Theres the most recent book by peter snow which is when britain burned the white house. All of these books are great but the question or maybe the point that im trying to make is that to the average person when they read a title like that, its going to give them an impression that is not necessarily what really happened in washington, d. C. And i find it ironic that we have three books that talk about the white house, a very important public building, no question about it, where the president lived and it hurt the morale when you burn the president s house. No question about it. But to me, of all of the buildings that were burnt, the most significant was the Capitol Building. Thats where the seat of government existed. And none of these books have that in their title. Just interesting to me. And just so that you know they are all in good company, this is the title of a chapter in one of my books. Washington is burning. We all do it. Almost all of us that have been talking today at the symposium have said it. But how accurate is it . This is the only eyewitness contemporary account i shouldnt say account illustration which is referred to as the burning of washington. And you can find this online from the library of congress and the first thing that i noticed when i pulled this up and took a look at it is that it was upsidedown and im happy to tell you that i went to the library of congress and told them that it was upsidedown and they corrected it. Its in its accurate position and for those of you with good eyes may be able to make out the guy that did this, william thornton, you can see his name on the righthand side. The title of it was the burning of washington and im sure that fchl ort and himself did not give it that title. It was somebody at the library of congress who was helping people identify this and after studying this, its very clear to me that this is not the burning of washington at all. Its the burning of the Washington Navy yard. You can make out, for example, the sheds where some of the ships would have been kept and if you look even closer, that building right there tells me that thats latrobe gate. Thats the entrance to the shipyard. N jut of you t. You know thats what it is. And i cant be quite as sure, but when i look at this building right there, the roof line reminds me very much of the taney house and that house survives today as does barracks b or building number b as does latrobe gate. Those structures were not burnt but almost Everything Else was. And so this is what it is titled today when i notified the library of congress and they now call it waterfront fire probably burning of the Washington Navy yard, 1814, washington, d. C. , and thats a much more accurate description of what that image represents. Now, if you also pay attention, where are most of the flames coming from . Right there in the center of that image. And i dont want to put more into this than maybe what thornton was trying to do, but this is a blowup of that. And if you look very carefully at it, these do not appear to be buildings to me. And i say that because you can see how they are can ta leavered over on the edges. Those are some of the ships, in my opinion, that were at the navy yard. And there were two frigates. These were ships no longer active but still good enough that they didnt need to get rid of them but they just kind of kept them in a mothball and they would float alongside a wharf and other times they would take them out of the water and take all of the mast and rigging down and put something over top of it to protect the decks. And i believe what we are looking at right there are two of the frigates that burned at the navy yard that night and they are probably the boston and the general green. Very interesting. This is a noncontemporary drawing done by peter wadell and for those of you at the dinner last night when you came into the decater house, you may have noticed on the lefthand side there was an exhibit area. I hope you took the time to look at some of those exhibits. You may have an opportunity to do that again tonight. Im not sure. But hanging on the wall were several other paintings done by peter. I like his work a lot. What youre looking at here is his depiction of the burning of the navy yard. So youre standing in latrobe gate and youre looking into the navy yard, which i have done myself many times, and you can make out on the left thats quarters b or building b, whatever you want to call it. And you notice its not on fire. The tan knee house, which is where the comma dont would have lived, its out of the perspective of this particular image. And in the background, you can see the flames all about the buildings and you can also see ships in the background that are on fire. And for those of you that may not know what is standing right here in the middle the tripoli monumentziuognub j first erected in the United States as a tribute to those sailors who fought and lost their lives in the barbery wars. Tradition holds that when the british came into the navy yard not on the night of august 24th, because the navy yard was burnt by the americans, what you are looking at here was the burning that was caused by the u. S. Navy, ordered by the secretary of the navy to keep it out of the hands of the enemy. The next day, the british came back and they checked out the navy yard to see if there was anything that possibly might still deserve some destruction. Something that might have escaped the hands of the americans. And there were a few sheds and there were the coopers quarters, whatever you want to call it, that they further burned that next morning. But at the same time, they supposedly caused vandalism to that particular monument. Now, whats interesting is that monument was then moved to the west grounds of the capitol and when the capitol was expanded, it had to be moved a second time and it was moved to the Naval Academy where it resides today. So heres a monument thats been in three different places during its history and it has a tie to the war of 1812. This is out of the imax movie, if you have not seen it, i highly recommend