Part 7

Obscurity of logic and serio-comic rhetoric had accomplished what solemn oratory and studied satire had failed to do, and the House, for the first time since the question of locating the capital had provoked the ambitions and hostilities of every State, joined in unanimous and jocular applause.

The Constitution adopted in 1787 gave to Congress the power to “exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may by cession of particular States and the acceptance of Congress become the seat of the Government of the United States.” This provision served only to increase the competition. After the conflicting efforts of several States to secure the prize, a bill was passed on September 27, 1789, locating the capital at Germantown, but, pending an amendment to the bill, the Senate adjourned, and when the next session was convened both Houses had decided to change their vote.

The contest might have continued long enough to dismember the Union but for the genius of Jefferson and Hamilton, who brought about a compromise. Jefferson, in his _Ana_, has recorded the inside history leading to the final selection of a site for the capital. At the time Hamilton was urging the passage of his bill to have the Federal Government assume the State debts, amounting to $20,000,000. The measure was defeated in the House, and Hamilton invoked Jefferson’s aid to secure a reconsideration, stating that the creditor States of the East threatened secession if their claims were not considered.

“I proposed to him,” says Jefferson, “to dine with me the next day, and I would invite another friend or two and bring them into conference together, and I thought it impossible that reasonable men, consulting together coolly, could fail by some mutual sacrifices of opinion, to form a compromise which was to save the Union. The discussion took place. It was finally agreed that whatever importance had been attached to the rejection of the proposition, the preservation of the Union and of concord among the States was more important, and that, therefore, it would be better that the vote of rejection should be rescinded, to effect which some members should change their votes. But it was observed that this pill would be peculiarly bitter to the Southern States, and that some concomitant measure should be adopted to sweeten it a little to them. There had been propositions to fix the seat of government either at Philadelphia or at Georgetown, on the Potomac; and it was thought by giving it to Philadelphia for ten years and to Georgetown permanently afterwards, this might calm in some degree the ferment which might be occasioned by the other measure alone. So two of the Potomac members, White and Lee, agreed to change their votes, and Hamilton undertook to carry the other point.”

Some historians have accepted Jefferson’s account as final, but others, studying the inflexible purposes of Washington, believe that a controlling power more potent than the wine and compromises at a political dinner finally secured the vote for the Potomac site. Years before, when a young lieutenant, encamped with Braddock’s army on Observatory Hill, Washington had “noted the beauty of the broad plateau” on which the Capitol was destined to be reared, and had “marked the breadth of the picture, and the strong colors in the ground and the environing wall of wooded heights which rolled back against the sky, as if to enclose a noble area of landscape, fit for the supreme deliberations of a continental nation.”

The loftiest minds in Congress were swayed by Washington’s judgment. They agreed with him that America should establish the splendid precedent of a nation locating and founding a city by legislative enactment for its permanent capital. Furthermore, they wished to honor their first President and the great general and counsellor who had made their independence possible, by conferring upon him the power to select for this Federal city the locality he had in prophetic fancy chosen as a suitable site for the capital of the Republic.

In the act passed July 16, 1790, Congress expressed its faith in the President by permitting him to establish the capital anywhere along the Potomac between the East Branch and the Conogocheague, a distance of eighty miles. The boundaries of no other city were ever fixed by so illustrious a surveyor. It is recorded that, as he walked over the wilderness with his engineering instruments and corps, he was harassed by the “importunities of anxious residents and grasping speculators,” but not for a moment did he waver in his purpose to select the site whose majesty had appealed to him in former years as a fitting environment for the Federal home. Within nine months the confines of the federal territory were established. The corner-stone was laid with appropriate ceremonies at Jones’s Point, Alexandria, April 15, 1791, but the territory west of the river was retroceded to Virginia in 1846. Not a cent was advanced by Congress for buildings or grounds. In fact, with an empty treasury and no credit, Congress was unable to give financial aid.

Washington himself drew up the original agreement by which the owners were to convey the land to the Government. The proprietors agreed that all lands necessary for streets, avenues, alleys, etc., should be surrendered free of cost. The building lots were to be equally apportioned between the Government and the individuals. For the larger plots necessary for public buildings and other government uses, the owners were to receive compensation at the rate of £25 per acre. Washington thought that by this arrangement the Government might sell the smaller lots and with the proceeds buy the large ones needed for public uses.

It is a memorable picture, that of the “Cincinnatus of the West,” the renowned statesman, President, general and engineer, planting his theodolite here and there, marking the confines of the capital city, or travelling on horseback to the Georgetown tavern to discuss terms and titles with the owners of the land. The spectacle of Washington laying out the city and presiding at the laying of the corner-stone of its Capitol, appealed to the dramatic sense of Daniel Webster, who in delivering the oration on the occasion of the laying of the corner-stone of the extension of the Capitol, July 4, 1851, alluded as follows to the city’s illustrious founder: “He heads a short procession over these naked fields; he crosses yonder stream on a fallen tree; he ascends to the top of this eminence, whose original oaks of the forest stood as thick around him as if the spot had been devoted to Druidical worship, and here he performs the appointed duty of the day.”

