Did you know that British troops once burned the White House down?

The American-British friendship has been close and special for generations. But 210 years ago this month, British troops set fire to the White House, gutting it from the inside − the last time another nation invaded the continental United States. The story of that epic night during the War of 1812 and the restoration that followed is one of our nation’s greatest moments of resilience.
The U.S. declaration of war against Great Britain in 1812 capped off years of tensions, in part over seizures of American ships and sailors as Britain fought a string of wars with France. For the first two years of hostilities, American and British troops battled largely in the Mississippi River valley and near the Canadian border − including the Battle of York (now Toronto), where Americans plundered the city and burned public buildings and businesses, sowing a British desire for revenge. 
In August 1814, the British brought the war to Washington, D.C., which had barely 8,000 residents. (President James Madison’s Attorney General Richard Rush called it “a meager village with a few bed houses and extensive swamps.”)
After landing more than 4,000 British troops in southern Maryland, the British routed American volunteers at Bladensburg, Maryland, just a few miles outside of the District’s northeast border.
President Madison (who was nearly captured on the battlefield) fled back to the city with the retreating troops and escaped from the city via ferry to Virginia.
Pop quiz:Where do presidents vacation and hold historic events? Answer: Camp David.
As the British entered the capital, roads clogged with refugees hauling their possessions. A clerk at the State Department sewed bags of linen to hide the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution so they could be slipped out.
“We entered Washington for the barbarous purpose of destroying the city,” wrote British Captain Harry Smith.
But even after militiamen guarding the White House had fled, first lady Dolley Madison stayed to salvage treasures with a handful of White House staff, including a steward, a gardener and an enslaved 15-year-old valet named Paul Jennings.
“Since sunrise, I have been turning my spyglass in every direction and watching with unwearied anxiety,” the first lady wrote to her sister. “When I shall again write to you, or where I shall be tomorrow, I cannot tell!!”
Hot dogs, fireworks, parades:Americans love July 4th. How Independence Day evolved.
As artillery booms from Bladensburg rattled through the nation’s capital, the first lady ordered a wagon packed with velvet draperies from the Oval Room, a silver service and Lowestoft china she had purchased for the state dining room. “Will you believe it, my sister?” she wrote. “We have had a battle or skirmish … and I am still here within sound of the cannon!”
One of the White House’s most venerable treasures, Gilbert Stuart’s iconic full-length portrait of George Washington, was broken from its frame so that its linen canvas could be loaded into a cart and spirited away into the countryside.
As darkness fell, the Union Jack flew over Capitol Hill, just 2 miles away. The invaders had captured the House and Senate chambers, lighting fires that grew so intense that window panes melted and stone columns began to wobble and shatter.
The Library of Congress and thousands of books were burned to cinders. 
The British began marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in two rows toward the White House. They came to a deserted executive mansion an hour before midnight. The occupation began with a surreal late dinner when hungry troops came upon an elegant silver setting and decanters of wine for 40 guests laid out earlier in the day, spits of meat still hung over the kitchen fireplace.
“They sat down to it, therefore,” British Lt. James Scott wrote, “not indeed in the most orderly manner.”
Soon the British were plundering rooms, smashing windows and stealing souvenirs. (Lt. Scott swapped a clean shirt he found in a drawer for his filthy top.)  A soldier balanced one of President Madison’s tricornered hats on his bayonet, promising to parade it in London if they couldn’t capture the president. Another took Madison’s dress sword.
The troops began piling up furnishings collected by four presidents, from writing tables and window stools to crimson sofas and handcarved chairs. On top they stacked mattresses, rugs and pillows, then draped the heaps with bedding soaked in lamp oil.
”I shall never forget the destructive majesty of the flames as the torches were applied to the beds, curtains, etc.” Captain Smith wrote. “Our sailors were artists at the work.”
Outside, British sailors and soldiers ringed the White House to throw javelins tipped with flaming oil-soaked rags through the upstairs windows. The pyres ignited and spread rapidly. Soon the interior of the White House began collapsing into its burning wooden floors.
“The spectators stood in awful silence,” a witness reported. “The city was light and the heavens reddened with the blaze!”
