The Burning of the White House

by Jane Hampton Cook

  When Jefferson became president, King remained in his diplomatic role in London while Madison, now Jefferson’s secretary of state and head of all diplomats, became his boss. King realized that his Federalist leanings would become increasingly at odds with President Jefferson’s Republican policies. Hence, King returned to New York in 1803 and retired to private life.

  His retirement lasted only five years. Soon America discovered just how different King’s and Madison’s politics were from each other when they ran against one another in the 1808 presidential election. King became Federalist Charles Pinckney’s running mate. Madison beat them handily in the Electoral College to become president. King spent the next four years observing Madison’s politics while living a private life in New York. Things suddenly changed in 1813.

  “You will have observed in the public paper the notice of my appointment to the Senate,” he had written to his friend, Christopher Gore of Massachusetts, on February 14, 1813. The New York State Assembly had chosen King, its most veteran politician, to serve in the Thirteenth Congress in the U.S. Senate. Upon his return to public life, King wrote: “Of one thing you may be assured that this appointment has been made without solicitation, nay, without the expression, or existence, of a wish for it on my part.”

  Despite pretentiously denouncing ambition for power, he knew that his return to the Senate in 1813 as a senior statesman was historic because of his stature. “I shall probably pass the next winter at Washington; the changes of men, as well as measures are so complete, that there will not be a single member of the Senate except myself, who belonged to that body during the time of General Washington.”

  When King arrived in Washington City in late May 1813, he had only a few things in common with Madison. Both bore a bald spot on tops of their heads with their hair framing the sides. What remained of King’s reddish brown semicircle was graying and curly. What was left of Madison’s hair was white, wavy, and loose. Hair loss, age, and intellect were about all they seemed to share in the summer of 1813.

  King made his move on June 2. As a moderate Federalist attorney, he tapped logic more than passion as he addressed his fellow senators. He argued that the president had exceeded his authority by not seeking the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate before sending peace envoys to Europe, particularly Treasury secretary Albert Gallatin.

  King submitted three resolutions. Up first was a request that Madison send the Senate copies of the “communication from the Emperor of Russia, offering his mediation to bring about a peace between the United States and Great Britain, together with copies of the answers to such communications.” King wanted specifics. He didn’t just want to read the letters. He wanted to know the “dates at which” the correspondence was “respectively received and answered.” He rightfully suspected that Madison had delayed revealing the offer until after the conclusion of the Twelfth Congress and his inauguration.

  King’s second resolution called for the president to send copies of the commissions given to Gallatin, Adams, and Bayard. These first two requests seemed harmless enough, an act of transparency. The third resolution was much sharper and more pointed: “That the President of the United States be requested to inform the Senate whether Albert Gallatin . . . retains the office of secretary of the department of the treasury.”

  That wasn’t all. If Madison had kept Gallatin as Treasury secretary while also appointing him as a peace envoy, King wanted the president “to inform the Senate under what authority, and by whom, the powers and duties of the head of the treasury department are discharged during the absence of Albert Gallatin from the United States.”

  On June 3, 1813, the Senate considered King’s resolutions. By close margins, it voted against the first two requests. But the third request intrigued the senators because it raised an important question. Could Gallatin legally serve as both Treasury secretary and a peace commissioner? Many wondered if Madison, the father of the Constitution, had just exceeded the power of the executive branch by stealing authority from the legislative. To King, this was a golden opportunity to undermine the president.

  What he didn’t realize was that by doing so, King might just thwart the remaining political goal that he shared with Madison. Though they may not have realized it, both men wanted the same thing for their country: peace. They simply had different opinions on how to achieve it.

  Meanwhile another New Yorker contemplated his next move. His name was Washington Irving, and he had visited Washington City two years earlier, in 1811, with an eye for writing a satire about the place.

  “I arrived at the inn about dusk; and, understanding that Mrs. Madison was to have her levee or drawing-room that very evening, I swore by all my gods I would be there,” Irving had written in January 1811 of his visit to the President’s House.

