While we are currently living through huge political moments that will surely be in history books someday, it is worth remembering the history that has gone before. It’s worth remembering those American patriots who did noble deeds in service to our country.

And those noble deeds belong just as much to our foremothers as our forefathers. Today is the 210th anniversary of the burning of Washington DC, and the White House, which happened August 24, 1814. But it is also the anniversary of First Lady Dolley Madison saving the portrait of George Washington from the White House, and making herself a national symbol of resistance and courage that still stands to this day.

Let’s set the stage for what happened that day over two centuries ago. The United States is fighting what would eventually be called The War of 1812 against the British Empire, which would essentially end in a draw with the Treaty of Ghent, signed on Christmas Eve 1814. But before the war was fought to a stalemate, the British sacked and burned Washington DC. And as they approached in August 1814, Dolley Madison was holding down the fort at the White House by herself.

By now thousands of Washingtonians were crowding the roads. But Dolley, whose determination to stay with her husband was unwavering, remained. She welcomed Madison’s decision to station 100 militiamen under the command of a regular Army colonel on the White House lawn. Not only was it a gesture of protection on his part, it was also a declaration that he and Dolley intended to stand their ground. The president then decided to join the 6,000 militiamen who were marching to confront the British in Maryland. Dolley was sure his presence would stiffen their resolve.

After the president had ridden off, Dolley decided to show her own resolve by throwing a dinner party, on August 23. But after The National Intelligencer newspaper reported that the British had received 6,000 reinforcements, not a single invitee accepted her invitation. Dolley took to going up to the White House roof to scan the horizon with a spyglass, hoping to see evidence of an American victory. Meanwhile, Madison sent her two scribbled messages, written in quick succession on August 23. The first assured her that the British would easily be defeated; the second warned her to be ready to flee on a moment’s notice.

Her husband had urged her, if the worst happened, to save the cabinet papers and every public document she could cram into her carriage. Late in the afternoon of August 23, Dolley began a letter to her sister Lucy, describing her situation. “My friends and acquaintances are all gone,” she wrote. The army colonel and his 100-man guard had also fled. But, she declared, “I am determined not to go myself until I see Mr. Madison safe.” She wanted to be at his side “as I hear of much hostility toward him…disaffection stalks around us.” She felt her presence might deter enemies ready to harm the president.

The next day, on August 24, Dolley Madison was preparing to leave, but had to be persuaded to go as the British army approached.

At the White House, Dolley had packed a wagon with the red silk velvet draperies of the Oval Room, the silver service and the blue and gold Lowestoft china she had purchased for the state dining room.

Resuming her letter to Lucy on that afternoon of the 24th, Dolley wrote: “Will you believe it, my sister? We have had a battle or skirmish…and I am still here within sound of the cannon!” Gamely, she ordered the table set for a dinner for the president and his staff, and insisted that the cook and his assistant begin preparing it. “Two messengers covered with dust” arrived from the battlefield, urging her to flee. Still she refused, determined to wait for her husband. She ordered the dinner to be served. She told the servants that if she were a man, she would post a cannon in every window of the White House and fight to the bitter end.

The arrival of Maj. Charles Carroll, a close friend, finally changed Dolley’s mind. When he told her it was time to go, she glumly acquiesced. As they prepared to leave, according to John Pierre Sioussat, the Madison White House steward, Dolley noticed the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington in the state dining room. She could not abandon it to the enemy, she told Carroll, to be mocked and desecrated. As he looked anxiously on, Dolley ordered servants to take down the painting, which was screwed to the wall. Informed they lacked the proper tools, Dolley told the servants to break the frame. (The president’s enslaved White House footman, Paul Jennings, later produced a vivid account of these events; see sidebar, p. 55.) About this time, two more friends—Jacob Barker, a wealthy ship owner, and Robert G. L. De Peyster—arrived at the White House to offer whatever help might be needed. Dolley would entrust the painting to the two men, saying they must conceal it from the British at all costs; they would transport the portrait to safety in a wagon. Meanwhile, with remarkable self-possession, she completed her letter to Lucy: “And now, dear sister, I must leave this house…where I shall be tomorrow, I cannot tell!”

British troops burned the White House #OTD in 1814. First Lady Dolley Madison instructed Paul Jennings, a 15-year-old enslaved African American, to save Gilbert Stuart’s full-length portrait of President Washington. https://t.co/MvQHUwRtpK pic.twitter.com/OtlUuLBMYe

— Presidential Trivia (@triviapotus) August 24, 2024

Dolley Madison made it to Virginia the next day, where she was reunited with her husband. President Madison, once he returned to Washington DC two days later, tried to keep Dolley where she was. She ended up joining him the next day.

