USA > Washington DC > Eminent and representative men of Virginia and the District of Columbia in the nineteenth century. With a concise historical sketch of Virginia > Part 2
USA > Virginia > Eminent and representative men of Virginia and the District of Columbia in the nineteenth century. With a concise historical sketch of Virginia > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65
and the western country. The gentleman from Massachusetts who thought the Po- tomac subject to periodical maladies, should consider how much more liable to that objection were the waters of the the ocean, till they made nothing of the Susquehanna."
Fisher Ames again urged the Susque- has planted in the path of making it a quehanna as nearest the center both of means of communication to the Ohio. population and of territory. Nearest the After more debate, the banks of the
14
SKETCH OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
Delaware were voted down, and the members, who would forego their election, house agreed to the Susquehanna by rather than attend the national legislature on that river. yeas 28, nays 21.
Many votes were taken on alternative propositions for a seat of government. Baltimore was defeated, 23 to 37; Ger- mantown, 22 to 39; sites on the Delaware and the Susquehanna were voted down, and the senate bill for the Potomac finally passed, yeas 32, nays 29, and was signed
The bill then went to the senate, but no debates in that body, whose sessions were secret during the first congresses, are on record. The senate voted down the Susquehanna, and there being a tie vote on Germantown, Penn., it was decided by the casting vote of Vice-President Adams to locate the capital in that suburb of by President Washington, July 16, 1790. Philadelphia. The house finally agreed two houses on amendments.
Thus, finally, after long and sometimes to this, but the bill was lost between the acrimonious debate, a site on the Poto-
mac was accepted by a majority of seven votes in the senate and three votes in the house. Those three votes, 'moreover, could not have been obtained had North Carolina not come into the Union in the meanwhile, or had Pennsylvania sided with the northern vote as against the southern location.
At the next session, in 1790, the question was renewed on a motion that congress remove its sittings from New York to Philadelphia. Mr. Thatcher, of Massa- chusetts, said it was no time to consider removal. "It was not of two paper dollars' consequence whether congress sat at New York, at Philadelphia, or on the Potomac." Mr. Jefferson has recorded in his Ana, a remarkable piece of private history re- The proposition was beaten at first, but on renewed effort it passed the senate, garding the final adoption of the Potomac fixing the seat of government at Philadel- site for the national capital. According to phia for ten years, and after that on the this statement, the session of 1790 was Potomac. The house discussed the mat- marked by an obstinate struggle over Hamilton's favorite scheme of the as- sumption of the state debts - amounting to twenty millions of dollars. This was at first defeated in the house; Hamilton was anxious and excited; he urged Jeffer- son to aid in securing its reconsideration, saying that the eastern, or creditor, states were dissatisfied, and threatened secession and dissolution if their claims were not considered. Says Mr. Jefferson: ter some days, on motions to strike out the Potomac, and insert Baltimore. Mr. Madison said: " I defy any gentleman ·to point out any substantial advantage in Baltimore that is not common to the Po- tomac;" in salubrity, security from inva- sion, and access to the west, Baltimore had no superiority. He hoped the house would pass the bill as it stood, for he religiously believed that if Baltimore was inserted, it would never pass the senate.
Mr. Livermore, of New Hampshire, said Baltimore was the most reasonable sug- gestion. He enlarged on the demerits of the Potomac region, and said that taking so southern a situation would amount to a disqualification of many of the northern place. It was finally agreed, that whatever
" I proposed to him to dine with me the next day, and I would invite another friend or two, bring them into conference together, and I thought it impossible that reasonable men consulting together coolly could fail, by some mutual sacrifices of opinion, to form a compromise which was to save the Union .. The discussion took
15
SKETCH OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
importance had been attached to the re- jection of this proposition, the preserva- tion of the Union and of concord among the states was more important, and that therefore it would be better that the vote of rejection should be rescinded, to effect which some members should change their votes. But it was observed that this pill would be peculiarly bitter to the southern states, and that some concomitant meas- ure should be adopted to sweeten it a little to them. There had before been propo- sitions to fix the seat of government either at Philadelphia, or at Georgetown, on the Potomac; and it was thought by giving it to Philadelphia for ten years, and to Georgetown permanently after- ward, this might, as an anodyne, calm in some degree the ferment which might be excited by the other measure alone. So two of the Potomac members (White and Lee, but White with a revulsion of stom- ach almost convulsive) agreed to change their votes, and Hamilton undertook to carry the other point. In doing this the influence he had established over the eastern members, with the agency of Rob- ert Morris, with those of the middle states, effected his side of the engagement; and so the assumption was passed, and twenty millions of stock divided among favored states, and thrown in as a pabulum to the stock-jobbing herd."
