On August 19, 1814, during the
War of 1812, over 4,500 British soldiers landed at Benedict, Maryland, on the
shores of the Patuxent River and marched towards Washington. Their mission was
to capture Washington and take revenge for the burning of their British Capitol
in Canada a year earlier by American forces.
It what remains one of the
worst pieces of advice ever given to a President, Secretary of War John
Armstrong said that Washington was safe and didn’t need military protection
because the British were focused on Baltimore. After the destruction of
Washington, Madison forced him to resign in September 1814.
Arriving in the city, the
British sent a party of men under a white flag of truce to Capitol Hill to come
to terms, but they were attacked by snipers hiding in a house at the corners of Maryland, Constitution,
and Second Street NE. It was the only
resistance the soldiers met within the city. The English responded by setting
the house afire, tossing the white flag and marching into the city proper under
the British flag.
Arriving to the top of Capitol
Hill, the troops set fire to the partially completed the Senate and House of
Representatives building there, and set fire to what was the miniscule Library
of Congress inside the Senate building. However the library was replaced
through Thomas Jefferson who, in 1815, sold his personal library of more than
6,487 volumes to the government to restock the Library of Congress for $23,950,
a staggering amount of money for the time. (Prior to the fire the library held
about 3,000 volumes).
But the collection was incredible. It had
taken Jefferson 50 years to accumulate the wide variety of books that included
volumes in foreign languages, philosophy, science, literature and cookbooks.
"I do not know” Said
Jefferson “that it contains any branch of science which Congress would wish to
exclude from their collection; there is, in fact, no subject to which a Member
of Congress may not have occasion to refer." Oddly enough, a second fire on Christmas Eve
of 1851 destroyed nearly two thirds of the 6,487 volumes Congress had purchased
from Jefferson.
The English intended to capture the supplies
stored at the vast Washington Navy Yard but the Americans had already set it
afire rather than have the English capture it.
The English sent two hundred men to secure a fort on Greenleaf's Point.
(Now Fort McNair) but the fort had already been destroyed by the Americans,
however, for some reason, they had left
behind 150 barrels of gunpowder. The
British arrived, found the powder and tried to destroy it by dropping the
barrels into a well, the powder ignited killing about thirty men and maiming
many others in the explosion that followed.
The US Patent Office was saved from
destruction by the Superintendent of Patents, Dr. William Thornton who convinced the British of the importance of
its preservation.
Then the troops marched down
Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House where a gallant First Lady, Dolley
Madison remained behind, alone.
President James Madison had left the White House on August 22 to meet
with his generals on the battlefield and his cabinet had already fled the city,
and saved the nation’s valuables from the British. (Silverware, books, clocks,
curtains) However it is not true that she removed
Gilbert Stuart's full-length portrait of George Washington. (The portrait was
actually a copy of Gilbert Stuart's original)
James Madison's personal servant, the slave
Paul Jennings, was an eyewitness (He was 15 years old at the time) to the event
and wrote later’ “It has often been
stated in print, that when Mrs. Madison escaped from the White House, she cut
out from the frame the large portrait of Washington, and carried it off. She had no time for doing it. It would have
required a ladder to get it down. All she carried off was the silver in her reticule,
as the British were thought to be but a few squares off, and were expected any
moment.”
The heroes of the White House
burning were John Susé, Frenchman and doorkeeper, and a man named Magraw
[McGraw], the President's gardener. They
saved Washington’s portrait (The portrait was screwed to the wall) along with
large silver urns, packed it aboard a wagon and sent if off to Virginia. Senior
clerk Stephen Pleasonton saved the Declaration of Independence by hiding it in
a gristmill near Georgetown.
Secretary of State James Monroe
directed Senior clerk Stephen Pleasonton with preserving the books and papers
of the State Department during the burning of Washington. He filled several
coarse linen bags, and filled them with all the Department's records, including
the still-unpublished secret journals of Congress, the commission and
correspondence of George Washington, the Articles of Confederation, the United
States Constitution, and all the treaties, laws, and correspondence of the
Department made since 1789. Before he
left, he noticed the Declaration of Independence had been forgotten and was
still hanging in its frame on the wall, and took it all to Leesburg, Virginia,
where they were stored in an empty stone house.
