- History
- US
- Revitalizing History
Barely a generation after the Revolution, the young United States found itself at war again with its former mother country. Much as the French and Indian War had drawn in the reluctant colonies, now the Napoleonic wars ensnared the Americans. In desperate need of sailors for their generational sea battle with the French, the British Royal Navy had begun to “impress” sailors from American ships stopped on the high seas, sweeping up both guilty English deserters and innocent Americans. Influenced by “war hawks” like Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, a deeply divided U.S. Congress declared war on Britain in June 1812.
After two years of war, the Americans had won almost no victories of note, except on Lake Erie. By July 1814, with Napoleon seemingly defeated, the British decided to capture the upstart country’s capital as a knockout blow. Landing on the Maryland shore in the Chesapeake Bay, four thousand Redcoats led by Major General Robert Ross began their march on Washington on Saturday, August 20. As the British swung towards the capital, they were observed by Secretary of State James Monroe, who had been shadowing them the past two days. Monroe hurriedly shot off a message to the State Department: “The enemy are in full march for Washington,” he wrote, adding: “You had better remove the records.”
Monroe’s note reached a city in panic. All around Washington, government clerks were frantically attempting to save valuable records, but the State Department, had custody of the country’s most priceless documents, including the original parchment Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, George Washington’s commission in the Continental Army, and the Journals of the Continental Congress.
It fell to Stephen Pleasonton, assistant clerk, to save the Declaration. Somehow, amid the commotion, he “proceeded to purchase coarse linen, and cause it to be made into bags of convenient size,” into which he unceremoniously shoved the Declaration and other precious documents. If ever there was a time when the Declaration was damaged and possibly crushed, this was it.
Pleasonton also somehow found carts even though almost all had been commandeered by the Army. On August 23, in the stifling heat and humidity, Pleasonton rode up Pennsylvania Avenue, crossed into Georgetown, and thence across the Potomac River. Stopping first at a gristmill, Pleasonton began to worry that the British would likely aim for the country’s largest cannon-making foundry, just across the Potomac. They might decide to look in the gristmill, as well.
The next day, Pleasonton headed out deeper into Virginia, eventually reaching the outskirts of Leesburg, in Loudon County. There, he stopped at the empty mansion of Rokeby, which had a brick vault in the cellar formerly used for the storage of county records. Turning over his precious cargo to the Reverend Mr. Littlejohn, the county collector of revenue, Pleasonton watched the country’s most important documents locked away. He then rode into town and fell asleep, exhausted.
Pleasonton’s actions came not a moment too soon. As he rode up into Virginia on August 24, the British met and quickly swept from the field a ragtag force of 6,000 Americans at Bladensburg, Maryland, about ten miles from the capital. The Redcoats then marched to the unfinished Capitol Building, which they turned into a giant bonfire, including the entire Library of Congress. After that, they headed up to the President’s House, torching it and the buildings around it. Right next door was the State Department, which burned to the ground, along with the Treasury, War, and Navy Departments and their archives. We don’t know if Ross and his men were aware that the Declaration and Constitution had been kept in the State Department, but had the documents stayed there, they would have been reduced to ashes.
Until President Madison and Secretary Monroe were sure the British had left the Chesapeake, the Declaration lay hidden in the cellar at Rokeby, lying unguarded for weeks in a coarse linen sack on the floor of a humid cellar, keeping company with rats and bugs. Given the space-age preservation and ultra-sophisticated security that protects the document today, it is hard to imagine it lying in Rokeby’s vault. Finally, sometime in September, Stephen Pleasanton rode once more to Rokeby and took the Declaration and the other documents from their cellar hiding place. As soon as the new State Department building was finished, the Declaration was once more put into storage in the attic, still in the darkness, but no longer at the risk of capture or being gnawed at by rats and bugs.
The fuller story of the Declaration during the War of 1812, including how its survival led to the document being celebrated by a new generation, is told in National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America, released this month by Simon & Schuster’s Avid Reader Press.
Michael Auslin is the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of National Treasure: How the Declaration of Independence Made America, from which this essay is adapted.
