USA > Washington DC > Washington DC > Centennial history of the city of Washington, D. C. With full outline of the natural advantages, accounts of the Indian tribes, selection of the site, founding of the city to the present time > Part 12
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
and the other one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia.
John Steele was First Comptroller of the Treasury under Presidents Washington and Adams. He was a member of Congress from 1790 to 1793, and was a commissioner to adjust the boundary between the States of North and South Carolina. He was elected to the Legislature of North Carolina in 1814, and died on the day of his election.
Gabriel Duval succeeded John Steele as First Comptroller of the Treasury, and served in that capacity from 1802 to 1811. He was a clerk of the Legislature of Maryland before the Declaration of Inde- pendence, and was a member of Congress from 1794 to 1796. In 1811, he was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, and held that office twenty-four years. He died in Prince George's County, Maryland, in 1844.
William Simmons was appointed accountant of the War Depart- ment and came to this city with the Government when it removed here from Philadelphia.
Thomas Turner was appointed in 1800 accountant of the Navy Department, the office being subsequently known as the Fourth Audi- torship. He continued its occupant until 1810.
Abraham Bradley, Jr., was appointed Assistant Postmaster-Gen- eral in 1817, holding the office for about one year. His descendants have continued citizens of the District to this time, and have, many of them, held positions of importance and responsibility, always with great eredit.
Thomas Munroe came to Washington with the Government in 1800, and in 1802 was appointed Superintendent of the Publie Build- ings for the District of Columbia. He was appointed postmaster of the city of Washington in 1799, and retained that office until removed by President Jackson. He continued to reside in the city until his death. He acquired considerable property, and was identified with the progress of the eity in every way in which he could be useful. Members of his family still continue to reside in the city.
Roger C. Weightman was one of the carly residents of Washing- ton, but was not connected in any way with the Government. He held a prominent position among the citizens of his adopted city, was Mayor of the city several terms, and was afterward cashier of the Bank of Washington. During his entire life, which was quite extended, he was held in the highest regard by citizens of all classes.
Altogether the most important incident connected with the estab- lishment of the permanent residence of the Government at the Capital
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City, was the erection of the buildings intended for the accommoda- tion of the Federal officers. As early as 1784, when the subject of the selection of the site for the Government residence was under discussion in the Continental Congress, a motion was made to select a parcel of land upon the banks of the Delaware. This motion prevailed, but was never acted upon. By the terms of this motion commissioners were selected whose duty it was to purchase the soil and enter into negotiations for the erection and completion of elegant buildings for the Federal House, a President's House, and houses for the Secretaries of Foreign Affairs, of War, Marine, and Treasury; and that in devising the situation of such buildings due regard should be had to the accommodation of the States for the use of their delegates respectively. It will thus be apparent that the erection of these buildings was considered at the outset a matter of great importance. When the site upon the Potomac was finally decided upon, this same subject was carefully considered, and steps were taken for the procurement of plans for the Capitol and other public buildings. The men who were principally engaged in the erection of these buildings are entitled to a prominent place in the history of the Capital City. That they were remarkable men is shown by the stability and grandeur of the build- ings erected under their guidance. Under all these circumstances it will not be amiss if a few short sketches of the lives of these men are here inserted.
Stephen L. Hallett was a cultivated French architect residing in New York City in 1792. In that year the following advertisement appeared in the principal newspapers of the country :
" WASHIINGTON, IN THE TERRITORY OF COLUMBIA.
