The Burning of the White House

by Jane Hampton Cook

  The special Senate committee presented a resolution, which the full Senate accepted. They believed that the “the powers and duties” of the treasury secretary and of those of an envoy to a foreign power “are so incompatible, that they out not to be, and remain, united in the same power.”

  The committee chairman also sent Madison a letter asking him to meet with them “at such time as you may please to appoint.”

  What they didn’t yet know was that Madison would not meet with them. Was he being defiant? Somewhat. More than that, the feverish president was ill—so ill that his wife feared his death was imminent.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Snubbed by Dolley

  Early in her husband’s administration, Dolley had worried over “a bilious fever . . . caused by an unfinished canal.” Bilious fever was a dreaded condition causing high fever, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. The mosquito-magnet of Washington City often bred disease, especially in the summer. One solution was to leave town when the heat set in, something many Washingtonians did each year. Though the Madisons loved to retreat to their mountain home, Montpelier, in Orange, Virginia, Congress’s special summer session in 1813 prevented such flight.

  Because she had lost her first husband to the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia twenty years earlier, Dolley understandably feared losing James in a similar way. In fact, several years before his presidency, when he had become very sick, Dolley had nightmares of his death, calling her visions painful and begging him to “think of thy wife! Who thinks and dreams of thee.” Such words show how deep her love for James had grown since their marriage of seeming convenience.

  Now in June 1813, bilious fever came upon James so seriously that her greatest fear struck her heart each time she wiped his fever-filled forehead or smelled the stench in overflowing chamber pots. Others quickly joined the melancholy chorus.

  “Mr. Madison has been several days quite sick—is no better—has not been well enough to read the resolutions [of] the Senate,” wrote Congressman Daniel Webster of New Hampshire, who delivered paperwork from Capitol Hill to Madison. Webster returned five days later and found Madison worse than before.

  “I went to the palace to present the [House] resolutions—the president was in his bed, sick of a fever—his night cap on his head—his wife attending him.” Because Webster was a foe of Madison’s policies, he quipped: “I think he will find no relief from my prescription.”

  Ten days later, the president was even worse. James Monroe, the secretary of state, also visited his boss. Though several physicians had given Madison quinine, also called bark, and reported that he would recover, Monroe feared for Madison’s life.

  His fever “perhaps never left him, even for an hour.” Unlike Webster and others, the secretary of state—who had known Madison for years—understood that the burdens of war and peace were too much to bring to his attention at the moment. Madison needed rest, not stress: “No pressure whatever should be made on him,” Monroe concluded.

  Soon those fears turned into rumors of his impending death. The French minister to the United States recorded his angst. “The thought of [Madison’s] possible loss strikes everyone with consternation. His death, in the circumstances in which the republic is placed, would be a veritable national calamity.”

  No president had ever died in office, though the vice president, George Clinton, had died before the election the previous year. Elbridge Gerry was now vice president. Word of Madison’s illness ignited a fire of panic, affecting anyone seeking Dolley’s attention.

  “I write to you in sincere anxiety for the health of the president . . . be assured my dearest Mrs. Madison of my sympathy and tenderness for every incident which interests you,” Phoebe expressed her concern in a letter to Dolley as soon as she heard of the president’s illness.

  Not wanting to further burden Dolley, Phoebe updated her on Anthony’s acceptance of his new post. “The anxiety of your mind must be so great on this subject that I only mention at Papa’s request the determination he has made to leave us all here.” Appointed by Madison as a special agent to Spain, Anthony Morris was leaving for Europe. For now, mother Dolley needn’t worry about Anthony and Phoebe, who would attend a school in Philadelphia. James now consumed her entire existence.

  His illness also made it impossible for Dolley to say good-bye to dear friends. “The dangerous sickness of the president at that moment prevented Mrs. Latrobe who called several times, from seeing you,” Benjamin Latrobe explained to Dolley in a letter.

  The need for the Latrobes to see the president and Mrs. Madison before they left was both personal and business. Mary desperately wanted to say goodbye to Dolley before they moved to Pittsburgh, while Benjamin needed an opportunity to remind the president that Congress still owed him $600 for his work on the President’s House and the Marine hospital.

  Too consumed with James’s care, Dolley didn’t answer Latrobe’s letter, effectively snubbing them. Surely they would understand? She didn’t have time to think too much about hurt feelings or consequences. Little did she realize that the depressed Latrobe would soon write to Robert Fulton, “Several times I had nearly thrown myself into the Potomac. I cannot receive $600 on two appropriations (the President’s furniture and Marine hospital).”

  With Madison too weak to write and Edward Coles’s continuous absence, Dolley became secretary in chief. She wrote a letter for James on June 18 to inform the special senate committee that illness prohibited him from meeting with them to review the legalities of Gallatin’s appointment. He was unavailable that day or “fixing a day when it will be in his power.” She rightly suspected that his health was teetering between life and death.

