“ON THE HILL”
In the ordinary conversation of Washington, one rarely hears Congress
mentioned by name. The respective functions of its two chambers are so
generally understood that it is common to distinguish between them: the
Senate yesterday did so-and-so; something is about to occur in the House
of Representatives. In speaking of the lawmakers collectively, the
familiar phrase is “the gentlemen on the hill.” Washington has several
hills, but “the” hill is by universal consent the one on which the
Capitol stands.
To the visitor who knows the city only in its present aspect, the choice
of this hill for the monumental building now crowning it seems most
natural. This is not, however, the place originally considered for the
purpose. James Madison favored Shuter’s Hill, an eminence a little west
of Alexandria, now embraced in the tract set apart for George Washington
Park. Thomas Jefferson supported Madison in this preference; but
President Washington, feeling that Virginia had already had her full
share of the honors in launching the new republic, insisted that the
most important architecture at the seat of government should stand on
the Maryland side of the Potomac. His view prevailed; and, when the
sites of the principal public buildings were marked on L’Enfant’s plan
of the city, that selected for the Capitol was the elevation which,
besides being fairly central, commanded in its outlook, and was
commanded by, the greatest area of country on both sides of the river.
Like almost everything else architectural in Washington, the Capitol is
a pile of gradual growth, subjected to many changes of detail in the
plans. Sketches were submitted in competition for a prize; the two
competitors who came nearest to meeting the requirements, though adopted
citizens of the United States, were respectively of French and English
birth; and the drawings finally evolved from the general scheme of the
one modified by the more acceptable ideas of the other were turned over
to an Irishman to perfect and carry out. Most of the credit belongs,
undoubtedly, to Doctor William Thornton, a draftsman by profession, who
afterward became Superintendent of Patents. The material used was
freestone from a neighboring quarry. Only the north or Senate end was
far enough advanced by the autumn of 1800 to enable Congress to hold
its short session there, and the disputes which arose over the
succeeding stages of the work led President Jefferson to call in
Benjamin H. Latrobe of Richmond, the first architect of already
established rank who had had anything to do with it. Under his
direction, the south end was made habitable by 1811; and the House of
Representatives, which till then had been uncomfortably quartered in
such odd places as it could find, took possession. There was no central
structure connecting the Senate and House ends, but a roofed wooden
passageway led from the one to the other. In this condition was the
Capitol when, in 1814, the British invaders burned all of it that was
burnable.
The heavier masonry, of course, was unaffected by the fire except for
the need of a little patchwork here and there; but in his task of
restoration Mr. Latrobe found himself so embarrassed by dissensions
between the dignitaries who gave him his orders that after three
vexatious years he resigned, and the celebrated Charles Bulfinch of
Boston took his place. In 1830 Mr. Bulfinch pronounced the building
finished and returned home, and for twenty years it remained
substantially as he left it. Then, the needs of Congress having outgrown
the space at their disposal, Thomas U. Walter of Philadelphia was
ordered to prepare plans for an enlargement, and he was far-sighted
enough to make the extension the vehicle for some other improvements.
The great wings attached to the northern and southern extremities were
built of white marble, which has rendered imperative the frequent
repainting of the old freestone surfaces to match; the dome was raised
proportionally; and additions made, then and since, to the surrounding
grounds, have given the building an appropriate setting and vastly
enhanced its beauty of approach.
This is, in brief, the story of the Capitol as we find it to-day. A
stroll through it will call up other memories. As you look at the
building from the east, you will be struck by the difference in tint
between the painted main structure and the two marble wings. Imagine the
wings cut off and the dome reduced to about half its present height and
ended abruptly in a flat top, and you have in your mind’s eye a picture
of the Capitol as Bulfinch left it, and as it remained till shortly
before the Civil War. Its most conspicuous feature now is its towering
dome, surmounted by a bronze allegorical figure of American Freedom. As
the sculptor Crawford originally modeled the image, its head was crowned
with the conventional liberty-cap; but Jefferson Davis, then Secretary
of War, objected to this on the ground that it was the sign of a freed
slave, whereas Americans were born free. The cap was therefore discarded
in favor of the present helmet of eagle feathers.