[Illustration: STATUE OF GEN. WINFIELD SCOTT, WASHINGTON.]

The planning of the city was entrusted to Pierre Charles L’Enfant, who had been a major of engineers during the Revolution, and later had proved a popular architect both in Philadelphia and New York. He studied the Potomac situation and drew up the plan of a city on so magnificent a scale that it was considered wild and chimerical. Nothing like it existed in the New World, and few cities in the Old equalled the grandeur of his projections. L’Enfant was removed before having progressed far with the work, and Andrew Ellicott of Pennsylvania was appointed in his place. But the present widely admired plan of Washington had its origin in the artistic, creative mind of L’Enfant.

In 1792, Congress voted him a sum of five hundred guineas, and deeded him a lot in Washington, as compensation for his services; but the designing of the capital city had been to him a work of art and love, and he rejected all considerations of payment. His dismissal had been brought about by his refusal to submit his plans to the Commissioners, his defence being that if his design were published speculators would seize upon the “vistas and architectural squares and raise huddles of shanties which would permanently disfigure the city.”

When Madison became President, he sought to honor L’Enfant by offering him the professorship of engineering at West Point, but again the artistic foreigner declined to accept anything at the hands of the people who, he felt, had failed to appreciate the supreme effort of his genius. His final years he spent as a pensioner at the manor houses of the Digges family in Maryland. He died in the home of Dudley Digges in 1824, and was buried in the garden of the Chellum Castle Manor near Bladensburg, where to-day his grave is marked only by a cedar tree. Inasmuch as the great projects of L’Enfant are receiving to this day the attention of the Government, it would not be inappropriate, in the centennial year of Washington’s existence, to give his remains fitting and affectionate sepulture in the city he designed.

The Commissioners, at a meeting held in Georgetown, September 8, 1791, decided to call the Federal district, “Territory of Columbia,” and the Federal city, the “City of Washington.” At this same meeting the method of designating the streets by letters and numbers was adopted. The name of the city has remained unchanged, but the name of the territory was afterwards changed by Congress to the “District of Columbia.”

For a short time after the city was plotted, Washington enjoyed its first real-estate boom, although that word was not then known. The lots sold more readily abroad than at home, and for a time brought extravagant prices in London. However, comparatively few seem to have been disposed of, and the meagre return from sales was most unfortunate because the money was badly needed to pay for the first public buildings. Finally, the President made a personal appeal to Maryland, which lent $100,000, not, however, without first securing the personal bond of the Commissioners.

The Capitol was planned by Dr. William Thornton, an Englishman, who seems to have been a man of some natural talent, but unskilled in architecture. Stephen L. Hallett, a professional house-builder, also submitted specifications for the building, and there is good reason to suppose that Thornton’s plans, as finally accepted, were considerably affected by Hallett’s more practical drawings.

When the corner-stone of the Capitol was ready to be laid, great preparations were made for the event. Companies of militia and artillery were called out, and civic societies, public officials and many distinguished citizens were invited. With appropriate ceremonies of the military and of the Masonic order, the President deposited in the corner-stone, together with corn, wine, and oil, a silver plate bearing this inscription, which the Commissioners first ordered to be read aloud:

“This Southeast Corner Stone of the Capitol of the United States of America in the City of Washington was laid on the 18th day of September, 1793, in the thirteenth year of American Independence, in the first year of the second term of the Presidency of George Washington, whose virtues in the civil administration of his country have been as conspicuous and beneficial as his military valor and prudence have been useful in establishing her liberties, and in the year of Masonry, 5793, by the President of the United States, in concert with the Grand Lodge of Maryland, several lodges under its jurisdiction, and Lodge No. 22, from Alexandria, Virginia.

THOMAS JEFFERSON,

DAVID STUART,

DANIEL CARROL, Commissioners.

JOSEPH CLARK, R. W. G. M. P. T.

JAMES HOBAN,

STEPHEN HALLETT, Architects.

COLLEN WILLIAMSON, M. Mason.”

[Illustration: THE CAPITOL.

FROM THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY.]

