James and Dolley Madison

by Bruce Chadwick

  As they disappeared from view northwest on Pennsylvania Avenue, a few dozen British troops began to move to within sight of the city. So did James Madison. He and his friends arrived from the battlefield at Bladensburg on horseback and had some refreshments a short time after Dolley left. Scouts told him of British troops throughout the countryside around the city and other troops that were only a mile or so behind him on the road he had traveled.

  President Madison was not happy. He had waged a so-far-unsuccessful war against England. He had stuck with it for more than two years now, using a small, regular army and thousands of inexperienced and untrained militia, plus a largely untested navy, and the results were not promising. Even members of his own party, the Republicans, were angry with him. Many referred to him as “the little man at the palace.”33

  The British high command had boasted that it would capture the president and the First Lady and bring them back to England for trial as war criminals. They were intent on finding him and arresting him. Soldiers were out with specific orders to abduct him. He knew that and finished his drink quickly. He took off his holster with two pistols that he had been carrying for days and set them down gently on a wooden table. He sent off some military letters and then entrusted a note for his wife to a rider. He told his wife to meet him the next day at Foxall's Foundry in Georgetown. He gave it to the rider, then called him back. He wrote another note telling his wife to cross the Potomac the next day and meet him at Wiley's Tavern, an alehouse they both knew. Then he and his party rode away on horseback toward the Potomac River, barely in time, after he sent his wife yet another note that he would meet her the next day at a friend's home near Georgetown.34

  The president rode out of town with his small entourage of military personnel, leaving his two pistols behind in the White House. He did not retreat in haste or in panic, but as the commander in chief should, full of confidence. A French minister still in town saw the president ride out that afternoon and wrote that he “proudly got on his horse and, accompanied by a few friends, slowly reached the bridge separating Washington from Virginia.”35 The British began to move in as Madison rode out. They had triumphed in the battle of Bladensburg, sending the American soldiers running away like scared rabbits, and now they had the capital of the United States lying at their feet.

  Late in the afternoon, around 5 p.m., just a few hours after President Madison was seen riding toward the bridge to Virginia, the US Army fell into confusion. Several regiments were in the capital and several just outside of it, but no one seemed to know what to do. One regiment marched to the Capitol building, intent on defending it and expecting orders to arrive at any moment instructing them to do so. They passed hundreds of empty houses and some that were still occupied by owners who just could not believe that the British would attack. These residents also believed that the American army would protect the city, and them. They were angry about the war and angrier still that they were stuck in their homes. They had waited too long to flee and now faced the prospect of being seized by the British and held prisoner. Many moved in with neighbors in the same predicament. Every few moments, a rider would gallop through the streets, shouting at the top of his lungs for residents to evacuate immediately. “Fly! Fly! The Ruffians are at hand!” was a call heard often that afternoon.36

  One of the first groups of American soldiers in the city, sixty cavalrymen on tired horses with their commander, Colonel Jacint Laval, all exhausted from a hard ride down from Bladensburg, trotted to the east side of the Capitol building. They stopped in front of the enormous structure, not yet complete, that sat amid large fields dotted with clumps of brush and a few trees. From there, they had a nearly interrupted view of the city. Laval thought he had orders to defend the capital but was not sure. If he did, then where were the hundreds of other troops who should be there to join him in what might be the final fight of the war? No one was there. Then he heard from a passerby who walked up to Laval, who was mounted on his horse, a rumor that the American troops had been ordered to leave the Capitol and to go down Pennsylvania Avenue to the President's Mansion to defend it when the long columns of British troops arrived. Laval and his men did the same, but when they arrived in front of the White House, they found no one there, either. It was eerie to see the usually busy home completely empty. He waited nearly an hour, with few sounds in the air except the distant retreat of scared residents across the bridges to Virginia. No other soldiers arrived. There were no military couriers. Nothing. He did not see any other soldiers in the city, either. Had they fled? Were they ordered out? “I could not, nor would not, believe that the city was to be given up without a fight,” he wrote, adding that would cause “sorrow, grief and indignation for his troops.”37

  Men in the American regiments, apprehensive and frightened, broke ranks throughout the neighborhoods of the town. Many with permission and some without it left their regiments and visited friends and family to fill them in on the building disaster. Some returned to the army and some did not. Some could be found and some were missing. The departure of hundreds of men undercut whatever fighting strength was left in the army. “The idea of leaving their families, their houses and their homes at the mercy of an enraged enemy was insupportable,” General Walter Smith said later.38 “To preserve that order which was maintained during the retreat was now no longer practicable.”

