and a similar set of china ordered for the dessert service from mill delve. she also sternly mentions that there was an impossibility of finding french china which may or may not have been a ploy of latrobe's anything french from being brought into the white house. latrobe was working furiously trying to get the white house prepared. he was finishing marble pieces, installing doors, constructing stairwells, assembling a coach house and installing a well into the side of the house in addition to the furnishings. mrs. madison's parlor and dining room had been finished since spring and it was the elliptical room holding everything up, but december everything was set for the new year's day reception, it had become a tradition that president jefferson had started.

at the same time the largest home in the united states, mrs. madison also had a large draw of visitors to the event. before it and preceding it. she was well liked for her warmth and casual nature although a bit bizarre, she took a youthful fashion, robes, feathers, ermine and rouge, very abstract for a woman of her age. president madison was not as beloved. she adored his wife and she him, but he was a bit stern, definitely what we like to call a statesman. one such encounter is described as he was a little man with a powdered head, having pale countenance but with little flow of courtesy. this is not a compliment, let me assure you. let's see. you can see up here there's the reference to the wallpaper. when guests finally arrived new

year's day 1810, they came through the north door entering into an entrance hall flanked with fireplaces to the east and west. this is the modern day white house, but this is the entrance they would have come in. not much has changed in the design of the white house since hogan rebuilt it after it was burned. but here you come in from the north, these marbleized columns. and here we also have these small little alcoves jefferson had put in to put stoves in, but latrobe had carefully covered them up with columns that were made out of concrete but painted to look like marble. the hall was sparse in decoration compared to the brilliance of the elliptical room. very fashional grecian space with a dominant color being a sunflower yellow with sofas and chairs colored in the same color satin and trimmed heavy with

silk and bobbin fringe. creating a free-flowing space. it truly must have been unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. following the debut of the latrobe interiors, the house's general completion and the madisons began entertaining frequently again. mrs. madison's wednesday night receptions were the center of attraction. contemporary count state, all these whom fashion, fame, beauty, wealth or talents had rendered celebrated, and many were able to enjoy the splendor but for a very brief time. the signs of oncoming war were extremely present in 1811, and the escalating conflict came as no surprise to president madison. so the country prepared and put attention to its resources on relevant issues rather than latrobe's outlandish and expensive designs to finish the city. by madison's time, had he become exhausted with latrobe. and he was ready -- later wrote to -- latrobe later wrote full

awareness of madison's feelings, quote, i am personal hi obnoxious to the president and to his principal friends in congress. the white house was still not finished and the capitol was left with its two wings and plan dome not yet begun. by 1813 latrobe was relieved of his position and moved to pittsburgh. the great fire. did we skip -- can you go back one? on august 24th, 1814, the british finally made their way to washington with instructions to burn all public buildings. there's a misconception they burnt the entirety of washington. they did burn all the public buildings. many had been warned, many had fled and still some stayed until the last minute including mrs. madison. as she was hurried out of the white house, she made certain to sit down and write a letter to her sister. is he describes the flurry of activity that happened just prior to her leaving. our kind friend mr. carroll of dumbarton house has come to

hasten my departure in a very bad humor with me because i insist on waiting until the large picture of washington is secured and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. the process was found to be tedious in these perilous moments. i've ordered the frame to be broken and canvas out, placed in the hands of two gentlemen from new york for safekeeping. one eyewitness account also zroibs the scene of washington as from his hotel room. i perceive the smoke coming from the windows of the president's house and in a short time that sple splendid inferior to none what i've observed was wrapped in entire flame. the large and elegant capitol of the nation on one side and the splendid national palace and treasury department on the other all wrapped in flame. presented a grand and sublime but at the same time an awful and melancholy sight. the madisons returned to the

charred city three days after the great fire. needing to find temporary quarters and a place to recover from the symbolic and physical humiliation that the united states and the capital city had just incurred. madison was pinpointed as a coward for abandoning the capitol. and at this point in time, too, before most people did come back to washington, there was actually talk of moving the capital city west, possibly to cincinnati or even to st. louis. but fortunately enough, they decided to stay in washington. and in an effort to regain authority and some sense of place, mr. and mrs. madison took up residence in temporary homes. and to furnish these spaces, they did not go to mr. latrobe. from 1815 to 1817, they relied mostly on local resources and available furniture which was mostly secondhand. the used furnishings at this point were not necessarily castoffs or discards, but they were actually generally from diplomatic representatives that had since left and needed somewhere to put their