So far Mr. Jefferson: and his statement has been generally accepted as a part of the history of the times.
wide latitude of choice, indeed, to be con- fided to one man. It was in the power of Washington, under the provisions of this act, to have founded the national capital at Harper's Ferry, fifty miles west of Bal- timore, instead of at a place forty miles south of it. He might even have located it, at his discretion, at the mouth of the Conococheague itself, 100 miles farther up the river than the present capital; and there is a contemporaneous letter of Oliver Wolcott, which says-"In 1800 we are to go to the Indian place with the long name, on the Potomac." Washing- ton, however, with that consummate judg- ment which distinguished his career, fixed upon just the one spot in the entire range of the territory prescribed by congress, which commanded the three-fold advant- ages of unfailing tide-water navigation, convenient access from Baltimore and the other large cities northward, and superb natural sites, alike for public buildings and for the varied wants of a populous city. The "magnificent distances," once the theme of so much cheap ridicule, are found not at all too liberal, now that the capital has grown from a straggling vil- lage into a well-built and well-paved em- porium for a population which, though not placing it in the first rank of great cities, gives it at least an enviable place in the second rank.
It is a noteworthy fact that this act of congress, adopted after so long and seri- ous a division of opinion, fixed absolutely no place for the site of the capital city. It gave to the president of the United Both Virginia and Maryland took the most zealous and active interest in the success of the establishment of the national capital on their borders. With coterminous territory for nearly 300 miles, separated by the great natural boundary of the Potomac, these prosper- ous commonwealths had every motive to unite in whatever should bring population and wealth to develop their great natural States the sole power to select any site on the river Potomac between the mouth of the eastern branch (or Anacostia) to the mouth of the Conococheague; in other words, within a distance of about 105 miles (following the river windings) from the present site of Washington to where the Conococheague joins the Potomac, at Williamsport, about seven miles from Hagerstown, in Maryland. Here was a advantages, and to improve the naviga-
16
SKETCH OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
tion of the river. With a liberality equal and Anacostia rivers, and the command- to the occasion, Virginia voted $120,000 ing heights on both banks of the two in money as a free gift to the United rivers. These commissioners laid the States government to aid in erecting the corner stone of the new district April 15, public buildings, and Maryland appropri- 1791, and under Washington's direction employed Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant, ated $72,000 to the same object - a sum which was relatively a very large one in a skilled engineer from Paris, to lay out a that day of small things. This not prov- ing to be sufficient, and the congress at Philadelphia not coming forward with ap- propriations, as had been expected, Washington was induced to make a per- sonal appeal to the state of Maryland for a loan. He told Gov. Stone that the com- missioners had attempted in vain to bor- row in Europe to carry on the public buildings, and he knew of no place in the out the city of Washington. The fact United States where application could be made with greater propriety than to the legislature of Maryland, "a state where the most anxious solicitude is presumed to be felt for the growth and prosperity of that city which is intended for the per- manent seat of government for America." The application was granted, and the legislature accompanied the act author- izing the loan of $100,000 with a testi- monial of their high regard for the president, while they were careful to re- quire the personal security of the commis- sioners (so low was then the credit of the United States) as guarantee of the re- payment of the loan.
