The White House

This guide to the White House traces the night of August 24, 1814, when British troops set the house ablaze after President James Madison rode out to check the city's defenses and couldn't return in time. It follows his wife Dolley, who stayed behind watching the horizon with a spyglass, and a fifteen-year-old enslaved servant named Paul Jennings, who she asked to save one particular object before the soldiers arrived. The soldiers, the guide notes, sat down to the family's abandoned dinner before setting the house alight.