Two years later Thomas Twining, an English traveller who had taken an important part in laying the foundations of the Indian Empire, visited Washington, and thus describes a trip from Georgetown to Mr. Law’s house at Washington:

“Having crossed an extensive tract of level country somewhat resembling an English heath, I entered a large wood through which a very imperfect road had been made, principally by removing the trees, or rather the upper parts of them, in the usual manner. After some time this indistinct way assumed more the appearance of a regular avenue, the trees here having been cut down in a straight line. Although no habitation of any kind was visible, I had no doubt but I was now riding along one of the streets of the metropolitan city. I continued in this spacious avenue for half a mile, and then came out upon a large spot, cleared of wood, in the centre of which I saw two buildings on an extensive scale, and some men at work on one of them. The only human beings I should have seen here not a great many years before would have been some savages of the Potomac, whose tribe is said to have sent deputies to treat with William Penn at the assembly he held at Chester.

“Advancing and speaking to these workmen, they informed me that I was now in the centre of the city, and that the building before me was the Capitol, and the other destined to be a tavern. As the greatest cities have a similar beginning, there was really nothing surprising here, nor out of the usual order of things; but still the scene which surrounded me--the metropolis of a great nation in its first stage from a sylvan state--was strikingly singular. I thought it the more so, as the accounts which I had received of Washington while at Philadelphia, and the plan which I had seen hung up in the dining-room at Bladensburg, had prepared me for something rather more advanced. Looking from where I now stood, I saw on every side a thick wood pierced with avenues in a more or less perfect state.”

Sometime before this, and in answer to an advertisement by the Commissioners, James Hoban, an Irish architect, then acting as supervising architect of the Capitol, had submitted plans for a “President’s House,” and they had been accepted. Inasmuch as the Act of Congress creating the District decreed that the houses for Congress and the President should be ready for occupancy by the year 1800, the work on both was now carried forward vigorously. Washington, retiring to his home at Mount Vernon at the close of his second term in 1797, gave over the care of the Federal city to his successor, John Adams. President Adams first appointed a new architect for the Capitol, Stephen Hallett, who resigned after holding the position for one year. George Hadfield, an Englishman, next appointed, resigned in 1798, and left James Hoban, the supervising architect, to finish the work alone.

Congress having adjourned about May 20, 1800, to meet in Washington in November, the seat of government was removed from Philadelphia to Washington early in June of that year. The records and files of the various departments were transferred by vessels chartered for the purpose, and, as soon as possible, were put in order in the buildings to which they had been assigned. The government officials and clerks came by stage, bringing their families with them. From the records of the Treasury Department it appears that the Government met all the expenses of moving them and their household effects.

When the government officials arrived, only the north wing of the Capitol had been completed, while the Treasury Building, a plain two-story structure of thirty rooms located on the site of the south front of the present edifice, was the only public building ready for the occupancy of the executive departments. Work had been begun on the War Office at the southwest corner of the White House grounds.

When Congress convened in November, little progress had been made. The few hotels and buildings of the city were so overcrowded that few of the members could secure quarters nearer than Georgetown, three miles away through mud and forest. Streets existed for the most part only on paper, and Pennsylvania Avenue, the principal thoroughfare, was really a bog lined with bushes. The only sidewalk, that from the Capitol to the Treasury, being made of stone chippings, so wounded the feet and tempers of pedestrians as to make the mud of the street preferable.

[Illustration: THE CITY OF WASHINGTON IN 1800.

FROM AN OLD PRINT.]

One of the few ladies to follow their husbands into “the wilderness” at this time was Mrs. Adams. To her belongs the distinction of being the first mistress to grace the President’s house. The house itself was but partially finished, and, though Congress had appropriated $6000 with which to furnish it, but little of the furniture was in place when she arrived. Mrs. Adams, however, seems to have been of a bright and cheerful disposition, for, in her letters to her daughter, she gives a more lenient account of the inconveniences and a more just view of the possibilities of the city than many of the new residents. During the short remaining period of President Adams’s term, Mrs. Adams assisted her husband to receive at many formal dinners and stately functions, and under their combined influence Washington society became as polished and as exclusive as the best in other cities.

[Illustration: THE WHITE HOUSE.

FROM THE NORTHEAST.]

A drawback to the city’s progress lay in the constant agitation for the removal of the capital--an agitation that in no wise abated until in very recent times, when the railroad and the telegraph overcame “remoteness and inaccessibility,” the chief grounds for complaint. The press of New York and Philadelphia united with the Northern members in declaiming against the discomforts of the infant city, and such pressure was brought to bear that in March, 1804, a bill “to remove the seat of government to Baltimore” passed to its second reading in the Senate. However, the “Capital-movers,” as they came to be called, succeeded only in retarding the growth of the city. As a result, at the close of Jefferson’s administration there were but five thousand inhabitants. The North spread the sarcasm that Washington was a city of streets without houses and houses without streets. The ludicrous fame of America’s capital created laughter even in Europe. Foreigners after gazing at the President’s house were said to peer into the woods and inquire ingenuously where the city was. The satire of Tom Moore has been mentioned. Here is his picture of Washington:

“In fancy now beneath the twilight gloom, Come, let me lead thee o’er this modern Rome, Where tribunes rule, where duski Davi bow, And what was Goose Creek once is Tiber now. This famed metropolis, where fancy sees Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees;

Which travelling fools and gazateers adorn With shrines unbuilt and heroes yet unborn; Tho’ naught but wood and ... they see Where streets should run, and sages ought to be.”

