The same year in which the New York Federal Hall had seen the
inauguration of the first President, the chance of his life came to
L'Enfant. He deserved it, because he not only availed himself of it, but
went forth to meet it, giving up his abode in New York, "where I stood
at the time," he wrote later, "able of commanding whatever business I
liked." This was the founding of the federal city.
The impression was a general one among the French that those insurgents
whom they had helped to become a free nation were to be a great one,
too. Leaving England, where he was a refugee during our Revolution,
Talleyrand decided to come to the United States, "desirous of seeing,"
he says in his memoirs, "that great country whose history begins."
General Moreau, also a refugee, a few years later spoke with the same
confidence of the future of the country: "I had pictured to myself the
advantages of living under a free government; but I had conceived only
in part what such happiness is: here it is enjoyed to the full.... It is
impossible for men who have lived under such a government to allow
themselves ever to be subjugated; they would be very great cowards if
they did not perish to the last in order to defend it."[108]
L'Enfant, with his tendency to see things "en grand," could not fail to
act accordingly, and the moment he heard that the federal city would be
neither New York nor Philadelphia, nor any other already in existence,
but one to be built expressly, he wrote to Washington a letter
remarkable by his clear understanding of the opportunity offered to the
country, and by his determined purpose to work not for the three million
inhabitants of his day, but for the one hundred of ours, and for all the
unborn millions that will come after us.
The letter is dated from New York, 11th of September, 1789. "Sir," he
said, "the late determination of Congress to lay the foundation of a
city which is to become the capital of this vast empire offers so great
an occasion of acquiring reputation to whoever may be appointed to
conduct the execution of the business that your Excellency will not be
surprised that my ambition and the desire I have of becoming a useful
citizen should lead me to wish a share in the undertaking.
"No nation, perhaps, had ever before the opportunity offered them of
deliberately deciding on the spot where their capital city should be
fixed.... And, although the means now within the power of the country
are not such as to pursue the design to any great extent, it will be
obvious that the plan should be drawn on such a scale as to leave room
for that aggrandizement and embellishment which the increase of the
wealth of the nation will permit it to pursue at any period, however
remote. Viewing the matter in this light, I am fully sensible of the
extent of the undertaking."[109]
Washington knew that L'Enfant was afflicted, to be sure, with an
"untoward" temper, being haughty, proud, intractable, but that he was
honest withal, sincere, loyal, full of ideas, and remarkably gifted. He
decided to intrust him with the great task, thus justifying, a little
later, his selection: "Since my first knowledge of the gentleman's
abilities in the line of his profession, I have received him not only as
a scientific man, but one who has added considerable taste to
professional knowledge; and that, for such employment as he is now
engaged in, for prosecuting public works and carrying them into effect,
he was better qualified than any one who had come within my knowledge in
this country."[110] The President informed L'Enfant that he was to set
to work at once, and so bestir himself as to have at least a general
plan to show a few months later, when he himself would return from a
trip South. On March 2, 1791, Washington announced to Colonel Dickens,
of Georgetown, the coming of the major: "An eminent French military
engineer starts for Georgetown to examine and survey the site of the
federal city." A few days later the arrival of "Major Longfont" was duly
recorded by the _Georgetown Weekly Ledger_.[111]
L'Enfant's enthusiasm and his desire to do well and quickly had been
raised to a high pitch. He reached the place a few days later and found
it wrapped in mist, soaked in rain, but he would not wait. "I see no
other way," he wrote to Jefferson on the 11th, "if by Monday next the
weather does not change, but of making a rough draft as accurate as may
be obtained by viewing the ground in riding over it on horseback, as I
have already done yesterday through the rain, to obtain a knowledge of
the whole.... As far as I was able to judge through a thick fog, I
passed on many spots which appeared to me really beautiful, and which
seem to dispute with each other [which] commands."[112]
When he could see the place to better advantage, his admiration knew no
bounds. In an unpublished letter to Hamilton he says: "Now, when you
may probably have heard that I am finally charged with delineating a
plan for the city, I feel a sort of embarrassment how to speak to you as
advantageously as I really think of the situation determined upon; for,
as there is no doubt, I must feel highly interested in the success of
the undertaking, I become apprehensive of being charged with partiality
when I assure you that no position in America can be more susceptible of
grand improvement than that between the eastern branch of the Potomac
and Georgetown."[113]
A few weeks later L'Enfant was doing the honors of the spot to a brother
artist, the painter Trumbull, just back from Yorktown, where he had been
sketching in view of his big picture of the surrendering of Cornwallis,
and who wrote in his autobiography: "Then to Georgetown, where I found
Major L'Enfant drawing his plan of the city of Washington; rode with him
over the ground on which the city has since been built. Where the
Capitol now stands was then a thick wood." (May, 1791.)
