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.]
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.