A half hour after he had initially been due for dinner, with Supreme Court associate Justice Gabriel duvall and soon learned that quote, our army was rapidly retreating and that of the enemy advancing rapidly. He and duvall went to georgetown and picked up the jones and carol families as well as dolly, anna and annas husband, richard cuts. Jones then received word from James Madison to go to the works west of georgetown. So, quote, at about 5 00, i set out in the company of the family of the president of mr. Carol and of my own with mr. Duvall and proceeded through georgetown to join the president and found madison crossed at masons ferry. By august 29th, newspapers printed an extract of a letter. We are now one step further from, if you will, authenticity. That is to say its extract rather than a whole and its printed in a newspaper, so what has happened between the writing and printing, we dont exactly know. An extract of a letter to a gentleman in this town stating jacob, a wealthy
A big rainstorm hit the city that night after the n÷ britisd gone back to their camp, and extinguishes some of the flames including at the treasury. And coburn, the next morning, he rides up to the white house pretty much for the ae satisfn of seeing the burnt building and he also wanted to make sure that some of the parts of the building that hadt not been extinguished by the rain, and one party sent up to the navy yard, and coburn remarks that he is glad that the americansrn e÷d him the trouble of burning the place, but he sends some of his sailors and loyal marines there remaining buildings that had not been burned. Another party comesvel down hero point, and this was the southern tip of the city at this point. 2p the federal government had a large arsenal ofs;fcannons and hundreds of kegs of powder stored there. And the party Royal Marines gets to it, and they find the well sh, and they try to destroy it, and some of the cannons that had been left behind. And they are in the proc
Hero heroine of the war of 1812. In 1834, we have now skipped 20 years. In 1834, she finally got her chance to present her interpretation of events. The occasion for this was that she received a request from Margaret Baird smith, the wife of the editor of the National Intelligencer and also writer and novelest, to supply smith with material for a bigragical sketch of mrs. Madison for the third volume of the portrait gallery of distinguished americans. Dolley seems to be ambivalent. She sent smith little about her origins and of that, some was intentionally incorrect. She was concerned about her privacy and that of her husband and she instructed her niece, mary cuts, not to give smith, quote, anything of importance in my own eyes. Dolley stalled, leaving smith z largely to write from her own memory. But in one particular matter, dolley mailed Margaret Smith a letter. The letter she told smith she sent her sister lucy in august of 1814. It was clearly important. Quote, if you have lost o
Saved by several businessmen from new york who came by4pqon secured a wagon and took it away in maryland for safekeeping. Now, dolly rides into georgetown adison friends, and she is etown waiting more word from madison. President madison arrives at the white house around 4 00 in the afternoon. Dolly is left, and he takes sort of the last look around the place, and she is accompanied by a couple of aides. He is obviously exhausted and a 60yearold man who had been riding out on a horseback out to a battlefield to come under rocket fire, and has come back to the white house, and you can only imagine what his thoughts are at this moment. This is the nation that he had helped conceive. He had been the Guiding Light behind the constitution. And now, you know, americas great enemy Great Britain had a clear path and was on its way into washington. He stopped and pauses for a glass of wine and collects his thoughts and then gets on horseback to ride down here to georgeto georgetown where the su
Accounts are not necessarily the most accurate thing in the world. But if these had been supported by other information, primary documents, id be more likely to believe that they also burned but i cant find any of that. I just want to remind you that the americans were very upset about what was going on and when they talked about what had happened to washington, they tend to embellish the true facts. And then if you go down below, these were the things that were burnt after the evening of august 24th. So a better way to look at all of this is to compare what was actually burned on the evening of august the 24th. During that night. And you can see theres a very, very big difference there. And when we talk about the british burning washington, were leaving the average citizen with this impression that the british came in and they burnt the entire city of washington, d. C. And if you look at this, you can see that the americans burnt a heck of a lot in the city, but you dont hear anybody