James and Dolley Madison (3 page)

“It is done!” Dolley wrote triumphantly to her sister moments after she put her knife down and helped take the painting down from the wall.

Dolley and the servants then carried the painting out of the building as passersby shouted at her to flee, that British troops had been seen at the edge of town. She now had a second fear about the painting. It would fall into British hands if she herself was captured. She needed someone else to hide it. Dolley saw two New Yorkers she knew, Robert De Peyster and Jacob Barker, a ship owner and close friend of her husband, respectively, passing the White House on horses and asked them to take the painting and hide it somewhere safe so that the British could not grab it.

“Save that picture!” yelled Dolley to the two men. “Save that picture if possible. If not possible, destroy it. Under no circumstances allow it to fall in to the hands of the British.”
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The men took the portrait and headed northwest. “Carried off, upheld whole in the inner wooden frame, beyond Georgetown, the picture was deposited by Barker in a place of safety. The presidential household got the image of the father of his country—by whom its chief city was fixed near his home, and by whose name it was called—was then snatched from the clutch or torch of the barbarian captors,” wrote Charles Ingersoll later.
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Ironically, Barker found a wagon to bring some of his prized goods out of town and put the painting in the wagon. In letters, diaries, and journals, many Washingtonians later wrote that they saw the painting sticking up from Barker's furniture as he rode slowly out of town with everyone else. It seems that everybody except the British saw the portrait that day.

A few moments later, James Smith, a freed black man who worked as a
courier for the president rode up and saw Dolley in the front yard. “Clear out! Clear out! Secretary Armstrong has ordered a retreat!” he roared.
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Carroll soon returned in his coach, full of nervous family members, and picked up Dolley and her servants. He had her sister Anna and Anna's husband, Richard Cutts, with him. Their driver, Joe Bolden, then headed northwest and sped out of town, through deep, green forests, across Rock Creek, to the village of Georgetown, some five miles away. Another servant drove a second wagon full of trunks and a bed, the only piece of furniture removed, tied hard to the back of the wagon.

Dolley had one last mission. She told Frenchman Jean Pierre Sioussat to take her well-known pet macaw bird to Octagon House, a mansion owned by friends of hers, the Tayloes, but today temporarily occupied by French diplomats. She knew the handsome bird, a favorite for White House visitors, would be safe there.
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As they left, Carroll told them that it would be a long journey to Bell Vue; he had reports from servants and friends that the thick string of refugees had clogged up all the roads. Mrs. Madison planned to stay for a short time at Bell Vue and then head south into Virginia, over one of the Potomac River bridges. Carroll told her that the crossing of the river bridges would be very time-consuming because of the crowds of refugees trying to get over them. He heard that families had spent an entire afternoon clambering their way across the bridge, jammed with carts, wagons, carriages, horses, and buggies, all piled high with trunks and boxes.

Dolley wrote just before she jumped up into Carroll's carriage, “I must leave this house, or the retreating army will make me a prisoner in it by filling up the road I am directed to take. Where I shall be tomorrow, I cannot tell.”
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The events of the day raged within Dolley Madison for quite a long time. She wrote a friend later that year, just before Christmas, that she had been so depressed over losing the White House that she had not even mourned for the substantial invaluable losses she suffered in destroyed or stolen clothing and jewelry. And she was mad, too. Dolley wrote, “I was free from fear, and willing to remain in the Castle. If I could have had a cannon through every window; but alas, those who should have placed them there fled before me…my whole heart mourned for my country.”
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The calm, cool behavior of Dolley in the middle of the panic in Washington impressed all and rekindled their admiration for her. “Mrs. Madison commanded the situation with grace and dignity,” wrote Margaret Bayard Smith. “The most valiant soul in the White House, she remained at her post, guarding its treasures, as the President had admonished her to do when he set forth for Bladensburg. Unintimidated by the sight of friends and acquaintances making their escape from the city, of the officials of the State and Treasury Departments
withdrawing with valuable papers, or even by the sound of guns, Mrs. Madison calmly awaited the return of her husband.”
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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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 American 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.