Another visitor of note came in the same year, namely the French
minister, a former companion in arms of Lafayette and of L'Enfant
himself, Ternant, back from a three days' stay at Mount Vernon, and who
gave his government an account of what he had observed: "I would not
leave Georgetown without having seen the ground destined for the federal
city. The position seemed to me a most interesting one from every point
of view. The French engineer who has already traced the streets, is busy
preparing a detailed plan.... The President shows the greatest interest
in this new Salente, which is to bear his name."[114]
The city, L'Enfant thought, must be great, beautiful, and soon peopled,
drawn "on that grand scale on which it ought to be planned";[115] meant
to absorb "Georgetown itself, whose name will before long be suppressed,
and its whole district become a part of the cession."[116] It must be
quickly filled with inhabitants, because this will strengthen the Union:
"I earnestly wish all that the Eastern States can spare may come this
way, and believe it would answer as good a purpose as that of their
emigration to the West. It would deface that line of markation which
will ever oppose the South against the East, for when objects are seen
at a distance the idea we form of them is apt to mislead us ... and we
fancy monstrous that object which, from a nearer view, would charm
us.... Hence arises a natural though unwarrantable prejudice of nations
against nations, of States against States, and so down to individuals,
who often mistrust one another for want of being sufficiently acquainted
with each other."[117]
The city must be beautiful, due advantage being taken of the hilly
nature of the spot for grand or lovely prospects, and of its water
resources for handsome fountains and cascades: "five grand fountains
intended, with a constant spout of water--a grand cascade" at the foot
of Capitol Hill,[118] etc., a part of the plan which was, unluckily,
left in abeyance. Some had spoken of a plain rectangular plan, "a
regular assemblage of houses laid out in squares, and forming streets
all parallel and uniform." This might be good enough, L'Enfant declared,
"on a well-level plain, where, no surrounding object being interesting,
it becomes indifferent which way the opening street may be directed."
But the case is quite different with the future federal city: "Such
regular plans, however answerable they may appear on paper ... become at
last tiresome and insipid, and it could never be, in its origin, but a
mean continence of some cool imagination wanting a sense of the really
grand and truly beautiful, only to be met with where nature contributes
with art and diversifies the objects."[119] We may imagine what his
feelings would be if he saw, in our days, the steam-shovel busy around
the city, dumping as many hills as possible into as many vales, and
securing a maximum platitude.
But the city must be more than that; besides being beautiful, healthy,
commodious, it should be full of sentiment, of associations, of ideas;
everything in it must be evocative and have a meaning and a "raison
d'être." Rarely was a brain more busy than that of L'Enfant during the
first half of the year 1791. Surveying the ground, mapping out the
district, sketching the chief buildings of the model city that was to
be,[120] he presented three reports to Washington, the first, giving
only his general ideas, before the end of March, the second in June,
the last in August, the two latter accompanied with plans, the last of
which being the one which was followed in the building of the city.
By the amplitude of its scope, the logic of the arrangements, the
breadth of the streets and avenues, the beauty of the prospects cleverly
taken into account, the quantity of ground set apart for gardens and
parks, the display of waters, the plan was a unique monument. The
selection of the place for what we call the Capitol and the White House,
which were then called the Federal House and the Palace for the
President, near which the ministerial departments were to be built, had
been the result of a good deal of thinking and comparing. "After much
menutial [_sic_] search for an eligible situation, prompted, as I may
say, from a fear of being prejudiced in favor of a first opinion, I
could discover no one so advantageously to greet the congressional
building as is that on the west end of Jenkins heights, which stand as a
pedestal waiting for a monument.... Some might, perhaps, require less
labor to be made agreeable, but, after all assistance of arts, none ever
would be made so grand." On that very pedestal now rises the Capitol of
the United States.