  While Dolley tended to James and carried on his correspondence in Edward’s absence, she very likely read a resolution sent to James from the Society of Friends on June 17, 1813. Leaders of the Quakers had recently met at an annual assembly in Rhode Island and crafted a resolution for the president, Senate, and the House of Representatives.

  Their concern was the war, proclaiming that “our minds have been affected with deep and serious consideration upon account of the national calamity of war, in which our once happy country is involved.”

  By reiterating a tenet of their beliefs—pacifism—they underscored the source of their opposition, saying that “it is well known that a fundamental principle of our faith leads us to believe that war of any kind is unlawful to us.”

  If they knew Madison’s personal background well, then they would have known that as a young man right out of college, he had opposed the persecution of Baptist ministers by the royal government in Virginia. Within a few years, he was part of the 1776 Virginia Convention, which declared independence from England and also issued a declaration of rights. Among them was the right to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience. As he expressed in Federalist 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

  Years later as a congressman under the new Constitution, Madison had led the effort that resulted in the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. The first amendment began: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Madison had also proposed that “no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.” While this amendment didn’t make the final ten, Quakers hoped they had a friend in Madison.

  Unanimous in their resolution, the Quakers concluded that they had a civic and religious duty to ask the president and Congress to end the war.

  Dolley’s reaction to Quakerism was often mixed. Years earlier she had gone to Philadelphia for medical treatment on her knee. When many of her family’s old friends came by to see her, she remembered painful memories from her past, such as her father’s excommunication for going into debt. Then at other times, when speaking with cousin Edward, a devout Quaker, or greeting someone like Mr. Hallowell at a party, she felt fondness and kinship.

  On top of
that, she couldn’t argue with Scripture’s reminder that peacemakers were a blessing to others and that peace on earth was an angelic hope. A few years earlier, Dolley had taken comfort in the hope of angels after the death of two of her nieces. She wrote her mother at the time. “They are now angels! And can never know evil or misery—ought we not to console ourselves with this reflection?”

  Now, if her husband’s peace commission succeeded, then Quakers would have an end to the war. For the moment she was doing all she could to make sure that James wasn’t called to his heavenly home.

  Unaware of Madison’s illness, Admiral Warren returned from Bermuda to the Chesapeake Bay in mid-June 1813. He brought Cockburn the best possible gift: reinforcements. They now had enough men, more than 2,400, to launch a series of attacks. Two battalions of Royal marines made up most of these fighters, but 600 were true blue redcoats, regular British Army soldiers led by Colonel Sir Thomas Sidney Beckwith. A veteran of England’s war against Napoleon, Beckwith was one of Britain’s finest light troop leaders. Also among Beckwith’s men were 300 Canadian Chasseurs.

  In addition Warren brought several Royal Navy vessels for their disposal. Of that group, three were seventy-four-gun ships and one was a sixty-four-gun. Also included were four frigates and three transport barges. Attacking Norfolk and the USF Constellation had never seemed more promising. All they had to do was get past Craney Island, which guarded the mouth of the Elizabeth River.

  As hungry as Cockburn was for another delectable victory, he made an interesting conclusion. His greatest obstacle just might be Admiral Warren, not the Americans. Warren’s experience serving the British in the American colonies during the Revolutionary War gave him important know-how. But the sixty-year-old Warren hadn’t seen much action since 1806 and experienced poor health. His lack of enthusiasm was as obvious to Cockburn as his overly cautious approach.

  Nonetheless Admiral Cockburn was cavalier in his assessment of Craney, which he shared with Warren and others. Yes, he knew the water was shallow. Lieutenant Westphal had detected a shoal near the island that could cause trouble. But Cockburn was, well, cocky. He insisted on attacking Craney Island instead of invading Norfolk via an overland route. He believed the few Americans defending the place would flee in an instant and retreat toward Richmond.

  “From what I have now seen and know of them, I have no doubt a larger proportion of their now heroes will be inclined to take advantage of such a circumstance,” he wrote, invoking what he had learned at Havre de Grace and other places.

  For all of Cockburn’s recommendations about launching an invasion, Warren snubbed him. Beckwith had shared his ideas with Warren on how to best invade Craney Island during their voyage carrying reinforcements from Bermuda. Though Beckwith was highly experienced, he had not seen the terrain or investigated the waters like Cockburn had. Yet, Warren allowed Beckwith’s strategy to prevail, much to Beckwith’s delight and Cockburn’s skepticism.

  Illness, Senate opposition to Gallatin as a peace envoy, and rumors of a British attack against Washington were not Madison’s only problems that summer. Some Federalists were seeking an opportunity to sever the Union and return New England to England.

  Where did King stand on New England secession? Was he willing to go that far to embarrass Madison? Though he opposed the president at every turn, Senator Rufus King treaded carefully on this Federalist issue. The reason? A painful, personal past. Before the Revolutionary War, radical mobs burned portions of his Loyalist father’s property. This destruction left him fearing radical factions throughout his life.

