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 15
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Aldermen - First Ward, James H. Handy and J. W. Moulder; Second Ward, James Hoban and Thomas II. Gilliss; Third Ward, R. C. Weightman and W. W. Seaton; Fourth Ward, Henry Tims and Nicholas L. Queen; Fifth Ward, Daniel Carroll, of Duddington, and Thomas Dougherty; Sixth Ward, William Prout and Israel Little.
Common Councilmen - First Ward, Thomas Carberry, Josiah Tay- lor, and Satterlee Clark; Second Ward, John McClelland, Henry Smith, and John Strother; Third Ward, Hanson Gassaway, Samnel Burch, and George Sweeney; Fourth Ward, Dr. Andrew Hunter, John Ingle, and Benjamin Burch; Fifth Ward, Richmond Johnston, Dr. C. B. Hamilton, and James Middleton; Sixth Ward, Gustavus Higdon, Adam Lindsay, and Benjamin Bryan.
Register, William Hewitt; health officer, Dr. Henry Hunt; sur- veyor, Joseph Elgar; inspector of tobacco, Samuel P. Lowe; sealer of weights and measures, Jacob Leonard; inspectors of flour, Samuel MeIntire and William A. Scott; members of the board of appeal, John Davidson, Peter Lenox, Frederick May, and Matthew Wright; commissioners of wards: First Ward, Samuel Harkness; Second Ward, Edward G. Handy; Third Ward, Joseph Dougherty; Fourth Ward, Henry Ingle; Fifth Ward, John Van Riswick; Sixth Ward, John B. Forrest; inspectors of lumber, Thomas Sandiford, Jr., Thomas Wilson, Leonard Harbaugh, Benjamin Bryan, and William II. Barnes; wood corders and coal measurers, Thomas Taylor, Jr., Thomas Burch, George Sanford, William Wise, Benjamin Bryan, and John B. Ferguson; gaugers, Samnel MeIntire and William II. Barnes; commissioners of the West Burial Ground, David Easton, Robert King, and Benjamin M. Belt; commissioners of the East Burial Ground, John Crabb, John Chalmers, and Daniel Rapine; sexton of the West Burial Ground, Alexander Watson; sexton of the East Burial Ground, Benson McCormick; clerk of the West Market
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House, Philip Williams; clerk of the Center Market House, John Waters; clerk of the Capitol Hill Market House, Benson McCormick; clerk of the Eastern Branch Market House, Peter Little.
Under this charter the Mayor served two years, as also did the members of the Board of Aldermen, after the rotation was established. In 1822, Thomas Carberry was elected Mayor to succeed Mr. Small- wood, and in 1824 R. C. Weightman was elected to succeed Mr. Carberry.
In March, 1824, the citizens of Alexandria, becoming tired of being in the District of Columbia, made an attempt to have Alex- andria retroceded to Virginia. A meeting was held on the 9th of that month for the purpose of preparing a memorial to Congress on the subject. Thomson F. Mason was chairman of the meeting, and P. R. Fendall secretary. The memorial as drawn up set forth that the citizens of Alexandria County were deprived of their constitutional rights without the existence or assumption of authority of the people of the United States to do so; but by what seemed to them to be an oversight of the framers of the Constitution of the United States. The citizens of Alexandria could not presume that the framers of the Constitution, who had just previously been engaged in a struggle for liberty for themselves, would designedly deprive others of that precious boon, which they had done in the case of the inhabitants of the District of Columbia, by the imposition of taxes upon an unrepresented community, for this was the very grievance which produced the Revolution, etc.
An adverse meeting was held March 11, over which Phineas Janney presided, and of which Nathaniel S. Wise was the secretary . The object of the meeting was fully stated by Robert I. Taylor, who explained what disadvantages the citizens of Alexandria County would labor under if the proposed retrocession of the county should become an accomplished fact. A memorial against the movement was drawn up and a committee appointed to present it to Congress.
The proposed retrocession was defeated at that time by a vote of the people of 404 against it to 286 for it, but at length, in 1846, another movement for the same purpose was inaugurated, and was successful.