As for the "Presidential Palace," L'Enfant made his choice with the
object, he says, of "adding to the sumptuousness of a palace the
convenience of a house and the agreeableness of a country seat," which
are the three main qualities actually combined in the present White
House. He selected a spot which Washington had himself noticed as a
convenient one, at some distance from Congress, it is true, but that
would not matter much, L'Enfant thought, with his old-world notions of
etiquette, for "no message to nor from the President is to be made
without a sort of decorum which will doubtless point out the propriety
of committee waiting on him in carriage, should his palace be even
contiguous to Congress." Since it was a question of driving, it little
mattered whether the drive was to be a little more or less long.
For different reasons President Washington approved of that distance;
_major e longinquo amicitia_, he apparently thought. "Where and how," he
once wrote to Alexander White, "the houses for the President and other
public officers may be fixed is to me as an individual a matter of
moonshine, but ... the daily intercourse which the secretaries of the
departments must have with the President would render a distant
situation extremely inconvenient to them; and not much less so would one
be close to the Capitol, for it was the universal complaint of them all,
that while the legislature was in session they could do little or no
business, so much were they interrupted by the individual visits of
members (in office hours) and by calls for papers. Many of them have
declared to me that they have often been obliged to go home and deny
themselves in order to transact the current business."[121] In that
respect, carriage or no carriage, distance would have its merits.
L'Enfant's letters and the notes accompanying his plans show that
everything in the future city had been devised, indeed, with an
intention: ever-flowing fountains and a cascade for health and beauty;
an avenue of noble buildings, leading from the Capitol to the
Presidential House, and increasing the dignified appearance of both:
"The grand avenue," he wrote, "connecting both the Palace and the
Federal House will be most magnificent and most convenient," with a
number of handsome monuments, a very characteristic one being a temple
for national semireligious celebrations, "such as public prayer,
thanksgivings, funeral orations, etc., and assigned to the special use
of no particular sect or denomination, but equally opened to all." It
would also be a pantheon for the illustrious dead, "as may hereafter be
decreed by the voice of a grateful nation." A column, as yet never
built, was "to be erected to celebrate the first rise of a navy, and to
stand a ready monument to consecrate its progress and achievements." The
squares were to be allotted, one to each of the States forming the
Union: "The centre of each square will admit of statues, columns,
obelisks, or any other ornaments ... to perpetuate not only the memory
of such individuals whose counsels or military achievements were
conspicuous in giving liberty and independence to this country, but also
those whose usefulness hath rendered them worthy of general imitation,
to invite the youth of succeeding generations to tread in the paths of
those sages or heroes whom their country has thought proper to
celebrate." This was a way, L'Enfant considered, of fortifying the Union
and of giving to the very city that educational value to which he
attached so much importance.
Chief among those patriotic objects was to be, at some distance north of
the place where the Washington monument now rises, "the equestrian
figure of George Washington, a monument voted in 1783 by the late
Continental Congress." And L'Enfant must certainly have hoped that the
author would be his illustrious compatriot, the sculptor Houdon, on
whose behalf we have seen him writing to Congress, in 1785, as to the
probable cost.
Distant views and prospects were, of course, to be used to the best
advantage: "Attention has been paid to the passing of those leading
avenues over the most favorable ground for prospect and convenience."
But, above all, L'Enfant was persistent in his request that, on no
account, the grandeur of his conception be in any way curtailed: it was
to remain commensurate with the greatness of the United States of future
times. The plan "must leave to posterity a grand idea of the patriotic
interest which promoted it."[122] He foresaw much opposition to some of
his ideas, but besought the President to stand by him, and especially to
prevent any dwarfing of his views: "I remain assured you will conceive
it essential to pursue with dignity the operation of an undertaking of a
magnitude so worthy of the concern of a grand empire ... over whose
progress the eyes of every other nation, envying the opportunity denied
them, will stand judge."[123]
To make a man of that temper and enthusiasm, having a reason for each of
his propositions, accept hints and change his mind was almost an
impossibility. In vain did Jefferson object "to the obligation to build
the houses at a given distance from the street.... It produces a
disgusting monotony; all persons make this complaint against
Philadelphia." In the same record of his views, however, and much more
to his credit, Washington's secretary of state is seen foreseeing the
sky-scraper and its dangers: "In Paris it is forbidden to build a house
beyond a given height, and it is admitted to be a good restriction. It
keeps down the price of grounds, keeps the houses low and convenient,
and the streets light and airy. Fires are much more manageable when
houses are low,"[124] as was only too well evidenced since in the fires
at Chicago, Baltimore, and San Francisco.
