Roman Catholic foundations of Frederick which lend such an unusual
aspect to the part of the town in which they stand. The long, dull
façade of the Novitiate fronts the school and the beautiful church,
and next that the great walls of the convent arise, shutting out the
world from the still, cloistered life within. Many men eminent in the
order have been part of the place--none of them more interesting,
perhaps, than Father John Du Bois, who came thither in 1792. He was an
_émigré_ of the French Revolution, in which his old classmates at the
College of Louis-le-Grand, Camille Desmoulins and Robespierre, figured
so largely, and he afterwards wore a mitre.
In 1824, Lafayette included Frederick in his great tour of rejoicing,
and was accorded the usual welcoming parades, speeches, dinner and
ball. Only a few years ago a beautiful, blind old lady, who had been a
beautiful, bright-eyed young wife, used to tell of her noble guest. She
was a favorite granddaughter of Governor Johnson, and in her girlhood
had helped Louisa Johnson, the wife of John Quincy Adams, to dispense
the unpretentious hospitality of the White House. Mr. Adams, she said,
got up and built his hearth-fire of a morning himself! It was a chapter
from an old romance to listen to her kindly talk of “the old times and
the days that were before us,” and when she “went away,” almost the
last of the perfect breeding and high simplicity of the old, old days
left Maryland forever.
So much must be left out that hardly a word can be given to the Civil
War, which found the old town alive with the old fervor. Not that
all its sons thought alike. Sometimes the gray uniforms thronged the
streets; sometimes the blue; once there was even a skirmish on the
main street. In the terrible Battle Autumn of 1862, Frederick was the
heart of the war. Dr. Holmes came down, after Antietam battle, to make
his famous “Hunt after the Captain,” and even the sad, gaunt face of
President Lincoln was seen among the rows of wounded and dying men that
filled convent and church--every available space. The roads for miles
in every direction were crowded with the paraphernalia of war--of hurt
and of healing.
[Illustration: THE OLD REFORMED CHURCH.]
In the early September days, Generals Lee and Stonewall Jackson were
both here with the armies, gathering for the fearful struggles of South
Mountain and Antietam. On the night of the 7th General Jackson drove
into town in an ambulance, to attend divine service in the Reformed
Church, where, as he wrote to his wife, and as is told of him by many
who saw him, he fell asleep. On the morning of the 10th, the camps
breaking, and the march over the mountain beginning, General Jackson,
with Major H. Kyd Douglass of his staff, rode to the Presbyterian manse
on Second Street, to pay his respects to his friends, the Rev. Dr. and
Mrs. Ross. As they had not yet arisen, the General pencilled a line of
greeting and farewell, with military precision noting the hour, “5¹⁄₄
A.M.,” and remounting his horse under the great silver-poplar rode down
Mill Alley, a narrow lane which crosses Carroll Creek by a ford and a
high foot-bridge, and so on to the Pike, or Patrick Street, where he
rejoined his command, and led them westward.
[Illustration: BARBARA FRITCHIE.]
A few hundred yards to the east of Mill Alley, and again across a
winding of Carroll Creek, lived a very old and intensely loyal woman,
Barbara Fritchie, who was no myth, but a figure familiar to Frederick
from time immemorial. Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on December
3, 1766, she had come, as Barbara Hauer, to Frederick so many years
before that on the occasion of the visit of General Washington in 1791
and a ball given in his honor, she loaned some of her choice china to
adorn the table, and his Excellency drank a cup of tea poured from her
yet carefully cherished teapot. She and her husband, John Fritchie,
a glover, had long lived in a small house adjoining the creek which
was demolished after one of the perilous floods to which the stream
was formerly subject. On the opposite side of the creek is a tiny
park, with a deep, cool spring which is often called by her name, and
from which many a weary soldier drank. She was of the Reformed faith,
and her devotion to the Union cause was almost passionate. Small
hospitality had she for the tired Confederate who sometimes dropped for
a moment’s rest upon her “stoop.” Such visitors were shown her cane,
and in most vigorous Saxon were invited to “move on.” It was said that
just before the battle of South Mountain, as the Union troops were
passing her house, General Reno, seeing her venerable welcoming face,
asked her age.
