Editing Dolley Madison (section)

=== Burning of Washington (1814) ===
{{main|Burning of Washington}}
The United States declared war in 1812 and invaded British North America in 1813, and a British force attacked Washington in 1814. As it approached and the White House staff prepared to flee, Dolley ordered [[Paul Jennings (slave)|Paul Jennings]], her personal servant, to save the Stuart painting, a copy of the [[Lansdowne portrait]],<ref name="NPSportraitsaved"/> of George Washington. She wrote in a letter to her sister at 3 o'clock in the afternoon of August 23:

<blockquote>Our kind friend Mr. Carroll has come to hasten my departure, and in a very bad humor with me, because I insist on waiting until the large picture of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. The process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken and the canvas taken out. . . . It is done, and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen from New York for safe keeping. On handing the canvas to the gentlemen in question, Messrs. Barker and Depeyster, Mr. Sioussat cautioned them against rolling it up, saying that it would destroy the portrait. He was moved to this because Mr. Barker started to roll it up for greater convenience for carrying.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://nationalcenter.org/WashingtonBurning1814.html|title=Dolly Madison on the Burning of Washington - 1814|website=nationalcenter.org|date=November 3, 2001|access-date=March 9, 2019|archive-date=July 15, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190715002910/https://nationalcenter.org/WashingtonBurning1814.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>Dolley Madison's letter to her sister as quoted in {{cite book|first=Gilson|last=Willets|title=Inside History of the White House|url=https://archive.org/details/insidehistorywh00willgoog|year=1908|page=[https://archive.org/details/insidehistorywh00willgoog/page/n226 220]|publisher=New York, The Christian herald}}</ref></blockquote>

Popular accounts during and after the war years portrayed Dolley Madison as the one who removed the painting, and she became a national heroine. An 1865 memoir by Jennings stated that she had ordered him to save the painting, and that [[Jean Pierre Sioussat]] and a gardener, McGraw, were the ones who removed it from the wall.<ref name="reminiscences">{{cite book|title=A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison |last=Jennings |first=Paul |year=1865 |publisher=George C. Beadle |location=Brooklyn, NY |url= http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/jennings/jennings.html |pages=12–13 |quote="She (Mrs. Madison) 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 every moment. John Suse (meaning Jean Sioussat), a Frenchman, then doorkeeper, and still living, and McGraw, the President's gardener, took it down and sent it off on a wagon with some larger silver urns and other such valuables as could be hastily got hold of. When the British did arrive, they ate up the very dinner, and drank the wines, etc., that I had prepared for the President's party."}}</ref><ref name="NPR2009">{{Citation |last=Gura |first=David |date=August 24, 2009 |title=Descendants Of A Slave See The Painting He Saved |journal=The Two-Way: NPR's News Blog |url=https://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/08/descendants_of_the_slave_who_s.html |access-date=2010-09-11}}</ref> Early twentieth-century historians noted that Sioussat had directed the servants, many of whom were enslaved people, in the crisis, and that they were the ones who actually preserved the painting.<ref>Review: Gilson Willets, ''Inside History of the White House-the complete history of the domestic and official life in Washington of the nation's presidents and their families,'' ''The Christian Herald'', 1908</ref>

Dolley Madison hurried away in her waiting carriage, along with other families fleeing the city. They went to Georgetown and the next day crossed over the Potomac into Virginia.<ref>{{cite AV media |people=Darcy Spencer |date=August 21, 2016|title= Historic McLean Home Set for Demolition |url= http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Historic-McLean-Home-Set-for-Demolition_Washington-DC-390859091.html|access-date=August 24, 2016 |format=news program |publisher= [[WRC-TV]]}}</ref> When the couple returned to Washington, the White House was uninhabitable and Dolley and James Madison moved into [[The Octagon House]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Octagon of Washington, D.C.: The House that Helped Build a Capital (Teaching with Historic Places) (U.S. National Park Service)|url=https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-octagon-of-washington-d-c-the-house-that-helped-build-a-capital-teaching-with-historic-places.htm|access-date=2021-10-21|website=www.nps.gov|language=en}}</ref>