PRAISE FOR
The Burning of the White House
“The Burning of the White House is an important look at one of the most underappreciated and perilous periods in our past. This book does a wonderful job of capturing the great leadership of not only President Madison but First Lady Dolley as well . . . Great job!”
—BRIAN KILMEADE, cohost of Fox & Friends, host of Kilmeade and Friends, and author of Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates
“Never have I read a more compelling rendition of the plots and subplots leading up to the dastardly burning of Washington, D.C. by the British in 1814, and its horrific destruction followed by the somber aftermath to rebuild a city by those whose very lives had been broken. The author is a master storyteller who makes history a true page-turner that contains all of the elements of a drama. She cleverly weaves pages seamlessly filled with quotes that become readable dialogue to flesh out protagonists, antagonists, intrigue, and conflict. This is real history that allows the reader to feel the emotions nearly always lacking in nonfiction.”
—LUCINDA J. FRAILLY, director of education and special events coordinator, First Ladies National Historic Site, National First Ladies’ Library
“The Burning of the White House tells the exhilarating story of a pivotal moment in American history. Jane brings to life the fascinating men and women who helped our nation survive its second war for independence, and offers a captivating look at the burning of our capital city.”
—CALLISTA GINGRICH, president of Gingrich Productions and author of the New York Times bestselling Ellis the Elephant Series
“From the moment Jane Hampton Cook first toured the White House as an employee there, she herself was lit by a fire to tell the untold story of the woman who could be called our Founding Mother, Dolley Madison. Jane possesses both the scholarship and storyteller’s passion for bringing new generations into the intimate, immediately daring intrigues of our nation’s history. In short, she brings The Burning of the White House story alive in a way that emboldens us now to be better citizens, and to count our blessings for our forebears’ acts of great courage and prescience to imagine a better world for future Americans who will find themselves surprisingly inspired by the tales of those who built our democracy.”
—BOBETTE BUSTER, story guru, former adjunct professor, University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, writer/producer, and author of Do Story: How to Tell Your Story So the World Listens
“Jane Hampton Cook once again brings to vivid life stories of the White House and its occupants and the times in which they lived. In her latest book, we learn about the figures around James and Dolley Madison—both historical and ordinary—who were witnesses to the divisive time in our nation’s history when we came dangerously close to losing the capital city and perhaps the Union itself.”
—ANITA MCBRIDE, assistant to President George W. Bush and chief of staff to First Lady Laura Bush, and executive in residence at the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, School of Public Affairs at American University
“Author Jane Hampton Cook has done it again! She has written a well-researched new book entitled The Burning of the White House—James and Dolley Madison and the War of 1812. It is filled with historic facts, figures, and insightful stories about the buildup to the war, the lives of the fourth President of the United States and the First Lady, and the Executive Mansion. It is a wonderfully documented study of one of our nation’s early historical events.”
—NANCY THEIS, presidential writer for President Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush
“Jane Hampton Cook has emerged as one of America’s leading and important historians, especially on the country’s early days. In her new book, The Burning of the White House, Cook reveals new facts about that awful event which were previously unknown. Her writing is lively and engaging, honest and fresh. Cook asks the reader to simply enjoy her book and no doubt many will. I did!”
—CRAIG SHIRLEY, Reagan biographer and presidential historian
“Jane Hampton Cook’s latest book proves to the reader to look to our past for the strength to guide us in our country’s future. In The Burning of the White House, the Madisons, through their commitment, bravery, and love of country, provide us an excellent lesson in hope and a determination to save our beloved nation. This book is more than an excellent tribute to people of substance; it is a reminder of what we nearly lost and must preserve.”
—DR. LINDA SUNDQUIST-NASSIE, retired American history teacher and author of The Poetess of Song: The Life of Mary Shindler
“The Burning of the White House is a lively, engaging read. It’s told through some characters we don’t often meet, such as Senator Rufus King—Federalist and bitter opponent of President Madison—and offers a unique, fresh twist on a familiar story.”
—MATTHEW GILMORE, editor, H-DC, Washington, D.C. History Network
Copyright © 2016 by Jane Hampton Cook
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, website, or broadcast.
Regnery History™ is a trademark of Salem Communications Holding Corporation; Regnery® is a registered trademark of Salem Communications Holding Corporation
Cover image: 2013 White House Historical Association
First e-book edition 2016: ISBN 978-1-62157-549-8
Originally published in hardcover, 2016:
Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file with the Library of Congress
Published in the United States by
Regnery History
An imprint of Regnery Publishing
A Division of Salem Media Group
300 New Jersey Ave NW
Washington, DC 20001
www.RegneryHistory.com
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Books are available in quantity for promotional or premium use. For information on discounts and terms, please visit our website: www.Regnery.com.