Filling the pediment over the main portico is a bit of sculpture which
enjoys the distinction of having been designed by John Quincy Adams,
because he could not find an artist who could draw him what he wished.
It consists of three figures: the Genius of America in the center and
Hope and Justice on either side, Justice appearing without her customary
blindfold. Flanking the main staircase are two groups of statuary. That
on our left is called “The Discovery”--Columbus holding aloft a globe,
while an Indian woman crouches at his feet. It was done by the Italian
sculptor Persico, who copied Columbus’s armor from the last suit
actually worn by him. And now comes a bit of politics; for Congress,
having awarded this work to a foreigner, was besieged by a demand that
the next order be given to an American, and accordingly engaged Horatio
Greenough to produce “The Rescue,” which stands on our right. It
represents a frontiersman saving his wife and child from capture by an
Indian.
The portico has an historic association with another President besides
Adams, for it was here that an attempt was made upon the life of Andrew
Jackson. At the close of a funeral service in the House of
Representatives, he had just passed out of the rotunda to descend the
steps, when a demented mechanic named Lawrence sprang from a place of
hiding, aimed a pistol at him, and pulled the trigger. As they were less
than ten feet apart, the President was saved only by the failure of the
powder to explode. Lawrence instantly dropped the useless pistol and
tried another, with like effect. Jackson never could be talked out of
the idea that Lawrence was the tool of political conspirators who wished
to put some one else in his place as President.
We enter the building between the bronze doors designed by Randolph
Rogers, commonly called the “Columbus doors” because they tell, in a
series of reliefs, the life story of the discoverer. In the rotunda, the
center of the building, we find ourselves surrounded by paintings and
sculpture dealing with historical subjects. Hung at even intervals are
eight large canvases, of which four are by John Trumbull, a portrait
painter who was also an officer of the patriot army in the Revolution.
For the one representing the signing of the Declaration of Independence,
old John Randolph could find no better designation than “the shin
piece,” because “such a collection of legs never before came together in
any one picture”; but a more friendly commentator has discovered by
actual count that, of the nearly fifty figures, only ten show either
legs or feet, the rest being relieved by drapery or deep shadows. In
another, the “Resignation of General Washington,” are the figures of two
girls, which have given rise to many a discussion among sightseers
because the pair seem to have five hands between them; I shall not
attempt to solve the problem.
The paintings of the “Landing of Columbus,” “Discovery of the
Mississippi,” “Baptism of Pocahontas,” and “Embarkation of the Pilgrims”
are from the brushes of Vanderlyn, Powell, Chapman, and Weir
respectively. Their subjects permit of picturesque costumes and dramatic
groupings which Trumbull could not use. But whatever his limitations, we
owe to him, probably more than to any other one man, the rotunda as we
know it. Bulfinch had under consideration various schemes of treatment
for the center of the building, but Trumbull’s foremost thought was of a
good light for his pictures; and, as he was a valued friend of the
architect, the pertinacity with which he urged this design won the day.
Four doors pierce the circular chamber, and over each is a rectangle of
sculpture in high relief. As works of art, the quartet are little short
of execrable, but as milestones on the path of esthetic development in
America they have a charm of their own. All were the work of Italian
sculptors, whose acquaintance with our domestic history and concerns was
presumptively scant; and when the tablet showing William Penn
negotiating his treaty with the Indians was first exhibited to the
public, the head of the gentle Quaker was adorned with a cocked hat and
military queue. It was necessary, therefore, to decapitate him and set
upon his shoulders the head he now wears. All four reliefs deal with our
aboriginal problem. In one, the Indians are welcoming the Pilgrim
Fathers with a gift of corn; in another, they are conveying to Penn the
land on which Philadelphia now stands; in a third, Pocahontas is saving
the life of Captain John Smith; while in the fourth, Caucasian
civilization, personified in Daniel Boone, has already killed one Indian
and is engaged in bloody combat with a second. The series drew from an
old chief the comment that they told the true story of the way the white
race had repaid the hospitality of the red race by exterminating it; and
another observer, pointing to the huddled-up body of the fallen Indian
under Boone’s foot, remarked: “The white man has not left the Indian
land enough even to die on!”