it, its called star spangled banner. It has wonderful illustrations as well as animations about some of the aspects of the war of 1812. And what youre looking at here is a still and i know the lighting is not very good here so you probably cant see it that well because of the extreme light that we have, but it is showing the navy yard burning on the night of august the 24th, 1814. And if you were able to look at it very closely, you would be able to see ships that were in the water, ships that are up on land, all of them burning as well as most of the structures but you can look and you can see right there that latrobe gate is not burning. The taney house is not burning. Quarter b is not burning but what is also interesting is that you can make out theres two additional bridges that are burning and these are also structures that were burnt by the americans. They were not burnt by the british. So were talking about the stoddard bridge, the upper bridge that would be essentially where east capitol street is located today and then this lower bridge is essentially the bridge that is referred to as pennsylvania avenue today or the susa bridge, whatever you prefer edyeaju have done, that bridge should be actually much closer to the navy yard. Because of those of you who are familiar with that bridge, you know that it essentially exits right next to where the naval station is. Just in case you werenr wonderi, according to the u. S. Navy observatory, sunset on august the 24th, 1814, was at 6 52 p. M. Before daylight savings time. The stoddard bridge was set on fire by the americans somewhere between 2 00 and 4 00 in the afternoon. I dont know that it still would have been burning to the extent that you would see in this illustration. The pennsylvania avenue bridge was set on fire at about 8 20 p. M. So were well an hour after sunset. And the navy yard was set on fire approximately 8 30 p. M. The reason im going through all of this detail with you is that when the british are marching into washington, they reach the capitol and they begin to do their first burning, which is actually a structure known as the Belmont House which is two blocks from the capitol. And this takes place at about 9 00. What this means is that as the british are marching into washington, d. C. , they can already see parts of the city on fire. Not by them but by the americans. And i know that you cannot see this and its not important that you can, but this is a may 1815 drawing showing the navy yard as it they hope it would appear as they were rebuilding it. This is a letter being done trying to estimate the amount of money its going to cost to repace all of thesen5znii str that were lost during that burning and im going to come back to that in a minute. This is what the navy yard looks that red bar, that separates below that bar the navy yard that existed in 1814 and then the addition to the navy yard after 1814. So the navy yard was actually bigger today than it would have been in 1814. And if we overlay the two of them, you can see how things have changed over the years. This is the tangy house and then theres building b on the right that still survived and this is latrobe gate. So at the bottom, thats what latrobe gate looks like today and up at the top, thats the design drawnings for the original for the latrobe gate and what i have out leaned in red is all that remains of the original gate. The rest has been incorporated into this enlarged structure that now hides the original major portions of latrobe gate. So here is that burning scene again and i would just ask you to take a look at the details of the tangy house and ask you if that does not look very similar to what you see right there. And if you lay it out, thats exactly where you would expect it to be in relation to latrobe gate in relation to the rest of the burning navy yard. Up at the top it says probable cost to refurbish the following buildings and where im just circled is the mass shed and there it says, to be made of old brick. Underneath of that, the rigging loft, new brick. Underneath that, cant even read it. The smith shops, the blacksmith shop, for example, there it says old brek. Whats going on in the mind of the u. S. Navy is that they want to replace these buildings but they dont want to replace them out of wood. They are concerned about the enemy coming back. They are going to try to spend that extra money to make these out of brick. Theyve learned a lesson. And then the last one is the sawmill which is also made out of new brick. Now, this is the navy yard around circa 1833, well after the fire. But you can still see latrobe gate right there. You can see the capitol, you can see what we would call pennsylvania avenue bridge and then over here on the left you can see whats known as the lawn bridge. That actually existed in 1814. Thats the bridge that connected washington with alexandria. The reason im showing it to you, this is the only structure that i know of that was burnt by most the americans and the british at the same time. The americans burnt side of the bridge over in alexandria and the british burnt the side in washington, d. C. That was the following day. Im going to read this to you. Its a little bit long but i think it will help to give you an understanding. This is by the comma dont of the navy yard. The buildings destroyed by the yard were the mass shed, the boat builder shops, mold lchl of tchl, the block maker shop, the sawmill and the block mill where their whole apparatus tools and machinery, the combustible parts of the machinery and materials, the rigging lchl oft, of all the furniture, the gun carriages, makers and painters shops with all of the materials and tools therein at the time, also the halls of the old frigates, boston, new york, and the general green. Thats a lot of destruction there, folks. This is a list and im not going to go through the whole thing because it would take me 15 minutes to read it to you. But on the righthand side under blue is everything that was burnt by the americans. And on the lefthand side under red is everything that was burned by the british. And