Mayor R. C. Weightman was reelected in June, 1826, and on July 20, 1827, Mayor Weightman was elected cashier of the Bank of Washington, and resigned his position, to be succeeded by Joseph Gales, Jr. In June, 1828, Mr. Gales was elected to the position for two years, and was reelected in 1830 for two years more.
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On June 4, 1832, John P. Van Ness was elected Mayor; on June 2, 1834, William A. Bradley was elected to the position, and in June, 1836, Peter Force was elected by a vote of 570, to 337 cast for H. M. Morfit.
Mr. Force, in his inaugural, congratulated the citizens upon having been relieved of a heavy burden. In 1828, the city had made a large subscription to the stock of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, to which subscription that great work owed its existence. The subscrip- tion carried with it obligations greater than the city could carry. The responsibilities growing out of this subscription were rendered greater than they would otherwise have been by the hostile proceedings of a rival company, which interrupted the prosecution of the work for years, and for each year that the work was delayed Washington City, the wealthiest of all the parties connected with the subscription to the stock of the company, though one of the largest contributors, lost in the aggregate about $50,000 per year. But now the United States had assumed the payment of the interest of this subscription on the pledge and deposit of its stock in the company; still the corporation owed on its subscription about $450,000, and at the same time it was possible that by a change in circumstances the city might derive no benefit from the canal, and Mr. Force advised the most rigid economy and the limiting of expenditures to the smallest possible amount.
On Monday, June 1, 1840, W. W. Seaton was elected Mayor of the city. Previously to this election there had been great excitement in political cireles, in the District of Columbia as elsewhere in the United States. The financial measures of President Jackson's two administrations, and the practical continuation of the same destructive policy by Mr. Van Buren's administration, aroused the people to such an extent that they were determined to throw off the incubus of a "democratic" government, which was, in fact, a democratie government only in name, being in reality a monarchy in disguise. In the city of Washington, this feeling succeeded in electing Mr. Seaton Mayor, he being a determined and outspoken Whig. With reference to this election, Hon. William Cost Johnson, of Maryland, in an address to the people of the District of Columbia, quoted from elsewhere, with reference to the powers of Congress with regard to the banking institu- tions of the District of Columbia, said, under date of July 22, 1840:
" But not satisfied with destroying the banking institutions of the District, in punishment of the people, the administration Senate really passed to a third reading a bill to abolish the present charter of the city of Washington, and to cause a new election for Mayor of the
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city to be held in October next, because the people had selected only a few weeks ago a Whig Mayor to serve for two years from the day of election; and containing, besides, features virtually depriving every master of control over his servant, which no one but an abolitionist could have urged, or a Southern Jacobin have supported," etc.
Another, a citizen of the District, called for a convention of the people, from the corporations within the District, for the purpose of expressing their indignation at the treatment they had received from Congress, and a writer in the public press said: "Till 1829, the people of the District, and especially of Washington, had always been friendly to the administration of the Government, and the administration had always been friendly to the people, regarding them with a kind of parental attachment. Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Adams did what they could to give an impetus to its improvements; but the Hun, Attila, came, and swept like a destructive avalanche over the fair face of the land under the plea of democracy, and clothed with the power which popularity gave him, he 'played such fantastic tricks before high heaven as made the angels weep.' Almost every family was more or less affected by his wild and reckless despotism. He was followed by the Northern man with Southern principles, who professed to follow in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor, and who has brought the country and the District, as well as the Government, to bankruptcy and ruin by the folly of his measures, and his profligate and useless extravagance in the expenditure of the public money," etc.
A public meeting of the citizens of the District of Columbia who were over twenty-one years of age, and who were opposed to the then recent ruinous legislation of Congress toward this District, by which the business, trade, and industry of the community had been pros- trated, was held on Monday, July 27, 1840, in front of the City Hall, to give voice to their wrongs, and to endeavor peacefully to devise a remedy for them. Of this meeting W. W. Seaton was made chairman and Walter Lenox secretary. Samuel HI. Smith submitted a series of resolutions, which were in substance as follows: That the course pursued by the late Congress toward the District of Columbia was insulting to the character of the people of the District, derogatory to their rights, and subversive of their prosperity; that in it the meet- ing beheld a total disregard of the principles of justice and the calls of humanity, connected with a stern purpose to punish sixty thousand people for the exercise of their undoubted right to think and to speak freely of public men and public measures; and that the meeting would appoint five delegates from each ward of the city, to attend a
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convention of delegates to assemble in Washington on the second Monday (10th ) of August, and invited the citizens of Georgetown and Alexandria to appoint delegates to the said convention, for the purpose of adopting such measures as the alarming crisis in the affairs of the District seemed to render expedient.
