Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/433760
THE CAPITOL DOME reports aside and refrained from breaking into George Magrud- er's locked desk, which held another set of documents. 17 Burch tore off in search of a vehicle to transport the books and papers, but found that nearly every wagon or carriage in the city had been impressed by the army or otherwise occupied. Unable to hire a wagon, he claimed the right to impress, but had no authority to so. Finally, a House messenger obtained a cart and four oxen six miles from the city, returning to the Capitol after dark on Monday. With their one cart, the clerks and messengers shuttled the most valuable books and papers to a "safe and secret place" nine miles in the country, repeat - ing the process until they had to stop the morning of August 24. 18 Meanwhile, Frost had the Library of Congress's books ready for removal, but no boxes to contain them. 19 Forced to flee the Capitol for his own safety, he took the House commit- tee reports to a nearby residence in one of the two houses on Capitol Hill that George Washington had constructed. 20 In his haste, however, he forgot "the Secret Journal of Congress," as well as the locked desk, containing a number of receipts and vouchers, the loss of which would lead to the Magruder broth- ers' downfall. 21 "e Fate of War has befallen the City of Washing- ton," the reporter for the National Intelligencer declared on August 30. "It was taken by the enemy on Wednesday the 24th instant, and evacuated by them in the course of ursday night, after destroying the interior and combus- tible part of the Capitol, of the President's house, and of the public offices." 22 Torched by the invading British, the Capitol's "combustible part" included invaluable House and Senate records and most of the Library of Congress's collection. 23 While Colonel Magruder's troops recovered from their shocking defeat at the Battle of Bladensburg earlier that day, the enemy built a bonfire in the ornate House Cham- ber (fig. 3), then turned to the committee rooms and the clerk's office in the basement. 24 ere, the remaining papers and furniture, including Magruder's desk, burned so hot the soldiers had to leave the wing. 25 On the Senate side, the Library's books created a tremendous blaze; the flames engulfed the Senate cham- ber, fueled by the elegant drapery and carpets. e British then burned the White House and the Treasury, as well as a number of private residences, including the George Washington house that now sheltered the doomed House committee reports. 26 In the aftermath (fig. 4), there was nothing for Burch and Frost to salvage. All they could do was provide Patrick Magruder with a list of the items destroyed: the reports of the Committees of Ways and Means, Claims and Pensions, and Revolutionary Claims, the Secret Journal of Congress (much of which was printed elsewhere), manuscript papers (mainly private petitions presented before 1799), a number of printed books, and all of George Magruder's expense records and vouchers, accounting for the House's contingent spend - ing since January. With sadness, they concluded, "Every thing belonging to the office, together with the library of Congress, we venture to say, might have been removed in time, if carriages could have been procured." 27 Fig. 3. Rear Admiral George Cockburn allegedly stood on the chair of the Speaker of the House and mockingly asked his men to vote on "Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned?" is engraving appeared in William Cullen Bryant, A Popular History of the United States (1881). L IBR ARY OF CONGRE S S PRIN T S AND PHOTO GR APHS DIVISION 14