Patriotism and the Reconstruction of Washington, D.C., after the British Invasion of 1814

Symbols are the choicest targets for those who would make war or instill terror. Destroying the symbolic center of a nation or culture destroys the spirit of its people—or so it would seem. This chapter examines the British invasion of Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812 and reveals how the attackers carefully chose to torch a set of buildings symbolically important for the upstart republic. In the wake of the attack, Washington nearly lost its raison d’être, as Philadelphia, Georgetown, Lancaster, and other cities vied for the honor of becoming the national capital. Invoking the memory of General George Washington himself, the city’s proponents finally convinced Congress to stay put. By hastily reconstructing the edifices of government, Congress effectively sealed the decision to remain and assured the recovery of Washington, D.C. The program of surgical destruction calls to mind the events of September 11, 2001, when another set of symbols—the Pentagon and the World Trade Center—was similarly targeted and, in the case of the WTC, destroyed. But rather than wreck the country’s spirit, both actions instead galvanized the nation and strengthened its commitment to unity, freedom, and democracy. Washington in 1814 was a steamy southern backwater with a population of only 8,000 residents, one-sixth of whom were slaves. The attorney general at the time, Richard Rush, described it as “a meager village, with a few bad houses and extensive swamps.” Nonetheless, it was the capital of the young republic, and capitals, however meager, have symbolic import. The British raided Washington in 1814 partly because they wanted to humiliate and demoralize the Americans, and they calculated that razing public buildings in the nascent capital would accomplish this in the most direct way. After all, Americans had done much the same in the Canadian capital of York the year before, when they torched and plundered public buildings before raiding villages on the Niagara frontier the following year. To retaliate, the British admiral George Cockburn pressed for the seizure of Washington, arguing that the fall of a capital was “always so great a blow to the government of a country.” By this time the countries had been at war for two years.

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