USA > Washington DC > Washington DC > Washington : the capital city and its part in the history of the nation > Part 18
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Into a space of less than three years Shepherd and his lieutenants injected the delayed activity of three-quarters of a century, creating Wash- ington as it is known to-day. The effect of their labors was at once seen in a rapid increase in population, and an even more rapid rise in real estate values, but the American Haussmann shared the too frequent fate of the innovator. He had done his work roughly and hastily, though thoroughly, and had created the while a numerous body of powerful and active ene- mies, who, keenly alive to the large indebtedness it created, failed, on the other hand, to appreciate the incomparably large results it insured. He was given no credit for his successes, and only curses for his failures; and, though not a dis- honest dollar was discovered to bear witness against him, he was driven from office in dis- grace and virtually ostracised in the city he had done more than any other to make beautiful and prosperous. A few years later he became finan-
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cially embarrassed, and was forced to exile him- self to Mexico, hoping to repair in its silver mines his shattered fortune. This hope has been abundantly realized, and he is now one of the wealthiest men in our sister republic. Better still. he has lived long enough to see his vindi- cation, to be royally welcomed back to Wash- ington, and to hear its citizens discussing the propriety of erecting a statue to his honor.
Perhaps Shepherd's greatest service to his na- tive city was an unconscious one. His own downfall was the downfall also of the govern- ment of which he was the master spirit. An act passed by Congress, in June, 1874, abolished the form of government under which the re- making of the city had been carried forward, and with it the elective franchise. To replace the old order, Congress temporarily provided a government by three commissioners, at the same time guaranteeing the interest and principal of the bonds issued for the new improvements, and making provision for the preparation of a per- manent form of government. These pledges were duly redeemed in an act passed in June, 1878, which lodged the affairs of the District in the hands of a board of three commissioners,-
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two civilians, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and an engineer officer, detailed from the army. All the numerous sub- ordinates are appointed by the commissioners. The engineer is allowed two assistants, also de- tailed from the engineer corps of the army, one of whom is in charge of the streets and the other of the sewers. All money for street improve- ments is virtually controlled by the engineers, as they make out the estimates for the commis- sioners, who forward them to the Secretary of the Treasury, for transmission to Congress and incorporation in the appropriation bills. Con- gress pays half the taxes and the salaries of all officers appointed by the President; all others are paid by the District of Columbia.
Although many good citizens may regret that in the national capital taxation without repre- sentation is the basic principle of what, in the language of the Supreme Court of the United States, is "the final judgment of Congress as to the system of government which should ob- tain," it is generally admitted that for the Dis- trict of Columbia the present form of govern- ment is the best possible. Free from scandal of every sort, successive boards of commissioners
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of ability and character have administered the affairs of the District during the past twenty- seven years more efficiently and economically than the affairs of any other American munici- pality have been administered, and to such gen- eral satisfaction that there has been no lasting criticism. Indeed, to quote the words of an experienced and acute observer, "Washington is one of the best governed cities in the world. There is no political party to profit from the knavery of contractors or the finding of places for henchmen, no boss to whom universal tribute is paid. Its streets are clean and well lighted, its policemen polite and conscientious, its fire department prompt and reliable, its care for the public health and of the sick and indigent ad- mirable, and its rate of taxation one of the lowest in the country. The greatest virtue of its government is that it is distinctly a govern- ment of public opinion. The unusually high in- telligence of its citizens and their remarkable interest and activity in the conduct of its affairs make them its real rulers under the constitu- tional authority of the President and Congress."
