Part 8

The preparations for rebuilding the city were begun before the smoldering ruins had ceased to glow. The designs of the Capitol and other public buildings were somewhat altered, but the White House, under the supervision of Hoban, the original architect, was reared on the old walls--almost a replica of the former mansion. Although the reconstruction was begun immediately, there was a continuation of the old difficulties. The question of removing the capital again became an issue, and continually hampered the work of rebuilding. However, the old buildings were slowly replaced, new ones were constructed, and the Government was soon comfortably housed. But the city itself developed with woeful languor. The few attempts to beautify it failed. By 1860, there were but two or three miles of poorly constructed pavements. Most of the streets were worse than country roads. In summer the dust rose in clouds and blinded and choked those who ventured forth, while in winter the mud was so deep that at times the streets were well-nigh impassable. Until 1862 there were no street railways.

Charles Dickens, who was a visitor to Washington during its period of struggle and reconstruction, drew this startling picture of the capital:

“Take the worst parts of the City Road and Pentonville, or the straggling outskirts of Paris, where the houses are smallest, preserving all their oddities, but especially the small shops and dwellings, occupied in Pentonville (but not in Washington) by furniture-brokers, keepers of poor eating-houses, and fanciers of birds. Burn the whole down; build it up again in wood and plaster; widen it a little; throw in part of St. John’s Wood; put green blinds outside all the private houses, with a red curtain and a white one in every window; plough up all the roads; plant a great deal of coarse turf in every place where it ought not to be; erect three handsome buildings in stone and marble, anywhere, but the more entirely out of everybody’s way the better; call one the Post Office, one the Patent Office, and one the Treasury; make it scorching hot in the morning and freezing cold in the afternoon, with an occasional tornado of wind and dust; leave a brick-field without the bricks in all central places where a street may naturally be expected; and that’s Washington.”

[Illustration: GRAND STAIRCASE IN THE HALL OF THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY.]

As there were few attractions to tempt the wealthy, plain and inexpensive dwellings were mostly in evidence. During the sessions the members of Congress could hardly find suitable quarters, since the inns and hotels, with few exceptions, were of such a character that they brought forth vilification from those who were compelled to live in them. Boarding-houses were somewhat better. An old directory shows that in 1834 Senators Daniel Webster, John Tyler, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay; Representatives John Ouincy Adams, Franklin Pierce, James K. Polk and many other well-known men of the time sought homes with private families or in semi-public boarding-houses. The modern method of numbering houses was not then used, and we find addresses given as follows: Henry Clay, “at Mrs. Ditty’s, C Street near the corner of Four-and-a-half”; Nathaniel Silsbee and Daniel Webster, “Boarding-house of Mrs. Bayliss, opposite Central Market.”

The Civil War added the final touch to the national significance of the capital. From the straggling city of seventy thousand inhabitants, those stirring times transformed it into a vast military post of two hundred and fifty thousand. In appearance the city resembled an extensive military camp and hospital. Yet when the foe did come the city was in but poor condition to withstand attack. In the summer of 1864, General Jubal Early was sent north to attack Washington, and, if possible, to divert Grant from Richmond. General Lew Wallace was then in command of the Middle Division, which included Washington. Home Guard, crippled soldiers, and Department clerks were mustered in; but in all there were not more than thirty-five hundred men. General Early had by his own account ten thousand picked veterans, including nine field batteries with forty guns. At Monocacy, thirty miles from Washington, after a brave contest, the Union forces retreated in good order. At night, Early camped within ten miles of the capital; But Wallace had delayed him long enough to enable Grant to send a part of the Sixth and Nineteenth corps, and Washington was saved.

Meanwhile, work on the public buildings went steadily forward. During the war the dome of the Capitol was raised, and the Treasury and Patent Office buildings were almost completed. In 1863, the statue of Freedom was placed upon the dome with imposing ceremony, accompanied by the salutes of guns of the surrounding forts. The enormous military population during the war brought greatly increased responsibilities to the city, and a better realization of its importance to the nation. From 1860 to 1870, more noteworthy and substantial improvements were made than had been before undertaken in the whole history of the city, and the population in this single decade increased from seventy thousand to 120,000.

With the return of peace the habitual slothfulness returned, and the old do-nothing policy seemed about to be resumed. But there were a few energetic citizens in whom the short period of progressiveness had instilled an unquenchable desire for a better order of things, and by their untiring energy they prevented a recurrence of the former stagnation.

[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES TREASURY.

FROM THE SOUTHWEST.]

One man in particular seems to have been inspired with a resistless ambition for the city’s salvation. Around this person--Alexander R. Shepherd--the little body of reformers rallied their forces.

