Events
A force of 2,500 soldiers under Major General Robert Ross arrived in Bermuda aboard HMS Royal Oak, three frigates, three sloops, and ten other vessels. They sailed to the Washington area and, together with Royal Marines already under Cockburn's command, Ross landed at Benedict, Maryland on August 19. His forces routed the US Navy's Chesapeake Bay Flotilla, a detachment of US Marines, and the inexperienced American militia at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24.
Immediately after the battle, the British sent an advance guard of soldiers to Capitol Hill. Major General Ross sent a party under a flag of truce to agree to terms, but they were attacked by partisans from a house at the corner of Maryland Avenue, Constitution Avenue, and Second Street NE. This was to be the only resistance the soldiers met within the city. The house was burned, and the British raised their Union Flag over Washington.
The buildings housing the Senate and House of Representatives—construction on the central rotunda of the Capitol had not yet begun—were set ablaze not long after. The interiors of both buildings, which held the Library of Congress, were destroyed, although their thick walls and a torrential rainfall that was caused by a hurricane preserved the exteriors. Thomas Jefferson later sold his personal library of more than 6,000 volumes to the government to restock the Library of Congress.
Read more about this topic: Burning Of Washington
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“Whatever events in progress shall disgust men with cities, and infuse into them the passion for country life, and country pleasures, will render a service to the whole face of this continent, and will further the most poetic of all the occupations of real life, the bringing out by art the native but hidden graces of the landscape.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“This is certainly not the place for a discourse about what festivals are for. Discussions on this theme were plentiful during that phase of preparation and on the whole were fruitless. My experience is that discussion is fruitless. What sets forth and demonstrates is the sight of events in action, is living through these events and understanding them.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)