  Within an hour, General Winder rode up to the Capitol, where some more troops had gathered after Laval's men left. Winder told them all that it was futile to make a final stand in the city; they were outnumbered and had been battered at Bladensburg. He ordered the American army to head for the heights in Georgetown, five miles away, where they would fight the British if necessary. The army had to abandon the city and leave it to the British. One regiment of seven hundred troops had finally been equipped that morning. They headed toward Bladensburg to fight but were turned back and told to defend Washington. At the Capitol, ready to give their lives, they met Winder, who ordered the troops, who had not yet even lifted their rifles, to flee once again—this time to Georgetown. The men in the regiment never fired a shot.39

  Southeast of the Capitol building and the White House, loud explosions were heard late in the afternoon. It was the Navy Yard being blown up by Americans to prevent the British from using it. Destroyed were several entire ships, hundreds of carriages, and thousands of pounds of ammunition. Flames and thick smoke from the carnage rose quickly in the summer air and could be seen for miles on both land and sea. Residents of Baltimore, forty-five miles away, claimed they saw the smoke.40

  Sometime in late afternoon, close to 6 p.m., seeing stores and homes evacuated and the rivers of residents on roads headed out of town, dozens of looters descended on the streets of the city. Residents still there reported groups of young men running into stores and emerging with armloads of stolen goods. Some even ran through the empty White House, stealing china, jackets, and other goods.

  On a narrow street just north of the Capitol, the first British troops to enter town were fired upon by a resident taking sharp aim with his musket from a two-story house. The British dove off their horses and sought cover; none were hurt. They fired at will on the house, driving out the sniper. Furious, they set fire to the building, using their commander's philosophy that it was proper to burn down any structure, home, or barn, from which hostile fire had come. It was the first of many torches used on the nation's capital that day.

  The British troops reached both the White House and Capitol building at about 8 p.m., as darkness was slowly falling on Washington. The decision had already been made by Admiral Cockburn and others to burn at least several government buildings in order to teach the Americans a lesson (he himself did not have orders to do that). The soldiers expected the torching to take place and were fully prepared for it, but many were reluctant to carry out those orders. They realized that the burning of the Capitol and/or White House would not only destroy the most important and lovely buildings in America but also enrage the Amer
ican people. The invaders had captured the city; they did not have to burn it. To do so was a historical insult that would resonate for generations between the two countries.

  “I had no objection to burning arsenals, dockyards, frigates, buildings, stores, barracks etc…. but we were horrified at the order to burn the elegant Houses of Parliament,” wrote one young British officer.41 Weeks later, the British press bitterly criticized the army for torching Washington, DC, and singled out Admiral Cockburn for their most vicious scorn. The London Statesman called him “a buccaneer” and wrote that “the cossacks spared Paris, but we spared not the capital of America.” The British Annual Register of 1814 called the burning of the capital “barbarism.”42

  The Capitol building was immense. It sat on a slight hill overlooking the rest of the town. The structure was three stories high. It was not finished. The two enormous wings, the Senate and House of Representatives, were intact, but to get to either, one had to take a wooden plank walkway that connected them. The dome above the building, soon to be one of the most famous in the world, was not there.

  Troops entered through doors to the House of Representatives. Many said later that they were stunned at the beauty of the large chamber, with its elegant desks and seats and sixty-seven-foot-high ceiling. The British fired rockets into the ceiling, expecting it to burn, fall down, and set the rest of the chamber on fire. They did not realize that the ceiling was metal; it did not burst into flames. Then they piled up all the wooden furniture that they could find and made a large bonfire. The heat and flames from the bonfire ignited the desks and walls and the entire structure soon started to burn. Within a half hour, most of the building was engulfed in flames. It was a dark and cloudless night, and the sight of the rising flames, soaring into the night sky like crimson fingers, could be seen for miles. Those who had fled Washington watched from their safe houses in Georgetown or Virginia, miles away, and grimaced as the sky was lit bright orange with the flames.43

  “You never saw a drawing room so brilliantly lighted as the whole city was that night,” wrote Mary Hunter from her home in town. “Few thought of going to bed—they spent the night in gazing on the fires and lamenting the disgrace of the city.”44

  Nearby villages like Georgetown were overcrowded with refugees. “Night. Ten o'clock. The streets of this quiet village [Georgetown], which never before witnessed confusion, are now filled with carriages bringing out citizens, and baggage wagons and troops. Mr. Bentley's house is now crowded; he has been the whole evening sitting at the supper table, giving refreshment to soldiers and travelers. Every house in the village is equally full,” wrote Margaret Bayard Smith, so stricken with fear that she told friends the government would have to abandon Washington and move somewhere else.45

  At about 11 p.m., after the Capitol was set on fire, dozens of troops rode up to and walked into the vacant White House of James and Dolley Madison. They trudged through the house on an inspection tour and to survey the building in order to determine the best way to set it ablaze. They were astonished when they entered the dining room. They may have noticed that a large painting had been removed from the wall, but their eyes focused on the table. It was laid out for a dinner party for thirty or forty people, and a dozen or more bottles of wine lay in buckets of ice, all set earlier by Paul Jennings and other servants on the orders of the First Lady. The British had not eaten much all day, had been in combat, and had marched six long miles down the highway to Washington. They were tired and hungry. Dozens of them sat down in the dining room and enjoyed a delicious dinner and some of America's best wines. The spectacle enraged the American people.

