1.On a sweltering August day in 1814, word reached the Capitol that British
forces had swept aside the defending American army at Bladensburg,
Maryland, and would occupy Washington by dusk. By late afternoon, British
soldiers had marched on the Capitol, torching just about everything in sight.
The documentary record of the Senate's earliest years might have gone up
in flames as well, had it not been for the quick action taken by a 24-year-old
Senate clerk named Lewis Machen.
2.Since 1789 Secretary of the Senate Samuel Otis had safeguarded the
Senate's growing collection of records-bills, reports, handwritten journals,
and even the Senate's mark-up of the Bill of Rights. But Otis died in April of
1814, and no secretary was on hand to protect the collection from the
invading soldiers. Fortunately, with little time to spare, Lewis Machen
devised a plan to save the precious records. Assisted by a Senate
messenger, an African American named Tobias Simpson, Machen
commandeered a wagon from a District resident and began loading it with
bundles of Senate papers. "I engaged in removing . . . all the Books and
papers of the office which I considered of more value," he later recalled.
"When the sun was nearly setting, our vehicle being able to contain no
more, I departed."
3.Machen headed southeast toward a family farm in Maryland. The journey
proved to be adventurous. As he traveled in complete darkness, one wagon
wheel flew off, forcing him to borrow "without leave from the owner" a
replacement from an abandoned blacksmith shop. As he approached the
Maryland state line, the wagon suddenly and violently overturned, spewing
bundles of papers in all directions. It took several hours to repair that
damage and reload the valuable cargo. In the morning hours, Machen finally
reached the relative safety of the farm. Later, another Senate clerk delivered
the records to Brookville, where government officials were working in exile.
Five years later, the documents were returned to a rebuilt Capitol. As the
years went by, these founding-era documents and other Senate papers were
stored away in the Capitol's damp basement rooms and humid attic spaces-
and were forgotten.
4. More than a century later, in 1927, another Senate clerk named Harold
Hufford entered one of those basement storerooms. He found there
surprised mice and disordered papers. Under his foot lay an official-looking
document that bore two distinct markings: the print of his rubber-heeled
shoe and the signature of John C. Calhoun. "I knew who Calhoun was;"
Hufford said, "and I knew the nation's documents shouldn't be treated like
that." Over the next decade, Hufford inventoried Senate records stored
throughout the Capitol, and discovered that autograph seekers had
harvested signatures and thieves had stolen notable state papers. Clearly,
the Senate needed a place to archive its important collection.
5.In 1934, Congress established the National Archives. Three years later, the
history-conscious Senate launched another rescue mission-less dramatic
than that of 1814, but equally important-and began transferring its records
to the newly built Archives. Today, the Senate can boast of a vast archival
collection dating back to March 4, 1789, its very first day of operation-
thanks, in part, to two diligent clerks named Hufford and Machen.