Running all around the circular wall and immediately under the dome
opening, we note an unfinished frieze, so done in neutral tints as to
convey the suggestion of relief sculpture, depicting the most notable
events in the history of America from the landing of Columbus to the
discovery of gold in California. Six of the fourteen scenes were painted
by Constantino Brumidi, and the others after sketches left by him. It
was an ambitious design, in view of the rapidity with which history is
made now and the brevity of the space. Only a trifling gap is left for
all that has happened in the last sixty years or so, and Congress has
had more than one debate over what ought to be crowded into the record
of this interval. Among the subjects considered have been the
emancipation of the slaves, the completion of the first transcontinental
railroad, and the freeing of Cuba; but the proposal which has met with
most favor is a symbolic treatment of the Civil War, not as a breach
between the sections but as the cementing of a stronger bond. This was
set aside because the design outlined was a representation of Grant and
Lee clasping hands under the Appomattox apple tree--the objection being
based on the discovery that the apple tree existed only in fiction, and
that the real meeting-place of the two commanders was too unromantic for
artistic use.
From the frieze our eyes ascend to the canopy, or inner lining of the
dome, which hangs above us like an
[Illustration: _Survivals from “Before the War”_]
inverted bowl enclosing an elaborate fresco in colors. This, too, is
from the brush of Brumidi. Although it is ostensibly allegorical, many
of its sixty-three human faces are recognizable portraits, including
those of Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Robert Morris, Samuel F. B.
Morse, Robert Fulton, and Thomas U. Walter, who was architect of the
Capitol while the work was in progress. In a group representing War,
with an armed goddess of liberty for its center, are heads resembling
those of Jefferson Davis, Alexander H. Stephens, Robert E. Lee, and John
B. Floyd. Whether the likenesses are there by the deliberate intent of
the artist, or merely by accident, no one will ever know, as Brumidi
died in 1880.
The door on our left leads, through a short corridor, into what was once
the Hall of Representatives. It is now known officially as the Hall of
Statuary, but to irreverent critics as the National Chamber of Horrors,
because of the varied assortment of marble and bronze images collected
there. The room is semicircular, with a domed ceiling, a great arch and
supporting pillars on its flat side, and a colonnade lining the
horseshoe. During the forty years that it was used for legislative
purposes, a rostrum holding the Speaker’s table and chair filled the
arch, and the desks of the Representatives were arranged in concentric
curves to face it. Overlooking the chamber, and following most of the
rear wall, ran a narrow gallery for visitors who did not enjoy the
privileges of the floor; it derived an air of comfort from curtains hung
between the columns of the colonnade and looped back so as to produce
the effect of a tier of opera-boxes. Stay in the room a while, and you
will understand why, for many years, the complaint of its acoustic
properties was so constant, and a demand for a better hall so strong: it
is a wonderful whispering gallery. There are spots in the tiled pavement
where you can stand and hear the slightest sound you make come back from
some point before or behind you, over your head, or under your feet. Go
to the place where the semicircle ends on one side of the room, and I
will go to the corresponding place on the other side, and, by speaking
into the vertical fissures between the wall and the pillars at the two
extremities of the great arch, we can converse in the lowest tones with
as much ease as if we were side by side instead of a hundred feet apart.
A vivid imagination can people this hall with ghosts. Here some of the
fiercest forensic battles were fought in early days over protective
tariffs, internal improvements, and, above all, negro slavery. Here it
was that Randolph’s piping voice denounced the Northern “dough-faces,”
and here Wilmot launched his historic proviso. Here Alexander H.
Stephens made his last effort to resuscitate the moribund Whig party,
while Abraham Lincoln listened to his argument from a seat on the same
side of the chamber. Here John Quincy Adams drew upon himself the fire
of an incensed opposition by championing the people’s right to petition
Congress, and here he fell to the floor a dying paralytic. Here John
Marshall, the greatest of our Chief Justices, administered the oath of
office to two early Presidents. And here it was that Henry Clay, as
Speaker, delivered his address of welcome to Lafayette as the guest of
the nation, and listened with becoming gravity to the Marquis’s
response--which, as it afterward appeared, owed its excellent English to
the fact that Clay had composed it for the most part himself.
