08/24/2026
ON THIS DAY...
In 1814, Washington, D.C. was invaded by the British, who set fire to the White House, the U.S. Capitol and a number of other buildings and homes.
The nation, which was less than fifty years old at the time, was in the midst of the War of 1812, and U.S. troops had just been bested in the Battle of Bladensburg.
One of the best remembered moments from that attack and the ensuing takeover was the saving of the portrait of President George Washington. First Lady Dolley Madison enlisted the aid of enslaved servant Paul Jennings in unscrewing and taking down the heavy portrait, then hurrying it away to safety before the British arrived. He was assisted in this by White House steward Jean Pierre Sioussat and White House gardener Thomas McGrath.
"Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and is in a very bad humor with me because I insist on waiting until the large picture of Gen. Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall," Madison wrote to her sister at the time. "This process was found to be too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken, and the canvass taken out. It is done, and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen of New York for safekeeping."
Just shy of 200 years later, this heroic effort would be referenced by former President George W. Bush during the unveiling of his Presidential portrait at the White House. Bush joked to then-First Lady Michelle Obama, "In 1814, Dolley Madison famously saved this portrait of the first George W. Now Michelle, if anything happens..." He indicated his portrait. "There's your man!"
When the VFW was formed in 1899, it's possible that there were people still living who were alive during the 1914 burning of the White House, though few were old enough to have remembered it.
What is the first significant news story YOU remember firsthand?