  Once America became a united nation, King had worried that a runaway democracy would give way to violent mobs. Hence, he had often moderated his political views and snubbed extreme elements, such as those New England Federalists who were ready to secede from the Union to rejoin England or become their own nation.

  King concluded that no thinking man with any clout should seriously consider secession.

  Though he disagreed with secession as the solution, he believed that America was picking a fight with the wrong enemy. A devoted New Yorker, King had long bristled at the idea that England was America’s true foe. In his mind, and in those of many Federalists, enemy number one spoke a different language: French. Napoleon Bonaparte had espoused disdain for monarchies only to make himself France’s emperor. Napoleon’s goal was to rule Europe and defeat England’s economy and military any way he could.

  “The only opposition will be from France: indeed the only serious danger to our country is from that quarter,” King wrote.

  To him, Madison’s war was about politics, not America’s national interests. “I regard the war, as a war of party and not of the country—those who have made the war will dread the unpopularity of French connection.”

  Not only did King think that Madison had gone to war against the wrong country, but he also thought war was impractical. He believed that U.S. military supplies were pathetically weak and the size of its force made it incapable of defending its shores, much less invading Canada. “The war cannot be carried on by the militia,” he wrote. He also concluded that it was illegal for state governors to call up militia to defend their borders. A regular national army was the only way to properly defend America. Yet, that was problematic, too, because Congress couldn’t legally draft men. He explained, “A regular army will be enlisted with the utmost difficulty; besides money cannot be raised by loans: and if taxes be collected, the popularity of the party according to Mr. Jefferson’s former opinion, must be destroyed.”

  The fight and failure over establishing a national bank was shortsighted in King’s opinion. He believed that America’s financial situation, especially under Gallatin’s leadership at Treasury, had been a disaster. He opposed sending Gallatin as a peace commissioner because he opposed Gallatin’s financing methods. Blocking his nomination was a way to get rid of him from national politics once and for all.

  All of these problems—the wrong enemy, a volunteer regular army, and no national bank—were recipes for failure to King. As a result he predicted that the war would be lengthy. “I infer that the war will drag on heavily; that it will become very, and extensively, unpopular; that the dread of French connection will greatly increase the mass of discontent.”

  Ah, but he had hope, and he found it in England. He placed more confidence in Britain’s Parliament than he did in his own national government: “And if England have a wise ministry, we must soon return to peace.”

  Many believed that King had become too cozy with the British after serving as the U.S. minister to England. While there he had developed many friends and chums with Parliament and other prominent English gentlemen. At times his faith in Great Britain couldn’t have been stronger had he been an English citizen. Ah. That was his problem.

  “Notwithstanding the diplomatic quarrels and commercial regulations . . . I am not without hope that a final rupture will be avoided, and that things being left to the operation of time, temper and reflection, the former harmony and mutual intercourse of the two countries will be again restored and established,” he had written to an English friend.

  “The imbecility of Madison is daily more manifest, still his friends and party in general adhere to him,” he had written to another.

  He also dismissed his critics. “I know that our political adversaries will say that we aim at a monarchy. . . . I am and shall always be ready to purge myself from this suspicion; I would lessen sooner than increase the presidential power.”

  Pleased that his opposition to Gallatin was injuring Madison politically, King hoped that England desired peace. “I am convinced that things cannot remain where they are if the war continues; a great change must happen.”

  Indeed. That great change wasn’t England’s quest for peace. Quite the opposite. It was Cockburn’s lust for taunting and terrorizing his foes.

  Madison had never been a fan of the U.S. Senate because of its composition and the equality it gave the states. Each state, regardle
ss of population, boasted two representatives in the U.S. Senate. His initial vision had been different.

  “The legislative department might be divided into two branches; one of them chosen every years [sic] by the people at large, or by the legislatures,” he wrote to George Washington in the spring of 1787 as he referred to what became the House of Representatives, which was elected to two-year terms by the people.

  Madison initially viewed the Senate as “the other to consist of fewer members, to hold their places for a longer term, and to go out in such a rotation as always to leave in office a large majority of old members.”

  But he opposed the composition of the Senate proposed by men from smaller states at the Constitutional Convention. They wanted the Senate to be limited to two members from every state. Focused on representation by population, Madison opposed giving equal weight to smaller populated states like Delaware compared to larger populated states, such as Virginia. Instead, in his proposal voters would have elected the House of Representatives, who would have used nominations from their states to elect the U.S. Senate.

  Though it was easy to let many of the details change, the major loss for Madison during the Constitutional Convention was the composition of the U.S. Senate.

  Gunning Bedford of Delaware soon fired off a volley against Madison and others that epitomized the venom between the smaller and larger states. He believed the bigger states would abuse their power. “I do not, gentlemen, trust you,” he thundered in a rare personal attack. Until then, deliberations had been cordial in disagreements. He proclaimed that by giving each state equal representation, as they had under the Articles, the small states were protected. He warned of the dangers of failing to give them equal representation in the new constitution. “There are foreign powers who will take us by the hand.”