The conversion of the hall from its former to its present uses was at
the instance of the late Senator Morrill of Vermont, who procured
legislation permitting every State in the Union to contribute two
statues of distinguished citizens to this temple of fame. No restriction
having been placed on the sizes of the figures, one result of his
well-meant effort is a grotesque array of pigmies and giants, some of
the personages biggest in life being most diminutive in effigy, while
others of comparatively insignificant stature are here given massive
proportions. Most of the notables thus immortalized are persons with
whose names we associate a story. Here stand, for example, Ethan Allen
as he may have looked when demanding the surrender of Fort Ticonderoga
“in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress”; Charles
Carroll, who wrote Carrollton after his name so that the servants of the
King, when sent to hang him for signing the Declaration, would know
where to find him; sturdy John Stark, who snapped his fingers at
Congress and whipped the British at Bennington in his own fashion;
Muhlenberg, the patriot parson, throwing back his gown at the close of
his sermon and standing forth as a Continental soldier; and fiery Jim
Shields, who once challenged Lincoln to a duel, but was laughed out of
it when, arriving on the field, he found his adversary already there,
mowing the tall grass with a cutlass to make the fighting easier!
Another corridor brings us to the present Hall of Representatives, which
has been in use since the latter part of 1857. It is a spacious
rectangular room, with a high ceiling chiefly of glass, through which it
is lighted in the daytime by the sun and after nightfall by the modified
glow of electric lamps in the attic. Its plan is that of an
amphitheater, the platform occupied by the Speaker being at the lowest
level in the middle of the long southern side. Facing this are the
concentric curved benches of the members. Formerly the body of the hall
was filled with desks but, as the membership increased with the
population of the country, these were found to take up too much room,
not to mention the temptation they offered for letter-writing and other
diversions. Back of the Speaker’s chair hang a full-length portrait of
Washington by Vanderlyn and one of Lafayette by Ary Schaeffer. The
Washington is the conventional portrait as far as the waist-line, but
the legs were borrowed from a prominent citizen of Maryland, who had a
better pair than the General, and who consented to pose them for the
benefit of posterity.
Now let us go back to the north or Senate wing of the building. On our
way we swing around a little open air-well, through which we look down
into the corresponding corridor of the basement. The well is surrounded
by a colonnade supporting the base of a circular skylight. The columns
are worth noticing, because their capitals are of native design, using
the leaf of the tobacco plant somewhat conventionalized. They date from
the period when the clerk of the United States Supreme Court, whose
office is near by, used to receive a part of his compensation in
tobacco.
A few steps more bring us to the Court itself, sitting in a chamber
considerably smaller than the Hall of Statuary, but laid out on the
same plan. This was the first legislative chamber ever occupied in the
Capitol, having been till 1859 the Hall of the Senate. Here it was that
Thomas Jefferson was twice inaugurated as President. Here Daniel Webster
pronounced the famous “reply to Hayne” which every boy orator once
learned to spout from the rostrum. Here Preston Brooks made his
murderous assault upon Charles Sumner, and here Henry Clay delivered the
farewell address which we used to find in all the school readers. On the
walls of this chamber once hung the life-size oil portraits of Louis
XVI. and Marie Antoinette, which were presented by the Government of
France to the Government of the United States just after our Revolution,
and which disappeared when the British burned the Capitol in 1814. The
room has always suffered from the same bad acoustic properties which
caused the House of Representatives to exchange its old hall for its new
one; and it has a similar whispering gallery, so that a court officer in
one corner can communicate with a colleague in the other in a tone so
low as to be inaudible to any one else.
Since it took possession here, the Court has rendered its legal tender
and anti-trust decisions, and a number of others of historic importance.
In this room sat, in 1877, the Electoral Commission which decided that
Mr. Hayes was entitled to take office as President. Here occurs, every
day during a term, the one ancient and impressive ceremonial which can
be witnessed at our seat of government. At the stroke of noon there
appears at the right corner of the chamber the crier, who in a loud
voice announces: “The Honorable the Supreme Court of the United States!”