Washington appointed as commission- ers for surveying and laying out the dis- trict, under the act of congress, Thomas Johnson and Daniel Carroll, of Mary- land, and Dr. David Stuart, of Virginia. Under his authority they marked out the territory, which was so located as to em- brace the two towns of Georgetown, in Maryland (founded in 1751), and Alex- andria, in Virginia (founded in 1748), to- gether with the confluence of the Potomac
plot of what they informed him, in a letter dated September 9, 1791, they had deter- mined to call "the territory of Columbia," and the federal city "the city of Washing- ton." L'Enfant, early in the Revolution- ary war, offered his services and became captain in the continental army. He was a man of taste and genius, which he had a noble opportunity to display in laying that he was obstinate and impracticable, and that he was dismissed after a year's employment, should not detract from the honor justly due to this French-Ameri- can, who died in poverty, in 1825, and is one of the "unaccredited heroes" to whom a monument should be erected. The scheme of L'Enfant adopted as its basis the topography of Versailles, the seat of the French government buildings, and introduced those broad transverse avenues, intersecting the streets of the city, with numerous open squares, circles and triangular reservations, which now form the main features of the plan of the city. The proprietors of the lands within the city limits relinquished all title, in fee simple, to the president and commission- ers, conditioned upon retaining for them- selves an undivided half interest with the trustees in behalf of the public in all the lots laid off for sale; relinquishing without compensation all lands occupied by streets and avenues, and receiving {25 an acre for all which should be taken for public buildings or improvements.
L'Enfant was succeeded by Andrew
17
SKETCH OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
Ellicott, a skilled surveyor, whose labors tractions of the cities they had known. gave general satisfaction. The ideas of These discontents give an amusing and sometimes grotesque coloring to the cor- respondence and journals of the early members of congress and officers of the government. the founders of the city proposed a seat of government of ample territorial pro- portions, and provided with marvelous foresight for the future wants of a teem- ing population. Thus, the public streets and avenues were all from seventy feet to one hundred and sixty feet in width (the latter being double the width of Broad- way in New York). There are twenty- three wide avenues, and thirteen parks or squares, besides numerous smaller circles and triangular reservations planted with trees. While the superficial measurement of the city proper includes 6, 111 acres, not less than 3,095 acres of this surface is taken up by streets, avenues, and govern- ment reservations, leaving only 3,016 acres to private houses and their grounds. There is thus a much larger proportion of land reserved from buildings in Washing- ton than in any other large city in the country, a fact which secures permanent sanitary advantages of the utmost value.
Nothing could be more primitive than the condition of the District of Columbia in 1800. A single packet sloop brought the furniture of the executive departments, and all the archives of the government, from Philadelphia to the virgin capital, via Delaware river, Chesapeake bay, and the Potomac. The "president's palace," as some called it, was a great, rambling edifice, not half finished within, where Mrs. John Adams found it would take a retinue of thirty servants to take care of it, and more candles and lamps than the town could furnish to light it. She lost her way in reaching the place from Balti- more, there being a dense forest between, without landmarks or inhabitants. Oliver Wolcott wrote that most of the houses were "small, miserable huts, which pre- sent an awful contrast to the public build- ings." J. Cotton Smith, a member of congress, described the only wing of the capitol that had been erected as "a shin- ing object in dismal contrast with the scene around." Not one of the streets and avenues portrayed on the plan of the city was visible, except "a road, with two buildings on each side of it, called the New Jersey avenue." Pennsylvania ave- nue was only "a deep morass, covered with alder bushes." Sir Augustus Foster, British minister in Jefferson's term as president, gives a somewhat less forlorn description:
This is no place for any detailed descrip- tion of a capital so often described. But it is a notable fact, in connection with its history, that the felicity of the site, com- bined with the rival pretensions or disad- vantages of other places, more than once prevented a removal of the capital, at seasons when that chronic discontent which sways the tempers of many men and nations broke out against the estab- lished seat of the government. It is not strange that the early congresses, amid the discomforts and deprivations which were inseparable from an infant settlement in the wilderness, should have wished that the spirit of compromise, or the influence of " There is no want of handsome ladies for the balls, especially at Georgetown; indeed, I never saw prettier girls anywhere. In going to assemblies, we had sometimes Washington, the father of his country, had been less potent in bringing the seat of congress so far from the comforts and at- | to drive three or four miles within the city 3
18
SKETCH OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
bounds, and very often at the great risk of | ington became more pronounced. In an overturn, or of being what is termed ' stalled,' or stuck in the mud. Cards were a great resource of an evening, and gam- ing was all the fashion, at 'brag' espe- cially, for the men who frequented society were chiefly from the western states, and were very fond of this, the worst gambling of all games. 'Loo' was the innocent diversion of the ladies."
