Burning Down the House
On the afternoon of August 24, 1814, the British army under General Cockburn entered Washington DC unopposed and proceeded to sack the city, setting fire to the Capitol hoping to burn it to the ground. President Madison and other high ranking officials and their families had fled the city, and the British troops ate what was supposed to be a victory banquet for President Madison at the White House before setting THAT on fire.
Next, Cockburn wanted to burn the newspaper, but instead established a long running Washington tradition by destroying all the “C” type at the newspaper to inconvenience them. The British proceeded to burn their way through the city, going from the Treasury to the War Department to the Navy Yard to Fort McNair.
Have You Ever Seen the Rain?
After a night where the light of the blaze of Washington could be seen in Baltimore, the afternoon of the next day homo divinus decided to intervene to save their new experiment, American Democracy. Clouds moved in and the skies darkened, a traditional sign that the gods had brought their spaceships into play. The winds became so great that roofs were torn off houses and houses torn off foundations. The “tornado” (tornadoes are extraordinarily RARE in DC, with only 7 since, once every 30 years, and NONE close to this destructive) torn right through the area of Washington where the British had decided to house their troops. Men clung to the Earth to hope not to be lifted into the air as the cannons were.
Immediately after the “tornado”, torrential rains started which put out all the fires (AFAIK, no “rain dance” was performed to invoke the gods actions THIS time). After the rains stopped, the British packed up and headed back to their boats. Cockburn asked "Dear God! Is this the weather to which you are accustomed to in this infernal country?" The alleged retort was "This is a special interposition of Providence to drive our enemies from our city."
Freemasons, Divine Providence, and American Exceptionalism
This is my first piece on the US, so I think mentioning that self-rule and democracy was the 18th century experiment for homo sapiens. This was a major step away from the Divine Right of Kings concept where the only ruler had a direct responsibility to the gods, everything else was left to homo sapiens under that divinely designated ruler. The United States of Am
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