there is a lot we can learn about ship construction we don't already know. there is a lot about naval heritage that you can learn from recovering artifacts conducting analysis and publishing and disseminating the information and the more knowledge there is and can be shared, that is better for humanity in general. >> the object was to come far up river as they could go and possibly they could be transported over land to the south river and gain an escape into the bay and be saved. however, the british were coming up so fast behind them they didn't have the ability to affect that plan. they were eventually scuttled, and even though we only found one vessel, it could be the rest of the flotilla to end up under the land of the shoreline you see over here now.

>> you can watch this or other american artifacts programs at any time by visiting our website, c-span.org/history. watch american artifacts every sunday at 8 a.m., 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. eastern on c-span 3. >> this july 4th on c-span 3 it is 24 hours of "american history tv." we're usually seen on the weekends providing eyewitness accounts, historic tours, lectures and discussions with authors, historians and teachers. you can visit our website to see our weekend schedule and learn more about our programs. today we're marking the bicentennial of the war of 1812. up next we hear from anthony pitch. for the next half hour he talks about his book "the burning of washington: the british invasion

of 1814" and answers questions from callers. >> you're looking at a dress belonging to first lady dolley madison that is thought to have been made from the red velvet curtains she saved from the white house as british troops advanced on washington. this is "american history tv" on c-span 3 where we're taking your calls and comments on the war of 1812. we want to open up the phone lines with a reminder of the numbers for those of you on the east coast and the central time zones is 202-737-0001. in the mountain and pacific time zones it's 202-737-0002. make sure you mute your television when you call in. we will get to your calls on the war of 1812, in particular in this segment on the burning of washington. we are joined by anthony pitch. thank you for joining us today. >> thank you for having me.

>> you have brought along not only your book but an artifact. we saw an artifact of dolley madison. this is of james madison. tell us what your viewers will see here in a minute. >> this came up for auction five years ago. this check. the auctioneer had misread the name of the person it was made out to. they wrote -- i knew it was roger chew wightman, dragged into the white house by the admiral as they were preparing to burn the white house, and the check was made out by james madison to wightman 23 days -- to white man 23 days before burning the white house. it's probably for books, because wightman was a book seller and he was dragged in to represent the humiliation of the americans. he was the only american in the white house, the british bandit, and so i knew knowing more about the providence of this check that it was going to be very valuable. one day donated to the white house, but i'm fearful it might end up in a drawer or something where the public can't see it.

but it really is a remarkable find, because of the fact that wightman was the only person in the white house who was an american. he later became mayor of washington. he was a notable grand mason, and so that's why i brought it. >> how long had washington been the seat of government by 1814? how long had it been the -- >> 1800. john adams came down in 1800, because the capital used to be in philadelphia, and he was the first president to live in the white house. every president has lived there except george washington. >> what was the city like in 1814? >> it was a mere embryo of what it aspired to be. it was a gawky village. it was so forlorn that there was a british diplomat who wrote back to his mother after he saw the president in torn slippers greeting foreign diplomats, he

said, dearest ma, luckily for me i've been in turkey and am quite at home in this simplicity of manners. >> what was the white house like in 1814? >> the white house was run down. it was leaking. it was unfinished when the adams' moved in, and it was leaking for a long time. it was for many, many years in a state of disrepair. >> why did the british select washington as a target? what was their goal? >> twofold. the year before the americans had invaded canada, and they'd burned and plundered some of the public and private buildings, most notably in york, which is now toronto, and in some -- most recently in some of the villages on the niagara frontier. those remember the american successes, so this was payback but also to strike the american morale. morale, because admiral coburn, he was the driving force behind the attack on washington.

he told the british commander, overall commander of british forces in north america, that the fall of a capital is always a great road to the government of the country. so he knew this would be a struggle, it would really, really hurt americans' self-esteem, and it would be a blow to their morale. >> calls are waiting for anthony pitch, historian, author of "the burning of washington." seattle, washington, next. go ahead, jack. >> caller: good morning, excellent show. it's my understanding that president madison personally, physically, commanded the troops in the battles, making him one of the only two presidents who personally had the front command of troops during his tenure, and then, also, as a former marine, our belief is that the commandant of the marine corps' house, not far from the existing

