The White House Is Burning: August 24, 1814 [Paperback]

The British are coming.

This biography of a single day captures the burning of the White House by the British during the War of 1812 from the viewpoint of the people who were there, including First Lady Dolley Madison, a British officer, and a nine-year-old slave. 

In the early hours before dawn, a cry went out that the British were advancing on Washington, D.C. America was two years into another war—The War of 1812. By nightfall on the 24th, British soldiers were setting fire to D.C., starting with the Navy Yard, then the Capitol and the White House, where First Lady Dolley Madison still kept watch.

Jane Sutcliffe draws upon first-person accounts to recreate a compelling chronology of the events of August 24, 1814.*If it seems that the War of 1812 doesn't thrive in the classroom, crammed as it is between the massive units on the Revolutionary and Civil wars, look to Sutcliffe's title as an antidote. With just enough requisite scene setting, the author launches straight into a gripping reconstruction of the events of August 23 to 24, 1814, when the British invaded Maryland and the nation's capital, burned its government buildings, terrified those citizens who hadn't already fled, and then snuck silently out of Washington in the middle of the night. The reporting is kept lively by its heavy reliance on primary source material, with witnesses and participants ranging from an American soldier who went to battle in his formal dancing pumps, to British admiral Cockburn, who couldn't resist taunting the people he vanquished, to Dolley Madison, who kept up a running letter to her sister even as she ordered dinner as usual and packed up the silver (and George Washington's portrait), just in case. Throughout the narration Sutcliffe keeps a keen eye open for those details that convey the terror of an attack, and she reminds readers how coverage ol3-