A History of the American People

army of Peninsular War veterans, Madison's conduct makes no sense. Moreover, he was warned.
The British naval commander, Sir Alexander Cochrane, wrote to Monroe that, unless America
made reparations for the ‘outrages’ in Upper Canada, his duty was to destroy and lay waste such towns and districts upon the [American] coast as may be found available.’ In view of this, the lack of preparations taken by Madison, Armstrong, or any of their commanders is remarkable. The actual landing by the British on the Chesapeake in August 1814 seems to have taken everyone by surprise. The assault ships under Sir George Cockburn succeeded in landing 5,000 troops under General Robert Ross and withdrawing them, largely unscathed, over a month later. When news of the British landing reached the capital, politicians and generals rushed about not quite knowing what they were doing. Madison himself, Monroe, Armstrong, the Navy Secretary William Jones, and the Attorney-General Richard Rush all made off to a hastily devised defensive camp outside the city,a scene of disorder and confusion which
beggars description.’ An eyewitness saw the President's wife, Dolley, in her carriage flying full speed through Georgetown, accompanied by an officer carrying a drawn sword.' She seems to have been the only person to have behaved with courage and good sense. She saved Gilbert Stuart's fine portrait of Washington, on the dining-room wall of the President's house,by
breaking the frame, which was screwed to the wall, and having the canvas taken away.’
The British entered Washington, which was now undefended, on Wednesday, August 24.
There was a good deal of cowardice as well as incompetence. Edward Codrington, a British
naval officer involved in the operation, reporting events to his wife Jane, wrote: the enemy flew in all directions [and] scampered away as fast as possible.' Madison, he added,must be rather
annoyed at finding himself obliged to fly with his whole force from the seat of government,
before 1200 English, the entire force actually engaged.' He said that the Americans had 8,000
troops defending the Washington area but they ran away too fast for our hard-fagged people to make prisoners.' Madison himself was a fugitive. Dolley had to disguise herself: one tavern, crowded with homeless people, refused her admittance as they blamed her husband for everything. When she took refuge at Rokeby, the country house of Richard Love, his black cook refused to make coffee for her saying:I done heerd Mr Madison and Mr Armstrong done sold
the country to the British." The Middle States, like the West and North, had been strongly for the
war. Yet their resistance to invasion was pitiful. As one American historian put it, In Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania there were living not far from 1.5 million of whites. Yet this great population remained in its towns and cities and suffered 5,000 Englishmen to spend five weeks in its midst without once attempting to drive the invaders from its soil.’ Hence the British were able to take their time about humiliating Washington. They fired a volley through the windows of the Capitol, went inside, and set it on fire. Next they went to the President's house, contemptuously referred to by federalists asthe palace'-it was conspicuously
unfinished and had no front porch or lawn-gathered all the furniture in the parlor, and fired it
with a live coal from a nearby tavern. They also torched the Treasury Building and the Navy
Yard, which burned briskly until a thunderstorm at midnight put it out. Cockburn had a special
dislike for the National Intelligencer, which had published scurrilous material about him, and he
set fire to its offices, telling the troops: Be sure that all the presses are destroyed so that the rascals cannot any longer abuse my name.’ The troops pulled out at 9 P.M. the following day, by which time a cyclone and torrential rain had further confused the scattered American authorities and compounded the miseries of thousands of refugees. Madison finally found his wife at an inn at Great Falls and prepared to return to his smoldering capital, though as he confessed to Dolly, I know not where we are in the first instance to hide our heads.’ In temporary quarters on