All present--attorneys, spectators, and minor functionaries--rise and
remain standing while the members of the Court enter in single file, the
Chief Justice leading. The lawyers bow to the Justices, who return the
bow before sinking into their chairs. Thereupon the crier makes his
second announcement: “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All persons having business with
the Honorable the Supreme Court of the United States are admonished to
draw near and give attention, as the Court is now sitting. God save the
United States and this Honorable Court!”
All the Justices wear gowns of black silk. John Jay, the first Chief
Justice, relieved the somber monotony of his by adding a collar bound
with scarlet, but the precedent was not followed. The Court has
sometimes been styled the most dignified judicial tribunal in the world,
and doubtless it deserves the compliment. Certainly no American need
blush for its decorum. The whole atmosphere of its chamber is in
keeping with the fact, reverently voiced by one of its old colored
servitors, that “dey ain’t no appeal f’m dis yere Co’t ’xcep’ to God
Almighty.” The arguments made before it are confined to calm,
unemotional reasoning. The pleaders do not raise their voices, or forget
their manners, or indulge in personalities or oratory while debating:
and the opinions of the Court are recited with a quietness almost
conversational. These opinions are very carefully guarded up to the
moment they are read from the bench; but now and then, after a decision
has become history, there leaks out an entertaining story of how it came
to be rendered.
One such instance was in the case of an imported delicacy which might
have been classed either as a preparation of fish or as a flavoring
sauce. The customs officers had levied duty on it as a sauce, and an
importer had appealed. The Justices, when they came to compare notes,
confessed themselves sorely puzzled, and one of them suggested that,
since the technical arguments were so well balanced, it might be wise to
fall back upon common sense. That evening he carried a sample of the
disputed substance home to his wife, who was an expert in culinary
matters.
“There, my dear,” said he, “is a sauce for you to try.”
With one look at the contents of the package, which she evidently
recognized, she exclaimed: “Pshaw! That’s no sauce; that’s fish--didn’t
you know it?”
The next day the Court met again for consultation, and on the following
Monday handed down a decision overruling the customs officers and
sustaining the importer’s appeal.
Leaving the court-room and continuing northward, we come to the present
Hall of the Senate. It is smaller than the present Hall of
Representatives and also cleaner looking and more comfortable. When
Congress is in full session, the contrast may be extended further so as
to include what we hear as well as what we see, for there is little
likeness between the two houses in the matter of orderliness of
procedure. But that’s another story, which will keep. It was from this
chamber that the Senators from the seceding States took their departure
in 1860 and 1861. For years afterward the first request of every
visiting stranger was to be shown the seats formerly occupied by these
men. As long as the old doorkeeper of the Senate, Captain Bassett,
lived, he was reputed to be the only person who knew the history of
every desk on the floor. Whether he transmitted this knowledge to any of
his assistants before his death, I cannot say; but more than once he
saved some of the furniture from injury at the hands of wanton vandals
or curio collectors.
During the early days of the Civil War, a party of Northern zouaves,
passing through the city on their way to the front, entered the Senate
Hall during a recess and tried to identify Davis’s desk. They frankly
avowed their purpose of destroying, if possible, the last trace of the
Confederate President’s connection with the United States Government;
but Bassett refused to be coaxed, bribed, or bullied into revealing the
information they wished. Their persistency presently aroused his fears
lest they might come back later and renew their attempt in his absence;
so he resorted to diplomacy and made them a little speech, reminding
them that, no matter what Mr. Davis might have done to provoke their
indignation, the desk at which he had sat was not his property, but that
of the Government which they had come South to defend. His reasoning had
its effect, and, admitting that he was right, they went away peaceably.
Back of the Senate chamber are two rooms set apart for the President and
Vice-president respectively. Till lately, the President’s room as a rule
has been occupied only during a few closing hours of a session, when the
President wishes to be readily accessible for the signing of such acts
as he approves. Sometimes he has spent the entire last night of a
Congress here, returning to the White House for breakfast and coming to
the Capitol again for an hour or two before noon. President Wilson has
used the room more than any of his recent predecessors, going there to
consult the leading members of his party in Congress while legislation
is in course of preparation or passage.
