Excerpt
I insist on waiting until the large picture of Genl. Washington is secured.Historical wording and forms retained where stated.
Washington Burns
Documentary edition · packet 15
Letter written during the evacuation of Washington
The received text records waiting, rumor, fear, household removal, and the effort to save Washington's portrait. The original letter does not survive. Madison later supplied an extract in her own hand to her biographer, so its immediacy must be read through that transmission history.
23–24 August 1814Private letterRead the chapter →
Modernized reading
Madison delayed her departure until Gilbert Stuart's large portrait of George Washington had been removed.Plain-language reading; not a substitute for quotation.
Editorial method: The abbreviation “Genl.” follows the later copy. This is not a transcription of the lost original letter.
Annotations
- large pictureGilbert Stuart's full-length Lansdowne portrait of George Washington.
- securedRemoved from danger, not simply locked in place.
Witness and provenance
- Creator
- Dolley Madison
- Witness used
- Dolley Madison's later handwritten extract of the lost 1814 letter, supplied to biographer Lucia B. Cutts and edited in the Dolley Madison Digital Edition.
- Repository or edition
- Dolley Madison Digital Edition, University of Virginia Press
- Collection
- Selected Letters of Dolley Payne Madison
- Identifier
- Dolley Madison to Lucy Payne Washington Todd, extract dated 23–24 August 1814
- Transmission
- The original letter is lost. Madison later copied an extract for Lucia B. Cutts; the documentary edition explains that surviving witness.
- Rights
- Public-domain historical text; editorial apparatus has separate rights.