Existing comment:
Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail
Destroying the Library
The original Library of Congress occupied a room in the US 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 the first full-time Librarian of Congress.
British Rear Admiral George Cockburn and the inscription he made in what remains the only book known to have survived the 1814 burning of the Library of Congress.
A Returned Souvenir:
In 1940 a collector sent the Library of Congress a book titled, RECTs & 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." |