A territorial form, with a governor, legislature and delegate to Congress, was created for the District. A Board of Public Works, appointed by the President with the approval of the Senate, was created to undertake the remodelling of the city. Subsequently this Board became the pivot around which the rest of the municipal machinery revolved. Shepherd was appointed Governor, and under his guidance the Board immediately began its difficult and thankless task.

The changes which the Board wrought in the city were stupendous. The result is Washington as it is known to-day. The enormous expense entailed by the great reconstruction created an opposition which forced Congress to appoint committees of investigation. The extent of the Board’s operations are best illustrated by the enlargement of the District’s debt. The debt of the territory, which in 1871 was but three millions, had risen in 1875 to twenty millions, and of this “astounding increase only the original loan of four millions was submitted to the vote of the people, and this, at the time it was voted on, was understood to include all the main improvements necessary for remodelling the city.”

[Illustration: ROTUNDA OF THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, WASHINGTON.]

Shepherd, whose master mind had directed the whole undertaking, finally left the city. When, a few years later, he returned on a visit from Mexico, his advent was celebrated by the citizens of the new and beautified capital by demonstrations of welcome so sincere and genuine as to atone for the former lack of appreciation.

Washington to-day is richer in historic memories than any other city on the continent. To the literary worker and historian it is a boundless treasure-house. Standing on the hills of Anacostia, and musing on the story of Powhatan’s vanished capital, one may read in the surrounding spires and domes and monuments of the city the eventful story of Anglo-Saxon triumph in the Western Hemisphere. One smiles now at the satire of the poet Moore; for the morasses have indeed become parks, and imposing shrines have been built to commemorate heroes that were then unborn. In what was once the wilderness of “magnificent distances” are the palatial houses in brick and granite of men and women celebrated in letters, in art and in public life. In the galleries of the Capitol will be found the portraits and memorials of America’s illustrious dead. In the State Department is to be seen the faded original of the Declaration of Independence.

The city that Washington founded has become one of venerable memories and matchless triumphs.

From the “Rome” of Francis Pope the visitor looks down Pennsylvania Avenue, the Via Sacra of the new world, whereon the men most illustrious in the annals of the Republic have walked and ridden to their public offices, and along whose historic thoroughfares the heroes of great wars have enjoyed their triumphs. Here Lafayette was received with joyous welcome when, in 1824, he returned to measure the majestic growth of the Republic during the fifty years that had passed since he and Washington were comrades in the fight for freedom. As, standing on the superb terraces on the west front of the Capitol, one views the monument, the sacred hills of Arlington, the Potomac winding towards Alexandria, which Adams predicted would become the continent’s metropolis and greatest export city, the imposing declivities of old Georgetown, at whose base were once anchored merchant ships from foreign ports, there passes before the mind a vivid panorama of the history of the American people. Beauty and majesty have obliterated the infant city of a hundred years ago. The achievements of science have mocked many of the ancient prophecies. The canal, starting at Georgetown, which was to have carried the deliberations of Congress to the Western world, knows no such use, and the ships that were to crowd the Potomac are content to moor at railway termini along the Atlantic coast.

But although applied science has confounded the wisdom of a hundred years ago, the hopes and dreams of the founder of the capital have been realized. In 1798, before the Government moved to the new city, Washington wrote concerning the capital:

“A century hence if this country keeps united, it will produce a city, though not so large as London, yet of a magnitude inferior to few others in Europe.”

Had Washington looked down the century and caught the gleam of the gigantic shaft that attests his glory, and the golden dome of the Congressional Library, the most superb temple ever reared to literature, or in an illumined moment beheld the Goddess of Liberty standing between Heaven and earth and symbolizing freedom for seventy-five millions of people, he could not have written with loftier faith in the destiny of the Republic.

[Illustration: WASHINGTON MONUMENT.

LOOKING ACROSS THE “FLATS.”]

Washington is no longer the city of magnificent intentions; it is Washington the Magnificent.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

RICHMOND ON THE JAMES

BY WILLIAM WIRT HENRY

“And in regions far Such heroes bring ye forth As those from whom we come, And plant our name Under that star Not known to our North.”

DRAYTON.

On the 11th of April, 1606, a patent was issued by James I. of England to Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers and others for the establishment of a colony in Virginia. The charter prescribed that it was to be managed by a council of thirteen persons, under the direction of a council of thirteen in England. On December the 19th of that year, one hundred and nine years after the discovery of North America by Cabot, three small vessels, the _Susan Constant_, the _God Speed_ and the _Discovery_, sailed for the New World, bearing one hundred and twelve passengers and a crew of thirty-nine men.