" A premium of a lot in this city, to be designated by impartial judges, and $500, or a medal of that value, at the option of the party, will be given by the Commissioners of the Federal Buildings to the person who, before the 15th of July, 1792, shall produce to them the most approved plan for a capitol, to be erected in this city; and $250, or a gold medal, for the plan deemed next in merit to the one they shall adopt. The building to be of brick, and to contain the following apartments, to wit: A conference room and a room for the Repre- sentatives, sufficient to accommodate three hundred persons each; a lobby, or anteroom, to the latter; a Senate room of twelve hundred square feet area; an antechamber; twelve rooms of six hundred square feet each, for committee rooms and clerks' offices. It will be a rec- ommendation of any plan if the central part of it may be detached and
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erected' for the present with the appearance of a complete whole, and be capable of admitting the additional parts in future, if they shall be wanted. Drawings will be expected of the ground plots, elevations of each front, and sections through the building in such directions as may be necessary to explain the internal structure; and an estimate of the cubic feet of brick work composing the whole mass of the walls."
Architect IIallett offered a plan for a capitol building, and singularly enough his principal contestant was an Englishman named Dr. William Thornton, who, it is said, was a man of fine natural abilities, but unskilled as an architect. On many accounts the plan presented by Dr. Thornton was considered the best, and as may be seen by reference to the chapter on Public Buildings, was in the main adopted, although not without considerable modifications, these modifications being in the direction of the plan submitted by Mr. Hallett. The result was that Mr. Hallett was made supervising architect of the Capitol, but remained in office only a short time, when he resigned. But little is known of Mr. Hallett beyond what is here expressed.
George Hadfield succeeded Mr. Hallett, and continued on the work until 1798, when he resigned, having had as his associate a portion of that time James Hoban, who in 1799 or 1800 finished the north wing of the Capitol. Mr. Hoban, in response to an advertisement for plans for the President's House, submitted the plans that were accepted by the commissioners, and was the supervising architect in its construc- tion. Mr. Hoban was an Irishman by birth, and a man of great activity and vigor. He made the city of Washington his home, and some of his descendants are now living in the Capital. His son, James Hoban, was a lawyer of considerable prominence, serving for some years as attorney for the District of Columbia.
Benjamin Henry Latrobe, born in Yorkshire, England, May 1, 1764, succeeded Mr. Hoban as architect of the Capitol. He was descended from Boneval de la Trobe, who emigrated from France to Holland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and who, while in the service of the Prince of Orange, was severely wounded in the battle of the Boyne. Benjamin H. Latrobe, in 1785, entered the Prus- sian army as a cornet of Hussars. Resigning his commission in 1788 and returning to England, he was made engineer of London in 1789. Declining a crown surveyorship, he came to the United States, landing at Norfolk, Virginia, May 20, 1796. In 1798, he removed to Phila- delphia, where he designed the Bank of Pennsylvania, the old
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Academy of Art, and the Bank of the United States, besides other buildings. He was the first to supply water to Philadelphia, pumping it by steam from the Schuylkill in 1800. He was appointed surveyor of the public buildings in Washington by President Jefferson in 1803, following Thornton, Hadfield, and Hoban as architect of the Capitol. He perfected Dr. Thornton's designs, and altered those for the interior construction of the south wing of the Capitol, with the approval of the President:
In the reconstruction of the north wing of the Capitol, Mr. Latrobe planned the vestibule in which are six columns, each of which is composed of cornstalks bound together, the joints forming a spiral effect, while the capitals are modeled from the ears of corn. Ile also designed the tobacco-plant capitals of columns in the circular colonnade in the north wing, and left drawings of a capital whose ornamentation is designed for the cotton plant. In 1812, he became interested with Robert Fulton in the introduction of steamboats on the Western rivers, and built the Buffalo, at Pittsburg, the fourth steamboat to descend the Ohio River. While at work on this boat, Mr. Latrobe was called to Washington to repair the Capitol after its partial destruction by the British in 1814. Resigning his position at the Capital, he was succeeded by Charles Bullfinch, who executed his predecessor's designs of changing the oblong hall of the old Capitol into a semi-circular form. At the time of his death, Sep- tember 3, 1820, he was engaged in erecting waterworks to supply water to New Orleans.