  Because he was born in New York on April 3, 1783, during the same week that New Yorkers learned of the peace treaty ending the Revolutionary War, Irving’s mother named him after George Washington. When New York City was the nation’s capital, six-year-old Irving met President Washington. Little Washington was so impressed with the giant Washington that he painted a watercolor of him.

  By 1811, twenty-eight-year-old Irving wasn’t a typical American Joe or even a George. Many readers, especially New Yorkers, knew him by other names, including Jonathan Oldstyle, a pseudonym for his Federalist-leaning literary achievement called Morning Chronicle and, later, Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle.

  To most he was Diedrich Knickerbocker, whose satirical 1809 book poked fun at the self-importance of New Yorkers and coined the name knickerbockers. The work was so successful that he’d received acclaim from Sir Walter Scott, Scotland’s foremost historical novelist and poet. Scott had recently written a letter to a friend of Irving’s claiming that “our sides have been absolutely sore with laughing” after reading Knickerbocker’s History of New York. “There are passages which indicate that the author possesses powers of a different kind . . . let me know when Mr. Irving takes pen in hand again, for assuredly I shall expect a very great treat.”

  Writing another work was on Irving’s mind when he arrived in Washington in 1811. Just as he was drawn to meeting the first U.S. president, so he was attracted to meeting the fourth member of the president’s club and, more especially, his charismatic wife.

  Irving headed to the President’s House, where “in a few minutes I emerged from dirt and darkness into the blazing splendor of Mrs. Madison’s drawing-room. Here I was most graciously received; found a crowded collection of great and little men, of ugly old women and beautiful young ones, and in ten minutes was hand and glove with half the people in the assemblage.”

  Oh, how the vivacious Dolley impressed him. “Mrs. Madison is a fine, portly, buxom dame, who has a smile and a pleasant word for everybody.”

  With such great source material for his next comedic work, he continued his observations with humor. “Her sisters, Mrs. Cutts and Mrs. Washington, are like the two merry wives of Windsor. But as to Jemmy Madison—ah poor Jemmy!—he is but a withered little apple-john.”

  Ever the life of the party, Irving charmed Dolley with his comedic and satirical talents as much as she charmed him. He boasted that “Mrs. Madison is a sworn friend of mine, and indeed all the ladies of the household and myself great cronies.”

  Like many who came to Washington, Irving had been searching for something. Though tasked by his brothers to report on how politics might affect their family business in New York and London, which funded Irving’s travels, part of him had dabbled with the idea of an appointment. Secretary Monroe suggested that Irving become the secretary for the top U.S. diplomat to France at the time, Joel Barlow.

  “The President, on its being mentioned to him, said some very handsome things of me, and I make no doubt will express a wish in my favor on the subject,” he reported to his brother, noting that he hadn’t made a direct application for the position. “I shall let the thing take its chance.” But in his heart, he knew he was an independent
mind, unsuited for serving the American public through politics or a government position. “I should only look upon it as an advantageous opportunity of acquiring information and materials for literary purposes, as I do not feel much ambition or talents for political life.”

  He was determined to write more satire, especially when the diplomatic secretarial appointment did not materialize. “Should I not be placed in the situation alluded to, I shall pursue a plan I had some time since contemplated,” he wrote, wondering if he should reveal his real motivation “of studying for a while, and then travelling about the country for the purpose of observing the manners and characters of the various parts of it, with a view to writing a work.”

  He was confident in his best gift without being cocky. “Which, if I have any acquaintance with my own talents, will be far more profitable and reputable than any thing I have yet written.”

  Then he warned his brother. “Of this, however, you will not speak to others.”

