"For nearly two years during the War of 1812, the British treated the Chesapeake Bay as their private lake. But in 1814, as attention moved from the northern frontier to the mid-Atlantic region, the Americans fought back and drove the invaders from the bay. Christopher T. George traces the abuses of the inhabitants of the Chesapeake Bay by Royal Navy raiding parties under arrogant Rear Admiral George Cockburn. Cockburn's burning and pillaging of bay communities preceded the burning of our nation's capital, Washington, D.C., on August 24-25, 1814, by Major General Robert Ross. Cockburn persuaded Ross that the Americans could not stand up to Lord Wellington's Peninsular War veterans. But he miscalculated when it came to attacking Baltimore, where citizen soldiers, strongly led by Revolutionary War veterans Generals Samuel Smith and John Stricker, and backed by U.S. Navy regulars, held the British at bay, killing Ross and reclaiming American pride."--Jacket.