PEACE WITH HONOR The raids of the British navy on the American sea-coast through the last two years of the war were so many efforts to make effective the blockade which began with the proclamation of December, 1812, closing Chesapeake and Delaware bays. Successive orders in 1813 closed practically all the seaports from New London, Connecticut, to the Florida boundary, and the last sweeping proclamation of May, 1814, placed under strict blockade "all the ports, harbors, bays, creeks, rivers, inlets, outlets, islands, and seacoasts of the United States." It was the blockade of ports of the Middle States which caused such widespread ruin among merchants and shippers and which finally brought the Government itself to the verge of bankruptcy. The first serious alarm was caused in the spring of 1813 by the appearance of a British fleet, under command of Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren and Rear-Admiral George Cockburn, in the Chesapeake and Delaware bays. Apparently it had not occurred to the people of the seaboard that the war might make life unpleasant for them, and they had undertaken no measures of defense. Unmolested, Cockburn cruised up Chesapeake Bay to the mouth of the Susquehanna in the spring of 1813 and established a pleasant camp on an island from which five hundred sailors and marines harried the country at their pleasure, looting and burning such prosperous little towns as Havre de Grace and Fredericktown. The men of Maryland and Virginia proceeded to hide their chattels and to move their families inland. Panic took hold of these proud and powerful commonwealths. Cockburn had no scruples about setting the torch to private houses, "to cause the proprietors who had deserted them and formed part of the militia which had fled to the woods to understand and feel what they were liable to bring upon themselves by building forts and acting toward us with so much useless rancor." Though Cockburn was an officer of the British navy, he was also an unmitigated ruffian in his behavior toward non-combatants, and his own countrymen could not regard his career with satisfaction. Admiral Warren had more justification in attacking Norfolk, which had a navy yard and forts and was therefore frankly belligerent. Unluckily for him the most important battery was manned by a hundred sailors from the _Constellation_ and fifty marines. Seven hundred British seamen tried to land in barges, but the battery shattered three of the boats with heavy loss of life. Somewhat ruffled, Admiral Warren decided to go elsewhere and made a foray upon the defenseless village of Hampton during which he permitted his men to indulge in wanton pillage and destruction. Part of his fleet then sailed up to the Potomac and created a most distressing hysteria in Washington. The movement was a feint, however, and after frightening Baltimore and Annapolis, the ships cruised and blockaded the bay for several months.