white house, still today, was not burned because of the british respect for how the u.s. marines fought in the battle. any comments? >> those are two very good questions, but i have to correct the caller. he described himself as a former marine. once a marine, always a marine. i learned the hard way. addressed somebody as former marine. it's quite correct to say that james madison was the first president on the battlefield to face incoming enemy fire. at the battle he was in the knot of cabinet secretaries, and rockets passed over them, only then did they ride out of range. a lot of people, including the national parks service, keep repeating in their literature that abraham lincoln was the first in fort stevens, as the confederates approached washington during the civil war. lincoln did face enemy fire. in fact, he almost got killed,

he was so reckless, but he was not the first. james madison is the first president to face incoming enemy fire. >> what about his question about the marine corps house? >> that is a beautiful house. i have been in there. >> that is probably myth. there are a lot of myths about this occupation of washington. they did not destroy the commandant's house at the navy yard because they mistook it for private property, and they had pledged only to attack public property, and it was public property, but they didn't know that. the marine corps, there is no documentary evidence that i came across, why that house survived. i don't know. it's one of those things that is passed down through tradition. they admired the marines because the marines gave as good as they got. there were 114 of them.

they fought magnificently. >> how many british were there? >> the british? there were around 1,200 fighting. the americans vastly outnumbered the british, but the british were the finest army in the world, and most of the defenders were militiamen and couldn't possibly hold a candle to these regulars from britain. >> our viewers are seeing video from fort mchenry, re-enactors at fort mchenry over the weekend celebrating the 200th anniversary of the start of the war. jackie, go ahead with your comments. >> caller: hello. i'm a graduate of western reserve university in cleveland, and i understand that the western reserve refers to the fact that connecticut was also burned, and these people were

given lands in the western reserve of connecticut which is northeastern ohio. >> i have to pass on that because my expertise is on washington, the invasion of washington. >> also you wrote about, talked about a hated figure because of burning not just washington, but before that on the shore of maryland? >> the british had been plundering, pillaging, doing other misdeeds, ordering the chesapeake bay, and by doing this the year before they captured washington. so the newspapers had been reporting this all the time, and so the public was aware of coburn's successes. one american offered a reward of $1,000 for his head and $500 for each of his ears. he was the quintessential 19th century supercilious aristocrat in britain, a very haughty man, coburn. but he had excelled at a young age.

he was at sea before he was a teenager. he came to the attention of the greatest admiral of the day, horatio nelson, who described coburn as being brave, courageous and zealous. and coburn was later selected by the british military to take the former emperor napoleon into exile, and while walking the deck, coburn wrote in his diary that napoleon tried to act still as a sovereign. i cannot allow that. that shows how overbearing he was, what kind of character he was. >> our topic is the burning of washington, the british invasion of 1814, and our guest is the author of the book "burning washington," anthony pitch. we hear from princeton, new

jersey, next. theresa, welcome to the program. >> caller: thank you. it's a compelling image to think about dolley saving some of her husband's papers, but i would like to know what efforts were made to save government papers in general before the attack, and was there changes, how they were kept after that? >> that's a good question. dolley did save a lot of the papers. her husband had asked her to do that. she got a carriage the day before the british arrived. it was filled mostly with government papers, at the expense of their personal property, most of which was destroyed. but on capitol hill there was turmoil, pandemonium, fear, confusion, and most of the government agencies remained staffed because most of the

clerks were over 45 and exemption caught up to them. in the basement of the house of representatives nearly all the offices were empty because most of the clerks were young people, and so any j.t. foster was there. he had scant experience, weak authority, with the need to make rapid decisions of national importance, and he had no idea what to do, and a colleague of his had been called up into the military, and he sent a message and came back with one cart, four oxen, taken from a man who lived six miles out of town and loaded up some papers from the capitol and drove into the countryside. at the senate it was total confusion. nobody with administrative authority was on hand, and so two young people managed to get one cart, and one of them -- he drove this cart through washington having loaded the papers of the senate, which included its only copy of the executive history, and the

positions and names of all the american military forces from the canadian frontier right down to the gulf. they managed to take all of it to the quaker village of brookeville about 30 miles north of washington in maryland. that's where the sum of the papers remained. others, hours before the invasion managed to save a lot of the state department papers. one that really, really counts is steven pleasanton at the state department. this is one of the stories that you have to tell your children and your grandchildren, because when the british approached, the secretary of state was james monroe, and he scribbled a note to the state department, "save the precious national documents." this young clerk, stephen pleasanton,hurried, ordered them into bags and into these and others, but he was chiefly instrumental,put the original copies of the declaration of independence, the constitution,

