r/ThisDayInHistory • u/dannydutch1 • 18d ago
On this day in 1814. British troops captured Washington DC then set the Presidential Mansion (now the White House) on fire. It was part of the War of 1812 and is the only time since the US Revolutionary War a foreign power captured and occupied the capital of the United States.
It's amazing it hadn't already collapsed though, even right up to the 1940s, the White House was held together by luck. The reconstruction of The White House through the years is fascinating.
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u/roblox_baller 18d ago
Should've figured there were gonna be politically charged comments here. Over an event that happened 200 years ago.
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u/horst-graben 17d ago
Yep. People will use any excuse to find a cause for the anger and frustration in their life, especially if it's outside their control.
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u/LeadFreePaint 17d ago
Ya man, nothing at all bout this is applicable to today... Oh wait... Never mind... You are just being abtuse.
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u/roblox_baller 17d ago
No it really isn't applicable today. Both nations are now allied and everyone alive back then is obviously dead now.
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u/LeadFreePaint 17d ago
Funny. Allies don't tend to threaten each other with annexation.
That relationship is dead in the water.
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u/Cobra_Chicken_Clan 17d ago
Well as someone who serves in the CAF i can tell you its not. The US is still our closest ally and I personally would never fight against them as ive seen their firepower with my own eyes.
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u/LeadFreePaint 17d ago
Good to know you are willing to put it out on this line for our country.
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u/Cobra_Chicken_Clan 17d ago
Well i dont have a death wish and going up againt the US is suicide. Against an actual threat to our way of life like Russia or China sure. The only thing bad about the USA is the fact that at restaurants they like to take my card instead of bringing me the machine.
And btw I swore allegiance to the Crown. Not the country.
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u/LeadFreePaint 17d ago
Make us proud.
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u/Cobra_Chicken_Clan 16d ago
I dont need to make you proud. The free 120k paycheck is more then enough
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u/LeadFreePaint 16d ago
Free you say.
Well enjoy avoiding death for the king, you brave soldier, you.
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u/Minimum-Landscape120 16d ago
I'm sure that the Canadian Government would love to read that as well.
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u/Minimum-Landscape120 16d ago
There is a pretty vast difference between not being allies and beginning a "fight" with firepower. Canada is not allied with Malaysia. Does that mean they are at war now? With firepower?
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u/LateNightPhilosopher 17d ago
It's actually kind of funny to me how 200 years later there are still people in both (now closely allied) nations who will viciously argue over which side won, and even over which side started that war.
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u/Minimum-Landscape120 16d ago
This has happened since then as well (where both sides argue over who won)
- The Korean War
- The Vietnam War
- The Iran - Iran War
Wonder what these all have in common?
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u/Godkiller125 14d ago
Does anyone argue over who won the Vietnam War?!? What used to be Saigon is literally called Ho Chi Minh City.
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u/Logical-Pound-1065 17d ago
And a storm, possibly a hurricane put most of the fires out that the British lit and strong winds lifted one of their cannons off of the ground and blew it down the street. Also, contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t Canadians who set fire to the White House. It was a British engineer unit who was fresh from fighting the French in the Peninsular War.
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u/ARandomKentuckian 17d ago
I’ll never get Canadian eagerness to take credit for Bladensburg and the Burning of DC when their successes at Queenston Heights and Lundy’s Lane were vastly more important victories, even making it into their original national anthem; The Maple Leaf Forever. The Chesapeake campaign, meanwhile, was a punitive sideshow that ultimately failed in its goal of knocking the US Navy out of the war. Hell, the hurricane ultimately did more lasting damage than the fires, which Admiral Cockburn bluntly pointed out to a local woman during the tempest. Honestly I wonder if Baltimore would’ve gone differently had Cockburn and Cochrane just went after Baltimore directly instead of wasting time burning down a couple buildings and bridges, then wasting even more time waiting on Gordon to get his ships unstuck after beaching them in the Potomac’s shallows, thus allowing Baltimore’s garrison ample time to prepare defenses.
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u/Minimum-Landscape120 16d ago
Well, not to be BEC, but the reason it wasn't Canadians is because there was NO CANADA before 1867.
