The frame was a large one, hanging high on the wall, and it was impossible that a lady could by mounting a table be enabled to reach any but the lower portion; then, too, in that moment of nervous alarm, the constant noise of cannon filling each heart with dread, it seems improbable that any hand, above all a woman’s, could be steady enough to cut, without ruining the canvas.
Again, from the lips of a descendant, the assurance is given that Mrs. Madison repeatedly asserted that she did not cut it, but only lingered to see it safely removed before she stepped into her waiting carriage and was driven rapidly toward Georgetown.
First to the residence of the Secretary of the Navy, then to Belleview, and joined by the family of Mr. Jones and Mr. Carroll, she returned to town insisting that her terrified coachman should take her back toward the President’s house to look for Mr. Madison, whom she unexpectedly found near the lower bridge, attended by Mr. Monroe and Mr. Rush, who had reached the White House soon after she left it and stopped for refreshments.
It has been related that the British found a sumptuous meal smoking on the table when they reached there after dark, and that they enjoyed the iced wines and cold ham, amusing themselves with the coarse assertion that “Jemmy” ran from his bacon “to save his bacon.” The low pun found ears ready to credit and circulate it, but the porter, who died but a few years since, has repeatedly asserted that the occupants of the house had been in such constant fright that but little had been cooked, and no regular meal partaken of that day; that there was always plenty in the larder for any emergency, and a wine-cellar kept well stored, but that after the President’s party had eaten on their arrival, soon after Mrs. Madison’s departure, and given the remnants of their hasty meal to the tired, jaded soldiers of Col. Savol’s regiment, that there was nothing left.
Water was furnished the troops in buckets, and all the wine in the house given them. John Siousa, the French porter, after seeing the President and his attendants off, took the parrot belonging to Mrs. Madison to the residence of Col. Tayloe, and then returned and fastened the house securely and took the keys with him to Philadelphia. All the afternoon, parties of straggling soldiers, on their way to Georgetown, hung about the house and grounds, and vagrant negroes pilfered in spite of the efforts of the servants. Many articles were taken from the house to be secured and returned as some were, but much was never restored. The porter secreted the gold and silver mounted carbines and pistols of the Algerian minister, which are now in the Patent Office, but the revolvers belonging to the Secretary of the Treasury, which the President laid on a table, were stolen.
Gloating with revenge, at the escape of the President and his wife, “whom they wanted to show in England,” the enemy broke open the doors of the White House, and ransacked it from cellar to garret, finding nothing of value, or as objects of curiosity, save a small parcel of the pencil notes received from her husband by Mrs. Madison, while he was with the troops, which she had rolled up together and put in a table drawer. To all the rest of the contents: furniture, wines, provisions, groceries, and family stores, which cost Mr. Madison twelve thousand dollars, together with an excellent library, the torch was applied. Fire was procured at a small beer house opposite the Treasury to light the buildings with, and while the commanders were eating their evening meal at the house of Mrs. Suter, on the corner, the common soldiers, together with the negroes and thieves of all grades, were pillaging the rapidly burning buildings.
