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[Washington, D.C.,] 1 September 1814 and Plattsburgh, NY, 10 September 1814 (for integral ms. letter). Bifolium, 10” x 8.125”, 1 printed page, [blank], integral 2 pp. autograph letter, signed by Macomb; addressed to “Maj Genl Mooers Cmg the Militia”; docketed, evidently by Mooers, “Letter from Gel Macomb Sept 10 1814”; additionally docketed in a later hand in blue pencil: “Proclamation of President Madison Capture of Washington destruction of public buildings &c 1 Sep 1814.” CONDITION: Good, old folds, short separations along folds at fore-edge, a few small losses along one fold at left with a two small losses, one nicking tops of two words, but no loss of sense, 6.25 inch vertical crease, bit of foxing and toning.

The exceptionally rare, official printing of President James Madison’s proclamation in response to the burning of Washington—one of the most perilous moments in American history—calling upon the nation to expel the invader. This copy of the proclamation was sent to General Alexander Macomb, commander of the land forces at the Battle of Plattsburgh and one of its heroes, and was additionally purposed by him to write an urgent letter to Major General Benjamin Mooers, Commander of the New York Militia, directing him to attack the enemy. In addition to its importance and rarity, this bifolium document is a remarkable example of a state paper functioning in the field and links Madison’s directive with the American victory at Plattsburgh which, along with the victory in the Battle of Fort McHenry, did much to preserve American territory during the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Ghent and the formal conclusion of the War of 1812. 

During the first two years of the war much of the hostility had played out along the border with Canada, with neither side gaining an advantage. The British became eager to draw American forces away from their Canadian possessions and in 1814 began a campaign of naval harassment in the Chesapeake Bay region. In July, after months of ravaging coastal towns on the Bay, a British fleet under Rear-Admiral Sir George Cockburn, “the most feared and loathed representative of His Majesty’s forces in America” (Watson), sailed up the Patuxent and Potomac Rivers to continue the campaign along the corridor to Washington, D.C. British marines rolled up American regulars and militia in a series of raids and battles, destroying supplies, munitions, and buildings, and driving off the demoralized defenders, leaving the coastline—and ultimately the nation’s capital—at the mercy of the British. 

Cockburn was itching to capture and destroy Washington, in part out of vengeance for the sacking of York, Canada by the Americans in April of 1813, but the Commander in Chief of His Majesty’s North American Station, Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Inglis Cochrane, and the commander of Cochrane’s land campaign, General Robert Ross, had other ideas. Cochrane was more inclined to a “grand expedition” involving the capture of New Orleans and Ross favored an attack on Baltimore. However, on August 19th and 20th, British forces landed at Benedict, Maryland, fifty miles southeast of Washington, and began their march toward the capital, although the final decision to attack the city had not yet been made. After a grueling four-day march in the oppressive summer heat, they came to a halt within a few miles of the city, but General Ross soon received an order from Cochrane not to invade the capital. However, with Cockburn urging him to press on, Ross decided to ignore the order. On the 24th they met and easily defeated the ill-trained and inexperienced American militia in the Battle of Bladensburg, which cleared the way for them to march into Washington. After witnessing the embarrassing calamity from a nearby hill, President James Madison and Attorney General Richard Rush made their way back to the capital, then fled to Virginia (Madison’s wife Dolley having preceded them).  

Upon arriving in Washington that evening, the British set fire to various government buildings, the office of the National Intelligencer, several bridges, and a few houses. Rush later reported that as they were ferried up the Potomac and rode along the Virginia shore they saw “columns of flame and smoke ascending throughout the night…from the Capitol, the President’s house, and other public edifices, as the whole were on fire, some burning slowly, others with bursts of flame and sparks mounting high up in the horizon.” This dramatic scene was rendered even more so when a powerful thunderstorm passed through the area. Lacking the artillery necessary to occupy and hold the ravaged city, and driven off by continued violent weather, the British left the next day. Following a three-day absence, Madison returned to the city on August 27th, slept the night at Rush’s house, and the next day surveyed the destruction, finding the White House reduced to ashes and the capitol a mere shell. Worse still, he learned that the British had plundered Alexandria. On the 1st of September he issued his proclamation:

Whereas the enemy by a sudden incursion have succeeded in invading the capital of the nation, defended at the moment by troops less numerous than their own and almost entirely of the militia, during their possession of which, though for a single day only, they wantonly destroyed the public edifices, having no relation in their structure to operations of war nor used at the time for military annoyance, some of these edifices being also costly monuments of taste and of the arts, and others depositories of the public archives, not only precious to the nation as the memorials of its origin and its early transactions, but interesting to all nations as contributions to the general stock of historical instruction and political science:

And whereas advantage has been taken of the loss of a fort more immediately guarding the neighboring town of Alexandria to place the town within the range of a naval force too long and too much in the habit of abusing its superiority wherever it can be applied to require as the alternative of a general conflagration an undisturbed plunder of private property, which has been executed in a manner peculiarly distressing to the inhabitants, who had inconsiderately cast themselves upon the justice and generosity of the victor:

