White House burning: dinner at 3, flames after dark
The White House burning of 24 August 1814 belonged to the night, after the household's afternoon flight and the British victory at Bladensburg. Paul Jennings, an enslaved member of James Madison's household, recalled setting the dinner table before an urgent warning of retreat. British participant George Robert Gleig described troops approaching Washington in darkness beneath a sky lit by fires. Their testimony preserves two sides of the same reversal: a residence prepared to receive officials became an abandoned building entered by enemy soldiers, then a shell among the capital's smoking ruins.
Jennings's recollections appeared in 1865, decades after the event. He placed the household's preparations firmly in an ordinary daily routine. Dolley Madison ordered dinner for 3 p.m.; he set the table and brought up ale, cider and wine for the coolers. Cabinet members, military officers and other guests were expected. The waiting drinks and place settings were therefore preparations for the president's household and its company. Their later discovery by British troops did not require an advance decision to entertain the invaders.
At about 3 p.m., Jennings recalled, James Smith galloped up, waving his hat and announcing the order to retreat. Smith was a free Black man who had accompanied Madison toward Bladensburg. Dolley ordered her carriage, collected silver she could carry and left with Sukey, a household worker. Jennings described people running in different directions and a bed lashed behind another departing carriage. He also said the British did not arrive for several hours. The warning, evacuation and White House burning were separate moments, despite the household's fear of an immediate arrival.
Jennings then followed the movement away from Washington. Around sundown, he found the president and his companions waiting at the Georgetown ferry. They crossed and proceeded along the road. Later, at a Methodist minister's home, an explosion interrupted evening prayers. Jennings went outside and saw public buildings, the navy yard and ropewalks on fire. He wrote that Dolley spent the night at Mrs. Love's home a few miles across the river, identifying Sukey as his informant for her movements. His own evening view came after the ferry crossing.
Gleig's Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans describes the approach from the opposite direction. The Gutenberg text reproduces an edition dated 1879; its introductory notice says the narrative drew on a journal kept during the expedition. Gleig wrote that, although the battle had ended in the afternoon, the sun had set before the remaining regiments were ready to march. Fires had already started in Washington. Light from burning buildings, ships and stores illuminated the road strongly enough for soldiers to distinguish the faces of their companions.
His description of the presidential dining room preserves the corresponding interior scene. A table was laid for forty guests, wine stood in cut-glass decanters, and dishes, plates and cutlery were ready. Prepared food remained in the kitchen. British soldiers ate from it. Gleig also repeated a suggestion that Madison had intended a victory feast, but explicitly declined responsibility for the truth of that explanation. Jennings supplied a different origin for the same preparations: the customary 3 p.m. dinner and an expected gathering of officials. The two passages agree on a meal left ready while differing over its supposed purpose.
The rescue of Washington's portrait happened before the White House burning. Jennings rejected the notion that Dolley personally took the painting down, naming John Susé and a gardener he called Magraw as the people who removed it. The White House Historical Association's later reconstruction credits Dolley's order and a larger group involved in getting the canvas to safety, including Jennings and two men from New York. These statements distinguish direction from physical work. The painting's removal was a shared operation amid the flight, rather than a solitary gesture by the first lady carrying a large canvas out herself.
Gleig described a night of fires and explosions, followed by rain, thunder and lightning toward morning. At daybreak, his narrative places the light brigade in a city where the targeted buildings had already burned. He includes the president's residence among the smoking remains. His language also exposes a participant's divided judgments: he admired the dramatic illumination and defended much of the army's conduct, while saying the library and archives might have been spared. Those are his reactions to the damage, rather than neutral explanations of its necessity.
After returning to Washington, Jennings wrote, the household lived in Colonel John B. Taylor's house at 18th Street and New York Avenue. Congress made do in Blodgett's building, sharing space with the Patent Office, postal operations and remnants of the congressional library. The fires had disrupted both the household's accommodation and the government's meeting space. The portrait followed a different course from the furnishings left behind: according to the White House Historical Association, it returned after the residence was rebuilt in 1817.
- White House Historical Association, Who saved the Gilbert Stuart painting of George Washington before the 1814 fire? — www.whitehousehistory.org
- Paul Jennings, A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison, 1865, pp. 8–13 — www.gutenberg.org
- G. R. Gleig, The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans, 1879 edition, chapter X — www.gutenberg.org