Washington under its present form of gov- ernment has doubled in population and in
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wealth; nor has there been any break in the work of making it the most beautiful of capitals. In this private initiative and public spirit have gone hand in hand. Many of the later residents of the capital have been people of wealth or of fixed incomes who have become inhabitants be- cause of its superior attractions, while it has also grown to be the favorite resting-place for retired government officers, especially of the army and navy, and the most frequented work- shop for literary men in all branches of their professions. Thence has sprung the erection of an increasing number of private residences which lend to Washington one of its most per- vading charms. These houses are of as many designs as their owners have minds and tastes, but they carry domestic architecture to the height of comfort and beauty, and almost in- variably they stand free and clear amid fence- less lawns and the welcome loveliness of em- bowering shade. There is not space to describe the palaces of those who seek to make the city a social capital. A majority of them are to be found in the now fashionable West End, which less than thirty years ago was an unattractive waste given over to negro squatters. To-day
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its former swamps and hillocks are covered with miles of elegant residences. One would go far in Europe or America and not find so delightful a residential street as Massachusetts Avenue. It has not the ostentation of New York or Chicago, but it has more charm.
Meanwhile, there have been noteworthy and imposing additions to the great public buildings at Washington. These include the State, War, and Navy Departments building, completed in 1890; the National Museum building; the new General Post-Office building, the first govern- ment structure to be placed on Pennsylvania Avenue; the Pension Bureau building; the building devoted to the Bureau of Engraving ; the Government Printing-Office, a huge affair and a model of its kind; and finally the noble Library of Congress, a structure that now vies with the Capitol as the show building of Wash-
ington. Other new structures, not devoted to the business of the national government but worthy of mention, are the new Corcoran Art Gallery and the Public Library, now in process of erection, towards which Andrew Carnegie has given several hundred thousand dollars.
The work of beautifying the city promises to
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continue for many years to come, and there has been perfected in the current year ( 1901 ) a most comprehensive scheme for the development of its present park system, to be prosecuted during a long period, and which will involve the rec- lamation of large areas of swamp land along the Potomac and several islands in that stream. Much of the land fronting the river has already been reclaimed and converted into a park that stretches from the Capitol west past the White House, and constitutes the Mall, in which are situated the Smithsonian Institution, the Na- tional Museum, and the Department of Agricul- ture. Broad boulevards are to be cut through the Mall and the Botanical Garden, pass the Capitol, and sweep around the terraced bank of the Po- tomac on the heights of Anacostia, from which point the park system, with its boulevards, will be extended northward, skirting the city, to the Maryland line, and then around the semicircle to Georgetown. Coincident with this work and under the supervision of the skilled architects having it in charge, it is proposed to carry to completion the present system of streets and avenues, to bring water into the city to supply a projected group of fountains, and to indicate
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proper sites for additional statues and public buildings. Other improvements which have been much discussed and which promise to take form at no distant day are a bridge across the Potomac worthy of the city, and the construc- tion of new buildings for the National Museum and the Department of Agriculture, of a gallery to house the fast-growing art treasures of the government, and of a fitting structure for the preservation of trophies, relics, and memorials of national importance, the last carrying out the well-considered plans of the founders of the capital city. It is also proposed either to en- large the present executive mansion or to build a private residence for the President, leaving the White House for public receptions and business. All of these things sooner or later will become accomplished facts. The larger patriotism of a new era voices the demand that no niggard hand should minister to the nation's city, and the present generation, doubtless, will live to see Washington take on a new and surpassing archi- tectural beauty, giving it in dignity and out- ward attractiveness what it already enjoys in political importance,-the foremost place among the capitals of the world.