[Illustration: HOME OF BARBARA FRITCHIE.]
“Ninety-six! Boys, give three cheers for ninety-six!” he cried, and
so rode on to his death. Perhaps she waved a small flag at him, but
this one thing we know, that until Barbara Fritchie, who died on the
18th of December of that year, and Stonewall Jackson met in Whittier’s
stirring ballad, they never met at all. Those who honor the memory of a
brave Christian soldier are glad that the story is not true; those who
see in the poem an incident too picturesque to be willingly lost from
the story of the war, are sorry that it is not; but all who have seen
the valley will be for ever grateful for the perfect picture of its
loveliness.
Clinging to its old faiths, its old churches, its old traditions, its
old customs; clinging to its old houses, its old mahogany and china
and portraits, its sweet old gardens and its sweeter friendliness and
helpfulness and loyalty, the generations come and go.
“And ever the stars above look down
On the stars below in Frederick town.”
[Illustration: THE HATED BRITISH TAX-STAMP, 1765-1766.]
[Illustration]
WASHINGTON
THE NATION’S CAPITAL
BY FRANK A. VANDERLIP
Many generations before George Washington, as the New World Romulus,
paced off in person the metes and bounds of the Federal City, the
powerful Algonquin tribe of American Indians had established their
capital within the confines of what is now the District of Columbia.
Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas, conducted, with his eighty painted
chiefs, his savage councils of war, or peaceably smoked his calumet
within view of the hill destined to become the site of the forum of
the Republic. Nacochtank, afterwards Latinized as Anacostan by the
Jesuit fathers who accompanied Lord Baltimore to Maryland, and now
called Anacostia, a suburb of Washington, was the precise location of
Powhatan’s wigwam capital.
The first white man to approach the seat of government of these
barbarian warriors was Captain John Smith, who sailed up the
“Patawomeke” in 1608. The famous adventurer only partially explored the
country, the principal item in the log-book of his voyage being that
he found the river “full of luscious fish and its shores lined with
ferocious savages.”
Sixteen years later there began to appear in British publications vivid
recitals of adventure in the regions bordering the Patawomeke, and
alluring descriptions of the “fair and fertile” domain surrounding the
ancient capital of the Algonquins. These articles were written by Henry
Fleet, a daring trader, who, in search of furs, and braving the perils
of capture, had gone fearlessly as an uncommissioned ambassador to the
council-seats of the Monahoacs, the Monacans and the Powhatans, had
established trade relations with these crude inhabitants and had roamed
at will through their wildernesses. “The most healthful and pleasantest
region in all this country” was his characterization of that portion
of Maryland embracing the district to be chosen nearly three centuries
later as the seat of our national Government.
The description of this region sent to England by the intrepid fur
trader attracted, in 1660, a party of emigrants who founded homes in
the Maryland forests and meadows, fought or bargained for advantage
with the Indians, and soon reduced to ruin the rude huts of their
primitive capital. Husbandry invaded their domains and corn and wheat
crops were grown. It looked as if romance had fled to remoter forests,
and that henceforth that portion of the New World now the capital
city of the United States would be given over to the “homely joys and
destiny obscure” of emigrant farmers and their heirs.
For more than a hundred years the only record these humble settlers
gave the outside world was that they had found the soil productive and
that their farms were bordered by a majestic river on which white swan
floated in innumerable flocks.
It was reserved for the father of the American Republic to discover
that from the time of the original occupation of the region this simple
colony of wood-choppers and ploughmen had cherished a reputed prophecy
made in 1663 that this locality would, in the course of destiny, become
the renowned capital of a great nation.
To Washington and Major L’Enfant, who in an antique tavern in
Georgetown met the heirs and descendants of these pioneers to negotiate
the transfer of property to the Government, the strange story was told
that one, Francis Pope, in the year 1663, had had a vision wherein he
beheld a stately house of parliament on what is now Capitol Hill. In
pursuance of this dream he had purchased that eminence and had called
it “Rome,” and in further keeping with his sense of divination had
given to a sluggish yellow stream at the base of the hill the name
of “Tiber.” Pope, it was asserted, died in the faith that the wooded
hill he had christened would some day be crowned with a grand edifice
devoted to the deliberations of a mighty empire. Some of the more
irreverent settlers, dolefully observing the continued remoteness
of Pope’s uninhabited “Rome” from any possible capital, derisively
substituted, it was claimed, the name Goose Creek for the Tiber and
denied the hill the dignity of even a colloquial title.
