Prologue

Abstract

On 24 August 1814, Rear-Admiral Sir George Cockburn sat down to dinner at the White House. He was an uninvited guest. The table had been laid for President Madison. At around 3 p.m. that afternoon, with the streets of the capital choked with soldiers and refugees, Dolley Madison had fled the White House, having at the last moment found a wagon to carry off the silver, her favourite velvet curtains, papers, books, a clock and, cut from its frame, the full-length portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart. Left behind were most of her clothes and other belongings. President Madison and his companions, fleeing in a ferry across the Potomac and from the Virginia shore, saw ‘columns of flame and smoke ascending throughout the night … from the Capitol, the President’s house and other public edifices, as the whole were on fire … If at intervals the dismal sight was lost to our view, we got it again from some hilltop or eminence where we paused to look at it.’¹