It happened very fortunately, when Congress had finally, after years of struggle, determined to venture upon the experiment of erecting a capital city in the wilderness upon the banks of the Poto- mac, that such an engineer as Pierre Charles L'Enfant was found. He was unquestionably at that time the first engineer and architect of any consequence in the United States. His genius was equal to the occasion. He had already distinguished himself by the work he had performed in transforming an old public building in the city of New York into a Federal Hall, in which Congress held its sessions with great comfort and convenience; and he had made manifest his taste and patriotism by completing a design for the insignia of the Society of the Cincinnati. In addition to this, he had planned a house for Robert Morris, the great financier of the Revolution, which was not completed at that time. It was the first instance ever seen on the Western Continent of the mansard roof, which a century afterward was so generally used.
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
General Washington did not hesitate to place in the hands of L'Enfant the execution of the great design of a Federal City for the Government's official residence. Time has shown how wise the first President was in this respect, as in all things else he did in relation to our national existence. For years people ridiculed the extravagant plan of the erratie Frenchman. Not only our own citizens but also visitors from other lands laughed at the idea of "squares in morasses, obelisks in trees," and every American felt mortified when taunted with the charge that the Capital of his Nation was a city of only "magnificent distances." It took no little of the bravery of genius to plan amid the swamps and creeks of the lands lying between the Potomac and Anacostia, in those early days, a city that time was to develop into the model capital of the world. And yet such is the result. L'Enfant did not hesitate to enter upon the duty to which he had been assigned, and it is remarkable that from the first his design was to plan a city, not for the day in which he lived, nor for the population of a country such as that of the new Republic then promised to be, but a capital for all time, a nation of more millions than the population of any country in the world of that day numbered. Writing about this matter years afterward, one says: "Although the site of Washington looked very engaging to the eye of the traveler from the opposite hill, who imagined that its flatness would dispense with costly grades and engineering, yet it was in reality a mere gully,-the alluvial overflow from the hills of Maryland brought down by the heavy rainfall and ereeks. Much of it was swamp, and the engineers were persecuted with insects and malaria, with mud and extortion, with foolish questions and more insolent criticisms."
L'Enfant was assisted by Ellicott, a surveyor; the negro almanac maker, Bannecker; and Roberdieu, a young Frenchman full of impet- nosity and reckless of what he said. Many men regarded the great engineer as a mere subordinate, working out the plans of the commis- sioners in charge of the Federal Territory, and sought to influence him as such, to the end that they might accomplish their own views of profit and self-aggrandizement. The men of those days were like their sons of to-day, and it is not surprising, therefore, that the conscien- tions Frenchman who refused to expose his plans for the benefit of those who wished to find out where to purchase lots with the greatest assurance of profit, was made the subject of unfair criticism, and was finally discharged from his office.
Little is known of L'Enfant after his retirement from the office
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of engineer of the plan of Washington. President Monroe offered him the place of professor at West Point, but he did not accept the offer. He was afterward selected to prepare a design for, and to superintend the erection of, Fort Washington, on the Potomac, in the neighborhood of Mount Vernon. It seems, however, that his old spirit of impatience and insubordination followed him into this work, and he was soon mustered out of service. From this time, through several years of comparative obscurity and seeming neglect, we trace him to the home of a gentleman named William Dudley Digges, in the neighborhood of Washington, known as Green Hill, and for many years the country residence of Mr. George Riggs, the banker. Here he spent the even- ing of his days, amusing himself with books and designs that were confined to the arrangement of the flower garden of his tract. In 1825, he died, and was buried on the grounds near his last residence. His grave is not marked by a memorial of any kind; indeed, it is doubtful if its exact site can be ascertained. And this is all that is known of a man who, at some future day, will be the subject of a public statue in one of the squares of the magnificent city the plan of which is now recognized as the offspring of his genius.