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Though the first President's cherished dream of a great national university in the city which bears his name has never taken concrete form, Washington's development as an educational centre has been surprisingly rapid in recent years. Its common school system, which includes normal, high, and manual-training schools, was completely reorganized in 1869, and has since been so wisely and efficiently conducted as to be often cited as a model; while through the Columbian, the Howard, and the Catholic Uni- versities it makes effective and enhancing con- tribution to the cause of higher education. The Columbian, established as a college in 1821 and reincorporated as a university in 1873, has col- legiate, law, and medical departments, and is in an actively prosperous condition. Howard University, founded in 1867 and named after its first president, General Oliver O. Howard, rep- resents a brave and measurably successful at- tempt to place higher education within the reach of the colored race. It is well housed on a commanding site in the northern part of the city, and includes, besides the regular collegiate departments, well-attended schools of theology, law, and medicine. The Catholic University, II .- 25 385
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first opened to students in 1890, occupies one of the finest sites for the effective display of noble buildings that can well be imagined. Its divinity courses are attended only by ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic Church, but its other courses are open to students of all creeds, and their steadily increasing numbers promise ere long to confirm the hope and aim of its founders to make it the foremost institution of its kind in the New World. Mention must also be made of another noteworthy Washington school, the Na- tional Deaf-Mute College, which, begun in a modest way in 1857, has been since 1872 a ward of Congress. It is the only school in the world where deaf-mutes may obtain a collegiate educa- tion, and many of its graduates have won dis- tinguished success in the professions.
A city planned and built solely for the pur- poses of government, Washington boasts a life and color peculiarly its own. It is a city of authority and leisure, and this fact is pleasantly brought home to the wayfarer when for the first time he becomes a part of the afternoon parade on Pennsylvania Avenue. The people who make up this parade are different from those of other American cities. They are from
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all the States and Territories; most of them live, with ease of mind, on assured incomes from the government; and all of them are well dressed, self-respecting, and of a proud and con- fident bearing. There are no strained faces among them, such as one encounters in New York or Chicago, and all walk as if conscious of the fact that they have an abundance of time at their command. There are the men from the North and West, the one proud of his past and the other confident of his future; there is the Southerner, whose garb and speech prove that he is well enough established in his own locality to be of the government; and there is the joy- ous, laughing darky, who lives upon the ruling class and refuses to take thought for a rainy to-morrow.
Indeed, the Washington negro, whether fore- handed or out-at-elbows, has good reason to be satisfied with his lot, for nowhere else does he command and enjoy the same favoring con- ditions, the same standing and treatment. Four thousand of the odd ninety thousand negroes in Washington are in government employ. Ne- groes own more than eight million dollars' worth of real estate in the District of Columbia.
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They have their editors, teachers, doctors, den- tists, druggists, dancing-masters; their clubs, saloons, newspapers, schools, and halls; and they have a genteel society of their own, modelled closely upon the lines of white society, and living in amity with that body.
The negroes have scores of churches in Wash- ington, but the one " nearest to the heart of the city is the finest,-the Fifteenth Street Presby- terian Church. The Rev. F. J. Grimke, a negro and a Princeton graduate, is the pastor. His flock is composed of school-teachers, doctors, lawyers, dentists, and those colored people who come to Washington when they have money, to get the worth of it. You see nothing to laugh at in that edifice. The people dress, look, and behave precisely like nice white people, only some are black and others are shaded off from white. You see women with lorgnettes . and men with pointed beards and button-hole bou- quets. Polite ushers move softly to and fro, flowers deek the altar at the proper times, a melodious choir enchants the ear, and young men dressed like the best dressed men on Fifth Avenue wait on the sidewalk for sweethearts or drive up in fine carriages for mothers and sisters.
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The wealth of many families of colored persons in Washington sprang from the development of the West End, which, as already stated, was mainly occupied in other years by the tunible- down shanties of negro-squatters. For the making of its beauty and elegance the property- holders were assessed. Many negroes surren- dered their lots, but many others paid the assess- ments, held on, and were made wealthy when fashion led the rich to buy up the land and build upon it. Thus the provident colored people who had worked and saved were able to become capi- talists. Some other fortunes were made in trade, and by cooks, restaurateurs, and men who practise the professions among the people of their own race. One popular professional man of the ebon race is said to be the son of a man who mixed cocktails for forty years in a saloon on Pennsylvania Avenue,-but why should our white brothers in high fashionable circles look down on the man for that?"
They would not, at least in Washington. The capital city is nothing if not democratic, and its society confirms the old saying that in a republic every man has a chance to make his way to social grandeur as well as to political power.
