![]() ![]() ![]() It seemed to express the howl of a nation. ![]() In the five years it took to research and write a book on the burning of Washington, nothing struck me as more poignant than Booth’s wrenching despair at that moment. The inferno was so great that the glow in the night sky was seen from fifty miles away by British crewmen aboard warships in the Patuxent River by anxious Americans in Baltimore and in Leesburg, Virginia. But, Booth recorded, “all was as silent as a church.” Only then did this senior clerk at the Navy Yard grasp the awful reality “that the metropolis of our country was abandoned to its horrid fate.” Within hours the President’s House and the few other public buildings had been set on fire by British occupation troops. Near the entrance he saw an American colonel who dismounted, walked to the front door, pulled hard on the bell rope, banged on the door, and shouted for the steward, Jean Sioussat, known as French John. Shortly before Mordechai Booth fled the capital on Wednesday, August 24, 1814, he rode over to the President’s House to see whether anyone was still inside. ![]()
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