As for the President himself, he had well-determined, practical ideas on
some points, such as the befitting distance between the places of abode
of Congress and of the chief of the state, and, what was of more import,
the necessarily large extent of the ground to be reserved for the
building of the future capital.[125] On the rest, with his habit of
trusting those who knew, he seems to have left free rein to L'Enfant.
Submitting to him certain suggestions, some from Jefferson, he allows
him to use them or not, as he pleases, and he personally seems to
incline toward not: "Sir, although I do not conceive that you will
derive any material advantage from an examination of the inclosed
papers, yet, as they have been drawn under different circumstances and
by different persons, they may be compared with your own ideas of a
proper plan for the federal city.... The rough sketch by Mr. Jefferson
was done under an idea that no offer worthy of consideration would come
from the landholders in the vicinity of Carrollsburgh, from the
backwardness which appeared in them, and therefore was accommodated to
the grounds about Georgetown."[126]
Criticism of L'Enfant's plan turned out to be insignificant, and the
approbation general. "The work of Major L'Enfant, which is greatly
admired, will show," Washington said, "that he had many objects to
attend to and to combine, not on paper merely, but to make them
correspond with the actual circumstances of the ground."[127] Jefferson,
who had the good taste not to stick to his own former suggestions, was
sending, a little later, copies of the plan to Gouverneur Morris, then
minister to France, for him to exhibit in various cities as a thing for
the United States to be proud of: "I sent you by the way of London a
dozen plans of the city of Washington in the Federal territory, hoping
you would have them displayed to public view where they would be most
seen by those descriptions of men worthy and likely to be attracted to
it. Paris, Lyons, Rouen, and the seaport towns of Havre, Nantes,
Bordeaux, and Marseille would be proper places to send them to."[128]
Three assistants had been given to L'Enfant, two of the Ellicot brothers
(Andrew and Benjamin) and Isaac Roberdeau, the major's trustiest second.
Three Commissioners of the District had been appointed, Thomas Johnson
and Daniel Carroll, both of Maryland, and David Stuart, of Virginia.
They notified L'Enfant, on the 9th of September, 1791, that a name had
been selected for the district and the city: "We have agreed that the
federal district shall be called 'the Territory of Columbia,' and the
federal city 'the City of Washington.' The title of the map will
therefore be 'A map of the City of Washington in the District of
Columbia.'"
For the expropriation of the ground with a minimum actual outlay, an
ingenious system, also applied elsewhere, had been adopted: "The terms
entered into by me," Washington wrote to Jefferson, "on the part of the
United States with the landowners of Georgetown and Carrollsburgh, are
that all the land from Rock Creek along the river to the Eastern
Branch ... is ceded to the public, on condition that, when the whole shall
be surveyed and laid off as a city, which Major L'Enfant is now directed
to do, the present proprietors shall retain every other lot, and for such
parts of the land as may be taken for public use they shall be allowed
at the rate of twenty-five pounds per acre, the public having the right
to reserve such parts of the wood on the land as may be thought
necessary to be preserved for ornament; the landholders to have the use
and profit of all the grounds until the city is laid off into lots,
which by this agreement became public property. Nothing is to be allowed
for the ground which may be occupied as streets or alleys." The
President was confident that everybody would acquiesce and show
good-will, "even the obstinate Mr. Burns."[129]
But it turned out that there were other obstinate people besides Mr.
