Long before day, the sleepless caravan, with Mrs. Madison at the head, started forward to the place appointed for a meeting with Mr. Madison. Consternation was at its uttermost: the whole region filled with frightened people, terrified scouts roaming about and spreading alarm that the enemy were coming from Washington and Alexandria, and that there was safety nowhere. As the day wore on, in which the British were plundering and burning Washington, the storm that sent terror to their superstitious bosoms overtook the tired refugees. But the elemental war, with its bolts of thunder and zigzag lightning penetrating the darkened recesses of the forest, caused no feeling so insupportable as the flying rumor that the negroes were in revolt, and maddened with drink and promised liberty, were roaming in numbers, committing every excess, worse than those at Hampton the year before. As the day gradually drew to a close, the faint and drenched companions of Mrs. Madison reached the appointed place, sixteen miles from Washington. But the President was not there, and here occurred one of those disagreeable scenes that are a disgrace to the name of humanity, and which, be it said to the shame of her sex, are oftener the acts of woman than of man. Crowds of persons from Washington occupied the tavern, and the women declared that the wife of him who had brought war upon the country, should not find shelter with them, its innocent victims. Jaded and exhausted from constant travel and want of sleep, the devoted band about Mrs. Madison waited in the rain, urging the tavern-keeper to give them an apartment until the President should arrive. The furious storm grew louder, the sky, lowering before, was black as night now, and a tornado of tropical fury set in which spread desolation for many miles around. Women who had repeatedly enjoyed the hospitalities of the White House, been admitted with kind cordiality to drawing-rooms and dinings, now vied with the wife of the landlord in denouncing vehemently the inclination of the men present to admit the Presidential party. Embittered by their real and imaginary wrongs, they lost all sense of honor and refinement, and stood in their true colors before the lady who never for one moment forgot the dignity becoming her station. She preferred exposure to the storm to contention; but the escort with her, indignant at the contemptible conduct of the rude persons within, obliged the ungracious occupants to open the doors. The old tavern stood in the midst of an apple orchard laden with ripening fruit, and hardly had the travellers left their carriages when the hurricane dashed the apples, in several instances the entire trees, with fearful strength against the house. Mrs. Madison spread the lunch she had prepared the day before at the White House, and in silence, interrupted only by her inquiries for the welfare of her attendants, they ate their damp food and smothered the intense disgust they felt for families who only the day before they deemed firm friends. The hours dragged slowly on, and the anxious wife looked in vain for her absent husband. Did she, in that hour of grief and humiliation, think of her illustrious predecessors who had endured like her the black ingratitude of the women of her country? Had she forgotten that the ladies of Philadelphia, in 1776, refused Mrs. Washington similar attention, and treated with scorn the wife of the Commander-in-chief, who was using every human endeavor to organize and establish a continental army? Or did it recur to her that a time would come when, like Mrs. Washington, she would again, through the brightening prospects of peace, receive the flattering adulation of those very persons, and the respect and admiration of the more cultivated throughout the land? Did she think of that strong, resolute “Portia” of the Revolution who, in her modest home near the sea, denied and scorned the report that her husband had deserted to the British, yet who patiently submitted to the averted looks, and silent reproaches of those whom she thought her friends, and waited for the storm to blow over, and truth once more to triumph? Philadelphia was a great distance then from the coast of Massachusetts, and mails were brought only at rare intervals, but with her strong faith she trusted in her husband’s honor and felt that it was not betrayed. Time corrected the false rumor, but her heart had been deeply wounded, and it never forgot, if it forgave, the conduct of many who, in her hour of trial, turned against her.
Nervous and impatient, Mrs. Madison waited in her inhospitable quarters for the President’s coming; and as night came on, her mind was relieved by seeing him approaching, accompanied by the friends with whom she left him the night before. He was careworn and hungry, and after devouring the remnants of her scanty meal, sought the repose he so needed. “That uneasy and humiliating repose, not the last of Mr. Madison’s degradations, was, however, the turning point of his fortunes; for while he slept, Ross hastily and clandestinely evacuated Washington, victor and vanquished alike victims of, and fugitives from, imagined perils.” But the terrified citizens knew not that the British were impotent, and dismayed at the non-appearance of their fleet. Every crash of thunder was to them a source of alarm, and its rumblings in the distant clouds the imagined noise of approaching troops. Toward midnight, a courier, breathless from fatigue and excitement, warned the President that the enemy were coming, and he was compelled to pass the rest of that miserable night in a hovel in the distant woods, with the boughs sobbing and sighing their requiem around him, and the last efforts of the storm expending itself in moans, while the wind swept through the tall trees. The atmosphere was cooled by the great and prolonged storm, but all nature seemed to weep from exhaustion, and the stillness of the closing hours of the night were in marked contrast to the roar and din of the preceding twenty-four hours.
