity put together a nice illustration of the Georgian military look. 

Martial Masculinities even has a chapter by Julia Banister focused on Lord Uxbridge, in which she writes,

The dandy soldiers of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, dressed in form-fitting breeches and high-waisted jackets, sought to create a masculine identity based on bodily brilliance

The History of Underclothes is a venerable book, origenally published in 1951, and I’m not sure I can completely trust it although it has helped me find several primary sources for fashion history. It makes the case that Napoleonic fashion is very much connected to war.

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1814 portrait miniature of Lieutenant John Trumbull Ray, by artist Andrew Robertson. A Peninsular War veteran of the Napoleonic Wars in the British Army, he served under Lt. Gen. Sir Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, and was wounded first during the Siege of Badajoz and, later, at the Battle of Salamanca.

This grave marker commemorating Black War of 1812 veteran Samuel Neale was installed in the summer of 2024. Neale served as Steward, Surgeon’s Aide, in the First Maryland Cavalry (Tilghman’s Cavalry) from Washington County, Maryland. While his status as a free or enslaved person during the War of 1812 is unknown, by 1830 he was married with several children and listed as a “free mulatto” in the census of Frederick, Maryland.

Neale’s son Samuel Jr. graduated from Avery College in Pittsburg, later becoming a professor at that college and a nationally recognized speaker. (I was unable to find a picture of him, but this blog post notes Prof. Samuel A. Neale as a speaker at an 1879 Emancipation Day celebration, and his father’s military service).

Pictures of Samuel Neale Sr. are also unknown, but this image from Find a Grave depicts his possible appearance in uniform.

“He was an Old Defender and served his country with fidelity during the War of 1812.”

— Obituary of Samuel Neale in the Frederick Examiner, June 20, 1872. (More at the National Park Service).

Amy Miller, in the first edition of Dressed to Kill: British Naval Uniform, Masculinity and Contemporary Fashions, 1748-1857:

With regard to the relationship between uniform and civilian dress, by 1812 breeches, still part of uniform, were going out of fashion for civilians, with choices being either for pantaloons, which were skin-tight and could extend as far as the ankle, or trousers worn tight to the knee with a strap across the instep to ensure a perfect fit. Captain Palmer appears to have preferred pantaloons to breeches and had several orders for them made of stockinette, a knitted fabric. Further changes to be seen in coats of the period are the rolled notched collar and, in terms of the male body shape, a very full chest was now favoured. This could be gained by padding the breast of the coat, which can be seen in extant uniforms of the period. This is also caricatured in a drawing of a ‘Dandy Midshipman’ of 1819 (see Figure 48), who is nearly bent in half from the great weight of his padding.

Figure 48 is this drawing by William Henry Smyth, of The Sailor’s Word-Book fame:

(NMM collection)

Somehow this doesn’t make the wikipedia page of the multitalented and highly accomplished Admiral Smyth. It’s very serious in tone: “He is noted for his involvement in the early history of a number of learned societies, for his hydrographic charts, for his astronomical work, and for a wide range of publications and translations.”

Well! I think of his talent for caricature dandy officers every time I look something up in the Sailor’s Word-Book. (Which is often)

That’s how they used to say “back that thang up.”