Washington

Rear Admiral George Cockburn led a triumphant British seaborne assault that became known as the Burning of Washington, sometimes called the Capture of Washington, carried out during Admiral John Warren's Chesapeake campaign. Not since the American Revolutionary War had any foreign power managed to seize and hold the capital of the United States. After American troops suffered defeat at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24, 1814, British forces under Major-General Robert Ross pushed forward toward Washington, D.C. Once evening fell, British troops and naval personnel set several public structures ablaze, among them the Presidential Mansion, later called the White House, the Capitol building, and the Washington Navy Yard.

This assault served partly as payback for earlier American conduct in British-controlled Upper Canada, where U.S. troops had torched and plundered York the year before and afterward destroyed much of Port Dover. Within four hours of the attack's start, a violent thunderstorm, potentially involving both a hurricane and a tornado, doused the flames while inflicting additional damage on the city. British forces remained in control of Washington, D.C., for about twenty-six hours in total.

Meanwhile, President James Madison fled the capital along with members of his administration and various military officers, taking shelter overnight in Brookeville, a modest town located in Montgomery County, Maryland. Madison passed that night inside the home of Caleb Bentley, a Quaker who both resided and worked in Brookeville. That dwelling, now referred to as the Madison House, remains standing today.

Burning

When British forces overwhelmed American defenders at Bladensburg, President James Madison and his cabinet officials, along with the military, abandoned the capital. Their overnight sanctuary was Brookeville, a modest Montgomery County town in Maryland that has since earned the nickname "United States' Capital for a Day." Madison bedded down at the residence of Caleb Bentley, a Quaker silversmith who both lived and worked there. That dwelling, now called the Madison House, remains standing in Brookeville to this day.

The redcoats marched into Washington on August 24, 1814, under the joint command of Ross and Cockburn, bringing with them 4,500 seasoned troops. Cockburn had devised the assault strategy beforehand, confidently declaring that sufficient manpower would soon place the capital entirely at their disposal. Ross, who led the actual troops on the ground, held a more tempered view of the coming action. Where Cockburn favored torching the whole city, Ross intended to limit destruction to government structures alone.

Historian John McCavitt characterized Ross as embodying both military rank and gentlemanly conduct, noting that the general had originally hoped to accept Washington's surrender peacefully. That plan unraveled when American soldiers still positioned in the city fired upon Ross and his men as they approached under a truce flag, an act McCavitt called treacherous. The gunfire wounded Ross's horse and claimed the lives of two soldiers under his command. According to McCavitt, this betrayal pushed Ross into reluctantly authorizing the destruction of both the Capitol and the President's House.

Contemporary visitors to Washington often singled out the Capitol as the sole structure in the city deserving genuine admiration, making it an obvious target given its beauty and symbolic weight. Marching in along Maryland Avenue, British forces concentrated first on the building's southern half, home to the House of Representatives, before moving to strike the northern section housing the Senate. Before setting the structure ablaze, troops thoroughly looted it, seizing whatever they could from the building that then served Congress, the Library of Congress, and the Supreme Court simultaneously.

Among the plunder taken under Cockburn's direction was a financial ledger documenting United States government income and spending for 1810. The admiral personally inscribed its inside cover, noting it had been seized from the President's room during the Capitol's destruction on August 24, 1814. He subsequently gifted this volume to his older brother, Sir James Cockburn, who governed Bermuda at the time. Not until 1940 did the ledger finally make its way back to the Library of Congress.

British intentions called for razing the Capitol completely. Fire was applied first to the southern wing, but the flames spread with such speed that troops could not gather adequate fuel to fully consume the stone walls. The northern side fared differently, as the Library of Congress's holdings there fed the blaze considerably. Lost forever in these flames were the library's 3,000 volumes, along with elaborate architectural embellishments on neoclassical columns, pediments, and sculptural work that William Thornton had designed in 1793 and Benjamin Latrobe had continued in 1803.

Wooden floors and ceilings succumbed to fire while glass skylights liquefied under the extreme heat. Yet the Capitol did not suffer total ruin. Surviving elements included the House rotunda, the east lobby, various staircases, and Latrobe's celebrated Corn-Cob Columns positioned in the Senate's entrance hall. Thomas Munroe, who oversaw Washington's public buildings, calculated total damages to the Capitol at $787,163.28, a sum equivalent to roughly $12,088,579 today. Of this, $457,388.36 (about $7,024,178 now) applied to the north wing and main structure, while $329,774.92 (approximately $5,064,401 currently) covered damage to the south wing.

Following the Capitol's destruction, British troops proceeded northwest along Pennsylvania Avenue toward the President's House. Before fleeing, Madison had sent word to his wife Dolley, warning her to remain ready for immediate departure from the city. Dolley mobilized enslaved workers and other household staff to rescue valuable items ahead of the invasion. Among those present that day was Paul Jennings, the president's fifteen-year-old enslaved attendant, who witnessed these events firsthand. Years later, after purchasing his freedom from the widowed Dolley