hector5559
3 Answers
chelleanne
August 24, 1814
On this day in 1814, during the War of 1812 between the United States and England, British troops enter Washington, D.C. and burn the White House in retaliation for the American attack on the city of York in Ontario, Canada, in June 1812.
When the British arrived at the White House, they found that President James Madison and his first lady Dolley had already fled to safety in Maryland. Soldiers reportedly sat down to eat a meal made of leftover food from the White House scullery using White House dishes and silver before ransacking the presidential mansion and setting it ablaze.
According to the White House Historical Society and Dolley's personal letters, President James Madison had left the White House on August 22 to meet with his generals on the battlefield, just as British troops threatened to enter the capitol. Before leaving, he asked his wife Dolley if she had the "courage or firmness" to wait for his intended return the next day. He asked her to gather important state papers and be prepared to abandon the White House at any moment.
The next day, Dolley and a few servants scanned the horizon with spyglasses waiting for either Madison or the British army to show up. As British troops gathered in the distance, Dolley decided to abandon the couple's personal belongings and instead saved a full-length portrait of former president George Washington from desecration. Dolley wrote to her sister on the night of August 23 of the difficulty involved in saving the painting. Since the portrait was screwed to the wall, she ordered the frame to be broken and the canvas pulled out and rolled up. Two unidentified "gentlemen from New York" hustled it away for safe-keeping. (Unbeknownst to Dolley the portrait was actually a copy of Gilbert Stuart's original). The task complete, Dolley wrote "and now, dear sister, 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." Dolley left the White House and found her husband at their predetermined meeting place in the middle of a thunderstorm.
Although President Madison and his wife were able to return to Washington only three days later when British troops had moved on, they never again lived in the White House. Madison served the rest of his term residing at the city's Octagon House. It was not until 1817 that newly elected president James Monroe moved back into the reconstructed building.
Victory? The night before the White House was burned, President James Madison had laid in a celebratory meal, thinking they had beaten the British
A British force capture and burns Washington in 1814 during the War of 1812.
Photograph: Alamy
| 10 years ago. Rating: 7 | |
ROMOS
lindilou
Rubbing it in eh Heck?!!
That tired old special relationship with the White House is under strain these days – with Britain and the US out of step on Syria. But we're still a long way short of what our relations with the White House were like 200 years ago when we Brits set fire to it. A British army scattered an American force outside Washington, marched in and burned both houses of Congress, the war and state departments, the treasury – and the White House.
It was the only time other than 9/11 that outsiders have struck at America's capital. The US had rather foolishly declared war on Britain, then the world's greatest naval power, over control of the seas. The trouble was we Brits were fighting Napoleon at the time. So it wasn't until we had packed him off to Elba in 1814 that the opportunity came – as Whitehall put it – "to give the Americans a good drubbing".
Off across the Atlantic went 4,500 grizzled veterans who had defeated the French in Europe. They landed on the coast of Maryland and trudged in the appalling August heat to Washington. America's fourth president, James Madison, sent his barely trained militiamen to face them – and in anticipation of an American victory, he and his wife Dolley ordered a lavish dinner to be prepared.
But no sooner was the table laid than news of the defeat arrived and Dolley bundled what belongings she could on to a cart and fled across the Potomac river. Not long after, the British burst into the presidential mansion and were delighted to find 40 places neatly laid, with meat roasting on spits and Madison's best wine on the sideboard in handsome cut glass decanters. The British commander, Maj Gen Robert Ross, reported that the meal intended for the Americans was "voraciously devoured by John Bull", and a toast "to the success of his Majesty's arms … was drunk in the best wines".
After dinner, Ross coolly ordered the chairs to be piled on the table and the building set alight. It was the single most destructive act committed by either side in the almost forgotten war of 1812. It left America utterly humiliated and bitterly resentful and was the lowest point in a relationship that was rebuilt – much like the gutted interior of the White House – into the one that we call "special" today.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2013/sep/08/britain-burned-down-white-house
| 10 years ago. Rating: 6 | |