Distributed to the trade by
Perseus Distribution
250 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10107
CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PART ONE
1 - THE PIRATE
2 - MIGHTY LITTLE MADISON
3 - HELLO, DOLLEY
4 - DUELING STRATEGIES
5 - KNICKERBOCKERS
6 - TORPEDO
7 - CHESAPEAKE FEVER
8 - SNUBBED BY DOLLEY
9 - WASHED UP AT CRANEY
10 - ATROCIOUS HAMPTON
11 - DEAR DOLLEY
PART TWO
12 - THE WHITE HOUSE
13 - HOSPITALITY AND HOSTILITY
14 - NOSES FOR NEWS
15 - NOT YOUR AVERAGE NEWS DAY
16 - SUPERABUNDANT FORCE
17 - TWENTY THOUSAND REINFORCEMENTS
18 - HANGING MADISON
19 - INVASION
20 - THE BRITISH ARE COMING
21 - SPYGLASSES
22 - BLADENSBURG RACES
23 - CAPITOL CONFLAGRATION
24 - WHITE HOUSE INFERNO
25 - DISPLACED OR CONQUERED?
PART THREE
26 - PHOENIX SPICES
27 - PHOENIX MULTITUDE
28 - WHITE HOUSE PHOENIX
29 - DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT
30 - RELOCATING
THE CAPITAL CITY
31 - POOR MRS. MADISON
32 - PRESIDENTS’ CLUB
33 - UPLIFTING NEWS
34 - RISE OF THE FIRST LADY
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES
INDEX
Author’s Note
This book began when I toured the White House in February 2001 as a new staff member. I’m not sure who told me, maybe it was my new boss Nancy Theis or one of the Secret Service agents who guarded the rooms during public tours and answered questions. Regardless, a tidbit of sentimentality stood out and stuck with me in the years to come.
When you tour the White House, you enter on the east side and walk through the ground floor corridor, past the windows overlooking the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, and the library. Then you walk up a set of stairs, which gives you the sense of stepping up to power, as the design intended, to enter the State Floor through the grand East Room. The chandeliers glisten overhead as your eye beholds the full-length portrait of Martha Washington across the room. As you walk through the East Room, you pass the intersection of the red-carpeted Cross Hall in the center, which creates a stately image on television for presidential news conferences.
You also see the full-length portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart. Taking a right turn, you walk through adjoining doors that run parallel to the Cross Hall. Subsequent adjoining doors allow you to enter the beautiful Green Room, Blue Oval Room, Red Room, and State Dining Room before exiting through the Cross Hall and north entrance.
An arrangement in the Red Room is where I first caught the sentimentality about James Madison’s wife, Dolley, and the War of 1812. Above an adjoining doorway between the Red Room and State Dining Room hangs Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of Dolley Madison. Though it was not called the Red Room at the time, Dolley had decorated this parlor in sunny yellow and placed her pianoforte and guitar here to make it her beloved music room.
Fittingly, Dolley’s portrait faces the East Room with a view of the George Washington portrait that she saved in 1814. In this way, when all of the adjoining doors are open, as they are for public tours, Dolley continues to keep her eye on Washington. Though the arrangement is a fun tidbit, it made an impression on me and ignited a desire to learn more.
Several months later, I was part of the White House staff who evacuated the White House and adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. I never posted the page about the president’s education policies on the White House website that we had planned that day in my role as “web gal,” as President George W. Bush called me.
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 changed everything, including restricting public tours of the White House for a time. We tried to compensate by creating 360-degree tours of the State Rooms online. But in the days that followed those attacks, I sometimes thought about the Madisons and the War of 1812, when British Admiral George Cockburn wanted to be a guest at the White House so he could take his bow and terrorize its occupants. At some point, too, I saw Cockburn’s handiwork—the scorch marks—in the lower level of the White House, which isn’t part of modern public tours.
I wondered what it was like in 1814 to live in the grand White House and sleep at night with the possibility of being attacked, similar to the aftermath of 9/11. Were James and Dolley Madison afraid? Did they take precautions? Why did Cockburn want to attack Washington, D.C.?
Two years later, in 2003, my writing journey began in earnest. I left my position at the White House and received an educational research fellowship from the White House Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians to research the White House and its occupants. I’m forever grateful for this opportunity because it helped me to launch a book-writing career while also allowing me time to work through some medical challenges that were keeping my husband and me from having children.
The research fellowship led me to write a thirty-page version of this book as part of a collection of unpublished short stories about the White House. Though I wrote other published books over the years, I kept coming back to this story and expanding my research. I read Dolley’s letters and studied Admiral Cockburn’s correspondence, Madison’s writings, Senator Rufus King’s correspondence, and others from this time period.
