| However, the night of their 20th anniversary was no time to celebrate. As I discovered while researching “Dolley Madison and the War of 1812,” their special date was September 15, 1814, which just so happens to be the same day as the crucial Battle of Baltimore. Given the tumultuous times, there’s a very good chance they didn’t realize it was their anniversary until weeks months, or even the next year. They had much bigger problems on their mind, like the fate of the United States of America. Would they lose our young country to the ongoing British invasion? Only three weeks earlier on August 24, 1814, the British marched unopposed into Washington City. To our great shame, they burned our Public Buildings, including the President’s House, the Capitol, the Library of Congress, the State Department, the Supreme Court, and the Treasury. With the President’s House in ashes, the Madison had just recently rented the nearby Octagon House and moved in with little to no possessions left.This was the same night that Francis Scott Key, a Georgetown lawyer and distant cousin of Dolley, scribbled the “Star-Spangled Banner” as he watched the battle rage all night long from detention on a British prisoner-of-war ship. |