  Finished with their surprise dinner party, the soldiers went about their work to destroy the White House. First, the men looted the building, stealing everything they could find that marauders who went through it earlier had not taken. One man grabbed one of the president's hats and held it aloft on the tip of his bayonet. He said that if the troops were unable to capture “the little President,” they could at least bring his hat to England. Another soldier stole the president's dress sword. Others took some of his clothing and jewelry that probably belonged to Dolley.

  The mansion was still full of stacks of kindling wood for the many fireplaces. The troops spread the wood in front of wooden furniture, drapes, and other items that seemed combustible. Others simply set wallpaper, books, and drapes on fire in individual rooms and let them burn. Within minutes, all of the rooms in the building, the heart of American heritage and freedom, were on fire. The troops and officers, happy with their work, withdrew and watched the structure incinerate from the street. They were disappointed that the thick, sandstone walls of the outer structure did not burn, though, permitting reconstruction of the building much later.

  That night, the troops, on orders, burned down the Treasury building, one block from the White House. They were going to burn the nearby War Department building, but the high command rejected that. There was an attempt to burn a local bank, but that was rejected, too. They were sometimes stopped by residents of the town, who begged them on the streets in front of the buildings not to destroy America's landmarks. William Thornton, an architect, ran to the Patent Office building to try to take art treasures out of it when he heard it would be burned. He encountered British troops in front of it and begged them to leave it alone. If they destroyed it, he told them, they “would be like the soldiers who burned the legendary library at Alexandria” two thousand years earlier. They did not. The British had certainly done enough work for one night, destroying America's Capitol building, its presidential mansion, and the Treasury building.46

  One of the trips Admiral Cockburn made with his men that night was to the offices of the National Intelligencer newspaper, the paper of record for government activities. The editor had fled on news that the British were coming into town, and the offices were empty by the time the British soldiers arrived with Cockburn. First, he ordered them to burn down the building, but the quick arrival of four women who lived in houses that surrounded the newspaper halted that. They pleaded with Cockburn that the flames would leap to their homes and destroy them. He canceled the order. Then Cockburn told his men to take the hundreds of books and files in the newspaper's small library and pile them up in the street. They were burned. Cockburn then ordered them to destroy all of the printing presses and metal used to make letters for stories, and then trash the office. He wanted to make sure the city's most prominent paper did not publish for quite some time. “Make sure all the ‘C's are smashed,” he told them, “I don't want any more abuse of my name.” (All of this did little good; the newspaper was printing again, in smaller-sized editions, one week later.47)

  Bad weather saved further depredations in the American capital. The next day, Thursday, the region was battered by terrible thunderstorms that dumped several inches of rain on Washington in wide, unending sheets of water. Small, fierce tornadoes, a rarity in the Chesapeake region, whipped through the area, knocking down buildings like they were made of paper, uprooting large, hundred-year-old trees, knocking over carriages, terrifying horses, and in one area of the city forcing an entire building to collapse, killing several British soldiers inside of it. The dreadful weather, reports of American soldiers still in the area regrouping for a fight, and the realization that they were some distance from their ships in Maryland convinced the British to leave the city and march back to the Patuxent River.48

  On Wednesday, the night of the fire, the whereabouts of the president and First Lady were largely unknown. The president, some cabinet officers, two dragoons from the army, and a few servants rode around northern Virginia, evading British troops and seeking shelter. The president missed his wife. Madison's first stop was Wiley's Tavern, where he planned to spend the night and then reunite with his wife the following day. He was there only a short time when soldiers arrived with (untrue) news that British patrols were riding through northern Virginia, looking for him. He and his entourage then rode to the Great Falls of the Potomac, h
oping to make a crossing and reunite with General Winder's army near Georgetown. The party was unable to cross the river, though, and turned back. One report had him sleeping in a grimy, old cabin in a forest, with most of the others sleeping on the grounds around it. There were other reports that he spent the night at Salona, a 466-acre estate owned by a friend, Rev. William Maffitt. It was a large, brick mansion only four miles from Washington.49

  The president was supposed to ride to Wren's Tavern, in Virginia, to meet his wife. On the stormy Thursday, he arrived there when darkness fell, had some dinner, and then left after only one hour. He told his hosts he had to find his wife; he did not really know where she was. He was halted by the storm, though, and sought shelter at the Crossroads Tavern, where he spent the night. Dolley had gone on to Wiley's Tavern, an inn on the road from Georgetown to Leesburg, on her husband's orders. She received a harsh welcome. Men and women driven from their homes by the British and fed up with the war yelled at her when she arrived and blamed her and Madison for the war and the loss of their houses. Dolley spent the night in her room for safety.

  The next day, she left Wiley's and drove to the home of George Minor and his wife, her friends. The house was jammed with refugees from Washington who knew the Minors. Dolley was not scorned there. She decided to spend her time there not as a bedraggled refugee on the run from the enemy, but as the First Lady of the United States. She wore her best gowns and her makeup, and carried herself with great elegance and dignity. All who spent the time there with her remembered the gracious way that she presented herself and spent her time with them.