With the inauguration ceremonies of President Madison, March 4, 1809, the capital returned from Jeffersonian simplicity to the stateliness and fashion of Washington and Adams. Mrs. Madison, the charming hostess of the White House, revived the stately dinners and formal levees, and a court circle gradually grew up resplendent at balls and assemblies.

The War of 1812 had a special bearing on the history of Washington. It had been in progress almost two years when, early in the summer of 1814, rumor told of a great British armada fitting out at Bermuda, some thought to attack New York, others Baltimore, Annapolis and Washington.

On the night of August 19, 1814, a courier, dashing at full speed over the sandy roads of Maryland, drew rein for an instant at every little post-town and shouted the warning note: “To arms! The British have landed at Benedict, and are marching inland. To arms!”

Then at once it was known that the city of Washington was the object of the invasion. The British forces now marching upon the city numbered 5123. They were some of Wellington’s veterans, fresh from the fields of France and Spain. Opposed to them and in defence of the city, General Winder had nearly six thousand men. Only nine hundred of these were regular troops.

The attempt to resist the invasion resulted in the battle of Bladensburg, which was fought near the spot which later became famous as duelling-grounds. A brief but brave defence was made, the raw and undrilled American troops being compelled to give way to the disciplined veterans who had fought with Wellington.

[Illustration: STATE, WAR AND NAVY BUILDING.

FROM THE SOUTHEAST.]

Washington has had its days of tragedy. Two American Presidents have been assassinated within the city, and its inhabitants shuddered at the approach of Southern armies during the Civil War. But at no other time in the history of the Federal city has there been such a moment of supreme terror as on the night of the 24th of August, 1814, when the British gave to the flames the Capitol, the President’s house, the Navy Yard and the Treasury. President Madison and his Cabinet had taken refuge in flight; the frightened citizens were hurrying bewildered into Virginia when, towards sunset, General Ross and Admiral Cockburn drew up their troops on the esplanade east of the Capitol. Thus far the movement had been conducted according to the rigid etiquette of war, but the spectacle of the American capital at their mercy awoke both in officers and men the wanton spirit of revenge.

American school-books have perpetuated the unique fable that the British held a mock session in the Hall of the House of Representatives; that Cockburn from the Speaker’s desk, while the soldiers filled the seats, put the question: “Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned?” and that, when the motion was boisterously carried, gave orders to apply the torch. The scene is an imaginary one; the tale is a piece of romance. It is the sort of historical fiction that Lamartine delighted to invent to add dramatic interest to events.

It is unnecessary to resort to imagination to make a vivid picture of the sacking of Washington. By the glare of the burning Capitol the red-coats marched up Pennsylvania Avenue to the President’s house. The Palace, as the Federalists called it, was not palatial. The portico had not been built; what was to be the garden was a field of rocks and tree stumps; the interior of the house was crude, and the East Room, since associated with great historical events, had, since the time of Mrs. Adams, been given over to the uses of the laundry.

A second fiction connected with the British raid is that they found a great dinner spread on the President’s table and in much glee and derision sat down to devour it. That tale, like the fable of the mock session at the Capitol, was given to a London paper by a merry midshipman.

At midnight a violent thunder-storm checked the four conflagrations. The next day the British renewed the devastation, adding to the flames the Departments of State and War, and private buildings. But nature, as if protesting against the outrage, came to the rescue with a cyclone that drove the enemy to seek shelter.

Panic seized the combatants. On the Washington side, General Ross, perceiving Americans on the Virginia shore, set fire to the great bridge spanning the Potomac. On the Virginia side, Americans, believing the British were about to cross, simultaneously applied the torch. While the two sheets of flame rushed together, the British army left the ruined capital.

Sentiment in England was divided over the destruction of Washington. “Willingly,” said the London _Statesman_, “would we throw a veil of oblivion over the transactions of our buccaneers at Washington. The Cossacks spared Paris, but we spared not the capital of America.”

Other British authorities justified the ruin as a reprisal for the burning and destruction of York, the capital of Upper Canada, though that unwarranted act was the work of soldiers acting without authority, and had been generally condemned in America and publicly disavowed by General Dearborn, who commanded the expedition.

[Illustration: THE “OCTAGON HOUSE” USED BY PRESIDENT AND MRS. MADISON DURING THE REBUILDING OF THE WHITE HOUSE IN 1814.]