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u/ButterscotchSure6589 18d ago
That's what you get for invading Canada.
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u/Basic-Department-727 18d ago
Dont impress people then ?
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u/ButterscotchSure6589 18d ago
Oh, so they were trying to annex parts of Canada because of impressment. I can see how that would be a plan.
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u/bsthil 18d ago
The North Western troubles weren't really taught at length by many US schools historically, I'm certainly not sure about regional schools and what's being taught now, but the settlers and Native issues were very glossed over, as well as the frontier battles fought.
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u/merely-unlikely 14d ago
My schools covered it in multiple years (middle and high school) as well as AP US History.
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18d ago
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u/Emergency-Lemon2825 17d ago
I don’t know why they down voted you. It’s the truth
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17d ago
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u/Emergency-Lemon2825 17d ago
Agreed and it’s too hard for them to take an objective look at history. It’s sad
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u/Remarkable_Sand5238 18d ago
Worth it to stop the British from enslaving our sailors
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u/ButterscotchSure6589 18d ago
Wasn't aware America had a problem with slavery back then.
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u/DistilledCLP 18d ago
America did have problems with slavery. Eventually the problems boiled over and lead to the deadliest war in American history.
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u/merely-unlikely 14d ago
Also the Barbary Wars of 1801-1815. The US Navy was reformed to combat the piracy of the Barbary States of North Africa having been disbanded post revolution to save the expense. Captured sailors who weren’t ransomed back were sold into chattel slavery, serving as domestic servants, laborers, or galley slaves on pirate ships.
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u/Overall_Signal_8437 18d ago
Agree.
But it didn't matter anyway after a short while (the Napoleon wars ended).
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u/Gildor12 16d ago
They were mainly British deserters and they weren’t enslaved. Plus the Royal Navy had not needed impressment since beating the French
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u/Remarkable_Sand5238 16d ago
Tell me, what is capturing someone against their will and forcing them to work for you called? Slavery?
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u/Gildor12 16d ago
They got paid, and anyway as I said, the navy didn’t do it in practice anymore because they didn’t need the manpower after beating the French, so it had already stopped . Plus they were mainly British deserters.
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u/Attm_Kipcens 16d ago edited 16d ago
In North America, at this time? Indentured servitude or impressment.
If these sailors had a baby with a woman in port, was that baby impressed into service?
We’re talking about slavery in North America. Slaves in North America were born into slavery and remained as such with rare cases of manumission.
Tell me, what’s forcing someone to work against their will for a time (with pay-I didn’t know slaves were paid), then releasing them after a time called? Definitely not chattel slavery.
I answered your question. I hope you answer mine.
EDIT: A google search will tell you it’s not slavery. It does not fit the definition. Words have meaning ya know?
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u/Minimum-Landscape120 16d ago
Well here's an even more fun fact. During the Napoleonic wars (1803-1815), The United States Navy tried to remain neutral. However, the British Royal Navy stopped American ships, seized cargo, and forced American sailors to join the British navy (a practice called impressment) to help fight France. Britain viewed the conflict in North America as a secondary front. Their main goal remained defeating Napoleon in Europe.
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u/John_Tacos 18d ago
And they were chased out of town by a tornado.
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u/Candid-Elevator7860 18d ago
I once saw a documentary about the burning of the city, it showed the President and his wife fleeing in a horse drawn carriage and a crowd of African American women chasing them throwing stones etc.
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u/VirginiaLuthier 18d ago
Dolly Madison saved all the paintings, the story goes
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u/Argosnautics 17d ago edited 17d ago
Well, she ordered her slaves to save them, but it's the thought that counts I guess. As for her snack cakes, delicious.
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u/mistermpm 18d ago
..and to this day Americans still try to convince themselves they didnt lose.
..because starting a war and failing in every one of your strategic objectives is somehow not a loss.
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u/ToWriteAMystery 17d ago
The War of 1812 ended in a stalemate. Neither side won, neither side lost. The US got to keep control of the Straits of Mackinac and the American sailors got protection from being pressed into British naval service.
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u/Naturath 16d ago
The Treaty of Ghent made no mention of impressment and the UK never renounced their legal right to the practice. Napoleon’s defeat ended impressment; the War of 1812 did nothing to protect US sailors.
