The burning of Washington, also known as the capture of Washington, was a successful British amphibious attack conducted by Rear Admiral George Cockburn as part of the Chesapeake campaign planned by Admiral John Warren. It was the only time since the American Revolutionary War that a foreign power had captured and occupied a United States capital. Following the defeat of American forces at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24, 1814, a British force led by Major-General Robert Ross marched on Washington, D.C. That evening, British soldiers and sailors set fire to multiple public buildings, including the presidential mansion (White House), United States Capitol, and Washington Navy Yard.
The attack was in part a retaliation for American actions during the previous year in British-held Upper Canada, in which U.S. forces burned and looted York and then burned large portions of Port Dover. Less than four hours after the attack began, a heavy thunderstorm, possibly a hurricane and a tornado, extinguished the fires and caused further destruction. The British occupation of Washington, D.C., lasted for roughly 26 hours.
President James Madison, along with his administration and several military officials, evacuated and found refuge for the night in Brookeville, a small town in Montgomery County, Maryland; Madison spent the night in the house of Caleb Bentley, a Quaker who lived and worked in Brookeville. Bentley's house, known today as the Madison House, still exists.
Background
The United Kingdom was already at war with France when the United States declared war in 1812. The war against France took up most of Britain's attention and military resources. The initial British strategy against the United States focused on imposing a naval blockade at sea, and maintaining a defensive stance on land. The British Army could not reinforce Canada; instead, the government relied on militia units and indigenous allies to support the British Army units already posted in Canada. With the defeat and exile of Napoleon in April 1814, Britain was able to use its newly available troops and ships to prosecute its war with the United States. The Earl Bathurst, serving as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, dispatched an army brigade and additional naval vessels to the imperial fortress of Bermuda, from where a blockade of the U.S. coast and even the occupation of some coastal islands had been overseen throughout the war. It was decided to use these forces in raids along the Atlantic seaboard to draw American forces away from Canada.
The commanders were under strict orders not to carry out operations far inland, or to attempt to hold territory. Early in 1814, Vice-Admiral Alexander Cochrane had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Royal Navy's North America and West Indies Station, controlling naval forces based at the new Bermuda Dockyard and the Halifax Naval Yard, which were used to blockade American ports throughout the war. He planned to carry the war into the United States, by attacks in Virginia and against New Orleans. Rear-Admiral George Cockburn commanded the squadron in Chesapeake Bay since the previous year. On June 25, he wrote to Cochrane stressing that the defenses there were weak, and he felt that several major cities were vulnerable to attack.
Cochrane suggested attacking Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. Cockburn accurately predicted that "within a short period of time, with enough force, we could easily have at our mercy the capital".
He recommended Washington, D.C., as the target, because of the comparative ease of attacking the national capital and "the greater political effect likely to result". On July 18, Cochrane ordered Cockburn to "deter the enemy from a repetition of similar outrages ... You are hereby required and directed to destroy and lay waste such towns and districts as you may find assailable". Cochrane further instructed, "You will spare merely the lives of the unarmed inhabitants of the United States". Ross was less optimistic. He "never dreamt for one minute that an army of 3,500 men with 1,000 marines reinforcement, with no cavalry, hardly any artillery, could march 50 miles inland and capture an enemy capital", according to historian John McCavitt. Ross refused to accept Cockburn's recommendation to burn the entire city. He spared nearly all of the privately owned properties.
An added motive was retaliation for the "wanton destruction of private property along the north shores of Lake Erie" by American troops under Colonel John Campbell in May, the most notable being the Raid on Port Dover. On June 2, Sir George Prevost, Governor General of British North America, wrote to Cochrane at Admiralty House, in Bailey's Bay, Bermuda, calling for a retaliation against the American destruction of private property in violation of the laws of war. Prevost argued that,
in consequence of the late disgraceful conduct of the American troops in the wanton destruction of private property on the north shores of Lake Erie, in order that if the war with the United States continues you may, should you judge it advisable, assist in inflicting that measure of retaliation which shall deter the enemy from a repetition of similar outrages.
Many sources also suggest that the attack on Washington was motivated by revenge for the American looting of York in Upper Canada, the provincial capital, after the Battle of York in April 1813. Earlier, the British had filed general complaints about the "wanton destruction" along the Niagara region and Lake Erie. Major General Ross commanded the 4,500-man army in Washington, composed of the 1st Battalion, the 4th (King's Own) Regiment of Foot, the 21st (Royal North British Fusilier) Regiment of Foot, the 1st Battalion, the 44th (East Essex) Regiment of Foot, the 85th Regiment of Foot and a battalion of Royal Marines. This force defeated an American army at the Battle of Bladensburg.
Burning
President James Madison, members of his government, and the military fled the city in the wake of the British victory at Bladensburg. They found refuge for the night in Brookeville, a small town in Montgomery County, Maryland, which is known today as the "United States' Capital for a Day". Madison spent the night in the house of Caleb Bentley, a Quaker who lived and worked as a silversmith in Brookeville. Bentley's house, known today as the Madison House, still stands in Brookeville.