furnishings because they couldn't take them back with them. so they brought localized pieces and ended up getting french pieces also instead of english. in 1815, the madisons acquired from luis the french minister a dozen chairs and sofa for $250. and perhaps they were familiar with the furniture since he had occupied two of the areas most fashionable homes, calarama and the octagon house, which still stands and it's where the madisons temporarily took up residence, their first residence from 1814 to 1815. their second residence was in a temporary structure known as the 7 building on pennsylvania avenue which has now since been destroyed. and here the madisons acquired a great deal of furniture from i ageorgetown cabinet maker. perhaps they learned their lesson from outsourcing. possibly secondhand also but locally made nonetheless. and one large dining table and

one large family bedstead came from the workshop. they also patronized the merchant and silversmith charles burnett buying glassware and plated flatware. the madisons never lived at 1600 pennsylvania avenue again. but president madison did begin its reconstruction before leaving office. in 1815, reconstruction of the white house began. and surprisingly, james hobin was called upon to supervise and not latrobe. although latrobe's relationship with mrs. madison remained steady, his loose tongue and self-importance and endless amount of problematic insults had become a real issue for mr. madison. but as the gentleman he was, he did not lay any objection to the interview that was given to latrobe to become the architect of the capitol building which he did receive. his less than favorable altitude began to take a turn again. and in 1817, he resigned when james monroe was elected.

he had not finished the structure, to president monroe lived elsewhere but wasted no time ordering new furnishings for the new interior. latrobe went on to act as an engineer, ark trekt and landscape architect for sites in maryland, virginia, pennsylvania, ohio and louisiana. he aided in building of the first catholic church in america. next one. the baltimore basilica. which took almost 20 years to construct. and the decatur house. also adina, ohio and pope villa in lexington. another in new orleans where he designed the city's water works but ironically he died of yellow fever, the very disease he was trying to prevent from spreading with the water works system. there's a lot of history that's left up to interpretation, excess lishl the madison and la

strobe relationship which seems to have been pretty copacetic. la from being loud-mouthed and unappreciated especially at a time when manners were very well appreciated. and since most of his structures are actually in ruins now and don't exist anymore including the interiors of the white house and several other homes and also the bank of pennsylvania. most of his genius has been lost to history, but the great projects like the bank of pennsylvania and we're lucky that all these great drawings survived, he has been able to maintain that the relationship and the reputation of being america's first architect which is something i don't think anyone wants to rival. he ended his life almost facing bankruptcy and on a lot of short lists with many people. but like i said, his genius has been unchallenged for nearly two centuries. and as i do manage the decatur

house, i want to put the little plug in there, you see the latrobe-based designs here, a rendering of monroe and decaughter in decatur house. and if we go to the next slide, i do want to just go through a very brief sort of slide show so you see what we think that the madison interior looked like and the ee lip tick room which was latrobe's most important white house interiors. this is how the same room has changed throughout history. this is in pierce's administration, lincoln's administration, buchanan's administration, i think this is mckinley's administration, the roosevelt administration, theodore roosevelt, fdr's administration when it became his temporary office, and today. as it is as the blue room. i want to give special thanks to the maryland historical society for being really wonderful to work with.

i'm sorry for the technical difficulties to begin with and my skipping my first page. in addition to everyone here that has been like i said wonderful to work with, also want to thank the library of congress, the university of virginia's dolly madison addition, the new york public library, james madison montpelier and the white house historical association. and if anybody has any questions, i'd be happy to take them. there will be a microphone coming around if you'd like to raise your hand. or in white house history, in general. i know that as well. the gentleman down here? >> the furniture that the

madisons bought after the burning of the white house -- >> yes. >> like by worthington, et cetera. >> yes. >> does that still exist? is that still in the collection of the house? >> no, it's not still in the collection. it's unknown as to where most of it is at the time. because when monroe came into the white house -- actually, most of those things never entered the white house. >> right. >> they were used in the 7 building. to my knowledge, they're not in the montpelier collection. they may have been destroyed or they may have been lost in history. >> thank you. >> sure. >> the 1814 drawing that you have of the white house after the fire -- >> yes. >> -- that's a drawing, i mean, what was left of the white house, and what did they work with to come up with the white house that we have today? >> essentially it was just the exterior shell that was left. and they still used that same structure and built it from the inside-out. there are reports of all the walls standing completely, and

