WHILE Ross and Cockburn were hastily burning the White House and the Department buildings, anxious only to escape, and never sending more than two hundred soldiers beyond Capitol Square, the President, his Cabinet, his generals, and his army were performing movements at which even the American people, though outraged and exasperated beyond endurance, could not but laugh. The President, after riding over the battle-field until the action began, remarked to Monroe and Armstrong that “it would be now proper for us to retire in the rear, leaving the military movement to military men,” which they did.[246] A moment afterward the left of the line gave way, and the panic-stricken militia poured along the road leading westward toward the point which in later times became known as the Soldier’s Home. The President retired with them, “continuing to move slowly toward the city,” according to Monroe, in company with Attorney-General Rush. The slowness of movement, on which Monroe seemed to lay stress, was compensated by steadiness. The President left Bladensburg battle-field toward two o’clock. He had already ridden in the early morning from the White House to the navy-yard, and thence to Bladensburg,--a distance of eight miles at the least. He had six miles to ride, on a very hot August day, over a road encumbered by fugitives. He was sixty-three years old, and had that day already been in the saddle since eight o’clock in the morning, probably without food. Soon after three o’clock he reached the White House, where all was confusion and flight.[247] He had agreed with his Cabinet, in case of disaster, to meet them at Frederick in Maryland, fifty miles away, but he did not go toward Frederick. Before six o’clock he crossed the Potomac in a boat from the White House grounds, and started by carriage westward, apparently intending to join his wife and accompany her to his residence at Montpelier in Loudoun County, adjoining Frederick County, on the south side of the Potomac. Secretary Jones, Attorney-General Rush, and one or two other gentlemen accompanied him. In the midst of a troop of fugitives they travelled till dark, and went about ten miles, passing the night at a house “a few miles above the lower falls.”[248] The next morning, August 25, the President travelled about six miles and joined his wife at an inn on the same road, where he remained during the tornado, subjected to no little discomfort and some insult from fugitives who thought themselves betrayed. Although far beyond reach of the British troops and some twenty miles from their camp, the panic was still so great as to cause an alarm on the following night, which drove Madison from his bed for refuge in the Virginia woods,[249] at the time when Ross’s army, more than twenty miles distant, was marching at the utmost speed in the opposite direction.