As the first president inaugurated in Washington, Mr. Jefferson introduced re- publican simplicity into the social ob- servances, which had been very stiff and formal under Washington and Adams. But the romantic story of his riding alone to the capitol and hitching his horse to the fence, while he went in to be sworn into office as president, is an invention, first brought out by one John Davis, an Englishman, who published his travels in 1805. An actual eye-witness relates that Jefferson "walked from his lodgings, which were not far distant, attended by five or six gentlemen who were his fel- low-lodgers. * The new president walked home with two or three of the gentlemen who lodged in the same house." Jefferson was a very earnest friend to the infant district, recommend- ing to congress liberal provision for its improvement. He was, during his presi- dency, a member of the public school board of Washington, and the manu- script minute book recording his pres- ence at meetings is preserved in the Con- gressional library.
point of fact, not a solitary thing in the city, or rather village, had ever been fin- ished, and the crude and comfortless situ- ation of the public squares, walks, and streets was paralleled in the half-finished condition of the public buildings. Some were secretly glad that the British had burned the capitol, thus giving plausibility to the argument for re-building elsewhere without sacrificing the cost of what had been built and destroyed. In February, 1815, occurred a long debate, very imper- fectly reported, on a bill authorizing the borrowing of $500,000 at six per cent. for repairing or re-building the capitol, the president's house, and the public offices on their present sites. It was urged against the measure that Washington, as a capital city, was an entire failure; that the public buildings, if rebuilt here, were subject to recapture or destruction by the enemy at any time; that the interest and convenience of members of congress and of the govern- ment required a place at or near some considerable city; that the center of terri- tory as well as of population required a location elsewhere; that this was no season, while the country was still in the midst of a costly war, to devote half a million to the public buildings; and that even if it were deemed best to retain the capital at Washington it was absolutely needful to concentrate the public build- ings toward the western part of the place, as near as possible to Georgetown, rather than rebuild them on the existing distant and highly inconvenient sites. On the other hand, it was urged with great force that to talk of removing the capital then was untimely and pusillanimous; that con- gress would never recover from the odium of having run away in the face of
Several abortive attempts to get resolu- tions passed for the removal of the capi- tal were made in the first decade of the century. And after the war with Great Britain, in 1815, when the British army had destroyed the capitol, the executive mansion, some of the public offices and the navy yard, the spirit of opposition to the rebuilding at such a place as Wash- the enemy, taking their capital with them
19
SKETCH OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
that the site of the federal city had been after demands for building purposes, the determined on after full deliberation by capital-movers won no victory. the founders of the republic, and under the immediate care of Washington him- self; that it combined great natural
When the project for ceding back to Virginia Alexandria and the lands of the district lying west of the Potomac was advantages with remoteness from the brought forward in 1846, the matter of re- moval was again agitated. The grounds of the people of Alexandria for desiring to be relegated to a reunion with Virginia were obvious enough. In the half-century of their attachment to the District of Co- lumbia the sanguine hopes which a former generation had built upon the fostering hand of the national government had not not been realized. Congress had done little or nothing for the improvement of that side of the river. Washington had grown from a little settlement of 500 souls to a population of nearly 40,000; but Alexandria had not shared this rapid in- crease, and found her commerce, instead of the vast extension which had been pre- dicted, growing even smaller year by year. Her people, deprived of the privileges of citizenship in Virginia, had acquired no rights under the United States; on the contrary, they were deprived even of the privilege of voting for president or con- gress, while at the same time without a voice in any of the laws that governed them. In the forcible language of one of their spokesmen, they were " political or- phans, who had been abandoned by their legitimate parents, and were uncared for by the parents who had adopted them."
