On the evening of Aug. 24, 1814, a man — unelected and not American — walked into the House of Representatives in Washington, DC, and sat in the chair of the Speaker of the House.
He marveled at the opulence of the regal room, designed to reflect the grandeur of the Renaissance with “26-foot-high Corinthian columns of solid and beautiful freestone.”
George Cockburn, a rear admiral in the British Navy, was one of the leaders of the only invading force ever to breach the corridors of power in the United States.
Having achieved his goal spectacularly, he was about to call for the first and only vote ever taken from this chamber by one of our country’s enemies.
“Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned? All for it will say ‘Aye.’” The verdict from his countrymen was loud and unanimous, and within minutes, Cockburn’s men were piling furniture, books and anything they could find into piles to be set alight.
Within minutes, the buildings housing our Senate and our House of Representatives — including the Library of Congress, which held thousands of books representing our nation’s earliest repository of knowledge — were ablaze in a spectacular fire that reflected off the terrified eyes of Washington’s residents.
After two years of futile war with our young country, the British had finally dealt the US a crushing blow. But they were far from done.
Next stop: the White House.
This episode in the later months of the War of 1812 is told in the new detailed, novelistic history, “When Britain Burned The White House,” written by British political and military journalist Peter Snow using personal accounts from both sides.
It marked the only time in American history outside of 9/11 that “outsiders succeeded in striking at the core of American state power.”
But it also represented a turning point for the Americans, leading to a tremendous victory that would finally end a war that ultimately benefitted neither participant.
The war had been declared in June 1812 by President James Madison due to Britain’s policy of pressing Americans into British military service against the French, and their support for Native Americans who fought American settlers.
During the war, Cockburn’s superior, Sir Alexander Cochrane — who had lost a brother in the War of Independence — was informed of brutal acts Americans had committed during attacks on Canada.
He therefore instructed Cockburn to bring “retributory justice” to the States — to “destroy and lay waste” to our cities. There was initial debate about where to target, but it was ultimately agreed that destroying Washington would cause the most humiliation.
At the time, the White House — more commonly known then as the President’s House — was in its most elegant state ever.
After its previous residents, Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, kept interior design on the back burner, the current president’s wife, Dolley Madison, a “buxom, warm-hearted woman with twinkling eyes,” sought to adorn it in keeping with its prestige.
She turned Jefferson’s study into the State Dining Room, and placed a large portrait of George Washington on the walls as a focal point.
For the drawing room, Dolley “embellished it with elegant mahogany furniture and rich, red-velvet curtains” matched by “red-velvet cushions on the newly designed Grecian-style chairs; each chair bore a gilded and varnished US coat of arms.”
Dolley then opened the White House each Wednesday for informal salons with people “of all political persuasions” that made her the toast of the town.
While many at her affairs scoffed at the idea of the British attacking Washington, James Madison and his wife knew better, having heard rumors that Cockburn, already known for viciousness, had threatened to “burn the White House over [Dolley’s] head and carry her off to London to parade her in the streets.”
The rest of Washington learned the hard way what the Madisons already suspected during the third week of August 1814.
The British, having finally ended their war against France, allowing them to concentrate on the US, were a day away from Washington, and the town’s panicked residents fled en masse.
The president, in the field with his troops, wrote to his wife to pack as much as she could and leave immediately.
Dolley wrote to her sister on Aug. 23 that she had taken as many “cabinet papers” as she could and that “our private property must be sacrificed.” (Although Snow notes that when filling her wagon, she did bring her piano.)
Before the word came down to flee, though, the White House chief steward, Jean Pierre Sioussat, had laid out dinner service for 40, expecting the president to return with a large party.
Sioussat had “meat roasting on a spit,” and “bottles of the president’s favorite Madeira wine…laid on the sideboard.”
Sioussat was the last American out of the building, leaving after the others to execute the task of bringing Mrs. Madison’s prized macaw “to the house of the French ambassador for safe-keeping.”
The White House was therefore “dark, deserted and unprotected” at around 11 the night of the 24th, when Cockburn and British Maj. Gen. Robert Ross led their men inside, entering the 14-year-old building “as easily as if they’d been invited guests.”
As the British wandered freely, they were “immediately struck by the smell of cooked food emanating from the Dining Room.”
They had not eaten since early light, so they were amazed to find, awaiting them, a feast fit for a king — or at least a president.
The table had been adorned with “a damask tablecloth, matching napkins [and] silver and delicate wineglasses” by Paul Jennings, President Madison’s manservant.