The Vice-president’s room has been more constantly in use as a retiring
room for its occupant during the intervals when he is not presiding over
the sessions of the Senate. On its wall has hung for many years a little
gilt-framed mirror for which John Adams, while Vice-president, paid
forty dollars, and which was brought with the other appurtenances of the
Senate from Philadelphia when the Government removed its headquarters to
Washington. Many of the frugal founders of the republic were scandalized
at the extravagance of the purchase, and one gravely introduced in the
Senate a resolution censuring Adams for having drawn thus heavily upon
the public funds “to gratify his personal vanity.” What these good men
would say if they were to revisit the Capitol now and see in the same
room with the forty-dollar mirror a silver inkstand that cost two
hundred dollars and a clock that cost a thousand, we can only imagine.
It was in this room, by the way, that Vice-president Wilson died in
November, 1875, after an attack of illness which suddenly overcame him
at the Capitol and was too severe to justify his being carried to his
home.
On the floor below are two other points of interest. We shall do well to
descend, not by the broad marble staircases in the north wing, but by an
old iron-railed and curved flight of stone steps a little south of the
Supreme Court. Note, in passing, its columns, as truly American in
design as those above-stairs to which attention has already been
directed; for they conventionalize our Indian corn, the stalks making
the body of a pillar and the leaves and ears the capital. The first
point we shall visit is the crypt, which is directly under the rotunda.
It is a vaulted chamber originally intended as a resting-place for the
body of George Washington. There was to have been a circular opening in
the ceiling, so that visitors in the rotunda could look down upon the
sarcophagus, above which a suspended taper was to be kept continually
burning. The light was duly hung there, and not extinguished for many
years; but as Washington’s heirs were unwilling to allow his remains to
leave Mount Vernon, the rest of the plan was abandoned.
A little way north of the crypt we come to the room that the Supreme
Court occupied for about forty
[Illustration: _Rock Creek_]
years after the restoration of the Capitol. Out of it was sent the first
message with which Samuel F. B. Morse announced to the world the success
of his invention, the magnetic telegraph. Morse was perfectly convinced
that his device was workable, but he had exhausted his means before
being able to make a satisfactory experiment. He therefore asked
Congress for an appropriation to equip a trial line between Washington
and Baltimore. Some of the members scoffed at his appeal as visionary;
others intimated that he was trying to impose upon the Government; only
a handful seemed to feel enough confidence in him and his project to
vote for the appropriation. After a discouraging struggle lasting till
the third of March, 1843, Morse was at the Capitol watching the dying
hours of the Congress, when his friends advised him that his cause was
hopeless, and he returned to his hotel and went to bed.
Before breakfast the next morning he received a call from Miss Annie
Ellsworth, daughter of the Commissioner of Patents, who brought him the
news that after he had left the Capitol his appropriation had gone
through, and the President had signed the bill just before midnight. To
reward her as the bearer of glad tidings, Morse invited her to frame the
first message to be sent to Baltimore. It took more than a year to
build the line and insure its successful operation; but on May 24, 1844,
in the presence of a gathering which filled the court chamber, the
inventor seated himself at the instrument, and Miss Ellsworth placed in
his hand a phrase she had selected from the twenty-third verse of the
twenty-third chapter of the Book of Numbers: “What hath God wrought!” In
less time than it takes to tell the facts, the operator in Baltimore had
received the message and ticked it back without an error. In that hour
of his triumph over skepticism and abuse, Morse could have asked almost
anything of Congress without fear of repulse.