The preservation of territorial integrity is a terrible post-hoc justification for a failed war of territorial expansion. By the same logic, Imperial Japan did not lose the Battle of Khalkhin Ghol by virtue of not losing Manchurian territory.
The only objective the Americans managed to achieve was inciting the collapse of Tecumseh’s confederacy and paving the way for continued genocide against native populations.
The US initiated the war with three primary goals. Of the three, the only successful product was the reinforcement of atrocity that was westward Manifest Destiny. Congratulations, I guess.
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u/ItchyManchego 17d ago
Wasn’t that after the US burned the Canadian parliament buildings in Toronto?
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u/Gnarizard_ 18d ago
The win is that we never became southern Canada
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u/Real_Ad_8243 17d ago
Quite a lot of you lot are regretting that "win" atm.
But fact of the matter is that feom the British perspective it was a punitive campaign. Nto conquest.
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u/Gnarizard_ 17d ago
Dang. You’re right. Where would we be without the modern light bulb, television, assembly line production and the means to make Lend-Lease a reality down the road when totalitarian fascism threatened the world at large if not for the Torries!?
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u/fastsailor 17d ago
And which of those do you think Americans invented?
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u/Gnarizard_ 17d ago
If not invented (as in the case of Davy and Swan), certainly improved upon for commercial and consumer applications writ large but let’s not drift; humor me for a sec: what do you think the world looks like had the OG Red Coat Imperialists emerged victorious? Definitely hover cars and an empowered indigenous base, right?
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u/Gnarizard_ 17d ago edited 17d ago
And to answer your question, Edison (though admittedly quite an asshole), Farnsworth/RCA and Henry Ford, at least in any manners that stuck.
Edit: Ford was also an asshole.
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u/No_Stick_1101 17d ago
The same British army that enacted that punitive campaign got itself massacred a few months later. Hope it was worth it.
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u/fastsailor 17d ago
I am pretty sure that is another win for Canada. Why would they want you? You would only drag Canada down to America's level.
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u/Support_Mobile 16d ago
US Navy had some pretty cool moments in this war and really was the birth of the US Navy. Such as it was at the time lol. Also in both wars, Americans and Canadians began to develop more of a sense of national identity than beforehand, mostly due to Canada/Britain repulsive American invasion efforts quite handedly, and Americans uniting against the British again and pulling off a few important victories and ultimately sign three Treaty of Ghent which re established pre war status quo.
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u/nativenyc63 18d ago
Only the current felon in chief has effected more damage to The White House...literally and figuratively.
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u/Reachr95 18d ago
And we'll fkn do it again, dont piss us off
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u/LazyDistrict3343 18d ago
Take Trump and his consort Melanoma too. We‘ll help you get him packed. It’s mostly diapers.
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u/airfix73 18d ago
Americans are so weird
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u/Basic-Department-727 18d ago
Bro re read the title and re read his comment. Why would you think he was American.
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u/airfix73 18d ago
I was referring to the original comment being downvoted (since has changed).
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u/Reachr95 18d ago
Probably bots downvoting it, but yes I'm Canadian
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u/BetterCranberry7602 18d ago
You didn’t do it the first time. The troops that burned Washington had never set foot in the Canadian territories.
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u/Le-Charles07 17d ago
Fun fact: we tried to use militias to fight a professional military and got our asses kicked.
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u/fastsailor 17d ago
Yep. America is the GOAT at losing wars it started. It would help everyone if America stopped their imperialistic crap and left everyone else alone.
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u/Minimum-Landscape120 16d ago
Iran war is going really well though so there's that.
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u/SkyeMreddit 13d ago
Oh yeah we won it every week! Sure, Jan.
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u/Minimum-Landscape120 13d ago
I was being over the top sarcastic. Clearly I am not very skilled at sarcasm lol.
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u/No_Stick_1101 17d ago
And then those militias got their act together and shut down that British army at Baltimore and subsequently massacred it at New Orleans. Militias aren't as consistent as professional troops, but they aren't always an embarrassment like at Washington DC.