international treaties and george washington's correspondence including the historic letter and while something was being done the secretary of war passed by and rebuked him for being an alarmist. he said they're not coming to washington. they're going to baltimore. and he stood up to the secretary of war, he loaded them into carts, drove two miles above georgetown, put them in an abandoned mill and then had second thoughts. a spy could go there. he went 35 miles west to leesburg, virginia, put them in an empty house, checked into a hotel, and that night the british burned the white house, the next day the state department. >> some of the images we're seeing on screen are from the national portrait gallery, the smithsonian, and we thank them for that, and the american historical society.

also next for anthony pitch, nancy, go ahead with your comment. alexander kerr, who was a cashier in, he grabbed a lot of the money and escaped with it to maryland. >> some of the images we're seeing on screen today. the smithsonian national portrait gallery.

>> i have an ancestor named john burg. he fought in the war of 1812. and i requested his war records and received a lot of documentation for where he tried to get, i guess, the land that was supposed to be granted to him. later after he died, his wife even tried to do that and was never granted any land. so were there a lot of those that were not given the land after the war of 1812 is my question? because i really don't know a lot about the history that you're speaking of. that's why i'm listening today. >> again, that really doesn't focus on the burning of washington which i'm here to talk about. that's not my field. >> what was the size of the u.s. military force in washington? >> marines, 114 fought at the

battle of gettysburg. there were, according to records i found, 27,000 regulars, but spread thinly from the canadian frontier right down to the gulf. >> how many would have been in washington at the time? >> very, very few. the 114 were the best, finest units amongst several thousand who fought at the battle. predominantly militiamen. >> you talk about the battle. how did the burning of washington unfold after the british won there at bladensburg? >> it's six miles southeast of washington. the british approached that. they fought in the mid-day sun in august. it was so hot. 18 of their men died from heat exhaustion. within an hour, they had overwhelmed the americans, and the marines, as i said, fought so well, that the british, there's a scene of chivalry on

the battlefield where the commodore joshua and an american 55 years old was in charge of the men and the marines were clustered around him. the british came up, and they offered him his freedom in whichever direction he needed then treated him like a brother, appointed a british captain to look after him. he later said they've treated me like a brother. and so they spoke. they waited and then arrived in washington at sunset. and the american forces had fled through washington, through georgetown, into, they went as far as maryland, a lot of them. and there was nobody to defend. there were 8,000 residents who in washington. and 9/10 of them had fled to the surrounding areas of maryland and virginia. so there was nobody to defend the city and the capitol, and they just took over. they were there 24 hours, and he went very quickly.

they came in the evening. they left the following evening, because they were afraid of being cut off on their route back to their ships on the patuxent river about 45 mimes east. >> next call is in virginia. go-ahead, matt. >> caller: i was wondering if mr. pitch could talk more about the storm that hit right after the burning, and if that was a tornado -- i mean a hurricane, and if the storm affected the british fleet out in the chesapeake bay? >> okay. the british arrived on wednesday night. they left on thursday night. around about 2:00 p.m. on thursday, a storm of unprecedented velocity and veracity struck the city.

it lifted cannons like featherweights. hoses were flattened. old homes were lifted up and dumped at random. it was so terrifying, that people, veterans who lived here for decades had never seen anything like it. it was a whirling force. the skies were darkening. bolts of lightning illuminating scenes of chaos. the rivers were rising and ships were not latched, were broken loose from their moorings. it didn't douse the flames. that's another myth. the flames were recorded four or five days after the british set the fire to the public buildings, the capitol, the white house, the public buildings. people recorded seeing flames as long after the invasion as four or five days. so the british, like everybody else, just a sanctuary we --

where they could, and it doused a lot of the flames but didn't extinguish them completely. >> we're saying great live video from our cameras at fort mchenry today. how did the battle of washington, burning of washington, set up the battle of fort mchenry? >> the british originally didn't want to go to fort mchenry to capture baltimore and then changed their minds. it took almost a week for them to change their minds. had they gone immediately, many baltimoreans forecast that the city -- afterwards, even in correspondence before the battle of north point, that baltimore would have fallen. they were unprepared. they were demoralized.

