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Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail
Escape Across the Potomac
As war with Britain wore on, some U.S. military leaders believed the nation's capital, with its inland location and military defenses, was safe. So Washingtonians were cruelly surprised when the British invaded on August 24, 1814. As the enemy burned some of the public buildings, people gathered what they could carry and fled. Many crossed the Potomac River to Virginia on the Long Bridge, a wooden drawbridge on the site of today's 14th Street Bridge.
Bridge on Fire:
The next day, the British captured this end of Long Bridge while the Americans held the Virginia side. After a fierce thunderstorm crippled the drawbridge mechanism, each army set its end of the bridge on fire, reducing the Potomac crossings to either the Georgetown ferry or Chain Bridge, five miles upstream.
"The streets were...crowded with soldiers and senators, men, women, and children, horses, carriages, and carts...all hastening toward a wooden bridge which crosses the Potomac. The confusion...was terrible, and the crowd upon the bridge was su;ch as to endanger its giving way."
-- Lt. George Robert Gleig, British soldier. |