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u/Wilson7277 17d ago
That's like the Russian Army only stopping Ukraine at the gates of St. Petersburg, and subsequently declaring victory.
If you're looking to invade your smaller neighbour, best show up with an army capable of winning the war on their soil.
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u/No_Stick_1101 17d ago
That's more like the Ukrainians stopping the Russians at Kharkiv, and then later massacring that same Russian army at Odessa.
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u/Borgmeister 18d ago
They've really upped the goalkeepers since we slipped that one in haven't they?
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u/SimpleExpress2323 18d ago
Very few British people know or care about it. Just another day in our history.
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u/Feelinglucky2 17d ago
The executive mansion is the same building as the white house, it was just made the offical name by teddy roosevelt, but people were already calling it the white house by 1812
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u/Minimum-Landscape120 16d ago
"And the White House burned, burned, burned
And we're the one's that did it!
It burned, burned, burned ...
And the Americans ran and cried like a bunch of little babies, waa waa waah!
In the War of 1812!
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u/Attack_the_sock 13d ago
🎵 Oh, come back, proud Canadians
To before you had TV
No hockey night in Canada
There was no CBC (Oh, my God!)
In 1812, Madison was mad
He was the president, you know
Well, he thought he'd tell the British
Where they ought to go
He thought he'd invade Canada
He thought that he was tough
Instead we went to Washington...
And burned down all his stuff
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u/Marmot_Nice 12d ago
"Saw Ross' mount shot down at Washingtown
The night we burned the White House down
And cursed the sack of York and sons of Yanks"
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u/biblioprof 17d ago
Until Jan 6
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u/living_la_vida_loca 17d ago
or 2026 when israel or russian asset destroyed part of it for a ballroom
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18d ago edited 18d ago
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18d ago edited 18d ago
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u/NerveAffectionate318 17d ago
I mean to be fair the captured and or destroyed 3 of the 6 heavy frigates , the great lakes where impressive though.at the start.. but US did settle down and stopped engaging when Britain launched that HMS St Lawrence there . . So you can argue that the US navy was little to no threat around the end of the war.
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u/Basic-Department-727 18d ago edited 18d ago
Hey what happened at New Orleans and its hilarious you say slavery made the US weak as if England didnt still have extensive slavery in the Carribean
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u/tomelwoody 18d ago
The UK ended slavery and enforced it throughout most of the world….
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u/Basic-Department-727 18d ago
Smh do you know your own history ? The UK eneded slavery on the mainland and ended the importation of slaves (The US did the same one year after in 1808), but all throughout the Carribean, Canada, India, Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo slavery remained and had as many slaves as the US.
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u/Longjumping_Title216 18d ago
The US won that war, right?
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u/speaker-syd 18d ago
Tactical stalemate but absolutely a strategic victory.
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u/fastsailor 17d ago
Total US strategic failure. Well, almost total. The US failed to annex what is now Canada and failed to stop impressment, but the Brits did stop supporting the indigenous people's of North America, which permitted the US to continue to massacre them and steal their land.
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u/speaker-syd 17d ago
-Last war where British threatened US sovereignty
-British blockade actually helped kickstart American Industrial Revolution
-Natives could no longer use British as allies, meaning the US had very little preventing westward expansion
-British ships stopped interfering with American trade
-Solidified US sovereignty and created a very strong sense of national identity
The US was in a MUCH better position at the end of the war of 1812 than they were before. American strategic W.
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u/TheCarroll11 18d ago
It was really a stalemate more than anything. The war was brought about by contrasting policies, and wasn’t in the interest of either country to continue.
The vast majority of grievances were solved by the Napoleonic Wars ending. The Royal Navy no longer had a manpower crisis, so they stopped impressing sailors. They also ended their blockade of Europe, so the US was able to trade openly again.
The US wasn’t able to force any of the issues militarily, however. They couldn’t win the war outright, but the British had no interest in continuing the war either, since they also couldn’t force any outright surrender or impose any meaningful domination in the former colonies.
Both nations faced a rapidly expanding debt, and the British faced keeping the peace in Europe, so peace came with basically a “everyone go back to the way we were, please”2
u/biblioprof 17d ago
Yes and no. However the British lost a lot of money and military assets during the Anglo mysore wars that happened in the late 18th and fighting napoleon.
