The Bonfire of the Treasury Building
How a Fire at the U.S. Treasury Sparked the Nation's First Conspiracy Theory
November 8, 1800 was unusually warm for a fall afternoon in the nation’s capital. Clerk Israel Loring had finished filing and arranging papers in the War Department’s offices on the southside of Pennsylvania Avenue when he headed back to his hotel to eat dinner. At 6 p.m. a clerk rushed inside the hotel. The War Department was on fire.
Hurriedly Loring and departing Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott Jr. ran down Pennsylvania Avenue to the War Department.
“When we approached the house, we observed the light very strong from the window over the door of the entrance of the house immediately adjoining the [War Department] library,” Loring later testified.
Inside the smoke was so thick that Loring staggered backward as he tried to enter the library. Realizing nothing could be saved from the room Loring rushed over to the Treasury Building to retrieve a fire engine. It was too late. The damage from the fire was extensive. Every paper and book was destroyed in the fire except one volume – containing deeds and contracts for land sold to the federal government.
Sifting through the ashes afterwards initial indications were the fire had begun in a defective fireplace in an adjoining home owned by Jonathan Jackson.
When a fire broke out at the Treasury Department just two months later however many questioned whether the fires were accidental.
Wild rumors began to circulate in the Democratic press. The nation’s first conspiracy theory was born.
January 20, 1801 - the day the Treasury Building burned - was a cold, “violently” windy, winter day. Principal Clerk for the Auditor of the Treasury Patrick Ferrall was playing billiards at a nearby house when the cry of fire was heard. Arriving at Treasury Ferrall used his key to open the door to the auditor’s room. “Smoke and flames gushed out with such violence I had been nearly suffocated,” he later testified. Peering through the smoke the fire appeared to be strongest by a group of cases near the room’s fireplace.
As a crowd assembled and worked desperately to put out the flames Treasury Clerk Thomas Waterman watched surprised as Treasury Secretary Wolcott (who had rushed to the building upon hearing the news as he had at the War Department) loaded chests filled with papers onto a cart outside the building. As Waterman watched Wolcott loaded a chest, trunk, two boxes, a small writing desk and iron chest filled with various papers and effects.
Suspicious of what he was witnessing, Waterman later testified that he purposely stayed put to observe Wolcott in order to provide any evidence of Wolcott’s conduct at a later date.
Eventually the fire was gotten under control. Unlike at the War Department the worst of the damage at Treasury was confined to the auditor’s room - resulting in the majority of the department’s papers and records being saved. The cause of the fire however was not readily apparent.
Sensing something nefarious in two fires, within two months, at two separate government offices in the city, the Democratic press alleged they were part of a Federalist plot to destroy evidence of misappropriated funds during the Washington and Adams’ administrations. Rather than have the evidence of their various misdeeds fall into the hands of incoming president Thomas Jefferson and his administration, the Federalists - they charged - had decided instead to torch both buildings and destroy everything inside.
Like a scene out of an Oliver Stone movie, an unusual amount of paperwork was said to have been found scattered about the floor of the auditor’s room during the fire. When a group of men went to the door of an adjoining room - in an effort to save some furniture - they were said to have found it locked. Peering through the keyhole the men could see a light burning inside. When they forced the door open three men were found sitting inside. Just as they were about to be identified the candle in the room was blown out and the faces and identities of the conspirators were lost forever.
The Aurora – an Anti-Federalist newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin’s grandson – called the blaze the “the Federalist bonfire.” The Cabinet - an Anti-Federalist rag published by the son of formerly imprisoned Congressman Matthew Lyon - spread rumors of the three conspirators found by candlelight.
A Congressional committee in the House of Representatives was impaneled to investigate the fires. The committee found no basis for the allegations of a conspiracy by Federalists to destroy incriminating documents. The committee determined that Wolcott had simply been attempting to remove his personal papers and effects from the building. Even before the fire Wolcott (who had resigned as secretary) had been planning on removing the items. They had been packed and assembled and were ready to be removed in the next three days when the fire broke out.
Waterman - who believed that his salary at Treasury had been kept low while serving under the Federalists because of his Democratic politics - was less than an impartial witness. The Cabinet also had its own axe to grind. The editor’s father Matthew Lyon had been violently beaten with a thick hickory walking stick by Wolcott’s cousin Congressman Roger Griswold two years earlier in the House of Representatives after Lyon on an earlier occasion had spit in Griswold’s face after being called a coward.
“No suspicion can remain that the boxes and cases were not Mr. Wolcott’s private property,” the committee found.
The fire at the War Department the committee determined had been caused by a defective fireplace in the adjoining home. The cause of the Treasury Fire remained undetermined.
Sources
Annals of the Congress of the United States 6th Congress, Washington Gales and Seaton 1851 pg. 1363, 1359, 1366, 1367, 1368,1374
A History of the People of the United States John Bach McMaster Vol. II NY D. Appleton and Co. 1915 pg. 518
Matthew Lyon The Hampden of Congress A Biography J. Fairfax McLaughlin Wynkoop, Hallenbeck Crawford Co. 1900 pg. 245
A History of the National Capital Wilhelmus Bogart Ryan, Vol. I. The MacMillian Co. NY 1914 pg. 364
www.foundersarchive.com from footnote of a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Waterman March 17, 1801