Samuel Harrison Smith was the son of Jonathan Bayard Smith, of Philadelphia, a distinguished Revolutionary patriot. During the greater part of that war he filled with honor and reputation the responsible trust of a member of the Committee of Safety. Samuel H. Smith was born in 1772. In 1796, he opened a printing office on Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, between the western corner of Carpen- ter Street and Fourth Street, from which he issued, in August and September of that year, a newspaper twice a day, morning and evening, under the name of the New World. This enterprise was in all probability original with him, and never afterward imitated by anyone. It was not long before he discovered that zeal and talent were not the only prerequisites to success in the newspaper business, and learning from his experience that the people did not wish to receive a paper more than once a day, he changed his paper to a daily, the first number of which appeared October 24, 1796, and was marked No. 122 in the series. A few months further experiment induced him to abandon the daily paper, there being really but little demand for a fifth daily paper in Philadelphia at that time.
Another paper, however, began to be called for by the party then springing into consequence in Congress and the country under the leadership of Mr. Jefferson, Vice-President of the United States. This new party was known by the name of the Republican Party, and the
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paper demanded was a weekly, that it might be fit for distribution through the mails, which at that time were, as a general thing, trans- mitted but once a week. Mr. Smith was urged to undertake this new enterprise. There was then published in Philadelphia a paper by Joseph Gales, purchased by him about a year before from Colonel John Oswald, a Revolutionary hero, the name of the paper being the Independent Gazetteer. Mr. Smith bought this paper and changed its name to the Universal Gazette, and issued the first number of it under this new name November 16, 1797. IIe continued to publish it weekly until he relinquished the printing business in Philadelphia.
Upon the removal of the Capital of the United States to Wash- ington, in 1800, Mr. Smith also removed to Washington, and began the publication of a tri-weekly paper named the National Intelligencer, the first number of which was issued October 31, 1800. From the first, this paper received the support of the leading men of its own side of politics. It sustained Mr. Jefferson's administration, and -was sustained by him in return, as was also the case with the administra- tion of Mr. Madison. Mr. Smith, however, having partially engaged in rural pursuits, longed to devote his life to those labors which were more of a literary and philosophical nature, and hence, in Sep- tember, 1810, he sold the Intelligencer to Joseph Gales, Jr., who had been connected with it about three years.
Mr. Smith, therefore, at the age of thirty-eight years, was a retired gentleman, having a farm of about two hundred acres, upon which was a delightful "country seat," and he also had a comfortable compe- tency in money. He now became exclusively devoted to the rearing and education of his children, to the cares of a farm and garden, and to the pursuit of deferred studies with a view to certain literary enter- prises. But these literary undertakings were never fully carried out, because of the persistent intervention of other duties. In 1813, he accepted from President Madison the responsible office of Commis- sioner of the Revenue, and performed its duties, until it was abolished, with serupulous exactness and faithfulness. He then became president of the Bank of Washington, and still later, president of the Branch Bank of the United States, located in Washington. Ile was for many years a member of the corporate body of the city of Washington, and for a time president of one of the branches of the Council. Ile was for a long time registrar for the county of Washington and a member of its levy court. He was influential in the establishment of the public schools of the city and of the Washington City Library, and for many years previous to his death he was one of the vice-presi-
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dents of the American Colonization Society. He was an active member aud treasurer of the Washington National Monument Society.
The distinguished characteristics of Mr. Smith were his public spirit and his personal independence, and all through his life he lived with the blameless simplicity and purity of a philosopher. His death occurred November 18, 1845.
Andrew Ellicott was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Jan- uary 24, 1754; was a civil engineer; founded Ellicott's Mills, in Maryland; was a personal friend of Franklin and Washington; in 1790, was appointed by the General Government to survey and lay out the site of the city of Washington; in 1792, was appointed Sur- veyor-General of the United States; and in 1812, became a professor of mathematics at West Point, where he died August 29, 1820.
Benjamin Bannecker, the mulatto mathematician and astronomer, assisted Ellicott in his survey. He was born in 1751, and died in 1804. The Maryland Historical Society has published a sketch of his life. Condorcet, secretary of the French Academy of Sciences, wrote him a complimentary letter concerning his almanac, which had been sent him by President Jefferson. One of the public school buildings in Washington is named after him, the Bannecker School.
