Is Washington Burning? (The War of 1812)

America was rushed into war. “War Hawks” in Congress hungry to conquer Canada while England was pre-occupied with war against Napoleon, whipped up patriotic passions and plunged the country into a war it wasn’t ready to fight. On August 6, 1814, a British fleet consisting of nearly fifty vessels sailed into the Chesapeake.

The main British army landed at Benedict, Maryland. British forces routed American troops at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24, 1814 and marched into Washington City. The British commander reported to London, “I reached [Washington] at 8 o’clock that night. Judging it of consequences to complete the destruction of the public buildings with the least possible delay, so that the army might retire without loss of time, the following buildings were set fire to and consumed: the capitol, including the Senate house and House of representation, the Arsenal, the Dock-Yard, Treasury, War office, President’s Palace, Rope-Walk, and the great bridge across the Potomac: In the dock-yard a frigate nearly ready to be launched, and a sloop of war, were consumed.” The glow from the burning city could be seen forty miles away in Baltimore.




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Terrorism in the Civil War (New York City 1864)

The threat of terrorism is nothing new in American history. In 1864 the 814,000 people of New York City faced a terrorist threat by Confederate agents angered over the Union army’s ravaging of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The plot was formulated by Robert Martin, a Confederate officer who had once served under the famous Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan. Martin, with six others, planned to set fire to large hotels on Election Day, November 8, 1864, while Southern sympathizers would simultaneously begin an uprising similar to the Draft Riots of 1863 among the large teeming immigrant population living in poverty around the slum of Five Points. The Draft Riots of July 1863 shut the city down for three days as rioters burned, looted and killed. Union troops marched straight from the battlefield of Gettysburg to put down the riot. Some 118 people died.

Missing their target date by two weeks, the terrorists struck on November 25, 1864, planning to set New York ablaze with an incendiary mixture of sulfur, naphtha, and quicklime that bursts into flame when exposed to air. Over a dozen buildings were set on fire in a four hour period. The incendiary mixture did not perform as predicted and all of the fires were quickly extinguished.

New Yorkers were outraged by the attack. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper called it “The most diabolical attempt at arson and murder of which there is any record in the history of our country.” The New York Times called the plot “one of the most fiendish and inhuman acts known to modern times.”

None of the Southern agents were ever apprehended.



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Cuban Woman and Confederate Soldier (Women in the Civil War)

Civil War re-enactors have been challenged by some women in recent years to allow them to “join the ranks”. If re-enactors today find this problematic, how must men have reacted in the Civil War? But life and history are both complex.

Cuban-born Loreta Velasquez, disguised as a man, enlisted in the Confederate army as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford in 1860. According to military records, under the name Harry T. Buford, she raised a company of volunteers from Arkansas and fought in the battles of 1st Manassas, Ball’s Bluff, and Fort Donelson. In 1862 her disguise was discovered and she was discharged from the army. Velasquez then enlisted with the 21st Louisiana Infantry regiment and went on to fight at Shiloh. Velasquez's disguise was discovered yet again and she was once again discharged. The resourceful Velasquez then became a spy for the Confederacy, often posing as a man.

After the war the now widowed Velasquez moved to Nevada, where she authored a book, "The Woman in Battle", a non-stop thriller patterned after the tales about famous gunfighters. She was married and widowed three more time before her death in 1897 at the age of fifty five (?) .

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The Emancipation Proclamation of 1775

On November 7, 1775 the Royal Governor of Virginia, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore issued a proclamation offering freedom to all slaves and indentured servants belonging to rebels and willing to bear arms in the service of the Crown. The Earl of Dunmore’s proclamation anticipated Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation by some four score and seven years and was done for much the same reason, to cripple the ability of rebels to resist.

Lord Dunmore armed hundreds of runaway slaves in Virginia and formed an all black unit called the “Ethiopian Regiment” which performed distinguished service. The regiment marched under the banner, “Liberty to Slaves”. An estimated twelve thousand ex-slaves served with British forces during the American Revolution in such units as the Ethiopian Regiment and the Black Pioneers.

Some four thousand blacks who had served the Crown were evacuated to England at the end of the war. The presence of the black loyalists on British soil helped swell sentiment in Britian for the end of the slave trade and laid the groundwork for British abolitionism, which eventually spread to America.



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A Plot to Overthrow Franklin Roosevelt?

The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR
by Jules Archer

In 1934, Colonel Smedley Butler, the most decorated Marine in the nation, and recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor not once, but twice, (for separate engagements) testified before Congress that he had been approached by a cabal of businessmen to enlist his support in the overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Butler, a hero to hundreds of thousands of disillusioned World War I veterans, was to lead the veterans on an armed march on Washington which would strip Roosevelt of power and install a fascist government.

The planned coup was allegedly designed to protect the interests of businessmen and Wall Street financiers disenchanted with the New Deal. There was ample precedent for this type of coup in 1934. Mussolini had successfully seized power by a daring march on Rome in 1922. Hitler had initially tried to seize power in Germany by using a popular military figure (General Erich Ludendorff) to march against the government.

A Congressional Committee investigated Smedley Butler’s claims and found them credible but no action was ever taken against the alleged plotters.

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UFOs over the U.S. Capitol: "The Washington Flap" of 1952

The 1952 Washington D.C. UFO incident, also known as the “Washington Flap”, was a series of unidentified flying object reports from July 13 to July 29, 1952, over Washington D.C. and the neighboring vicinity. The most publicized sightings took place on consecutive weekends, July 19 & 20 and July 26 & 27. Radar picked the objects up over the White House and the U.S. Capitol.

On July 22, 1952 The Washington Post reported. “The Air Force disclosed last night it has received reports of an eerie visitation by unidentified aerial objects - perhaps a new type of ‘flying saucer’ - over the vicinity of the Nation's Capital. For the first time, so far as known, the objects were picked up by radar - indicating actual substance rather than mere light.” The article went on to report, “The airport traffic control center said [a] Capital-National Airlines Flight 610, reported observing a light following it from Herndon, Va. about 20 airline miles from Washington, to within four miles of National Airport.”

On July 28, 1952 the headlines of the Alexandria Gazette read, “Jet Fighters Outdistanced By ‘Flying Saucers’ Over Mt. Vernon And Potomac”.

The sightings prompted President Harry S. Truman to call the Air Force demanding explanations.

A Dramitization of the Washington Flap





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Car Deaths

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, since the end of the Vietnam War in the mid-1970’s, approximately 43,000 Americans have died annually on the nation’s highways. The total number of casualties over the last thirty five years amounts to some 1.5 million men, women and children. The number of Americans killed in automobile accidents during this period is larger than the total number of American military casualties (both combat related and non-combat related) suffered in all of the wars ever fought by the United States (approximately 1.3 million).

While American military casualties are a hot topic of debate by politicians, pundits, and the public, the annual slaughter on America’s highways is accepted without a murmur. No foreign enemy has ever inflicted as much damage on the American people as they have inflicted upon themselves. The trend continues. The National Highway Traffic Highway Safety Administration now estimates that nearly 6,000 Americans will die annually in car crashes involving distracted drivers texting, and talking on cell phones.

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