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At the head of this society stands the President, then the Vice-President, then the members of the Cabinet in the order of their succession to the Presidency, the diplomatic corps, the Su- preme Court, Senators, Representatives, and so on down a long list, each official, according to his rank, finding himself definitely placed in the social catalogue. But a long-time resident of the capital has aptly said that " while this offi- cially settles a man's status in the official world, determines his precedence, makes it certain where he will sit at dinner, and whether he shall precede or follow his fiercest enemy, in Washing- ton, as elsewhere, men rise superior to rank, and fortune is greater than circumstance. To be a Senator in Washington is to command respect and a certain amount of social deference; it serves as an introduction, but it serves as 10 more. The introduction secured, what follows depends upon the individual, and more perhaps on his wife, if he be not a bachelor or a widower. For Washington is the paradise of woman : there she holds greater sway than anywhere else ; there she wields greater influence than falls to her lot elsewhere. Woman rules, because in Washington everything revolves around the so-
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cial centre, and society and politics are insepara- bly interwoven. In other cities society and its diversions are only the relaxation from the more serious side of life; in Washington they are part of its general scheme. The one recog- nized leader of society, or the half-dozen who may be competing for that title, in New York, or Boston, or Chicago, or elsewhere, may give dinners or balls during the season as the whim seizes. In Washington there is no option; there is a social calendar to be religiously kept and observed from which there is no escape. Diplomacy, law, and statesmanship must eat at the President's table during the season; each member of the Cabinet must in turn play host to his chief; birthdays and coronations of kings and queens must be duly observed with feasting and dancing; and threading in and out of this maze are the dinners, large and small, official and semiofficial, of diplomatists and secretaries and legislators and the host of officials one grade lower, while the afternoons are busy with teas and receptions. Because society constantly needs to be entertained, and always welcomes to its ranks any person who can provide entertain- ment, and anathematizes the bore, tact and
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cleverness, brilliancy and beauty, . exercise greater influence in the capital than they do in most cities."
The same authority points out in another place that in Washington "position counts for much, but not for all, and wealth counts for little. Many men and women whose position and wealth might constitute them prominent in society are simply tolerated, and not welcomed; and while, to entertain, money is as essential in Washing- ton as elsewhere, it is not the open sesame which it is in some other cities. The million- aire member of the Senate, whose lavish en- tertainments are the admiration of his friends and the shaft of envy to his enemies, does not because of his millions stand higher in the social scale than his colleague who lives in a hotel and whose entertaining is confined to the few dinners which it is absolutely in- cumbent upon him to give during the course of the season. And if he is something more than a mere member of the Senate, if in addi- tion to being the possessor of an official title he is a man of force and character and intellect. if he has a wife and daughters who are tactful or brilliant or beautiful, he and his family will
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be welcome to the most exclusive houses, and nobody will think of his poverty; but if he has nothing to distinguish him, if his womenkind are conventional merely, although the news- papers will frequently report his name at din- ners, and the names of his wife and daughters at teas and luncheons, they will be only super- ficially in society. Washington is the paradise of the poor man with brains. Society in the capital is a very compact entity . and the narrowness of the circle makes it unnecessary for any one to live beyond his position or to try to dazzle his neighbors by a too lavish parade of wealth. A man either lives on his salary, which is always small, or else regards his salary as an incident merely, and relies upon private means. But in either case he quickly finds his level ; and while his wealth may give him a temporary advantage, it will convey no lasting benefit. The millionaires have splurged their brief hour ; they have been written up in the daily papers and pictured in the weeklies, and have drawn their crowds, and have promptly passed into ob- livion ; while men who never entertained, who lived on a salary of five thousand dollars a year and saved a little each year, wielded the real
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power then, and still remain a power. In no other capital of the world, in hardly any other city, does money mean so little as it does in the capital of democracy."
