Going to say it until i get here. So i hope you will forgive me for the lack of visuals. My title is dreams nightmares and neglect. And im going to start earlier than 1783. Im going to start with the beginning of european exploration, the early part of the 17th century. So its going to be an almost 200year dream. And but it will go fast because im going to concentrate on what happened once the dream was realized. In 1607 john smith entered the sevenmile wide mouth of the Potomac River and headed north. Whether he got this far north we are actually not certain but the People Living here called the place petomek. It translates as a place to which something is brought, a trading place, a place to which tribute is brought. It was a beautiful area in which the tide water from the ocean stopped. The river narrowed and as you know north of georgetown its very different river. But here where georgetown was to rise there was a huge tidal marsh. And this is the origin of the swamp myth. Washingt
Through the perilous fight is a gripping account of six weeks of dylans leaders and retails and fitted detail one of the burning of our capital at the heel of the british and the spectacular and improbable turn of events that will change the course of the war and the path of our young nation. Steve vogel has written extensively of military history in the wars in afghanistan and iraq as a graduate from International Public policy from John Hopkins School of studies represent steve vogel. [applause] it really is a great honor to be here when they think about it the library of congress which you may or may not know was burned down as part of the story that i tell. Is erotic to be here ironic to be here today. The attack on washington and of the burning of the white house and the library of Congress Comment today colberts papers are at the library of congress so that is justice served of some kind. [laughter] but i do spend a lot of time there an equal resources both for the amount of mate
Stay and answer additional questions or whatever you want to talk about. The life in the whit war of 18t for two and a half years. We dont call world war ii the war of 1941 to we dont call the civil war the world 1861 but we call it the war of 1812. Folks that support it and feel it was a positive thing called americas second war for independence. I think it was that. Its detractors call it an unnecessary war come and they think it was unnecessary. Thankfully we havent had an unnecessary war since then, right . [laughter] i call it the unknown war because no one does anything about it. My favorite president harry truman was characteristically blunt on the war of 1812 treaty, he called it the silliest damn war we ever fought. And they think it was that, too. It was a war that had we won, candidate would have been a state. And possibly we would have had a huge slave colony in mexico, maybe even cuba. Had we lost the war of 1812, we wouldve become once again a colony of britain. But after
Instead of to be living in this kind of hermeticallysealed distaupe ya which will be by 2020 surrounded by walls on all sides in which an adviser to netanyahu has proposed seawalls to keep out climate refugees in which the United States government has offered 200 million to provide an iron wall that coats the sky of israel with missiles. This is the reality that theyre in, and there should be a nonviolent means that all of you can participate in to get them out of it and also to get the people in the gaza strip, according to the u. N. The gaza strip will be uninhabitable by 2020, to get them out of their crisis. That should be the priority. And so, obviously, i favor the latter means which is, i think, humane and moral and also based in international law. [applause] well, on behalf of the committee, i want to to thank max, of course, and also a thank the public for coming. And we hope to continue this series of discussions on these and other topics. Yeah. And as max delicately suggeste
Theyre also very different. And i suspect that the truth is somewhere in the middle here, and i couldnt tell you which one is better. And this is another one. This is an image that came out of one of the books that i did and it is showing the british piling up material, and this is in the Capitol Building. And if youll notice, the guy on the left, on the back, hes carrying a backpack that would carry two cases for a congrieve rocket. Rocket and if youll notice the man standing on top of the pile, hes literally taking the projectile material that would have been inside of that rocket and hes sprinkling it over the top and then thats how they would light that fire and here is the actual account and this is by Benjamin Henry latrobe. There was no want of material for the conflagration. For when the number of members of congress was increased the old platform was left in its place and another raised over it giving an additional quantity of dry and loose timber. All the stages and seats of