British Capt. Harry Smith later wrote, “We found supper all ready, which was sufficiently cooked…and which many of us speedily consumed unaided by the fiery elements and drank some very good wine also.”
Royal Navy Lt. James Scott wrote in his personal diary that he saw bottles of wine “cooling in ice together with what he described as ‘a large store of excellent Madiera,’” and “helped himself to at least one generous glassful.”
A toast was offered, possibly by Cockburn, to “peace with America and down with Madison.”
There was, oddly, an American in their presence. Roger Weightman was a local bookseller whom Cockburn had met en route and “insisted” he join them, perhaps out of some sadistic impulse.
“Cockburn teased him mercilessly,” Snow writes, “and made him drink [to] the health of ‘Jemmy Madison,’” as he contemptuously called our president.
Before they burned the White House, the British rummaged through it. Here, too, Cockburn relished the chance to show his American hostage his pleasure at humiliating the former colony.
The president’s dressing room had been ransacked, with “drawers half opened with contents spilling on the floor,” the result of either the residents grabbing their belongings in a hurry to escape the invading British force, or perhaps the work of American looters.
“Cockburn told Weightman that he could take something ‘to remember the day,’” writes Snow. “The terrified and baffled bookseller reached for something that was obviously valuable, no doubt hoping to save it. But Cockburn, whether to avoid being accused of looting or just to taunt the young man further, said, ‘No, No…that I must give to the flames.’ ”
Cockburn instead handed Weightman “an armful of trinkets…from the mantlepiece,” and took “one of Madison’s hats and…a cushion from Dolley Madison’s chair” for himself, “saying with a smirk that it would remind him of ‘her seat.’ ”
Beauchamp Colclough Urquhart, a lieutenant in the 85th Light Infantry, helped himself to “James Madison’s very smart dress sword,” and Scott located the president’s wardrobe and “tried on one of Madison’s shirts.”
“I accordingly doffed my inner garment,” he wrote, “and thrust my unworthy person into a shirt belonging to no less a personage than the chief magistrate of the United States: the operation equalled in luxury and benefit the draught in the banqueting room.”
Finally, having fed themselves and claimed their souvenirs, the unwelcome tourists were ready for the task at hand.
Ross called for all the furniture to be stacked high, and, according to one later account, upwards of 50 British sailors were marched to a spot just outside, “each carrying a long pole to which was fixed a ball about the circumference of a large plate.
These ‘balls,’ presumably of a highly flammable material, were set alight.” When the word “Command” was shouted, each man broke the window before him and tossed in the fire. The building was engulfed in smoke and flame within minutes.
The Treasury Building, the War Office, and the offices of an anti-British newspaper, the National Intelligencer, were also burned, among other sites.
Once rain had finally extinguished the fires, “not an inch, but its cracked and blackened wall remain[ed]” of the White House, which would take three years to rebuild.
After successfully sacking Alexandria, Va. — they negotiated with the residents, exchanging their safety for their property — the British spent the second week of September bombarding Baltimore.
But the Americans, united by anger at the destruction of Washington and having had weeks to prepare due to British dithering, kept the battle to a draw. (It was during this battle that Francis Scott Key, straining to see whether the US or British flag flew over the city’s Fort Henry, wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner.”)
The British then tried conquering New Orleans, figuring that holding “the key to the Mississippi” would give them a “stranglehold” on our country, but they were demolished by American forces, losing 700 men to our seven.
Ironically, a peace treaty had been signed in Europe two weeks prior — getting news across the Atlantic back then took about a month — so the result of this battle was moot.
While the war left neither side with much to celebrate on its face, Snow writes that the War of 1812 marked “the coming of age of the United States,” and “the birth of a new American pride and self-confidence.”
The Madisons spent the remainder of his presidency — President James Monroe would re-establish the White House as the President’s House three years later — living in the Octagon House, which stands to this day on 18th Street and New York Avenue in Washington.
On the night of Feb. 14, 1815, the Madisons received word that the appropriate treaties had been signed and the war was officially over.
That night, Dolley Madison “threw open the doors” to the Octagon House for a grand celebration, and the United States of America began a brand new phase in its promising evolution.
“No one could doubt, who beheld the radiance of joy which lighted up her countenance and diffused its beams around,” Snow quotes one eyewitness, “that all uncertainty was at an end, and that the government of the country had, in very truth…passed from gloom to glory.”