First-hand knowledge of these facts, however, comes only with long residence: it is Washing- ton the capital, the centre of a people's life, that charms and delights the wayfarer. Washing- ton was its founder; Adams, Jefferson, and Madison were the guardians of its struggling and doubtful infancy ; here Webster, Clay, and Calhoun won the fame and did the work which have now become an inseparable part of our history; here began the real rule of the people under Jackson's masterful leadership; here was waged the long contest as to whether the nation should be bond or free; and here centred the desperate and finally successful struggle to save it from dismemberment. And so it is fitting that the tall shaft reared in honor of its founder, and the Capitol which is its heart of hearts, should be the objects which first awaken and longest hold the admiration of the patriotic stranger. The one is the most imposing simple object of great dimensions erected by modern hands, the other the stateliest home ever pro-
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vided for the law-makers of a mighty people. Both are beautiful or sternly impressive at all times, but never more so than when seen with the whole city-a city set down as it were in a forest of green trees-from the great military cemetery on the heights of Arlington, this through the soft and restful haze of an autumn afternoon. There, ranged in grassy columns which stretch from hill-top to water's edge, lie the heroic dead, keeping silent vigil over the capital of the republic for whose redemption they paid the last full measure of devotion. And on the farther shore of the silvery, slow-moving river, beside the sunlit dome of the Capitol, crowned with its statue of Liberty, the white shaft rises heavenward to mark in shadow time for the living the " hours of the dead men's end- less days." It is an unforgetable vision, to com- pass which adds a supreme moment to any life. Burial-ground, Capitol, and Obelisk link the Washington of the past with the Washington of to-day and make both a part of the proud and precious heritage of every American.
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INDEX
A
Aberdeen i. 379 Abolition organ, first, ii. 44
party, first candidate of, i. 355 Abolitionists, i. 300, ii. 82
made by Pierce and Douglas, ii. 138 Ackerman, Amos T., ii. 345 Act. bankrupt, i. 367
Embargo, i. 114, 115
establishing the Smithsonian Institution, ii. 47
general amnesty, ii. 356
giving power to the President to select federal territory, i. 16 granting an increase of con- pensation to Congressmen, ii. 361
Non-Intercourse, i. 115
providing a new government for the District of Columbia, ii. 373
repealing Van Buren's sub- treasury system, i. 367
Acts making penal offences of attempts to hinder negro fran- chise, ii. 356
Adams, Abigail, Mrs., describes journey to Washington, i. 40 at the White House, i. 42. 43 describes condition of White House, i. 41, 42 personality of, i. 42
Adams, Charles Francis, services of, ii. 161 Adams, George W., ii. 317
Adams, John, objects to location of Capitol, i. 25 dress of, i. 43 appoints Marshall, i. 47, 48 law-office of. i. 57
again a candidate, i. 64, 108 travels to Georgetown, ii. 38, 39 Adams, John Quincy, bill intro- duced by, i. 71 as Senator, i. 79 draws up a code of etiquette, i. 179
Adams, John Quincy, made Sec- retary of State, i. 179
a candidate for the Presi- dency, i. 220
elected, i. 224
inaugurated, i. 225 changes the programine, i. 225
appearance of, i. 225
length of service of, i. 225
personality of, i. 225, 226 lacks policy, i. 226, 227
minute faithfulness of, i. 226
simplicity of, i. 227 customs of, i. 227, 228
his son Joliil, i. 228 assaulted, i. 229 wedding of, i. 230
private secretary of, i. 229
makes acquaintance Booth, i. 233
witlı
sees Forrest and Cooper, i. 234
and Clay, i. 244, 245
unpopular conduct of. i. 247- 249
returns to the House, i. 270, 271
fights for the right of petition, 1. 301, 302
describes Mrs. Royall, i. 306 defies his adversaries, i. 373, 374 triumph of, i. 375 death of, ii. 59, 77
Adams, Louisa Catherine John- son, Mrs., gives a ball, i. 216, 217 as bride and wife, i. 230 memorable entertainments
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