A committee of one from each ward was then appointed to name a list of delegates to attend the proposed convention, the delegates as named by this committee being as follows: First Ward, Samuel II. Smith, Benjamin O. Taylor, William Easby, Alexander McIntire, and Thomas Munroe; Second Ward, John McClelland, An- thony Preston, William H. Gunnell, Wallace Kirkwood, and William M. MeCanley; Third Ward, Walter Jones, Joseph II. Bradley, John C. Harkness, Jacob A. Bender, and John C. MeKelden; Fourth Ward, Dr. Frederick May, Henry J. Brent, George Watterston, John Kedgely, and W. McGill; Fifth Ward, Daniel Carroll, of Duddington, Thomas Blagden, John W. Martin, Griffith Coombes, and Thomas R. Riley; Sixth Ward, Noble Young, James Marshall, Dr. Alexander Mc Wins, Robert Clarke, and Robert Coombs.
The chairman and secretary of the meeting were then added to the list of delegates, and then, by resolution, the grateful thanks of the meeting were tendered to Hon. William D. Merrick, chairman of the District Committee of the Senate, and to Hon. William Cost John- son, chairman of the District Committee of the House of Representa- tives, and their zealous friends of both Houses of Congress, for their generous and manly resistance to the aggressive measures attempted to be adopted with reference to the District.
The citizens of Georgetown held a meeting, July 21, for the purpose of giving expression to their sentiments as to the course of Congress. Their meeting was held in front of the Mayor's office, and in obedience to a call issued on the 18th of the month. At this meeting a committee on resolutions was appointed, and instructed to report to an adjourned meeting to be held in the Lancasterian Schoolhouse, July 23. This committee was composed of Samuel Me- Kenny, John Marbury, William Laird, Henry Addison, and Judson Mitchell. The resolutions reported by this committee were as follows:
"1. That the surrender of the rights of self-government by the people of the District of Columbia to the people of the United States, to enable them to carry into practical operation the principles of the Government devised by the Constitution of the United States, was a great personal and political sacrifice, and merited a kind, liberal, and generous consideration in return; but has been paid by the majority
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of the present Congress with indignity, insults, wrong, and oppression, of which it becomes us to speak with temperate, but at the same time with indignant, reprehension, and to which no citizen of the District of Columbia having any interest in its prosperity can patiently submit.
"2. That the people of the District, in common with the people of the States, are of right free, and equally with the latter entitled to the benefits of the laws snited to promote their happiness and welfare; that the Congress of the United States has refused to the people laws by them deemed absolutely necessary to their happiness and prosperity, and such as exist in every State in the Union, and have thereby failed to discharge their solemn duty, wantonly and wickedly exposing the people of this District to ruinous embarrass- ment and distress.
"3. That we trace the whole of the wrongs and evils of which. we complain to the subjection of the people of this District to the exclusive legislation of Congress, the members of which, being chosen by strangers, are without the knowledge of our wants or in sympathy with our condition; and we are confident that we cannot be contented and prosperous so long as so unjust and intolerable a mode of gov- ernment is allowed to continue.
"4. That the only remedy from the evils which we now suffer, and the only mode of securing permanent and general prosperity to our town, is retrocession to Maryland; and with a view to effect a measure so indispensable to our interests, the following address to the citizens of the United States at large, and to Maryland in particular, be adopted at this meeting, and signed by the president and secretary, and printed under their direction; and that a copy be forwarded to the governor of each State, with a request that he will lay the same before the legislature of his State at the next meeting."