Winds from a midnight storm whipped the flames. The glow could be seen 50 miles away in Baltimore and Leesburg, Virginia, where people gathered to watch the flaring sky. Back in Maryland, the red glint was bright enough for soldiers to see one another’s faces.
Finally, a cold nighttime rain, the first in nearly three weeks, helped to tame the fires − and crack stone walls and foundations as they plunged from oven-hot to more normal temperatures.
When the sun rose on Aug. 25, the White House was a soot-stained rectangle of scorched sandstone walls with empty window sockets. Brick arches and vaulting smoked inside. The ashes included the remains of mahogany bed sets and tables purchased by the Madisons, along with porcelain, glassware and countless sundries. 
Within a few days, the Madisons returned to the devastated capital, where some of the fires still lingered. A friend of the president wrote that he looked “miserably shattered and woebegone. In short, he looks heartbroken.”
The British moved on, driving to capture Baltimore. During their siege, an attorney named Francis Scott Key wrote a poem, “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” after a withering night of bombardment failed to capture the fort. Key’s words were later set to music as “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The nation’s capital began to recover from its sacking. Stuart’s portrait of Washington was returned. An enslaved White House worker named Nace Rhodes brought back urns, candlesticks and other items he had rescued from the fire. 
The Madisons never lived at the White House again, adopting a three-story brick dwelling nearby called the Octagon House as their official residence before moving in 1815 to another place nearby. Madison ordered that the White House be rebuilt as before, selecting James Hoban, an Irish-born architect who designed the original White House, to oversee its reconstruction. 
The rebuilding of the White House took three years. Dozens of stonecutters, bricklayers, carpenters and other laborers worked under Hoban’s supervision. Weakened stone walls were pulled down and replaced. Damaged brick interiors and substructures were rebuilt with timber framing to speed the reconstruction. Carved stone exterior ornaments were restored, and an iron kitchen range installed by Thomas Jefferson was cleaned up and restored to duty.
When Madison’s successor, James Monroe, moved back into the White House in October 1817, the restoration was not quite done. Wall plaster was still wet, pine floorboards and woodwork weren’t yet painted, and fireplaces waited for marble mantels being shipped from Italy. By New Year’s Day 1818, the rebuilt White House made its public debut ‒ with Stuart’s portrait of Washington rehung for all to see. 
But the story was not over.
In 1939, 125 years after the White House burned, a 73-year-old Canadian named Archibald Kains sent President Franklin Roosevelt a small mahogany medicine chest that his British grandfather had looted from the White House that night: “I hope you will find an appropriate resting place for this little relic and should be very pleased if you gave it shelter in your own home.” 
The chest became one of Roosevelt’s most cherished possessions and has been loaned back to the White House by the Roosevelt Library since 1961.
Another full circle moment came in 2009, when President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama hosted the descendants of Paul Jennings, the enslaved worker who helped remove the treasured painting of Washington that day as the British approached. His descendants paused for a family photo ‒ next to the iconic work their ancestor helped save. 
The White House has undergone renovation several times since it was burned, though the remaining timber beams and floor supports weren’t finally replaced with steel and concrete until the presidencies of Calvin Coolidge and Harry Truman. 
Decades later, during another round of restoration and cleaning, workers made a discovery: Black scorch marks that had never been cleaned from the Virginia sandstone that was used to build the original White House. These scars from the inferno of 1814 have been preserved as a reminder of that cataclysmic night, of how a new nation endured and how it rebounded from its greatest defeat. 
The events of 210 years seem unthinkable now. Our enemy has become one of our closest friends. Great Britain’s leaders have returned to the White House many times for consultations and state visits, including Queen Elizabeth’s 1976 visit to honor the bicentennial of American independence. The White House Historical Association has no better friend in Washington than Dame Karen Pierce, the United Kingdom’s current ambassador to the United States.
More than two centuries ago, the White House began its rise from literal ashes to become a center of global leadership. The burning and restoration of the White House show how the layers of American history live side by side, every day, with our ongoing project of renewal.
Stewart D. McLaurin is president of the White House Historical Association, a private nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961.