Panel 24

Of the Senate House, the President's Palace, the barracks, the dockyard . . . nothing could be seen except heaps of smoking ruins . . . —a British officer at Washington, 1814, Panel 24, 1956, Inscription: The [Raid?] on Washington Aug 19–22 — 1814, Jacob Lawrence, from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954–56, Collection of Harvey and Harvey-Ann Ross, © 2019 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Look Closer

This picture from one of Lawrence’s source books illustrates the burning of Washington, DC, in 1814. British soldiers advance in formation through the burning city where smoke billows out of the Congressional Library and Capitol buildings and blackens the sky. In the lower left corner, soldiers march over a slain horse, raising British flags as they move forward. In Lawrence’s painting of the aftermath, there are no people, only a wounded bird.

The Burning of Washington, engraving illustrated in Alan C. Collins, The Story of America in Pictures, Doubleday & Company, 1953. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM
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