The Tiber still flows on, but in the obscurity of a modern sewer.
The poet, Tom Moore, who stumbled through the bogs and over the
“magnificent distances” of what pretended to be a capital city in
1804, turned the story around and pictured the founders of the city
reveling in burlesque dreams concerning the future of the capital, and
attempting to mimic the glory of Rome and give absurd dignity to Goose
Creek by naming it the Tiber.
[Illustration: PIERRE CHARLES L’ENFANT.]
The original maps of the city, drawn by Major L’Enfant in 1790, give
both names to the stream, and there has come to light a much older
document, proving the groundlessness of the poet’s lampoon, and
giving substance to the romantic tale concerning Francis Pope and his
prophecy. It is his original abstract of title and reads as follows:
“June the 5th, 1663. Layd out for Francis Pope of this Province
Gentleman a parcel of land in Charles County called Rome lying on the
East side of the Anacostian River beginning at a marked oak standing
by the river side, the bounded tree of Captain Robert Troop and
running north by the river for breadth the length 200 perches to a
bounded oak standing at the mouth of a bay or inlet called Tiber ...
and now laid out for 400 acres more or less.”
Whether this nomenclature in the title attests the dream of this
pioneer or was adopted by him in a spirit of whimsical humor may be
left to the fancy of the reader, but the fact that 237 years ago
Capitol Hill was called Rome, and a stream at its base the Tiber, gives
dramatic interest to the reputed prophecy. It is one of the several
beautiful traditions that impart a romantic interest to the genesis of
Washington.
The record of the complicated circumstances resulting in the final
location of a site for the capital is one of the most fascinating
chapters in American history. The Continental Congress was a migratory
body. It had no abiding capital, the exigencies of war forcing it
from city to city. During the stress of the Revolution it convened
its sessions at Philadelphia, Baltimore, Lancaster, York, Princeton,
Annapolis, Trenton and New York City.
For four years prior to the capitulation of Cornwallis, Congress had
held its sessions in Philadelphia, and the city seemed destined to
become the permanent capital. Public sentiment favored such selection,
for the Quaker City was identified with most of the great and
far-reaching acts of the American colonies. There a document of human
rights, unparalleled since Magna Charta, had been signed by a company
of immortals, and there the Liberty Bell had pealed forth its joyous
tones for freedom.
Notwithstanding the splendid sentiments favoring the retention of
Philadelphia as the capital, there were statesmen in that day who
opposed selecting a city whose immediate interests and political
strength might influence and perhaps dominate the legislation that
should be national. Paris had not yet risen to override France,
but London had at times shown its mastery over Parliament and the
King. Some of the public men, therefore, hopeful of establishing the
capital remote from the concentrated power of a great city, favored
the creation of a city that should be wholly under the control of the
nation.
The project might never have been accomplished but for the mutinous
uprising of a body of unpaid soldiers who attempted to compel Congress
by force of arms to settle their arrears. In this extremity, the
Executive Council of Pennsylvania was appealed to, but declined to
interfere, claiming that the State militia could not be relied upon,
as its members were largely in sympathy with the revolters. In the
bankrupt condition of the Treasury, however, Congress had a sure
defence, and the hopelessness of further sedition served to disarm the
insurrectionary band. But Congress had learned its lesson and sought a
more peaceful session at Trenton.
From this time, with Congress sitting in various cities until 1790, the
question of selecting a permanent site for the capital became one of
the most engrossing issues before the American people. New York offered
public buildings free; Virginia and Maryland offered to cede districts
ten miles square and to furnish additional subsidies as an inducement.
The advantages of Philadelphia and Baltimore were ably advanced, while
Germantown, Conogocheague, Wright’s Ferry, Peach Bottom and other
ambitious centres sent persuasive orators into the acrimonious forum to
plead their respective claims.
