A Dolley Madison Zinger: The Burning of Washington

On August 23, 1814, legend holds first lady Dolley Madison saved a portrait of George Washington from being looted and destroyed by British troops during the War of 1812.

According to the White House Historical Association and Dolley’s personal letters, President James Madison left the White House on August 22 to meet with his generals on the battlefield at Bladensburg, Maryland, as British troops threatened to enter the capital.

Before leaving, he asked his wife Dolley if she had the “courage or firmness” to wait for his intended return the next day. He requested she gather important state papers and prepare to abandon the White House at any moment.

The following day, Dolley and a few servants scanned the horizon with a spyglass waiting for either Madison or the British army to show. As British troops gathered in the distance, Dolley elected to abandon the couple’s personal belongings and save the full-length portrait of national icon Washington from desecration by vengeful British soldiers, many of whom would have gloried in humiliating England’s former colonists.

Engaging a full-stop of the Walt Disneyesque action here, we must examine the irony of slaves, held by the Madisons, strenuously assisting in the rescue of the Lansdowne portrait of our first, slaveholding president, and the executive documents of a slaveholding nation.

Looking back to 1787, James “Jemmy” Madison, the Father of the Constitution and future fourth-POTUS, attacked slavery early in the Constitutional Convention, stating, “We have seen the mere distinction of colour made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.”

Fellow delegate Thomas Jefferson’s view was equally unrelenting, calling the slave trade a “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people.” New York’s Gouverneur Morris echoed these sentiments claiming the slave trade persisted “in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity.” Yet all three men, and nearly half the Convention delegates, hailed from slave-holding families.

On February 27, 1801, Madison’s father, James Sr., passed and bequeathed to Jemmy the Montpelier Plantation along with 100 slaves. And within a week, third-POTUS Jefferson named Madison U.S. Secretary of State. Throughout the family’s time in the city, then, including Madison’s terms as secretary, the president, and into Dolley Madison’s widowhood, they would rely on enslaved labor to run their household.

While most of the enslaved retinue remained at Montpelier to work the land and such, some favorites were brought along to D.C. One enslaved man, John Freeman, was already at the White House when the Madisons arrived. Principally a dining room servant, he had been hired and later purchased by Thomas Jefferson during his presidency.

When T.J.’s second term ended, Freeman preferred to stay rather than return to Monticello, having begun a family in the city. Jefferson agreed to sell (and not gift) Freeman to incoming President Madison, so Freeman could stay.

As a gauzy postscript on Freeman, he was freed in 1815 according to the terms of his original sale contract, went on to purchase a house, raise eight children, and become a preeminent member of D.C.’s free black community. And it is he who is likely depicted in the illustration above. And it is a rye postscript that U.S. Presidents would hold slaves in the White House for another 36 years through Zachary Taylor’s brief tenure to 1850.

Returning to the action, then, on August 24, 1814, after defeating the Americans at the Battle of Bladensburg, British forces led by Major General Robert Ross burned buildings including the White House, known then as the Presidential Mansion, and the Capitol, as well as other facilities of the U.S. government. The attack was in part a retaliation for the recent American raid and utter destruction of Port Dover in Upper Canada.

Throughout the history of the United States, the United Kingdom is the only country to have ever captured Washington, D.C.; the Burning of Washington also marks the only other time since the Revolutionary War that a hostile power has captured and occupied a United States capital building until January 6, 2021.

President James Madison, his retinue, military officials, and his government fled the city in the wake of the British advance, and eventually found refuge for the night in Brookeville, a small town in Montgomery County, Maryland known today as the “United States Capital for a Day.”

Less than a day after the attack began, a sudden, very heavy thunderstorm, if not a hurricane, doused the fires. It also spun off a tornado that tore through the center of the capital, setting down on Constitution Avenue and lofting and two cannon away before dropping them and killing British troops and American civilians alike.

Following the storm, the Brits returned to their ships, many of which were badly damaged. The occupation of Washington lasted only 26 hours, and after the “Storm that saved Washington,” as it came to be called, the Americans returned to the city, with the namesake portrait intact.

Entertaining the final, salient notion that themes of race, freedom, equality and dignity make notable showings in both sacks of Washington, here the lesson from the days when God perhaps smiled more broadly on us endeth.