Not all the associations which cling about the Capitol are confined to
politics or legislation, science or business. The old Hall of
Representatives was, in the early days of the last century, long used
for religious meetings on Sundays, the Speaker’s desk being converted
temporarily into a pulpit. One of the first preachers who held stated
services there was a Swedenborgian. When the custom had become well
established, most of the clergymen of the city consented to take the
Sundays in a certain order of succession. Sir Augustus Foster, a
secretary of the British Legation during Jefferson’s administration, has
left us his impressions of the meetings:
“A church service can certainly never be called an amusement; but, from
the variety of persons who were allowed to preach in the House of
Representatives, there doubtless was some alloy of curiosity in the
motives which led one to go there. Though the regular Chaplain was a
Presbyterian, sometimes a Methodist, a minister of the Church of
England, or a Quaker, sometimes even a woman, took the Speaker’s chair,
and I do not think there was much devotion among the majority. The New
Englanders, generally speaking, are very religious; but though there are
many exceptions, I cannot say so much for the Marylanders, and still
less for the Virginians.”
Probably this comment on the worldly element entering into the meetings
was called forth by their gradual degeneration into a social function.
The hall came to be regarded as a pleasant Sunday gathering-place for
friends who were able to see little of one another during the secular
week. They clustered in knots around the open fireplaces, apparently
quite as interested in the intervals afforded for a bit of gossip as in
the sermon. The President was accustomed to attend from time to time;
and possibly it was by his order that the Marine Band, nearly one
hundred strong and attired in their brilliant red uniforms, were present
in the gallery and played the hymn tunes, as well as some stirring march
music. Their attendance was discontinued later, as their performances
attracted many common idlers to a hall already crowded almost to
suffocation with ladies and gentlemen of fashion, and thus increased the
confusion.
Partly as a result of this use of the hall, the habit of treating Sunday
as a day for social festivities of all sorts reached a point where the
strict Sabbatarians felt called to remonstrate. One, a clergyman named
Breckenridge, preached a sermon denouncing the irreligious frivolities
of the time, which created a great sensation. He addressed his remarks
directly to Congress. “It is not the people,” said he, “who will suffer
for these enormities. It is the Government. As with Nineveh of old, your
temples and your palaces will be burned to the ground, for it is by fire
that this sin has usually been punished!” And he cited instance after
instance from Bible history, showing how cities, dwellings, and persons
had been burned for disrespect of divine law.
One day in the fall of 1814, after the British had left the city scarred
with blackened ruins, Mr. Breckenridge was passing the Octagon house,
when he was hailed by Dolly Madison from the doorway.
“When I listened to that threatening sermon of yours,” she exclaimed, “I
little thought that its warnings would be realized so soon.”
“Oh, Madam,” he answered, “I trust that the chastening of the Lord may
not have been in vain!”
It was, however, as far as any permanent change in the habits of the
people was concerned. There was a brief interval of greater sobriety due
to the sad plight of the community; then Sunday amusements resumed their
sway with as much vigor as of old.
Although to the eye of the casual visitor the Capitol seems so quiet and
well-ordered a place that it practically takes care of itself, the truth
is that it is continually under pretty rigid surveillance. It has a
uniformed corps of special police, whose jurisdiction covers everything
within the limits of Capitol Park; besides this, the Superintendent of
the Capitol has general oversight of the building, and the officers of
the House and Senate look after their respective wings. When Thomas B.
Reed of Maine became Speaker, he found the House wing a squatting ground
for a small army of petty merchants who had crept in one by one and
established booths for the sale of sandwiches and pies, cigars,
periodicals, picture cards, and souvenirs, obstructing the highways of
communication between one part of the building and another. He proceeded
to sweep them all out. There was loud wailing among the ousted, and some
who could command a little political influence brought it to bear on
him, but in vain; and for more than twenty years thereafter the
corridors remained free from these intruders. With the incoming of the
Sixty-third Congress, however, discipline began to relax, and, unless
the House acquires another Speaker with Mr. Reed’s notions of propriety
and the force of will to compel obedience, we shall probably see the
hucksters camping once more on the old trail.