And whereas it now appears by a direct communication from the British commander on the American station to be his avowed purpose to employ the force under his direction “in destroying and laying waste such towns and districts upon the coast as may be found assailable,” adding to this declaration the insulting pretext that it is in retaliation for a wanton destruction committed by the army of the United States in Upper Canada, when it is notorious that no destruction has been committed, which, notwithstanding the multiplied outrages previously committed by the enemy was not unauthorized, and promptly shown to be so, and that the United States have been as constant in their endeavors to reclaim the enemy from such outrages by the contrast of their own example as they have been ready to terminate on reasonable conditions the war itself: 

And whereas these proceedings and declared purposes, which exhibit a deliberate disregard of the principles of humanity and the rules of civilized warfare, and which must give to the existing war a character of extended devastation and barbarism at the very moment of negotiations for peace, invited by the enemy himself, leave no prospect of safety to anything within the reach of his predatory and incendiary operations but in manful and universal determination to chastise and expel the invader:

Now, therefore, I, James Madison. President of the United States, do issue this my proclamation, exhorting all the good people thereof to unite their hearts and hands in giving effect to the ample means possessed for that purpose. I enjoin it on all officers, civil and military, to exert themselves in executing the duties with which they are respectively charged; and more especially I require the officers commanding the respective military districts to be vigilant and alert in providing for the defense thereof, for the more effectual accomplishment of which they are authorized to call to the defense of exposed and threatened places portions of the militia most convenient thereto, whether they be or be not parts of the quotas detached for the service of the United States under requisitions of the General Government.

On an occasion which appeals so forcibly to the proud feelings and patriotic devotion of the American people none will forget what they owe to themselves, what they owe to their country and the high destinies which await it, what to the glory acquired by their fathers in establishing the independence which is now to be maintained by their sons with the augmented strength and resources with which time and Heaven had blessed them.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed to these presents.

Done at the city of Washington, the 1st day of September, A.D. 1814, and of the Independence of the United States the thirty-ninth.

By the President:

JAMES MADISON.

JAMES MONROE, Secretary of State.

Copies of Madison’s proclamation must have been immediately dispatched to officers in the field, as Mooers’ docketing note on the example offered here dates the letter from Macomb September 10, just ten days after the date of the proclamation. 

The Battle of Plattsburgh, September 6–11, 1814, involved both a land engagement and a naval battle on Lake Champlain. In August of 1814, Major General George Izard, commander of the Northern Army, was ordered to leave Plattsburgh for Sackett’s Harbor with the main army, leaving General Alexander Macomb with just 1500 regulars to oppose the invading British force under Gov. Sir George Prévost, numbering some 8000 or more. To bolster his numbers, Macomb had General Benjamin Mooers call out the New York Militia and tapped the Vermont Militia as well. He put these 2000 recruits to work strengthening the already considerable defenses built by General Izard before his departure, giving the British “an exaggerated idea of his resources” (DAB). Moreover, he put his men to work building a series of false roads to divert and dilute the British force. The land battle consisted mainly of a series of raids and skirmishes, while the battle on Lake Champlain on September 11, pitting an American fleet under Lieutenant Thomas Macdonough against a British fleet under Captain George Downie, proved a decisive victory for the Americans and forced Prévost to withdraw and return to Canada, as their plan depended on joining forces with Downie, who was not only defeated, but killed in the battle.

In using the Madison bifolium to write his letter, sent the day before the battle concluded, General Macomb ensured that his orders to Mooers would carry the greatest possible weight, reflecting as they did the President’s directive to military officers. The letter reads as follows:

Sir, I have sent down to you one 6 pounder to [?] the artillery & two six pounders with L Lawton[?] of the Light Artillery to act in concert with any enterprise you may make in a detachment which is about marching under Major Wool to attack the several parties of the Enemy wheresoever they may be able to find the Enemy[.] Induce I pray you, General, your militia & volunteers to hang on the flanks & rear of the Enemy to attack him day & night and ambuscade him whenever it is possible — You will then destroy his [?] & enable us to go on working & making our defenses—As it is now we are constantly on the qui vive & we must ourselves perform all the duties of the outposts & pickets which your men might do with effect. Encourage them to move in [?] parties & constantly harass the enemy’s pickets & guards & every way annoy him that it is possible

In great haste I am D Gen your obdt & humble Alex Macomb 

While the proclamation was printed in various newspapers, this official, first printing appears to be its only separate contemporary appearance. The only other example we have been able to identify appeared in the Streeter sale (lot 1069). Streeter states that he was not able to find a record of another copy, noting that “it is not in Poore and not in the Cronin and Wise bibliography of Madison and Monroe.” Not in OCLC, the National Archives or the Library of Congress (according to staff at each), the Eberstadt catalogs, or The Papers of James Madison, Presidential Series, vol. 8, July 8, 1814–February 1815, (Charlottesville, 1984–2020), which cites only a printing in the National Intelligencer. Rare Book Hub records the Streeter copy only.

An exceptionally rare and compelling state paper marking an extraordinarily perilous moment in the nation’s history, joined with a fascinating letter of military significance.

REFERENCES: “Macomb, Alexander” in Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XII, pp. 155–57; Ketcham, Ralph. James Madison : a Biography (Charlottesville, 1990), pp. 573–86; Watson, Robert P. When Washington Burned (Washington, D.C., 2023), pp. xvii–50; “Battle of Plattsburgh” at Britannica online; Herkalo, Keith A. Battles at Plattsburgh: September 11 1814 (Charleston, 2012).

Item #9651

On Hold

Price: $125,000.00