He insisted that Dolley remain in Virginia until the city was safe. By August 27, the president had re-entered Washington. In a note written hastily the next day, he told his wife: “You cannot return too soon.” The words seem to convey not only Madison’s need for her companionship but also his recognition that she was a potent symbol of his presidency.

On August 28, Dolley joined her husband in Washington. They stayed at the home of her sister Anna Payne Cutts, who had taken over the same house on F Street that the Madisons had occupied before moving to the White House. The sight of the ruined Capitol—and the charred, blackened shell of the White House—must have been almost unbearable for Dolley. For several days, according to friends, she was morose and tearful. A friend who saw President Madison at this time described him as “miserably shattered and woebegone. In short, he looks heartbroken.”

History tells us that the British abandoned Washington DC after setting it on fire, and that a severe storm dumped rain on the city and put out the fires on August 25th.

The British troops set fire to the Capitol, the White House (then called the Presidential Mansion,) the Library of Congress, and other government buildings that day, (but not before taking the time to finish off a meal that had been left out at the White House.)

The next morning, the British invaders sought out ammunition and other supplies to burn. But, after an accident with gunpowder barrels led to the death of 30 British soldiers, the British decided to leave Washington.

Then came a fortuitous act of nature: a massive storm swept through the burning city. There is anecdotal evidence of a tornado, which touched down in the middle of the city on August 25, 1814, from the National Weather Service.

George Robert Gleig, a British soldier on the scene, detailed the scene in his memoirs as the severe thunderstorm rolled into the city in the afternoon.

“Of the prodigious force of the wind it is impossible for you to form any conception. Roofs of houses were torn off by it, and whisked into the air like sheets of paper, while the rain which accompanied it resembled the rushing of a mighty cataract rather than the dropping of a shower,” Gleig wrote. He said the incident produced “the most appalling effect I had ever, or probably shall ever witness.”

The severe weather lasted for two hours, he said, dumping torrential rain on the city. At least two British troops were killed, and Gleig was knocked off his horse. He also said two cannons were picked up in the air and tossed around during the most violent part of the storm.

Gleig recalled that as the rains doused the fires set by the British, they were able to use the confusion caused by the storm to cover their quick withdrawal from Washington that night.

Washington and the White House were eventually rebuilt, and Thomas Jefferson sold his personal library to Congress to help restock the Library of Congress. The painting, as we all know, survived its wagon trip, and eventually returned to the White House, where it is to this day. Dolley Madison became an American folk heroine for insisting on rescuing the painting. BUT… did you know that the Stuart painting was NOT the original one, but a copy painted by Gilbert Stuart?

Rescuing the painting was no simple feat. The eight-foot-tall portrait was bolted to the wall of the dining room, making it difficult to move or transport. According to Paul Jennings, a teenage footman enslaved by the Madisons, steward John Sioussat and gardener Thomas McGaw were instructed by Mrs. Madison to hack away at the portrait’s frame. Once the painting was free, it was turned over to two New Yorkers, Jacob Barker and Robert G.L. De Peyster, for safekeeping.

While preserving the portrait was important, Mrs. Madison felt it was equally critical that it not be allowed to be confiscated by the British. She instructed the men to destroy the painting before turning it over, admonishing them not to allow it “into the hands of the enemy, as their Capture would enable them to make a great flourish”.

The original life-sized portrait, painted by Gilbert Stuart in 1796, hangs in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

It was a gift to the Marquis of Lansdowne, an English advocate for American independence from Senator and Mrs. William Bingham of Pennsylvania.

Replicas painted by Stuart are on display in the East Room of the White House, the Old State House in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum. The copy that Mrs. Madison rescued still hangs in the White House.

Fun Fact: The Lansdowne portrait of George Washington, saved from Brits by Dolley Madison, has a secret misspelling on one of the books,“United Sates.” It was a way for the artist, Gilbert Stuart, to tell originals from copies he made pic.twitter.com/DJs4GKIqgr

— SPIES&VESPERS (@SpiesVespers) August 24, 2019

Dolley Madison and her actions during the burning of Washington DC should not just be reduced to the saving of Washington’s portrait, though that single act has lived through history as proof of her defiance, determination, and common sense.
https://twitter.com/whoismrzero/status/1814306285820506274
I’d watch a movie about Dolley Madison standing her ground until the last minute at the White House, and then robbing the British of a symbolic gesture as she went out the door. It’s been 210 years – this First Lady should get her due in popular culture, and not just from historians and history buffs.

Featured image: 1804 portrait of Dolley Madison via Wikimedia Commons, cropped, public domain in the United States