Contumacy, satire, hatred, envy and unreason struggled with wisdom
and patriotism for nearly a decade. It was conceded by all that the
American capital should be fixed as near as possible to what would
remain the centre of population, but as to the location destined to
enjoy the distinction there was the greatest possible conflict of
conjecture. Goodhue declared that it would remain in the North for
countless ages, and that when it did shift it would travel toward the
manufacturing districts of New England.
Stone of Maryland argued that as the tides of humanity followed the
lines of least resistance, they would flow into the warm and fertile
South.
The vast domain to the westward was not taken into the calculations of
statesmen predicting the course of empire. The profoundest philosophers
of the latter part of the eighteenth century were unable to grasp the
transformations soon to be wrought by the application of steam. They
could not dream that subsequent generations would establish a teeming
civilization in the distant and unmeasured solitudes. A century later,
when the eleventh census was taken, the centre of population was five
hundred and twenty miles westward of the spot Congress had fixed
upon as the unchanging focus of our growth. Madison alone caught a
glimpse of continental possibilities, and believed that America might
“speedily behold an astonishing mass of people on the western waters;”
and although for that reason it might be impossible to select a site
for the capital that would remain central as regards population, it
was of the utmost importance to choose a point whence the knowledge of
new enactments could be the most quickly disseminated throughout the
land. If it were possible, he contended, to promulgate the proceedings
of Congress by some simultaneous operation, it would be of less
consequence where the seat of government might be established. A site
along the Potomac began to be favored, as the then projected canal, now
paralleling the Potomac from Georgetown to Cumberland, would afford the
most convenient and rapid means of conveying to waiting citizens beyond
the Alleghanies the documentary decrees of the Congress of the United
States.
Could Washington and his colleagues have imagined that in a later age
the tidings of the deliberations of Congress, instead of depending
for transmission upon canal-boats, would be flashed instantly, by the
clicking of mysterious keys, to the distant shores of the continent,
and even to possessions beyond the seas, the Potomac to-day would
probably not be graced by the beautiful city of Washington.
Nearly all the members agreed that the capital should be located on
some waterway communicating with the Atlantic and connected with the
territory of the West. The Delaware, the Susquehanna, the Potomac, and
even Codorus Creek, were urged.
In the midst of the diatribes which these debates created, the
unconscious comedian of the House, Thomas Vining of Maryland, delivered
a speech in favor of the Potomac which became famous not for its
lucidity or logic, but for the absurdities of its bombast.
Charles Dickens’s comment concerning Congressional debate of a later
day, that the constituents of American statesmen boasted not of what
their representatives said, but of the length of time they talked,
would have fittingly described the attitude of the popular mind
toward the fight for the capital. Every member of both Houses had won
the plaudits of his respective followers by almost endless speeches
championing some locality, or devoted to arraignment of the sinister
motives of opponents.
Mr. Vining’s speech was a decided relief. In the first place, it was
brief, and secondly, its freedom from malevolence together with its
bizarre humor gave it a distinction unique in the famous controversy.
“Though the interest of the State I represent is involved in it,”
said he, “I am yet to learn of the Committee whether Congress are
to tickle the trout on the stream of the Codorus, to build their
sumptuous palaces on the banks of the Potomac, or to admire commerce
with her expanded wings on the waters of the Delaware. I have, on
this occasion, educated my mind to impartiality and have endeavored
to chastise its prejudices. I confess to the House and to the world,
that viewing the subject with all its circumstances, I am in favor of
the Potomac. I wish the seat of government to be fixed there, because
I think the interest, the honor and the greatness of the country
require it. I look on it as the centre from which those streams are
to flow that are to animate and invigorate the body politic. From
thence, it appears to me, the rays of government will most naturally
diverge to the extremities of the Union. I declare that I look on the
western territory in an awful and striking point of view. To that
region the unpolished sons of earth are flowing from all quarters,
men to whom the protection of the laws, and the controlling force of
the government are equally necessary; from this great consideration I
conclude that the banks of the Potomac are the proper station.”
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.