Peace at Last!

The Octagon was the city residence of wealthy Virginia landowner Colonel John Tayloe III. After the British burned the White House and other government buildings, President James Madison accepted Tayloe's invitation to use the Octagon as a temporary Executive Mansion, bringing fifteen-year-old enslaved servant Paul Jennings and other household help. On February 17, 1815, Madison signed the Treaty of Ghent there, ending the War of 1812. In his memoir, formerly enslaved White House servant Paul Jennings recalled that after the signing, “Miss Sally Coles … cry(ed] out, ‘Peace! peace!’ and told John Freeman (the butler) to serve out wine liberally to the servants and others,” and that he “played the President's March on the violin … and such another joyful time was never seen in Washington.” In the summer of 1814, the United States had been at war with Great Britain for two years, with battlefronts from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and on August 24, after their victory over the Americans at the Battle of Bladensburg, Maryland, British troops marched on Washington with devastating results.

Washington, District of Columbia · United States