disturbing influences of a populous city; that to suffer a single day's invasion and vandalism of an enemy at the national capital to break up the seat of govern- ment of the United States would be too pitiful a spectacle to present to the eyes of the world; that to rebuild the public edifices on the old sites would save about one half the expense, because the old walls could be largely used; that to remove the capital would be grossly unjust to the people of the district, some of whom had given their lands, and others had invested their means here on the faith of the permanent residence of the government, and they would now have just claims to indemnification to a heavy amount; that it would be equally unfair to Maryland and Virginia, which states had given nearly $200,000 to help erect the government buildings; that the continual agitation of the question of removal, of retrocession, etc., was the sole cause why the city of Washington had not grown in proportion to other places on the continent; and that no prudent man could be expected to risk his fortune in a place that was every year threatened with destruction by the very power which ought to foster and protect it.
The result of the full discussion was the triumph of the conservative influence, which favored the retention of the capital at Washington. The bill appropriating half a million was carried by a majority of fifteen in the house, and by a small vote in the senate, and though the struggle was
Mr. Reverdy Johnson said that the peo- ple of Alexandria complained of having been neglected by congress, and they had probably good reason; since it was natu- ral that congress should be more favorable to that part of the district which was the immediate scene of its labors.
Mr. Calhoun, replying to the constitu- more than once renewed, on occasion of tional objection to retrocession, that it
20
SKETCH OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.
proposed to cede a part of the permanent seat of government, said the act of con- gress, so providing, possessed no perpe- tuity of obligation, but was repealable. Besides, the giving up of a strip of land on the other side the river could in no manner affect the permanency of the seat of government in what remained. Here the government had been wisely located; and here, in his opinion, it would continue so long as the institutions of the republic endured.
Senator William Allen, of Ohio, said he was for establishing the seat of govern- ment to the westward, nearer the center of the country. Its location near the sea- board and the chief commercial cities gave to the commercial interests a preponder- ating influence over legislation. There were no lobbies from the farmers of the west, but the committees of congress were overrun with tariff lobbyists and Wall street lobbyists. The great mass of the people, four-fifths of them, lived on the soil, and it was in their center that the seat of government should be located.
Mr. Calhoun replied, that at the Mem- phis commercial convention, a body com- posed of 600 members, representing almost exclusively the interests of those who lived on the soil, a resolution was offered rec- ommending a change in the seat of the general government. A most extraordi- nary sensation was produced, and when the resolution was submitted there was one loud-toned, overwhelming no ! op- posed to the solitary voice of the mover.
The retrocession was carried by a large majority in both houses of congress. It submitted the question to a vote of the people concerned, and the re-union with Virginia was ratified by a vote closely ap- proximating unanimity.
| from 100 to sixty-four square miles, com- prehends the city of Washington, George- town (now West Washington) and the remainder of the district, known as the county of Washington. It is about four- teen miles in circumference.
The government of Washington city has undergone three notable transforma- tions. By act of May 3, 1802, the inhabit- ants were incorporated, a city council of two chambers was provided for, with a mayor, first appointed by the president annually, later (in 1812) elected by the board of aldermen and council, and finally (after 1820) elected biennially by the people. This form of government continued about seventy years, congress taking very slight interest in the capital city or its affairs. After the new impetus given to enterprise by the happy termina- tion of the Civil war of 1861-65, in the era of great commercial prosperity and finan- cial expansion which ensued, congress was induced to organize a new regime for the district. The charters of the cities of Washington and Georgetown were abol- ished by act of February 21, 1871, a ter- ritorial government was created, with a governor and council appointed by the president and senate, a legislative assem- bly elected by the people, a board of pub- lic works appointed by the president, and a delegate in congress, elected by popular vote. This new governing power had a brief, but preternaturally active and ambi- tious existence. Under the impetus and organizing power of Alexander R. Shep- herd, one of the most energetic of men, a vast system of street and sewer improve- ments was organized, and in three years a debt of $21,000,000 was created in pushing to the speediest completion the public works planned with a comprehensive aim
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.