Jennings concluded, “When the
British did arrive, they ate up the very dinner, and drank the wines, &c.,
that I had prepared for the President's party”
Admiral Cockburn made his way
to the White House after his officers arrived and began taking souvenirs. Dolly
Madison had abandoned the couple's personal belongings and the admiral was able
to take one of President Madison's hats, and a cushion from Dolley Madison's
chair. He then issued an order for his
troops to drink Madison's wine and helped themselves to food.
British soldier George Gleig wrote “[H]aving
satisfied their appetites … and partaken pretty freely of the wines, they
finished by setting fire to the house which had so liberally entertained them.
… Of the Senate house, the President's palace, the barracks, the dockyard,
etc., nothing could be seen except heaps of smoking ruins.”
They set fire to the White
House (Then called the Presidents House) by tossing torches through the windows
and adding fuel to the fire to ensure that it would keep burning and reports
had it that the thick black smoke could be seen as far away as Baltimore (Which
is very doubtful) and the Patuxent River (Which is likely). They also set fire
to the adjacent Treasury Department building.
Washington lay in ruins. American soldiers, government officials, and
residents fled the city. The White
House, the Capitol, and many other public buildings and residences were burning
and the next day, August 25, Washington was still burning. Suddenly, in the
early afternoon, the sky darkened, lightening flashed, loud thunder could be
heard and the winds swept up into what one resident called “a frightening roar.”
The White House in ruins. After the 1812 burning, the White House was
whitewashed to cover the smoke stains.
Originally light gray in color, the building’s exterior was painted
white during the restoration to cover the smoke stain.
It was a tornado. On the one hand, the city,
which was made mostly of wood, was saved from a rapidly expanding fire by the
storm but on the other hand, the tornado probably did more damage to the city
than it stopped. Buildings were lifted into the air and tossed a block away.
Flying debris killed several English soldiers and one gust made off with
several cannons. Hundreds of English soldiers laid face down in the streets as
the storm passed over them and one account describes how a British officer on
horseback did not dismount and the winds slammed both horse and rider violently
to the ground.
It ended after two hours and
the heavy rain that followed put out most of the flames and prevented
Washington from burning to the ground. The British regrouped on Capitol Hill
and marched out of the city that night.
As the English left the city, Admiral Cockburn
asked a local woman, “Great God, Madam! Is this the kind of storm to which you
are accustomed in this infernal country?” The lady answered, “No, Sir, this is
a special interposition of Providence to drive our enemies from our city.”
“Not so Madam.” The Admiral answered, “It is
rather to aid your enemies in the destruction of your city.”
Hours later, the British forces
left Washington and returned to their ships on the Patuxent River but the
journey back to their ships was a difficult one. Downed trees on the roadway
slowed their return and the war ships they arrived on had been badly damaged in
the storm. Still, the English stopped their ships in Old Town Alexandria long
enough to loot it. (A separate British
force had already captured Alexandria, The mayor of Alexandria made a deal and
the British refrained from burning the town.)
President Madison and Dolly
returned to Washington three days later, but the White House was made unlivable
by the fire. President Madison served
the rest of his term residing at the Octagon House. It was not until 1817 that
newly elected president James Monroe moved back into the reconstructed
building.
After the attack, Congress was
determined to relocate the nation's capital north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Fearful that the capitol would be moved to
Philadelphia, local Washington businessmen financed the construction of the Old
Brick Capitol, (Mayor Thomas Corcoran offered Georgetown College as a temporary
home for Congress.) where Congress met while the Capitol was reconstructed from
1815 to 1819.
For many decades the White
House has had reports that the ghost of a British soldier dressed in a uniform
from the War of 1812 and carrying a torch haunts the executive mansion. (He has
also been seen on the front lawn) Some think the soldier is one of those who
burned the White House, or accidently killed while burning down the White House
or who lost his life the following tornado. He is the only malicious spirit who
haunts the White House. In 1953, one
couple staying in a second-floor bedroom said the ghost tried to set fire to
their bed with a flaming torch.