They encountered many perils by sea, having bad weather and losing their reckoning, but the 26th of April, 1607, brought them to the shores of Chesapeake Bay, and they soon entered a noble stream called by the natives the “Powhatan,” but renamed by them the James, in honor of their King. On the 13th of May, they landed on a spot which seemed suitable for a settlement, and called the place Jamestown. The colony previously planted at Roanoke Island by Sir Walter Raleigh having perished, this was the beginning of the permanent Anglo-Saxon occupation of North America. From it has developed English possession of the continent with free institutions based upon English representative government.

In 1619, a General Assembly was held, which was the first legislative body elected by the people to convene this side of the Atlantic. It was an English acorn germinating in American soil, and from it has sprung the tree of liberty which has filled the continent. Among the colonists who landed at Jamestown, was the celebrated Captain John Smith, who was destined later to be snatched from the jaws of death by the lovely Indian princess, Pocahontas. From the story of his life, told by himself, and the Rev. Samuel Purchas in his _Pilgrims_, we learn that he had already been the hero of many adventures. He had been robbed, had encountered pirates, and had been shipwrecked at sea. He had slain three Turks in single combat while serving under Sigismundus Báthori, the Prince of Transylvania. He had been beloved by the fair Turkish lady, Tragabigzanda, besides having had many other _affaires du cœur_--notably one with the good lady Calamata of Russia.

[Illustration: GRAVE OF POWHATAN ON THE JAMES.]

Nine days after the landing of the colony at Jamestown, and thirteen years before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth, Captain Newport, with Smith and a party of men, ascended the James River, and discovered the site of the city of Richmond. In Smith’s _True Relation_, printed in London in 1608, he says:

“The two and twenty day of April [or rather May, 1607] Captain Newport and myselfe with diuers others to the number of twenty-two persons, set forward to discouer the Riuer some fiftie or sixtie miles.... In the midway, staying to refresh ourselues in a little Ile foure or fiue savages came vnto vs which described vnto vs the course of the Riuer, and after, in our journey, they often met vs, trading with vs for such provision as wee had, and arriuing at Arsatecke, hee whom wee supposed to bee the Chiefe King of all the rest, moste kindely entertained vs, giuing vs a guide to go with vs vp the riuer Powhatan, of which place their Great Emperor taketh his name, where he they honored for King used vs kindlly.

“But to finish this discouerie, we passed on further, where within an ile [a mile] we were intercepted with great craggy stones in the midst of the river, where the water falleth so rudely and with such violence, as not any boat can possibly passe, and so broad disperseth the streame as there is not past fiue or sixe foote at low water, and to the shore scarce passage with a barge.”

This was the first view had by Englishmen of the situation where the city of Richmond was located.

In September, 1609, when Smith was president, he set out to find a more favorable spot for the colony than marshy Jamestown. He sailed again to the Indian village Powhatan, at the falls of the river, and bought of the natives some land near the present site of Richmond, where the landscape presented such charming features that he called the place “None Such.” On his way home he was wounded by the explosion of a bag of gunpowder, and the next month he left the colony and sailed for England, leaving only a small settlement to occupy the site he had purchased. In 1645, “Fforte Charles” was built below the falls of the James, but no permanent settlement was effected. In 1675, Colonel William Byrd was granted 7351 acres of land beginning at the mouth of Shockoe’s Creek, which joins the river at the falls, and again, in 1687, he had a patent of 956 acres on the east side of the creek, extending up and down the line of the James River. On a part of these two tracts the present city of Richmond was founded some years later by his son, Colonel William Evelyn Byrd, who gives this account in his journal:

“Sept. 19th, 1733. When we got home we laid the foundation of two large cities,--One at Schocco’s, to be called Richmond, and the other at the Point of Appamattuck River to be nam’d Petersburgh. These Major Mayo offered to lay out into lots without fee or reward. The truth of it is these two places being the uppermost landing of James and Appamattuck Rivers, are naturally intended for Marts where the traffick of the outer inhabitants must Center. Thus we did not build Castles only, but also citys in the air.”

He also advertised in the Virginia _Gazette_ of April, 1737, “that on the north side of James River, near the uppermost landing and a little below the falls, is lately built by Major Mayo a town called Richmond with streets sixty feet wide in a pleasant and healthy situation, and well supplied with springs of good water.”

[Illustration: COLONEL WILLIAM EVELYN BYRD.

FROM A PAINTING BY SIR GODFREY KNELLER.]

The founder of Richmond was one of the worthiest and most intellectual men in the Colony of Virginia. His portrait, by Sir Godfrey Kneller, shows a face of remarkable beauty, framed in the curls of a flowing peruke of the time of Queen Anne. He was noted as “the Great Virginia wit,” and his writings are among the most valuable that have descended to us from that era. His library was the largest that had ever been brought over to the New World. A catalogue of it, in folio, is now in possession of the Franklin Library in Philadelphia. He was the father of the beautiful Evelyn Byrd, whose death of a broken heart because her father refused to give his consent to her marriage with her lover--said to have been Lord Peterborough--has furnished a theme for poet and novelist. He was buried at his family estate, Westover, and his tombstone, in the old flower garden there, not only gives a history of his life, but tells us also of several of his noble and illustrious friends and their good qualities.