CHAPTER VI.
MUNICIPAL.
The Municipal Government of the City of Washington - The Acts of Maryland and Virginia Ceding Territory-The Connection of the Location of the Capital with the State Debt Question -Thomas Jefferson Quoted-The Amended Act Relating to the District -President Washington's Letters and Proclamations -The First Commissioners-The Setting of the Corner Stone of the District --- Difficulties with the Proprietors - The Agreement with Them - Major L'Enfant's Instructions- Ilis Agreement with John Gibson - He Demolishes Daniel Carroll's House-His Course Approved by a Portion of the Proprietors- The First Commissioners in Full-The First Charter of Washington-The First Election under It-Subsequent Elections -Incidents in the Political History of the City-The Charter of 1820-The Mayors of the City-Congressional Legislation as Affecting the District-Indig- nation of the Citizens-Congress Comes Near Abolishing Slavery in Washington - Election Riots in 1857-Know-Nothingism -Mayor Berrett Arrested - Richard Wallach Becomes Mayor-M. G. Emery Elected Mayor-The Territorial Govern- ment- Alexander R. Shepherd's Work -The Government by Commissioners-The Police Department -Soldiers on the Force-The Water Department and Great Aqueduct-The Fire Department-The City Post Office.
THE history of the government of the city of Washington may well begin with the history of the formation of the District of Columbia. The formation of the District was provided for in the cession by the States of Maryland and Virginia of portions of their territory lying north and south respectively of the Potomac River, sufficient to constitute a tract of land ten miles square. The act of Maryland, passed December 23, 1788, was as follows:
" AN ACT to Cede to Congress a District of Ten Miles Square in this State for the Seat of Government of the United States:
"Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Maryland, That the Rep- resentatives of this State in the House of Representatives of the United States appointed to assemble at New York on the first Wednesday of March next, be and they are hereby authorized, on the behalf of this State, to cede to Congress of the United States any district in this State not exceeding ten miles square which the Congress may fix upon for the seat of government of the United States."
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The Virginia cession act was as follows:
" WHEREAS, The equal and common benefit resulting from the administration of the General Government will be best diffused, and its operations become more prompt and certain, by establishing such a situation for the site of the seat of government as will be the most central and convenient to the citizens of the United States at large, having regard as well to the population, extent, territory, and the free navigation to the Atlantic Ocean through the Chesapeake Bay, as to the most direct and ready communication with our fellow citizens on the western frontier; and
" WHEREAS, It appears to this Assembly that a situation combining all these considerations and advantages before recited may be had on the banks of the Potomac, above tide water, in a country rich and fertile in soil, healthy and salubrious in climate, and abounding in all the necessities and conveniences of life; where, in a location of ten miles square, if the wisdom of Congress shall so direct, the States of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia may participate in such location;
"Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That a tract of country not to exceed ten miles square, or any lesser quantity, to be located within the limits of this State, and in any part thereof, as Con- gress may by law direct, shall be and the same is hereby forever ceded and relinquished to the Congress and Government of the United States, in full and absolute right and jurisdiction, as well of soil as of persons residing therein, pursuant to the tenor and effect of the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution of the Government of the United States: Provided, that nothing herein contained shall be con- strued to vest in the United States any right of property in the soil, or to affect the rights of individuals therein, otherwise than the same shall or may be transferred by such individuals to the United States: And provided, also, that the jurisdiction of the laws of this Common- wealth over the persons and property of individuals residing within the limits of the cession aforesaid shall not cease or determine nutil Congress, having accepted the said cession, shall by law provide for the government thereof under their jurisdiction in the manner pro- vided by the article of the Constitution before recited."
The selection of a location for the seat of government was dis- cussed in the convention held in Philadelphia in 1787 to revise the Federal system of government, but it was not then decided. But at the second session of the First Congress, held in New York in the summer of 1790, an act was passed (recited in Chapter III.) which finally decided its location. The discussion was, as has been in that
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