When the news reached Winder, he immediately transmitted an order to Stansbury to give battle where he was, and hastened thither with the main army, arriving just before the action commenced. Barney, who had been stationed with five hundred men at the bridge over the eastern branch of the Potomac, with directions to blow it up should the enemy approach by that route, no sooner heard of his advance on Bladensburg, than he earnestly requested to repair thither with his brave seamen. He chafed under the inaction to which he was doomed, talking in a boisterous manner, half to himself and half to others, lashing the generals with the bluntness and truth of a sailor, saying, loud enough to be heard by the President and his cabinet standing near, it was absurd to leave him there with five hundred men to blow up a bridge which any "d----d corporal could better do with five." At length permission was given him to join the army, when he leaped on a horse, and ordering his seamen to follow, galloped to Bladensburg. The advance was already engaged, and he immediately sent back to his men to hurry up, and soon the brave and panting fellows appeared on a trot and took their stand beside their commander. The President and his cabinet galloped thither also, but retired at the commencement of the action, not before, however, Monroe, Secretary of State, had tried his hand at military evolutions, and altered the order of battle. Instead of taking advantage of patches of woods, thickets, etc., where inexperienced militia would have fought well, this heterogeneous army of five or six thousand men was arranged in the form of a semi-circle on the slope that makes up westward from the eastern branch of the Potomac, here a shallow stream and crossed by a wooden bridge. The British, supposing of course, that the position was chosen because it commanded a narrow bridge, the passage of which is always so difficult in the face of batteries, never dreamed the river could be forded, and therefore never attempted it. Ross, who from the top of the highest house in the neighborhood surveyed the American army, was disconcerted at the formidable appearance it presented--posted on such a commanding eminence with heavy artillery,--and would doubtless have retreated but for the greater danger of a retrogade movement with his exhausted troops. The American army was arranged in three lines like regiments on a parade, connected by the guns that could pour no cross fire on the assailing column. The latter advancing steadily, throwing Congreve rockets as they approached, so shook the courage of the militia that it required but the levelled gleaming bayonet to scatter them like sheep over the field. Many of the officers were brave men and strove to arrest the panic, but in vain. Pinckney with a broken arm rode leisurely out of the battle, his heart filled with rage and mortification at the poltroonry of those under his command.