then there are reports of some of it actually being destroyed on part of the eastern side. but for the most part, if you are ever fortunate enough to get on the inside in the bowels of the white house, you can still see burn marks on some of the marble stone. >> so some parts of the white house were not flammable. that's why they were still there. did someone try to put the fire out? >> actually, there was a rainstorm that helped singe anything -- i'm sorry, not singe, but put everything out which was very lucky for them. it happened the next day. >> thank you. >> sure. >> you mentioned when they burned washington, they didn't burn the entire city. >> correct. >> they left taverns. >> yes. >> and what else did you say? >> hotels. >> holtels. >> there are several accounts of

british soldiers knocking on private buildings and telling people to stay there. that was the safest place to stay. they would best be suited rather than not going to any of the public buildings that evening. >> what was the rationale, really? were they intending on using them or -- >> no, the americans had actually recently burned one of their ships. it was sort of a retaliation. i got yours, you got mine. >> thank you. >> yes. >> leslie, was there any fragment left of the original white house design? i mean, wallpaper, anything that allowed us to be able to really, you know, reconstruct those interiors, or was it all engulfed in flames? >> in terms of fabr kind of wallpaper? i mean, was there anything left if we do any kind of analysis of the surfaces today, if we went back enough, would we find anything, or is it completely gone? >> besides the wallpaper that's in the box that mrs. latrobe

received from mrs. madison, nothing else is reported to have been salvaged except for a stove that they went digging for afterwards. that's the only thing that actually came out of the rubble. >> no fabrics, nothing. >> no. okay. thank you again. throughout the weekend here on american history tv on c-span3, watch personal interviews about historic events on oral histories. our history bookshelf features some of the best known history writers. revisit key figures, battles and events during the 150th anniversary of the civil war. visit college classrooms across the country during lectures in history. go behind the scenes at museums and historic sites on american artifacts.

and the presidency looks at the policies and legacies of past american presidents. c-span.org/history and sign up pressing the c-span alert all weekend every weekend on c-span3 and online at c-span.org/history. every day at the national archives in washington, d.c., a team of six researchers from the papers of abraham lincoln project comb through a multitude of civil war-era government files searching for any documents related to the 16th president of the united states. so far, they have found 12,000

records. recently, a researcher discovered a missing page from president lincoln's second annual message to congress along with a complete copy of the message signed in lincoln's hand. american history tv went to the archives to see these relics from the great emancipator's presidency. >> this is the e-search room which is part of the research complex here at the national archives where researchers come and view records that we serve to them. my job is to work with researchers and work with the records that we have here in our holdings here in the national archives. and i work with the records of the house and senate, which is the bulk of our holdings in the legislative archives. we have records from legislative support agencies as well, but the records of the house and senate are the bulk of our holdings going back to 1789 to the present. i've worked with the staff of the lincoln papers for -- since they've been here, and i've

assisted them among my colleagues in serving them the records that they need to search for records pertaining to abraham lincoln. >> it's a long-term editing rojt from the abraham lincoln library and museum to locate an image and transcribe and publish all of the documents pertaining to lincoln during his lifetime. the papers of abraham lincoln began in 2001 as an expansion of the lincoln legal papers which has existed since 1985. we're systematically searching all the records series that pertain to lincoln's presidency and a handful of his papers that pertain to congress. we are trying to go through each series that might contain documents. now, some series don't contain any documents. as i tell my staff, no is an answer, and that's important for us to document that we've searched these records and haven't found anything. we're going through pretty much

anything that might contain correspondence to linken or by lincoln. everything from military records, army, navy to congressional records to, as i said, interior treasury and state department post office department, any kinds of records that might have some documentation from lincoln. >> his signature is very familiar. i think most of our staff, we've kind of picked up a knack that even if something's not signed by him, we can identify his handwriting. i was searching senate records. and i was going through them. was about through with the entry i was searching. and came across a cross-file sheet that referred me to some other volumes that weren't obvious to me that they existed. and so i had one of the legislative archivists go back and pull these volumes for me. and these two on the desk are two of the ones i found.