In 2012 I took a weekend intensive class on story structure with Bobette Buster, a film guru. Bobette combines the best of both worlds of scholarship and entertainment. The daughter of a former history professor, she is an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California and also on the guest faculty for Pixar, Disney Animation, Disney Channel, Sony Animation, Twentieth Century Fox, the University of Milan, and others.
Bobette challenged me to think about how the attacks of 1814 changed Dolley and James. Was there an authentic, nonfiction arc of change? I reread more writings and discovered that they both underwent natural, organic 180 degrees of change that was real, not fiction.
Bobette also encouraged me to include the stories of average Americans, people to whom readers could relate in some way. Let’s face it, very few people have become a president of the United States or been married to one. Her advice led me to create what I call an “average Joe” and “average Jane” point of view in this book. I’ve included several ordinary Americans who played an extraordinary role in moving the big-picture story forward. People such as attorney Francis Scott Key, newspaper editor Joseph Gales, architect Benjamin Latrobe, and U.S. Navy commander Joshua Barney made choices and expressed emotions that we all experience and can relate to, such as rejection, injustice, anger, love, and hope.
Likewise, the polarization of party politics today can help us better understand the contributions of the Madisons, who tried to change the culture, fought for what they believed in, overcame great loss, discovered a purpose in life beyond their own family circle, and sacrificed self for the well-being of others.
My own humanity played a small role in writing this book. Pregnant with my third child, I was just about ready to write the chapter on how the British “toured” the White House when I went into labor a few days early. Two nights later, while my infant son was snuggly asleep in the hospital nursery, I suddenly was ready to write that chapter. I pulled out my laptop at 11 p.m. and the words just flew out of my fingers.
While I can’t give you a literal tour of the White House today, I hope you will make new discoveries as you tour this book. The facts come from reliable summaries of history, biographies, and records. Anything in quotations is something that somebody wrote in a letter, diary, or newspaper. We all know that communication methods change over the years. Technology transforms time. Fashions of the day soon become the costumes of the past. But the human heart doesn’t change. The need for love, purpose, a second chance, renewal, faith, and hope are as real today as they were two hundred years ago.
While Dolley still keeps her eye on Washington in the White House, may we keep an eye on her and the others in this book to discover what history can show us today.
Enjoy,
Jane Hampton Cook
PART I
1813: A Fiery Prelude
If our first struggle was a war of our infancy, this last was that of our youth.
—James Madison, fourth president of the United States
This 1810 drawing by architect Benjamin Latrobe shows the north view of the President’s House. Courtesy Library of Congress
CHAPTER ONE
The Pirate
“One thousand dollars reward will be given,” began the bold announcement in Philadelphia’s Democratic Press on August 16, 1813.
As usual, this newspaper published many advertisements that day. These classifieds were mostly mundane ads for two-story brick houses, feather beds, and looking glasses, among other fineries. Unfortunately, because slavery was still common, the offer to sell the services of a thirteen-year-old African boy was also included. But thanks to religious Quakers who morally opposed slavery, the
practice was gradually being abolished in Pennsylvania.
What stood out as highly unusual that August day was this advertisement from Mr. James O. Boyle, a naturalized Irishman from Pugh Town, the northernmost point in Virginia. Why would someone living more than 179 miles away pay for an advertisement in a Philadelphia newspaper? The answer was simple: American zeal. This man was a patriot, and his homeland was under attack.
One thousand dollars was a mighty sum. Tickets to President James Madison’s inaugural ball—the first for a president—had cost only four dollars each four years earlier, in 1809. The going rate for room and board for congressmen in the nation’s capital, Washington City, was around twelve to sixteen dollars a week. Mrs. Madison’s beloved pianoforte in the charming yellow music room of the newly renovated President’s House had totaled a mere $458. Not even Gilbert Stuart’s superb painting of George Washington, which hung in the State Dining Room, had cost as much as $1,000. Congress had paid only $800 for this national art treasure as a gift for the opening of the President’s House in 1800. Yet, the reason for Boyle’s award was far more tantalizing than its high dollar value.
“For the head of the notorious, incendiary, and infamous scoundrel, the violator of all laws, human and divine, the British Admiral George Cockburn,” the ad continued. If Cockburn’s head wasn’t possible, other facial parts would suffice: “Or five hundred dollars for each of his ears on delivery to James O. Boyle.”
The time had come to slay the British Goliath, whether with a musket, bayonet, or slingshot. Any weapon would do. Boyle wasn’t alone in his David-like quest. Many Americans, especially those living along the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Virginia, wanted to see Admiral Cockburn’s head on a plate.
In the spring and summer of 1813, America’s second war with England—the War of 1812—had expanded from traditional fighting between armies and navies into the terrorizing of private citizens by pillaging redcoats. Cockburn may have been a British admiral, but he was acting with a pirate’s swagger.
The Burning of the White House Page 1