Richmond was established as a town by the Assembly of Virginia in 1742. Originally built on seven hills, it has been called the “Modern Rome,” and one of Richmond’s gifted daughters once wrote:

“O Richmond! Richmond! Richmond! Upon thy seven hills Like one of old, we wot of well Thy fame the wide world fills.”

In 1842, when Dickens visited Richmond, it already covered yet another hill, and he wrote of it as

“delightfully situated on eight hills overhanging James River, a sparkling stream studded here and there with bright islands, or brawling over broken rocks. There are pretty villas and cheerful houses on its streets, and nature smiles upon the country ’round.”

The oldest house in Richmond, the “Old Stone House,” situated on Main Street, was built by Jacob Ege in 1737, and is now used as a museum filled with relics and curiosities.

St. John’s Episcopal Church, which was built in 1740, is in a state of excellent preservation, and religious services are held in it as they were in the days before the Revolution. It was built under the superintendence of Richard Randolph of Curls Neck, the son of William Randolph of Turkey Island and Jane Bolling, the great-great-granddaughter of Pocahontas. In its graveyard are many quaint old tombstones--the oldest, that of the Rev. Robert Rose, is dated 1751. The learned and accomplished George Wythe, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and many other famous sons of Virginia lie buried in the graveyard. The most interesting event in the history of the Church, and one with which its name will be forever linked, was the meeting within its walls of the famous Virginia Convention of March 20, 1775. A few months after the adjournment of the first Continental Congress, this convention met to hear a report of its proceedings, and to deliberate on the political situation. The bitter hostility to the patriots on the part of Lord Dunmore made it unsafe for them to meet in Williamsburg, the capital of the colony, and the importance and sacredness of the cause made it appropriate to meet in the sanctuary of God, to whom they humbly looked for guidance on their sea of troubles. The vestry recognized this, and offered to the convention this, the largest building in the town. It was during the session of this convention that Patrick Henry made his famous speech, in which he proclaimed the folly of longer expecting peace, and the necessity of arming for immediate war, ending with the words: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.” The very spot where the orator stood is pointed out.

[Illustration: OLD STONE HOUSE, BUILT IN 1737.]

Some six years later, January 6, 1781, Benedict Arnold, the traitor, entered the city at the head of nine hundred British soldiers. That night part of his troops were quartered in the old church, desecrating it as far as they were able.

In 1779, the Legislature ordered the removal of the seat of government from Williamsburg to Richmond, then only a collection of disjointed villages placed amid the ragged ground at the falls of the James. Virginia had been settled largely by sons of country gentlemen, who brought from their far-off homes the love of country life. Her citizens preferred that life, and the title “Country Gentlemen” was the most desired. In consequence there were no large cities in the State.

In 1781, the Marquis Chastellux, who served with honor in the French army, thus described the city:

“Though Richmond be already an old town and well situated for trade, being built on the spot where the James River begins to be navigable, that is, just below the rapids. It was before the war one of the least considerable in Virginia, where they are all in general very small, but the seat of the government being removed from Williamsburg it is become a real capital, and is augmenting every day.”

[Illustration: BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF RICHMOND.]

In 1782, Richmond was incorporated as a city, and three years later the foundations of the Capitol were laid. Especially beautiful in the summer months, when the grass is as green as emerald and the noble trees give grateful shade, is the Capitol Square. Squirrels play as if at home about the grounds, much to the delight of the children. The square, with its area of about twelve acres, includes the lot on which the Executive mansion stands, and is supposed to be a part of Nathaniel Bacon’s plantation, where his overseer was murdered by the Indians, whose punishment by him, without permission of the Governor, Sir William Berkeley, was the beginning of the famous Bacon’s rebellion.

Of the Capitol itself, Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“I was written to in 1785, being then in Paris, by Directors appointed to superintend the building of a Capitol in Richmond, to advise them as to a plan.

* * * * *

Thinking it a favorable opportunity of introducing into the State an example of the classic style of antiquity, and the Maison Quarrée of Nismes, an ancient Roman Temple, being considered as the most perfect model existing of what may be called Cubic architecture, I applied to M. Clerissault, who had published drawings of the antiquities at Nismes to have me a model of the building made in stucco, only changing the order from the Corinthian to Ionic on account of the difficulty of Corinthian Capitals.”

The model sent by Jefferson is still preserved, and looks like a miniature of the Capitol with very slight variations. Jefferson says of it: “Here I am gazing whole hours at the Maison Quarrée like a lover at his mistress.”