On August 24, 1814, the British, led by Ross and Cockburn, entered Washington with a force of 4,500 "battle hardened" men. The plan to attack Washington had been formulated by Cockburn, who predicted that "within a short period of time, with enough force, we could easily have at our mercy the capital". Ross commanded the troops and was less optimistic. While Cockburn recommended burning the entire city, Ross planned to damage only public buildings.
Ross, who was described by historian John McCavitt as "an officer and a gentleman", initially planned for an orderly surrender of Washington. However, as he and his men entered the city under a flag of truce, American soldiers remaining in the city "treacherously" opened fire, wounding Ross' horse and killing two of his men. McCavitt argued that this led him to "reluctantly" order the burning of the White House and the Capitol building.
U.S. Capitol
The United States Capitol was, according to some contemporary travelers, the only building in Washington "worthy to be noticed". Thus, it was a prime target for the British, for both its aesthetic and its symbolic value. Upon arrival into the city via Maryland Avenue, the British targeted the Capitol, first the southern wing, containing the House of Representatives, then the northern wing, containing the Senate. Prior to setting it aflame, the British sacked the building, which at that time housed Congress, the Library of Congress, and the Supreme Court.
Items looted by troops led by Cockburn included a ledger entitled "An account of the receipts and expenditures of the United States for the year 1810"; the admiral wrote on the inside leaf that it was "taken in President's room in the Capitol, at the destruction of that building by the British, on the capture of Washington, 24th August, 1814". He later gave it to his elder brother Sir James Cockburn, the governor of Bermuda. The book was returned to the Library of Congress in 1940.
The British intended to burn the building to the ground. They set fire to the southern wing first. The flames grew so quickly that the British were prevented from collecting enough wood to burn the stone walls completely. However, the Library of Congress's contents in the northern wing contributed to the flames on that side. Among the items destroyed was the 3,000-volume collection of the Library of Congress and the intricate decorations of the neoclassical columns, pediments, and sculptures designed by William Thornton in 1793 and Benjamin Latrobe in 1803.
The wooden ceilings and floors burned and the glass skylights melted from the intense heat. The building was not a complete loss. The House rotunda, the east lobby, the staircases, and Latrobe's famous Corn-Cob Columns in the Senate entrance hall all survived. The superintendent of the public buildings of the City of Washington, Thomas Munroe, concluded that the loss to the Capitol amounted to $787,163.28 (equivalent to $12,088,579 in 2025), with $457,388.36 (equivalent to $7,024,178 in 2025) for the north wing and main building, and $329,774.92 (equivalent to $5,064,401 in 2025) for the south wing.
White House
After burning the Capitol, the British turned northwest up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House. After U.S. government officials and Madison fled the city, First Lady Dolley Madison received a letter from her husband, urging her to be prepared to leave Washington at a moment's notice. Dolley organized the enslaved and other staff to save valuables from the British. Madison's personal enslaved attendant, the fifteen-year-old boy Paul Jennings, was an eyewitness. After later buying his freedom from the widow Dolley Madison, Jennings published his memoir in 1865, considered the first from the White House:
It has often been stated in print, that when Mrs. Madison escaped from the White House, she cut out from the frame the large portrait of Washington (now in one of the parlors there), and carried it off. She had no time for doing it. It would have required a ladder to get it down. All she carried off was the silver in her reticule, as the British were thought to be but a few squares off, and were expected any moment.
Jennings said the people who saved the painting and removed the objects actually were:
John Susé (Jean Pierre Sioussat, the French door-keeper, and still living at the time of Jennings's memoir) and McGraw, [sic?] the President's gardener, took it down and sent it off on a wagon, with some large silver urns and such other valuables as could be hastily got hold of. When the British did arrive, they ate up the very dinner, and drank the wines, &c., that I had prepared for the President's party.
The sappers and miners of the Corps of Royal Engineers under Captain Blanshard, who were employed in burning the government buildings, entered the White House. Blanshard reported that it seemed that Madison was so sure that the attacking force would be made prisoners of war that a handsome feast had been prepared. Blanshard and his sappers enjoyed it. The soldiers then burned the president's house, and fuel was added to the fires that night to ensure they would continue burning into the next day.
Other Washington buildings
The day after the destruction of the White House, Cockburn entered the building of the D.C. newspaper, the National Intelligencer, intending to burn it down. However, several women persuaded him not to because they were afraid the fire would spread to their neighboring houses. Cockburn wanted to destroy the newspaper because its reporters had written so negatively about him, branding him the "Ruffian". Instead, he ordered his troops to tear the building down brick by brick, and ordered all the "C" type destroyed "so that the rascals can have no further means of abusing my name".
The British sought out the United States Treasury in hopes of finding money or items of worth, but they found only old records. They burned the United States Treasury and other public buildings. The United States Department of War building was also burned. However, the War and State Department files had been removed, so the books and records had been saved; the only records of the War Department lost were recommendations of appointments for the Army and letters received from seven years earlier. The First U.S. Patent Office Building was saved by the efforts of William Thornton, the former architect of the Capitol and then the superintendent of patents, who gained British cooperation to preserve it. "When the smoke cleared from the dreadful attack, the Patent Office was the only Government building ... left untouched" in Washington.