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THE CAPITOL DOME small party approached the Capitol and passed the Sewall Belmont house, a volley of shots rang out. Two British soldiers were killed and several were wounded. 23 Ross himself narrowly missed death or serious injury. His horse, however, was killed and the mount of the trumpeter also was shot. 24 Several British officers reported that the firing came not from the Sewell Belmont house but from other nearby houses, as well as from a party of up to three hundred Americans based at the Capitol. 25 Ross ordered up a brigade of troops and instructed them to fire a volley of shots at the Capitol with a view to deterring further resistance, reinforcing the impression that the British believed they had come under fire from the hallowed corridors of the American legislature. 26 is was sup- pressing fire, not an insult to American democracy. Most of the evidence that the Capitol or its grounds had been used for military purposes comes from the British, although it is not entirely one-sided. One Washington resident, Mrs. Mary Stockton Hunter, later recalled telling British officers that gunpowder had been stored there. 27 It is more than pos- sible that American forces stockpiled powder in the build- ing when they were told to rendezvous there after the retreat from Bladensburg. It is not without significance in respect to what transpired that Secretary of War John Armstrong had recommended turning the Capitol into a fortress immediately after the Battle of Bladensburg and that he suggested utiliz - ing adjacent houses too. 28 In the end, it may be no surprise that enraged American troops, who were appalled at the deci- sion not to defend the city, ended up doing precisely what A rmstrong suggested. In the years since the British occupation of Washington, debate has raged about the identity and number of assailants who opened fire on Major General Ross and his advance guard. Most American accounts attributed the attack on Ross to an Irish barber named Dixon, also known as Dickson. 29 "Chief barber" to Congress for more than twenty years, for some he was a Figaro-type, a talkative, good-humoured man. 30 While there is evidence to suggest that Dickson was involved in the attack on Ross, he was far from the only one who opened fire on the British. 31 It was a volley of shots that rang out, not just a single report. Again, while they may not have acted alone, the hardest evidence about who attacked Ross indicates the involvement of some of Barney's sailors who had remained in the Capitol area. 32 e Capitol and the houses from which shots were fired at the British were not immediately burnt after the shooting incident. Still Ross tarried in the hope of negoti- ating a deal. 33 e attack on Ross and his advance guard indicated to the British that the Americans were not going to negotiate. And so the burning began. Father John McElroy from a vantage point at Georgetown took a precise note in his diary when he saw the Capitol on fire, "9:06." 34 Meanwhile, there had been outrage in British ranks at the attack on Ross, a hero to his troops. James Ewell, an American phy- sician whose home the general later used for his headquarters, was told by British officers that had Ross been killed, "it would have been impossible to have restrained the soldiery, who idol- ized him, from committing the most horrid outrages, both on our city and its inhabitants." 35 Lord Bathurst, the British secretary for war, considered this an attempted assassination of the British commander and that "by the laws of war, after such an act as this, the lives and property of all the people of Washington were forfeited." Ross was soon heard to call out to his men, however, to "spare the lives and properties of the inhabitants" of the city. 36 In the decision-making which followed the attack on Ross and his advance guard, the general's aide-de-camp, Captain MacDougall, was clear that the shooting incident "subjected Washington . . . to all the rigours of war." Despite that, it was only after being "warmly pressed," implicitly by Rear Admiral Cockburn, that Ross agreed to burn the public buildings of Washington "for the purpose of preventing a repetition of the uncivilized proceedings of the troops of the United States." 37 It is also clear that Cockburn pressured the army commander to burn the entire city, private dwellings and all. 38 e nub of the issue for Ross was not only the "uncivilized" actions of American forces in Canada but the breach of military etiquette as he attempted to negotiate an orderly surrender of the city. An officer and a gentleman, one who played things by the book and valued chivalry, Ross would have considered the attack on himself and his men under a flag of truce as an affront to the codes of honorable warfare. It was in these circumstances that he reluctantly followed his orders, at least in so far as burning the public buildings in Washington was concerned. He disobeyed his orders by absolutely refusing to burn private property, with the exception of the premises that were used to attack him and his men. In conversation at Washington with Dr. Ewell, Ross reportedly justified the burning of the public buildings as retaliation for what had happened in Little York, Canada. 39 An American contemporary, Charles Jared Ingersoll, also recorded that "Ross continually deplored the tragedy which he said he had to perform, occasioned, he added, by the Ameri- cans burning the British capital in Canada." 40 Contrasting Ross with Rear Admiral Cockburn, however, Ingersoll remarked that "from the whole conduct of the Irish general, he seemed to be a kind-hearted gentleman, reluctantly fulfilling painful orders, which the Scots admiral executed with unfeel - ing delight." 41 Before the Capitol was burnt, Cockburn is said to have proposed a motion from the Speaker's chair: "Shall this harbor of Yankee Democracy be burned? All for it say 'Aye!'" It was unanimously carried. 42 at he later had his por- trait drawn with the public buildings of Washington ablaze at 8