Mrs. Madison was warned by her husband to use a disguise, and leaving her carriage and companions, procure another conveyance and fly farther. Attended by a nephew of Judge Duvall, she set out accompanied by one soldier, and at the dawn of day left the inhospitable inn where the most unhappy night of her life had been passed. Her carriage and four horses were left with her friends, and a substitute obtained from a gentleman of Georgetown. Soon tidings reached her that Washington was evacuated, and retracing her steps, she reached, after a weary ride, the Long Bridge, which had been burned at both ends. Here the officer in charge positively refused to let an unknown woman cross in a carriage in his only remaining boat. No alternative was left her but to send for him and explain who she was, when she was driven in her carriage upon the dangerous little raft, which bore her nearer home. Reaching Washington, so disguised that no one knew her, in a strange carriage, she found her former home in ruins, and the noblest buildings reduced to blackened heaps of smoking timber. Desolation met her on every side, and the deserted streets were as quiet as the depths of the forest through which she had passed. Fortunately her sister, Mrs. Cutts, lived in the city, and she repaired there to await Mr. Madison’s return. “The memory of the burning of Washington,” says another, “cannot be obliterated. The subject is inseparable from the great international principles and usages. It never can be thought of by an American, and ought not to be thought of by an enlightened Englishman, but in conjunction with the deplorable and reprehensible scenes it recalls. It was no trophy of war for a great nation. History cannot so record it. Our infant metropolis at that time had the aspect of merely a straggling village, but for the size and beauty of its public buildings. Its scattered population scarcely numbered eight thousand; it had no fortresses or sign of any; not a cannon was mounted.”
Late in the morning, news reached the President at his hiding-place in the hovel, that the enemy were retreating to their shipping—and he, too, turned his steps toward the capital, and found his wife before him. He rented the house called the Octagon, owned by Colonel Tayloe, where his family passed the winter, and where he signed the treaty of peace.
It was situated on the northeast corner of New York Avenue and Eighteenth street. He afterward removed to the northwest corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Nineteenth street, where he resided until the President’s House was repaired. This house had been previously occupied by the Treasury Department. On F street, in a house between Thirteenth and Fourteenth streets, now numbered 246, Mr. and Mrs. Madison lived when he was Secretary of State. All three of these residences still remain.
At the last New Year’s Reception held by President Madison, he was dressed in a full suit of cloth of American manufacture, made of the wool of merinoes raised in the United States.
“An old citizen has informed me,” says Mr. Gobright, in his “Men and Things at Washington,” “that the levee of Mr. Madison, in February, 1816, was remembered for years as the most brilliant ever held up to that date in the Executive Mansion. The Justices of the Supreme Court were present in their gowns, at the head of whom was Chief-Justice Marshall. The Peace Commissioners to Ghent—Gallatin, Bayard, Clay and Russell—were in the company. Mr. Adams alone was absent. The levee was additionally brilliant—the heroes of the war of 1812, Major-Generals Brown, Gaines, Scott and Ripley, with their aides, all in full dress, forming an attractive feature. The return of peace had restored the kindest feeling at home and abroad. The Federalists and Democrats of both Houses of Congress, party politicians, citizens and strangers were brought together as friends, to be thankful for the present, and to look forward with delight to the great future. The most notable feature of the evening was the magnificent display of the Diplomatic Corps, prominent in which was Sir Charles Bagot, special ambassador from our late enemy, Great Britain. It was on this occasion that Mr. Bagot made the remark, that Mrs. Madison ‘looked every inch a queen.’ The only incident of a disagreeable character was the coolness toward the French minister (who was very popular with the Republicans) by the Representatives of the Holy Alliance. Mrs. Madison, like Mr. Clay, was very fond of snuff. The lady offered him a pinch from her splendid box, which the gentleman accepted with the grace for which he was distinguished. Mrs. Madison put her hand into her pocket, and pulling out a bandanna handkerchief, said, ‘Mr. Clay, this is for rough work,’ at the same time applying it at the proper place; ‘and this,’ producing a fine lace handkerchief from another pocket, ‘is my polisher.’ She suited the actions to the words, removing from her nose the remaining grains of snuff.”
Mrs. Madison at this time was represented as being a very gay lady, with much rouge on her cheeks, and always appearing in a turban. She was fond of bright colors and the elegances of the toilet; yet she generally wore inexpensive clothing, preserving always the neatness of a Quaker, with the elegance of a lady of taste.
Two plain ladies from the West, passing through Washington, determined to see Mrs. Madison; but as they reached there late at night, and were to leave early next day, they were much puzzled to know how the feat should be performed. Meeting in the street an old gentleman next morning, they timidly approached and asked him to show them the way to the President’s House. Being an old acquaintance of Mrs. Madison, he took pleasure in conducting the strangers to the White House. The President’s family were at breakfast when the party arrived, but Mrs. Madison good-naturedly went in to be seen by the curious old ladies, who were evidently much astonished to find so august a personage in a plain dark dress, with a linen handkerchief pinned about her neck. Her friendly welcome soon put them at ease, and rising to leave, after a visit never to be forgotten, one of them said, “P’rhaps you wouldn’t mind if I jest kissed you, to tell my gals about.” Mrs. Madison, not to be outdone by her guest’s politeness, gracefully saluted each of the delighted old ladies, who adjusted their spectacles, and, with evident admiration, departed.
Mr. Madison was a silent, grave man, whose nature was relieved by a vein of quiet good humor, which in his moments of relaxation gave an inexpressible charm to his presence. A statesman of vast mind and research, he could not always descend to the graceful little accomplishments which were so attractive to many ladies, and hence he was not so universally admired by the fair sex as his charming wife was by the gentlemen; but nothing gave him more pleasant satisfaction than to feel that Mrs. Madison could do credit to both in the drawing-room, and he was willing to be banished to his cabinet.