Outside of the building the rules are as well enforced as inside. When
Coxey’s Army of the Commonweal marched upon Washington in 1894, its
leader advertised his intention to make a speech from the Capitol steps,
calling upon Congress to provide work and wages for all the idle
laborers in the country. Under the law, no harangue or oration may be
delivered anywhere on the Capitol grounds without the express consent of
the presiding officers of the two chambers of Congress. Remembering the
way the lawmakers had been intimidated by a mob at Philadelphia in the
early days of the republic, neither the Speaker nor the President of the
Senate was willing that Coxey should carry out his plan; and the Capitol
police, without violence or display of temper, made short work of the
proposed mass meeting. On another occasion, the performers for a
moving-picture show attempted to use the steps of the Capitol as a
background for a scene in which a man made up to resemble the President
of the United States was to play an undignified part; the police pounced
down upon the company, confiscating the apparatus and escorting the
actors to the nearest station-house. A like fate befel an automobilist
who, on a wager, tried to drive his machine up the steps of the main
portico. Occasionally a bicycler, ambitious to descend this staircase at
full speed, has proved too quick-witted for the officers, but as a rule
they are at hand when needed.
Now that we are outside, let us look around. To the eastward lies the
part of the city broadly designated as Capitol Hill. As far as the eye
can reach, it is a beautiful, evenly graded plateau--an ideal residence
region as far as natural topography, verdure, sunshine, and pure air are
concerned. It is the part which George Washington and other promoters of
the federal city picked out for its residential end, and the Capitol was
built so as to face it. These circumstances made it a favorite locality
for speculative investment, and the prices at which early purchasers of
land held out against later comers sealed its fate: the tide of favor
turned toward the opposite end of the city, and the development of the
northwest quarter took a start which has never since halted. The first
plans of Capitol Park included on its eastern side a pretty little
fish-pond, circular in shape, which must have been about where the two
raised flower-beds with mottled marble copings now flank the driveway to
First Street.
The west front of the Capitol overlooks a gentle slope pleasantly turfed
and shaded. The building itself descends the slope a little way by an
esplanade and a series of marble terraces, from which broad flights of
steps lead down nearly to the main street level. The perspective view of
the Capitol is much more impressive from this side than from the other,
thanks to an admirable piece of landscape gardening. In old times, the
lawns on the west side were used by the residents of the neighborhood
for croquet grounds, and the whole park was enclosed in an iron fence,
with gates that were shut by the watchmen at nine every evening against
pedestrians, and at a somewhat later hour against carriages. With
characteristic impatience of such restraints, sometimes a Congressman
who had stayed at the Capitol past the closing hour would save himself
the trouble of calling a guard to open the gate, by smashing the lock
with a stone. The increasing frequency of such incidents undoubtedly had
much to do with causing the removal of the fence.
No point in the city affords so fine facilities for fixing L’Enfant’s
plan in the mind of the visitor and enabling him to find his way about
the older parts of Washington, as the Capitol dome. A spiral staircase,
the doors to which open from obscure parts of two corridors, leads first
to the inside circular balcony crowning the rotunda. This is worth a few
minutes’ delay to test its quality as a whispering gallery. The
attendant in charge will show you how, and, if you can lure him into
telling you some of the funny things he has seen and heard in his eyrie,
you will be well repaid.
More climbing will bring you to an outside perch, which forms a sort of
collar for the lantern surmounting the dome. Now open a plainly printed
map of Washington and hold it so that the points of the compass on the
map correspond with those of the city below you. With a five minutes’
walk around the base of the lantern, to give you the view from every
side, you will have mastered the whole scheme designed by L’Enfant. Here
are the four quarters--northeast, southeast, southwest, northwest--as
clearly spread before you on the surface of the earth as on the paper in
your hand. Here is the Mall, with its grass and trees, leading up to the
Washington Monument and abutting on the executive reservation where
stand the White House, the Treasury, and the State, War and Navy
Department buildings. Well out to the northward you can descry a tower
which fixes the site of the Soldiers’ Home, and to the southward the
Potomac, flowing past the War College and the Navy Yard. East of you
loom up the hills of Anacostia. On all sides you see the lettered
streets running east and west, intersected by the numbered streets
running north and south, while, cutting both diagonally at various
angles, but in pursuance of a systematic and easily grasped plan, are
the avenues named in honor of the various States of the Union. Once let
this chart fasten itself in your mind, and there is no reason why, total
stranger though you may be, you should have any difficulty in finding
your way about Washington.
[Illustration: _Capitol, from New Jersey Avenue_]