" An Address to Our Countrymen Throughout the Twenty-six States of the Union, and to Maryland, in Particular," was then read by William Laird, Esq., and was afterward published, together with the above resolutions. The address was as follows:
" We, the citizens of Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, in town meeting assembled on this 23d day of July, 1840, have resolved to address you in the following terms:
" A provision in the Constitution grants to Congress the power 'to exercise exclusive legislation in all classes whatsoever over such district not exceeding ten miles square as may, by cession of particular States and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of government
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of the United States.' We are thus left entirely at the merey of the Legislature of the Union, without a representative on the floor, with- ont a voice in their counsels, -dependent altogether on their will and pleasure, on their wisdom and justice, for action, beneficial or otherwise, operating on our interests and immediately affecting our prosperity and happiness.
" We, a trading and commercial community, have for a long time had banks among us, those indispensable prerequisites for mercantile operations and facilities. The law chartering the one we now have was signed by James Madison; the laws rechartering it were signed by James Monroe, and twice by Andrew Jackson. Previously to the expiration of the charter of this bank a memorial numerously signed by the citizens was presented to Congress, praying in the most respect- ful manner for a recharter, and stating the fact that the institution was perfectly able and willing to resume the payment of specie on its notes as soon as the neighboring banks of Virginia and Maryland paid the same on theirs. A petition was also presented by the bank for a recharter, to include as a feature of it the immediate resumption of specie payments on all its notes. Nevertheless, our prayer for a recharter, as well as the prayer of every one of the other five banks of the District for the same, was rejected, and nothing whatever granted to the banks but the privilege of having a specified time wherein to close up their concerns; and this through the votes and influence of members of the Senate, who insist on the destruction of all banks as a policy of the administration."
The above is only a part of the address, which was very long.
But perhaps the most remarkable thing connected with the atti- tude of Congress toward the people of the District of Columbia during the remarkable session of 1839-40, which has heretofore been adverted to in an extract from an address by HIon. William Cost Johnson, was the attempt, which came near succeeding, to grant a new charter to the city of Washington. The charter under which the city was then operating was granted to it May 15, 1820, and by its terms was to continue in force for and during the term of twenty years, and until Congress by law should determine otherwise. Here, then, was a fine opportunity for a few of its citizens, the population being then about twenty-five thousand, to memorialize Congress for a new charter, and accordingly, such a memorial was presented to Congress, signed by about four hundred of the citizens. This memorial, or petition, instead of being referred to the standing committee on the District of Colum- bia, as was the usual and proper course with such petitions, was
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referred to a select committee, with Mr. Norvell, of Michigan, as its chairman.
The bill reported by the committee was very elaborate and volumi- nous, containing five or six sections more than the charter which it was designed to supersede. The section which declared the con- tinuance of the charter for twenty years, or indefinitely without Congressional action, was inserted in the new bill and altered to ten years, with a reservation to Congress to alter or repeal it at any time; and thus, while the new act was entitled, "An Act to Amend and Continue in Force the Act to Incorporate the Inhabitants of Washing- ton," yet, in fact, it was one merely to amend, and not to continue in force.
But the most amazing and mischievous feature of the bill, and the one which aroused the inhabitants of the city of Washington, as had perhaps nothing ever done or attempted to be done before, to a realizing sense of the danger which they had so narrowly escaped,- for the friends of the bill did not succeed in getting it through Congress,- was that with reference to slaves in the city of Washington. The people of the city were then almost universally opposed to the aboli- tion of slavery in the District. In the old bill or charter careful discrimination was made as to the different modes in which slaves and free persons were to be dealt with or punished. The corporation was empowered to prohibit the nightly or other disorderly meet- ings of slaves, free negroes, or mulattoes, and to punish the slaves by whipping and imprisonment, and the free negroes by pecuniary fines; and such slaves as should commit offenses against municipal ordinances as would impose fines upon others might be subject to corporal pun- ishment, unless the masters should come forward and pay the fines.
In the proposed new charter of the city, every provision relating to slaves was expunged! Every clause and part of a clause in which the word slare occurred was carefully picked out, here and there through the section, and it was impossible to believe otherwise than that these omissions were from design. This course would have resulted in the practical abolition of slavery within the District. It would have amounted to a renunciation on the part of Congress of the recognition by that body of any such thing as slavery, or of any such property as slave property, and would have amounted to a dec- laration that slavery could not in the nature of things be established or permitted by any human institution, and that human laws yield to the paramount force of the natural or divine law.