what happened after washington, it galvanized americans. everybody wanted to pay back, especially those who had been in the area. so when the british descended on baltimore, three weeks later, after having been in washington, there were 15,000 defendants. they'd swarmed in from surrounding counties and eastern pennsylvania and virginia. old men, young men. it was raining hard. the eastern hills, which were heavily fortified, were slashed with sudden trenches and even though the men were wet and tired and hungry, they were itching for payback. that's what it did. it fired them up. >> we talk about the burning of washington and wonderful pictures we have seen from the national portrait gallery but the building survived, the capitol survived. the white house survived. how badly were those buildings damaged? >> the capitol, a lot of it survived because benjamin harry latrobe, commissioner of public buildings in connection with the capitol, he had pioneered the

technique, and they acted as firebreaks. and that's why -- and then when the british burned some of the rooms, the unlimited flames came towards them. pushed them back. so they were not able to advance and a lot of the capital survived. the saddest thing of all that didn't survive was the library of congress. it was facing the mall and had no vaulted ceilings. a very, very large room on the western edge of the capitol and it went up like a tinderbox and all 3,000 books were destroyed. ironically, most were printed in britain and many of them about british parliamentary procedure. what happened next was amazing. thomas jefferson offered three weeks later his private library as the nucleus for a replacement for a new library of congress and said most of my books, 6,487, had been hand-picked by him in europe when he was minister to france, equivalent

to ambassador. he was a renaissance man and you could see many of those books still in the library of congress, history, architecture, science, agriculture. he was into everything and in many languages. and so congress liked the idea. they paid him just under $24,000. he said "i have so many books. it will take two weeks to fill 20 wagons and come from my home in monticello to washington." >> how long did it take to rebuild the white house and the capitol? >> the white house was rebuilt within three years, and the capitol took five years because they kept altering the plans, and they ran out of the original free stone which the capitol had been built with from acquire creek in virginia. that was no longer there. and so latrobe paced the countryside, from maryland,

virginia and sound a fusion of speckled rocks which he wrote to jefferson and he described as native magnificence, and these would replace the marble columns that were destroyed in the house of representatives hall and in the senate chamber. if you go to the capitol today, will you see the long columns with over turns of gray and they called it the putting stone marble. in many respects it was improved upon, the brilliance of the capitol. the capitol was always a beacon. it was always a symbol. when they built it at the beginning it was a symbol of pride and the aspirations of the young republic. after it was destroyed and rebuilt it became a symbol of unity and resilience and today it's a beacon on the hill there, of democracy. >> one more call for anthony pitch.

this is brenda in newark, new jersey. go ahead. >> caller: yes. i just saw a very interesting documentary on the war of 1812 here in the metropolitan new york area on one of the pbs stations, and one of the things i learned, a more balanced view of the war of 1812, and one of the things i learned a long time ago, and unfortunately not in school, was if you dissect the word "history" it comes out "his story" and my understanding from

the documentary is one of the reasons british wanted to burn washington was because of the plundering and the burning that the american militia had done in canada. >> i'll let anthony pitch apply. thank you, brenda. >> yes, i already referred to that at the opening of this interview. it was part payback for americans in canada. you're right. burned, plundered, pillaged some of the private buildings, that is correct. >> the book is "the burning of washington: the british invasion of 1814." our guest has been historian anthony pitch. thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. you've been watching american history tv on c-span3. a look at the war of 1812, and if you've missed any of our programming and our conversation on the war of 1812, you'll find it in our video library at c-span.org and c-span.org/history. >> you're watching "american history tv" all weekend every weekend on c-span3. for more information, follow us on twitter at c-span/history. >> you're watching "american history tv" which you can see every weekend here on c-span3. this july 4th we're highlighting

the war of 1812, the bicentennial, taking an in-depth look of the causes and course of the little-known war that bolstered america's international credibility and fostered a new sense of patriotism and gave us a national anthem. we continue with "american artifacts." >> each week "american artifacts" takes viewers into archives, museums, and historic sites around the country. uss constitution was launched in boston in 1797 and gained fame during the war of 1812 defeating british war ships in three sea battles and earning the nickname old iron sides. american history tv visited the uss constitution museum in boston located at the same pier where the ship is docked today. we tour toured an exhibit looking at lives of sailors aboard the constitution during the war of 1812. >> welcome to the uss constitution musm.