the important thing that im trying to point out to you here is that if you look at what the americans burnt, most of it is in the Washington Navy yard. And every one of those things that you read there with one possible exception, they were all made out of wood. Now lets go and take a look at what the british burned and we have the u. S. Capitol, which is made out of stone and brick, we have the white house thats made out of stone and brick, we have the treasury, which was made out of brick, we have the belmont sole house made out of brick, the georgetown George Washington townhouse on capitol hill which was accidently started on fire by a spark by the capitol, that was made out of brick. The tomlinsons hotel, we dont have absolute proof that this was burned. There is contrary information there. That was also made out of brick. Now, these other buildings that you see below it that says houses that were possibly burned, this is based on newspaper accounts. And theres only one reference and these are in various different newspapers. I cant honestly tell you if these are houses that actually burnt or whether its mistakes that the newspapers made because just like weve heard over and over today, newspaper 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 em bell lesh 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 this is to compare what was burned during the evening of august 24th, during that night. 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 talking about the american burning of washington, d. C. , during the war of 18 12 and i understand that. If youre being looking at the burning of the city after the british have come in and gotten to the capitol around 9 00, gotten to the treasury building, got to the white house at about 11 00, where are the flames going to be coming from . Are they going to come from these brick and stone buildings where fire is probably coming out of the roofs and windows and doors or is mostly going to be coming from a navy yard that is almost entirely made out of wood along with a whole bunch of stuff like hemp rope, canvas sails, tar, pitch, all of these things that are very, very highly flammable. Id like to remind you to go back to the thornton painting and its actually the burning of the Washington Navy yard. And so what im trying to get across to you is that i firmly believe that most of the red sky that was seen by people, whether it be in leesburg, virginia, 35 miles away or in baltimore or on the Patapsco River where they reported in their logbook that they could see a red glow 40 miles away, i think it was primarily the navy yard which was set on fire by americans. The fires from the public buildings that the british burned and the few private buildings that they burnt because resistance came from them certainly added to that. But the flames coming out of those buildings, i would argue, would be minuscule compared to what you would see at the navy yard. I dont want to go into a lot of detail here. Im getting hungry. If you look at the census of 1810, its estimated that there was a total structures of about 400. Theres other references that say in 1814 theres possibly 800 to 900 truck sturs. I find it hard to believe that youd have that many new structures being built. Im showing you how inaccurate a lot of this information is. But no matter how you slice and dice it, if we take the maximum numbers of british structures that were burned or i should say structures that were burned by the british, that was 19 and that represents about 4. 8 of the total structures that existed in washington at that time if you use the lower number of 400. And when you consider that most of those structures that the british burnt were the stone and the brick, that represents only 5. 5 . I misstated here. So its if you take all of these structures that were burned, it would represent 5. 5. If you only take the other, it would be 1. 4 . Ive gotten more conservative since i put this particular power point together because we had to do this about ten days in advance and i think its always better to be conservative than to not be. And so when i talk about the americans burning 22 buildings, im having second thoughts about that and the reason for it is that i honestly believe that although theres 20 Different Things that are mentioned by tingey that were burned, i believe many of those were probably in the same building. So its not really fair to think that each one of these were necessarily a separate building. So based on that, im going to revise this when i actually do the paper so that youll have a chance to read that. But the percentages are still going to be relatively small. So the important thing i want to get across to everyone here is that if you take a conservative approach to this and you combine the United States and the british and what they burned in washington, d. C. , its going to be less than 10 of the city. I dont think you can say that burning less than 10 of the city somehow represents the burning of washington. If you want to be even more conservative and say that maybe there were 450 buildings there by 1814, maybe 500 buildings in 1814, if you want to lower the number of buildings that the americans burnt, youre going to come out with a much smaller percentage. Youre talking more about a total of between 4 to maybe 5 of all of the buildings in the city that were burned. And if you notice, many of the speakers yesterday and today, most of them tried to be very careful when they talked about this issue. And many of them said things like the British Occupation of washington or they would say the british burning of public buildings in washington to try to stay away from what i essentially call a myth. Im going to pass over this very quickly. The red circles are british, blue circles, american. None of these are contemporary and you can imagine that if someone was not there, they are going to, in their minds, imagine all kinds of wild stuff and theres nothing here that is probably close to what happened. This one is particularly interesting. Steve already showed it to you. This is the alan cox fresco