Smoke rises over Washington as British troops torch the Capitol and the President's Mansion
Washington had been undefended for weeks when British troops broke the American militia at Bladensburg on the afternoon of August 24, 1814, and marched into the capital by evening. Under Major-General Robert Ross and Rear-Admiral George Cockburn, soldiers set fire to the Capitol and the White House, sparing private homes on Ross's orders, while the Americans themselves had already burned much of the Navy Yard to prevent its capture. President Madison had already fled toward Maryland; his staff, including the enslaved teenager Paul Jennings, saved what silver they could carry before the British sat down to eat the dinner set for Madison's guests. A violent storm broke out within hours and doused the flames. The British left the city after roughly 26 hours.
Washington's burning led directly to the rebuilding of the Capitol and White House, and it hardened public opinion against the war's Federalist critics, who had opposed the conflict from the start. It also produced one of the enslaved household's few first-person records of the era: Paul Jennings' account of that night remains a rare eyewitness testimony from inside the White House itself, predating any published slave narrative.