The bill was passed to a third reading by the unanimous vote of
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the Democratic Party in the Senate, and among those who thus voted were several Senators from slave States, who, it seemed to the people of the District most natural to infer, were not in the dark as to the effect of the proposed charter upon slave property. However, the next day after the passage of the bill to a third reading, a Southern Senator who had voted for the bill renewed a motion to lay it on the table, previously made by one of the minority without success, and it was laid on the table accordingly. But for this motion it would have passed. But yet during the recess of Congress for the summer
of 1840, this proposed new charter, with its clause abolishing slavery in the city of Washington, still, like the sword of Dionysius over the neck of Damocles, hung over their devoted heads, and they might well, as they did, feel considerable anxiety as to the fate of this obnoxious measure when Congress should again convene. Though upon reflection it should have occurred to them, and doubtless would have occurred to them but for the excess of their injured party feel- ings, that before the next session of Congress should commence the Senators from the Southern States would find out how nearly they had been trapped into voting for a bill which would have accomplished at one sweep the very thing which they had been voting against for years, and which they could not have sanctioned without going back on their own record, and without at the same time injuring to a greater or less extent the safety of slave property in the States.1
The people of the District took great interest in the politics of the time, being as a general thing in favor of the election of Harrison and Tyler, as President and Vice-President respectively. One of the clubs organized was named the " Washington City Tippecanoe Club," organized September 18, 1840. John Tyler, in passing through the city on his way to Columbus, Ohio, was invited to address the club, and accepting the invitation, spoke fully and feelingly of the troubles of the District, and joined his voice with the voices of others in various parts of the country who had greeted and cheered the independent spirit of the people of the District in the assertion of and demand for their rights. Of this club John A. Blake was president; Robert W. Bates, II. W. Queen, Jacob Gideon, Jr., and Richard H. Stewart, vice-presi- dents; J. L. Henshaw, corresponding secretary; and Wallace Kirk- wood, treasurer. There was in addition to these officers an executive committee of thirteen.
1 The history of emancipation in the District of Columbia, which was effected some twenty years later, will be presented in a subsequent chapter.
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On Saturday, October 3, this club raised a spacious log cabin and a handsome liberty pole on the vacant ground between the Center Market and Pennsylvania Avenue. The cabin was forty feet front by fifty feet in depth, fronting on Pennsylvania Avenue, and built in regular log-cabin style, with a platform in front for public speaking. The liberty pole was one hundred and seven feet high, and it was surmounted by a streamer bearing the inscription, "Harrison and Tyler." The stars and stripes were afterward elevated above the streamer. The cabin was used as a meeting room for the club, and as a reading and intelligence room for the Whigs generally throughout the presidential contest. The first meeting which took place in this cabin was on Saturday evening after the raising of it, upon which occasion speeches were made by General Walter Jones, Richard S. Coxe, and Robert Ould.
On Saturday morning, November 7, 1840, it was finally ascertained that William Henry Harrison was elected President of the United States, and the rejoicing of the people of this District knew no bounds; for, having suffered from the effects of President Jackson's policy toward them, they fully realized from what they had escaped.
John W. Maury served as Mayor of the city from June, 1852, to June, 1854. John T. Towers was elected Mayor in 1854. In June, 1856, W. B. Magruder was elected Mayor, by a vote of 2,936, over Silas B. Hill, who received but 2,904 votes. At the election which occurred on Monday, June 1, 1857, there was a serious riot, resulting in the death of several citizens and the wounding of others. The principal cause of the unusual excitement preceding this election and of the riot while it was in progress, arose from the heated discussion of the question as to whether naturalized citizens should exercise their right of suffrage, the Know - nothing Party being to a considerable extent bitterly opposed to such exercise. Trouble was anticipated for some days prior to the election, and everything that could be done was done to prevent any outbreak and to calm the excitement, especially by the press. These papers, however, did not know that arrangements had been made to introduce "bands of intrusive strangers" from abroad to interfere with the elections in this city. By the earliest train, however, and on subsequent trains, bands of ill-looking men, mostly a year or two under age, with the generic and suggestive title of "Plug Uglies," arrived from Baltimore, crowding the sidewalks, and giving every indication of being able and willing to carry out any instructions they might have received, or might receive, from headquarters. About 9:30 A. M., at the first precinct of
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