Destroying the Library

Destroying the Library. Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail. The original Library of Congress occupied a room in the U.S. Capitol. When British troops burned the Capitol in 1814, the collection was destroyed. After the war Thomas Jefferson helped re-establish the library by selling to Congress at a discount some 5,500 of his own books. President James Madison appointed local editor and writer George Watterston as his first full-time Librarian of Congress., Returned Souvenir , In 1940 a collector sent the Library of Congress a book titled, RECTs and EXPENDs [receipts and expenditures] U.S. FOR 1810. It survived the British burning of the library in 1814 because British Rear Admiral Cockburn took it for a souvenir. He inscribed it, “Taken in President's room in the Capitol of Washington 24th August 1814.”, In the summer of 1814 the United States had been at war with Great Britain for two years. Battlefronts had erupted from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. On August 24, following their victory over the Americans at the Battle of Bladensburg, Maryland, British troops marched on Washington with devastating results., The Star-Spangled Banner Historic Trail reveals sites of the War of 18 12 in Washington, DC, Virginia and Maryland. Visit ChesapeakeExplorerApp.com or download the Chesapeake Explorer App.