From Washington County, Missouri November 8th, 1819 On Friday last the woods in the neighborhood of this place were found to be on fire, and burned with such fury, during the course of the day and the succeeding night, as to destroy the fences of a great number of farms, with some houses and other buildings, together with several fields of corn; and had it not been for the unremitted and strenuous exertions of the inhabitants to arrest the progress of the fire, scarcely a house would have escaped its ravages. The air was so enveloped with smoke and ashes as to render the sun almost invisible at noon day, and respiration very difficult; even cattle and horses that were ranging in the woods came home very much scorched. By accounts just received from the settlement of Doe Run, we are informed that most of the fences and dwelling houses therein have been destroyed.

The people of Washington County Missouri have held a convention & resolved, that Congress have no right to prescribe any other condition of admission as a State into the Union but that of a republican constitution: that the attempt to prevent slavery in Missouri was contrary to their rights (and no doubt, in their opinion, to a republican constitution) and that if Congress do not, next session, pass a law to admit them into the Union on an equal footing with the old States, they will have a right on their own authority to erect themselves into a state.

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