James H. Blake - Mayorship

Mayorship

During his time as a mayor he advocated schools on the Lancastrian system and a reformatory. He also urged the office of Health Officer and in result it was created. As a mayor he started improving city streets and the first navigation of the Eastern Branch, now known as the Anacostia River.

Blake was the mayor of Washington when British troops laid siege to the city on August 24, 1814, as part of the War of 1812. He put the city on alert a few days before the siege, insisting that "I would exert myself to the last moment and agree to die in the streets rather than give up the city, but, if all resistance was given over, and our military abandoned it, I would then also leave it and not surrender myself a prisoner to the enemy." It was Blake who urged Dolley Madison, the First Lady, to flee Washington before the British arrived. He then rounded up men to defend the city, so occupied with its fortification that his wife and four children were forced to make escape on their own.

"Washington was left completely unprotected for the first two years of the war. No fortifications or batteries were erected along either the Potomac or the Eastern Branch. Old Fort Washington was scarcely capable of defending the entire city. Resolutions to place the capital in a defensive state were voted down, largely through the influence of the Secretary of War, General Armstrong. No system of alarms and outposts was established to warn the city of impending danger, and no steps were taken to use the natural advantages of an easily defended eastern boundary."

Once the army forces in Washington had surrendered, and most of the city's residents fled, Blake made a desperate last effort to hold off the British, distributing flyers and handbills and placing an ad in the evening newspaper The Daily National Intelligencer, urging "all able-bodied Citizens remaining here" to meet at the steps of the U.S. Capitol and then proceed to an arsenal at Bladensburg, Maryland to arm themselves and defend the city. It was too late, however, to save the capital from being burned, and Blake himself finally fled across the Potomac River on the night of the 24th when it became evident that his only alternative was to be taken prisoner.

He was the mayor during the most troublesome period of the United States. In the most doubtful days of existence with the least equipped to cope against a powerful adversary he stood up for his country. Despite much criticism of his inability to save the city, Blake was instrumental in its recovery and reconstruction after the British attack.