General Ross from blowing up the Capitol; but he ordered it to be fired at every point, and many houses near it were consumed. A house hard by, owned by General Washington, was destroyed, which, in justice to human nature be it said, the General regretted. Not so the Admiral, who ordered the troops to fire a volley in the windows of the Capitol, and then entered to plunder. I have, indeed, to this hour (said Mr. Richard Rush, in 1855), the vivid impression upon my eye of columns of flame and smoke ascending throughout the night of the 24th of August from the Capitol, President's house, and other public edifices, as the whole were on fire, some burning slowly, others with bursts of flame and sparks mounting high up in the dark horizon. This never can be forgotten by me, as I accompanied out of the city, on that memorable night, in 1814, President Madison, Mr. Jones, then Secretary of the Navy, General Mason, of Anacostia Island, Mr. Charles Carroll, of Bellevue, and Mr. Tench Ringgold. If at intervals the dismal sight was lost to our view, we got it again from some hill-top or eminence where we paused to look at it."
It was among the stories when Congress met near the ruins three weeks afterward, that the Admiral in a strain of coarse levity, mounting the Speaker's chair, put the question, "Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned?" and when the mock resolution was declared unanimous, it was carried into effect by heaping combustibles under the furniture. The temporary