this was the first one i came across. started out, you know, obviously it's not in the greatest shape. but analysis of 36th and 37th congress. 36th congress was the congress before lincoln took office. it was the office of buchanan. as i started leaving through, a lot of the stuff i saw was from buchanan's administration. but as i went further on through the book, eventually i came to one document that bore lincoln's signature. i have a copy of it here. and it turns out i found about 24 documents with lincoln's signature in this entry. these -- the text of these documents, in their printed form, but back in the '50s when roy basler did collective works

of lincoln, he didn't have access to these manuscripts. including is one document we only knew of one other manuscript copy, and that's stored in a church here in d.c. but as i kept leaving through the volume, i came to the end and started just came across in random stuff, stuff that really didn't seem to fit. it just seemed like just random pieces of paper, honestly. here at the very back. i mean, this here, this calendar, obviously i didn't know what it had to do with any presidential messages, it's dated 1861. you know, turned a couple pages, and there's some sort of ledger material. and a few pages later, stuff from the 32nd -- 33rd congress, which wasn't right at all in terms of lincoln's time period. and kept turning. and then i came to this spot here where i found this

document. ic lincoln's second annual message to congress. >> we found three really remarkable things. first of all, he found a missing first page of the official copy of lincoln's second annual message to congress. this is a predecessor of our modern state of the union address. so lincoln would write a message and then send it to congress. in those days, lincoln himself would not have read it to congress as we do today. but he would have had a clerk read -- a congressional clerk would have read the message. the official message has been missing the first two pages for more than a century. it was misfiled by the senate long before the national archives received it. and we didn't know where those two pages were. >> the first thing that tipped me off was the heading. house of representatives. i knew that's how most

presidential messages were transmitted. but as far as the text, i didn't immediately say oh, that's from the second annual message. i just did a quick internet search, and the text led me to confirm that this was indeed the text. i brought it to the legislative archivist's attention, bill davis and rodney baross. and they made the decision to remove it from the volume and return it to the rest of the copy that's in the vault. >> it's wonderful that we now know where it is, and we have put that page with the rest of the second annual message in our treasury's vault where we have some of our most -- some of our most historic items in that room also we have, for example, george washington's inaugural address. we have several items from jefferson's presidency dealing with the louisiana purchase,

lewis & clark expedition. we have things relating to world war ii, franklin d. roosevelt's day of infamy speech. we have a map that charts the incoming planes during the pearl harbor attack that was submitted to congress. and so those are among the special items. >> the second thing that he found in some ways even more remarkable is an entire second copy of that second annual message. and it is also written by a clerk but signed by abraham lincoln. so it is, in effect, an official copy as well. and then finally he found about two dozen pieces of communication between lincoln and congress. again written by clerks but all signed by lincoln that we had known about in terms of the text from printed sources but had not known where the manuscript materials were. and they were all in this one small set of records. >> it's actually labeled "interior department."

in addition, even though there's some exciting parts of this message, there's also some pretty dry parts where he's regurgitating what the secretary of state or caleb smith or whoever told him to say. so with this message, he transmitted to congress and was read by a clerk before the senate and house, there were also other reports submitted at the same time, reports from secretary of state, secretary of interior, war department, post office, postmaster general. so i think that's why this message is in this volume with the interior because following these pages are the message from the secretary of the interior. he has a lot of religious imagery in his opening. and while it please the almighty to bless us with the return to peace, we can but press on guided by the best light he gives us, trusting that in his own good time and wise way, all

will yet be well. the message is significant. mainly because it deals with emancipation and also lincoln's kind of reformulation of his thoughts about his administration during the course of the war, 1862 was a big year. a lot of change. he had issued a preliminary emancipation proclamation in september. he eventually decided to remove general mcclellan from command. and a big thing was that the democrats had gained 28 seats in the house of representatives. so he was -- lincoln, according to some historians, david donald for one, was trying to -- he might have been seen as more radical in some opinions. he was trying to come back centrist. especially what he says in this message regarding compensated

gradual emancipation was a way to try to bring more conservatives than moderates back to the fold. in addition to finding what i found in that volume, i also found another complete full copy of the message. probably his -- the most memorable words of this come from the last paragraph or so. the occasion is piled high with difficulties. we must rise with the occasion. as our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. we must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country. fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. we of this congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. no personal significance or incisii insignificance can save one another. the path we light will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. we say we are for union.

the world will not forget that we say this. we know how to save the union. the world knows we do not know how to save it. we here hold the power and bear the responsibility and giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free. honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve, we shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. other means may succeed. this could not fail. the way is plain, peaceful, generous, just, a way which, if followed, the world will follow forever applaud and god must forever bless. abraham lincoln, december 1st, 1862. and i'll touch on this page, the same page he touched, signed. and he spent a lot of hours crafting some of this language and to see it here before you is really something special. >> well, it's always great to