for 15 American newspapers, $200 to begin a collection of laws of the states, and $25 for the purchase of foreign gazettes and subscriptions to American newspapers that would be sent to American representatives overseas. In that same year, the Library also became, by law, the office of record to receive laws, public documents, and copyrights. Constitution saved from the flames During the War of 1812, the invading British burned the Capital, the White House, and other government buildings including that which housed the State Department and its library on August 24, 1814. While Dolley Madison famously saved the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington hanging in the White House, Secretary of State James Monroe can be credited with saving the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, housed at that time in the State Department's Library. As the British entered the Chesapeake, Secretary Monroe ordered Chief Clerk John Graham and Stephen Pleasonton to "take the best care of the books and papers of the office which might be in [their] power." In addition to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, official records of the Continental Congress and original laws and statutes were hid in hastily made linen bags, loaded onto carts and taken across the Chain Bridge into Virginia. The rescued documents were first hidden in an unoccupied gristmill two miles (3 km) upriver from Georgetown. Fearing the documents were still unsafe, Pleasonton hired horses and wagons from local farmhouses and transported them to Leesburg, Virginia, where they were stored in an empty house, locked and in the safekeeping of Rev. Mr. Littlejohn, until the British retreated from Washington. Reporting to the Congress on November 14, 1814, Secretary Monroe said that "Every exertion was made, and every means employed, for the removal of the books and papers of this office, to a place of safety; and notwithstanding the extreme difficulty of obtaining the means of conveyance, it is believed that every paper and manuscript book of the office, of any importance ... were placed in a state of security. ... Many of the books belonging to the Library of the Department, as well as some letters on file of minor importance ... were unavoidably left, and shared the fate, it is presumed, of the building in which they were deposited." Although saved from fire, the Declaration of Independence did suffer in years to come from the unanticipated ill effects of