The White House was not so large or complete then as now; the East Room, which had served Mrs. Adams for a drying room, was unfurnished and unoccupied, and the front vestibule not then added, which so greatly enhances the interior of the present mansion. The House was plain, unfinished, and totally destitute of ornament, the grounds uninclosed, and materials for building purposes lying scattered about the woods which have since become the ornament of this portion of the city. Nothing but the lateness of the hour, and the storm coming on, saved the War Department. The squadron which was to have co-operated with them, failing to come, filled the officers with timorous fear, and they determined to evacuate the city the next day unless it should arrive in the meantime. For over a week the unhappy citizens of Washington had not slept or pursued the avocations of daily life. Constant rumors and frights had unnerved the stoutest hearts, and families fleeing from a foreign foe rendered the situation of those who could not leave more distressing. Every vehicle had been pressed into service, and valuables scattered over the country for safety. The city contained about eight thousand inhabitants, living at great distances, of whom not more than one-tenth remained in its limits to see the entrance and exit of the British army. Over the Long Bridge, until it was in danger of giving way, through the country into the interior of Maryland and beyond the Georgetown limits, the flying, frightened people wandered, not caring whither or how they went, so that they escaped from their remorseless foes. It was a whole week, said the aged Mrs. Suter (at whose house the intruders demanded supper), of great trouble, no one sleeping at night and the day spent in fright. After the terrors of that sad week and dreadful day, the Capitol and other buildings blazing, the ammunition in the navy yard exploding, a rain set in which in intensity and duration was scarcely ever witnessed, and which continued during the following day. A British narrator states, “that the most tremendous hurricane ever remembered by the oldest inhabitant in the place came on. 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. The darkness was as great as if the sun had long set and the last remains of twilight had come on, occasionally relieved by flashes of vivid lightning streaming through it, which together with the noise of the wind and the thunder, the crash of falling buildings, and the tearing of roofs as they were stripped from the walls, produced the most appalling effect I shall probably ever witness. This lasted for nearly two hours without intermission; during which time many of the houses spared by us were blown down, and thirty of our men, beside several of the inhabitants, buried beneath their ruins. Our column was as completely dispersed as if it had received a total defeat; some of the men flying for shelter behind walls and buildings, and others falling flat upon the ground to prevent themselves from being carried away by the tempest; nay, such was the violence of the wind that two pieces of cannon which stood upon the eminence, were fairly lifted from the ground and borne several yards to the rear.”
This second storm, which was most terrifying to the British, unaccustomed as they were to the grand forests and heavy rains of America, was, if possible, more destructive than the one of the night before. It commenced about one o’clock in the afternoon, and was so awful to the troops that they neglected to fire the post-office, and Congress was thereby saved the necessity of being driven to Georgetown or Philadelphia, when it again met in three weeks. After an occupation of twenty-nine hours, the British withdrew and Washington was evacuated.
Mrs. Madison, after meeting her husband, accompanied him to the banks of the Potomac, where one small boat was kept ready—of the many others all sunk or removed but that one—to transport the President, Mr. Monroe, Mr. Rush, Mr. Mason, and Mr. Carroll to the Virginia shore. The boat was too small to carry all at once, so that several trips were necessary; and as the shades of night set in upon them, they looked like departing spirits leaving the world behind, to be ferried over an inevitable Styx. Bidding them adieu as the last one entered the frail bark, Mrs. Madison returned to her friends at Georgetown, but agreeably to her husband’s orders, she started on to a more secure retreat. The roads were so blocked with wagons that their progress was very slow, and they left their carriages and walked to relieve their anxiety. Crowds of soldiers, panic-stricken, were retracing their steps to the remnant of troops with General Winder. Families, with their conveyances loaded down with household goods, moved slowly forward, amid the tumult, while the coming darkness increased the general alarm. Long after dark, the party accompanying Mrs. Madison reached the residence of Mr. Love, on the Virginia side of the Potomac, where they begged the privilege of remaining all night. There was little need of beds for that agitated band of frightened women, and the night was passed by some in tears; by Mrs. Madison in sitting by an open window, gazing back upon the weird and fantastic flames as they met and lapped in the far distance.
Smothered rumbling noises started the listening ear, as ever and anon some huge edifice or wing of a building fell. The head of the house was away with the troops, and his wife was ill and alone with her servants, but the sudden visit of so many strangers was no check to the hospitality of the hostess. Every sofa and available substitute was brought into requisition, and all rendered comfortable. Sleep was banished from all eyes, even had any been inclined to repose. The clanking, clattering noise of several hundred disorderly cavalrymen around the house kept every one awake, while all felt the desolate weariness of the night to be but a harbinger of the coming day. “What must have been the feelings of the occupants of that house that summer night, we of the present day cannot realize,” writes an eminent historian in 1842; but those who had not “fallen asleep” when the summer of 1862 came upon us, endured similar hours of anguish, which seared their hearts forever. No scene of horror was enacted in or about Washington in that week of excitement that was not repeatedly paralleled in the sad years of our civil war.