  Indeed, great secrecy and a hoax had surrounded his satire on the history of New York. He had invented newspaper accounts of the disappearance of Diedrich Knickerbocker to build interest in publishing Knickerbocker’s History of New York as a way to pay the presumed deceased Knickerbocker’s bills. The ruse worked and his satire was a bestseller. Irving had hoped the President’s House and his travels would give him another success.

  No matter what, however, “I am determined on one thing—to dismiss from my mind all party prejudice and feeling as much as possible, and to endeavor to contemplate every subject with a candid and good-natured eye.”

  His next opportunity to receive compensation for writing had not left him good-natured. Returning to Washington in December 1812 for his family’s business, he had felt “tied by the leg to the footstool of Congress.”

  Worse, he had also accepted a job to review books for a magazine. He didn’t like it, saying he was “wickedly made the editor of a vile farrago, a congregation of heterogeneous articles that have no possible affinity to one another.” Writing reviews made him “stagger under the trash.”

  Then something exciting happened. He, along with 400 guests, attended a Washington City dinner saluting America’s newest naval hero, Stephen Decatur. “It was the most splendid entertainment of the kind I ever witnessed. The city assembly room was decorated in a very tasteful manner with the colors and flags of the Macedonian.”

  Decatur had commanded the USS United States in October 1812. In a battle off the coast of Azores, a group of nine islands 1,000 miles west of Portugal, a wounded Decatur defeated the HMS Macedonian. Decatur’s victory over this British vessel was a source of American pride. According to Irving, “The room was decorated with transparencies representing the battles . . . and the whole entertainment went off with a soul and spirit which I never before witnessed.”

  Now, in June 1813, with the war a year old, Irving needed new material for the Analectic Magazine in Philadelphia. While Senator King took jabs at Madison from the Senate floor, Irving sought something fresh to write about for his magazine. Should he write about the withered apple James Madison and his delectable wife? Recalling the splendid dinner for Decatur, he longed to write something more nautical, more heroic. What would that be? In the midst of war, the patriotic Irving decided to put aside being a satirist and take up the pen of a journalist.

  John Armstrong’s politics were also a complicated mixture of opinions and contradictions. As a transplanted Knickerbocker, sometimes his loyalty was to the North, particularly to New York, where he lived, and Pennsylvania, where he had grown up. Because he disdained the power of the South, he met with New York Federalists in advance of selecting nominees for the presidential election in 1812. What he disliked about Madison and Jefferson was their southern backgrounds. How he longed for a man of the North to take the presidency! He had secretly concluded that southern domination must end with Madison’s presidency.

  As much as he loved the North, Armstrong loved the military more. When tensions with Great Britain escalated and diplomacy continue to fail, he had complained that the government and nation lacked the spirit needed for war.

  “We are a nation of Quakers [pacifists], without either their morals or their motives,” he quipped.

  Congress’s declaration of war had affected Armstrong’s politics and decisions in 1812. As a dedicated military man who had fought for his country during the revolution, he couldn’t fully embrace the Federalists who opposed the war, especially those who supported New England’s secession from America. “They [Federalists] behave like idiots when they oppose or obstruct it. A war will give them another chance of ascendancy and I know not anything else-that will do so.”

  As a diplomat, he had seen firsthand how unwilling France was to cooperate and embrace U.S. trade. He also understood the bully that England had become to America.

  Armstrong felt war was the only remaining option. Presidential candidate DeWitt Clinton’s opposition to the war had worried Armstrong. Backing from both Federalists and anti-war Republicans had boosted Clinton’s chances of winning. Though Clinton was from New York, Armstrong had concluded that Clinton’s ambition would backfire and give the South more power. As he had written to his New York friend Justice Spencer: “The effect will be to perpetuate, not put down, the policy of the South.”

  Armstrong’s sense of duty, the military, and patriotism had led him to support Madison for president in 1812. After the war started, he had become a brigadier general in the regular army, which assigned to him the prestigious job of defending New York harbor.

  Now as a member of Madison’s cabinet in 1813, Armstrong watched Senator King’s maneuvers with great interest. Should he approach his fellow knickerbocker with an opportunity? When the time was right, of course.