Burns, L'Enfant himself chief among them. He had evinced from the first
a great fear of speculators, and was at once at war with them. "How
far," he boldly wrote to Hamilton, "I have contributed to overset that
plotting business, it would not do for me to tell; besides, I am not
wholly satisfied whether I would be thanked for by the people among whom
you live."[130] The three Commissioners had notions of their own, but
could never bring L'Enfant to take into account either their persons or
their ideas; he would acknowledge no chief except Washington, who,
gently at first, firmly afterward, sternly later, and vainly throughout,
tried to make the major understand that he was one of the Commissioners'
subordinates. A great reciprocal irritation, which even the President's
painstaking diplomacy could not assuage, began between them from the
first. Out of fear of speculators, L'Enfant wanted the sale of the lots
to be delayed, while the Commissioners desired to make a beginning as
soon as possible. The officer kept, accordingly, his plan to himself,
and refused to have it shown to would-be purchasers. How, then,
Washington exclaimed, could they be "induced to buy, to borrow an old
adage, a _pig in a poke_"?[131]
The major would not be persuaded, and, giving an early example of an
unconquerable fear of what would now be called a "trust," he persisted
in refusing to show his plan to any individual or association. He had
declared beforehand, in one of his reports to the President, what were
his views and how things should be delayed until the plan could be
engraved, distributed all over the country, and made known to all people
at the same time: "A sale made previous the general plan of the
distribution of the city is made public, and before the circumstance of
that sale taking place has had time to be known through the whole
continent, will not call a sufficient concurrence, and must be confined
to a few individuals speculating ... and the consequence of a low sale
in this first instance may prove injurious to the subsequent ones by
serving as precedents." He was afraid of the "plotting of a number of
certain designing men," of the forming of a "society" organized "to
engross the most of the sale and master the whole business."[132]
When one of the chief landowners of the district, Daniel Carroll, of
Duddington, a relative of one of the Commissioners, decided, in spite of
all warnings, to go on with the building of a house across what was to
be New Jersey Avenue, matters came to a crisis. Washington tried to
pacify L'Enfant, whose indignation knew no bounds. "As a similar case,"
he wrote to him, "cannot happen again (Mr. Carroll's house having been
begun before the federal district was fixed upon), no precedent will be
established by yielding a little in the present instance; and it will
always be found sound policy to conciliate the good-will rather than
provoke the enmity of any man, where it can be accomplished without much
difficulty, inconvenience, or loss."
But even at the request of a leader whom he worshipped, L'Enfant would
not be persuaded. With no authority from the Commissioners, he sent his
faithful Roberdeau to raze the house to the ground, which was but partly
done when the Commissioners had Roberdeau arrested. L'Enfant thereupon
came in person with some laborers, and saw the work of destruction
perfected (November 22). He barely escaped arrest himself. Washington,
who, as he wrote to Jefferson, was loath to lose "his services, which in
my opinion would be a serious misfortune," severely remonstrated now
with the major. "In future I must strictly enjoin you to touch no man's
property without his consent, or the previous order of the
Commissioners," adding in kindlier tones: "Having the beauty and
regularity of your plan only in view, you pursue it as if every person
or thing were obliged to yield to it."[133]
But so they are, thought L'Enfant. For him the city was his city, his
child, and a father has a right to rear his child as he pleases.
Remonstrating went on some time. Jefferson came to the rescue of the
President, used the fairest means, asked the major to dine with him
"tête à tête," so as to quietly discuss the federal city, the hour for
the meal differing rather widely from ours: "Mr. Jefferson presents his
compliments to Major L'Enfant, and is sorry to have been absent when he
was so kind as to call on him, as he wishes to have some conversation
with him on the subject of the federal city. He asks the favor of him to
come and take a private dinner with him to-morrow at half after three,
which may afford time and opportunity for the purpose.--Saturday January
7, 1792."[134] Nothing resulted. Another landowner, Notley Young, had
been found in December building a house which had, "contrary to
expectation, fallen into a principal street. But I hope," Washington
wrote the Commissioners, "the major does not mean to proceed to the
demolition of this also."
On no point would L'Enfant yield, so that on March 6, 1792, Jefferson
wrote to the Commissioners: "It having been found impracticable to
employ Major L'Enfant in that degree of subordination which was lawful
and proper, he has been notified that his services were at an end."
A consolation and a comfort to him was the immediate signing by all the
landowners of the district, except two, of a testimonial "lamenting" his
departure, wishing for his return, praising his work, "for we well know
that your time and the whole powers of your mind have been for months
entirely devoted to the arrangements in the city which reflect so much
honor on your taste and judgment."[135]