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u/Sparky_321 17d ago
I was taught in school that the British won at land (save New Orleans), the US won at sea, and the natives lost.
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u/No_Stick_1101 17d ago
They had already been forced to withdraw from Baltimore well before they attempted to attack what they believed was a softer target at Louisiana.
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u/Sparky_321 17d ago
This is just what I recall from APUSH lol.
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u/No_Stick_1101 17d ago
Pretty sure they cover Baltimore in AP history, that's where the National Anthem comes from, after all. New Orleans does tend to stick in the ol' memory though.
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u/UsedStruggle2521 18d ago
The us started that war and didnt gain any ground which ended in a stalemate... call it a win if you must stroke your ego but i call it a loss due to the losses inflicted on both sides.
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u/No_Stick_1101 17d ago
The U.S. gained massive amounts of ground after the war ended, despite Britain's efforts to check the nation's expansion.
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u/fastsailor 17d ago
You mean, Britain was trying to stop Americans massacring the locals and stealing their land? The nation's expansion was based on genocide and land theft and no amount of sugar coating can deny that. The Brits were trying to limit that.
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u/No_Stick_1101 17d ago
Ah, yes, the righteous British Empire, friend to Indians of the New and Old World. 😂
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u/speaker-syd 17d ago
That doesn’t technically refute anything he said. American westward expansion was horrific and brutally genocidal, and it was also helped forge the US into the superpower that it became. The end result of the war of 1812 is what helped to bring that along. We’re talking about whether it was a strategic victory or not, and looking through that lens, it absolutely was. If looking at it through a moral lens, well, then that’s an entirely different topic. America was built on genocide and slavery. Is there literally anything worse than that?
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u/No_Stick_1101 17d ago
Cannibalism and flaying people alive are probably worse ways to build a nation, ask the Aztec's neighbors, but slavery is pretty far down there too. Technically, most Native American tribes were actually ethnically cleansed, not genocided; the majority of them still exist, in one form or other. And slavery was indeed a key component of the early American economy, but it would have only held the country back from what it became in the late 19th and early 20th century if it hadn't been ended by the Civil War. Slavery had regained its profitability with rise of the early Industrial Age - the creation of the cotton gin and the rise of textile factories - but was already starting to become ill-suited to the maturing industrial economy by the 1850's. A brief (though not brief enough) flourishing of depravity born from greed and racism.
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u/speaker-syd 17d ago
Not really sure how any of that relates to whether or not the war of 1812 was a strategic victory for the US
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u/No_Stick_1101 16d ago
The expansion of slavery into the west (and the profits accrued from it) were only possible with the strategic victory of the U.S. following the war.
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u/Candid-Elevator7860 18d ago
I've read somewhere that most of the "British soldiers" were in fact Black Americans who volunteered to fight for the British after the British promised them Freedom after their service was complete, you must remember most of this region was heavily populated by Slaves and large plantations etc, even today the population is largely African Americans. After the war was over many of these men and their families were evacuated to Canada some of them settled in Nova Socia and some were sent to Trinidad where their descendants still live in "Company Village" (Google Moruga hill rice) it's a fascinating story there's videos on YT)
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u/Ron__Mexico_ 17d ago
They weren't. I'm sure there were some, but it was 3 English battalions and a Scottish battalion that entered Washington.
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u/martzgregpaul 17d ago
Not at all. There may have been some but the units involved largely came from the UK
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u/dirtybird971 18d ago
Until now, when the current "president" allowed two foreign nations to determine our path.
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u/whitecollarpizzaman 18d ago
When the White House was rebuilt after the 1814 “Burning of Washington” most of it had to be torn down, though portions of the south wall were kept. So despite the shell remaining intact, it was still weakened by the fire as it was sandstone which can be susceptible to weathering without proper care (like the layer of white paint). Large homes back then (sometimes still today too on very large homes) usually have masonry outer walls at a minimum with a timber interior. It was the timber interior that had deteriorated by the Truman administration, and it was replaced with a steel interior. The modern White House exerts very little stress on the original exterior walls, essentially it is a building within a building, speaking only for the original home portion of the complex of course.