  King offered his resolutions from the floor of the U.S. Senate, which was located in the two-winged U.S. Capitol building on Pennsylvania Avenue. Years earlier, in 1791, Pierre Charles L’Enfant, a French veteran of the American Revolution and military engineer, had meticulously planned a grand grid for the future city of Washington. He had designed many streets to crisscross at traditional right angles while others cut through diagonally. L’Enfant had hoped that spouting fountains, cooling ponds, lush green spaces, botanical gardens, and grand edifices would one day transform this muddy marsh into a western Paris. Wanting Washington’s classical buildings to rival old Athens, he envisioned the Potomac River as a seaport for trade exceeding Alexandria—the one that anchored Egypt’s Nile River.

  With great enthusiasm and wonder, L’Enfant had ridden out with George Washington in 1792 to show him a hill cascading to the Potomac River. Here was an amazing spot to build the U.S. Capitol. This was the best place to showcase a grand imposing powerhouse fit for the halls of a Congress that represented the people. Adding a national mall would increase the location’s grandeur. Giddy with excitement, he described the hill as a “pedestal waiting for a monument.” Washington agreed.

  The final plans, however, did not come from L’Enfant but from Dr. William Thornton. For all of his vision, artistic eye, and skilled architectural hand, L’Enfant was unable to get along with other people. He was fired for his inability to work effectively with city commissioners. Saving the day, Thornton won a contest for designing the U.S. Capitol. Like a Roman temple, his multistory design with columns in the center topped by a triangle pediment and a low dome evoked the symmetry of classical architecture. President Washington placed the cornerstone in 1793 and believed the U.S. Capitol “ought to be upon a scale far superior to anything in this country.”

  Yet, in 1813, the U.S. Capitol building had yet to reach its potential. Both wings were complete. Though elegant and graceful, the building relied upon a wooden walkway between the two wings. Missing was the dome, which had yet to be built. Also missing was a long, manicured mall. Though trees lined the wide Pennsylvania Avenue, dusty deep potholes and mud stole that street’s elegance.

  The swampy stick-in-the-mud capital couldn’t c
ompare in elegance and size to Senator King’s beloved New York City. The nation’s largest city boasted a population of more than 96,000 in the 1810 U.S. census while only 8,000 lived in or near Washington City. Where New York was old, founded by the Dutch and taken over by the English in 1664, thirteen-year-old Washington was an odd combination of classical manmade beauty and lopsided, untamed nature. This fledgling district’s few taverns and boarding houses were spread out and stood out against the President’s House and U.S. Capitol like a clothing line set in a palace garden. Washington was a poor man’s town compared with cosmopolitan New York.

  If King and others had their preference, the nation’s capitol would return to New York or Philadelphia. Those places were better suited to a gentleman’s sense of taste and refinement. Washington was as embarrassing as it was rustic. What good would ever come from this city? Nothing, at least to King and others like him.

  While King did not love Washington City, he did love his country. And far more than elegance, he wanted peace for his nation and countrymen. They had neither. Without peace, there could be no prosperity. Without peace, there could be no pursuit of happiness.

  While King publically questioned Madison in June 1813, Armstrong focused on Canada and one of his military generals, General Wilkinson, who had yet to arrive in Washington weeks after Armstrong had ordered him to do so. Wilkinson seemed to be snubbing him.

  Armstrong badly needed a success in Canada to make up for the failed land campaign of 1812. Back then, William Hull, governor of the Michigan Territory, had led a combined force of 2,000 regulars and militia to defend Fort Detroit, secure Lake Erie, and invade Canada. Though he had successfully advanced into Canada and convinced 500 Canadians to desert, he became scared. Fearing that the British and their allied native tribes would cut off his supply lines around Lake Erie, he retreated back to Fort Detroit instead of advancing further into Canada as expected.