Madison was in the middle of writing a letter to her sister when she was evacuated from the White House.
"Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and is in a very bad humor with me because I insist on waiting until the large picture of Gen. Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall," she wrote. "This process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken, and the canvass taken out it is done, and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen of New York, for safe keeping. And now, dear sister, I must leave this house, or the retreating army will make me a prisoner in it, by filling up the road I am directed to take. When I shall again write you, or where I shall be tomorrow, I cannot tell!!"
The incident mirrors the 2021 riot by pro-Trump insurrectionists, when quick-thinking Senate aides saved the wooden boxes containing electoral votes as they left the Capitol building.