Читать книгу Ten Years in Washington: Inside Life and Scenes in Our National Capital as a Woman Sees Them - Mary Clemmer - Страница 7

Table of Contents

How the City was Built—“A Matter of Moonshine”—Calls for Paper—Besieging Congressmen—How they Raised the Money—The Government Requires Sponsors—Birth of the Nation’s Capital—Seventy Years Ago in Washington—Graphic Picture of Early Times—A Much-Marrying City—Unwashed Virginian Belles—Stuck in the Mud—Extraordinary Religious Services.

Nothing in the architecture of the city of Washington calls forth more comment from strangers than the distance between the Capitol and the Executive Departments. John Randolph early called it “the city of magnificent distances,” and it is still a chronic and fashionable complaint to decry the time and distance it takes to get any where. In the days of a single stage line on Pennsylvania Avenue, these were somewhat lamentable. But five-minute cars abridge distances, and make them less in reality than even in the city of New York. It is a mile and a half from the northern end of the Navy-yard bridge to the Capitol, a mile and a half from the Capitol to the Executive Mansion, and a mile and a half from the Executive Mansion to the corner of Bridge and High Streets, Georgetown. We are constantly hearing exclamations of what a beautiful city Washington would be with the Capitol for the centre of a square formed by a chain of magnificent public buildings. John Adams wanted the Departments around the Capitol. George Washington but a short time before his death, gave in a letter the reasons for their present position. In going through his correspondence one finds that there is nothing, scarcely, in the past, present or future of its Capital, for which the Father of his Country has not left on record a wise, far-reaching reason. In this letter, he says: “Where or how the houses for the President, and the public offices may be fixed is to me, as an individual, a matter of moonshine. But the reverse of the President’s motive for placing the latter near the Capitol was my motive for fixing them by the former. The daily intercourse which the secretaries of departments must have with the President would render a distant situation extremely inconvenient to them, and not much less so would one be close to the Capitol; for it was the universal complaint of them all, that while the Legislature was in session, they could do little or no business, so much were they interrupted by the individual visits of members in office hours, and by calls for paper. Many of them have disclosed to me that they have been obliged often to go home and deny themselves in order to transact the current business.” The denizen of the present time, who knows the Secretaries’ dread of the average besieging Congressman, will smile to find that the dread was as potent in the era of George Washington as it is to-day. A more conclusive reason could not be given why Capitol and Departments should be a mile apart. The newspapers of that day were filled with long articles on the laying out of the Capital city. We find in a copy of The Philadelphia Herald of January 4, 1795, after a discussion of the Mall—the yet-to-be garden extending from the Capitol to the President’s house—the following far-sighted remarks on the creation of the Capital. It says: “To found a city, for the purpose of making it the depository of the acts of the Union, and the sanctuary of the laws which must one day rule all North America, is a grand and comprehensive idea, which, has already become, with propriety, the object of public respect. The city of Washington, considered under such important points of view, could not be calculated on a small scale; its extent, the disposition of its avenues and public squares should all correspond with the magnitude of the objects for which it was intended. And we need only cast our eyes upon the situation and plan of the city to recognize in them the comprehensive genius of the President, to whom the direction of the business has been committed by Congress.”

The letters of Washington are full of allusions to the annoyance and difficulty attending the raising of sufficient money to make the Capitol and other public buildings tenantable by the time specified, 1800. He seemed to regard the prompt completion of the Capitol as an event identical with the perpetual establishment of the government at Washington. Virginia had made a donation of $120,000, and Maryland one of $72,000; these were now exhausted. After various efforts to raise money by the forced sales of public lots, and after abortive attempts to borrow money, at home and abroad, on the credit of these lots, amidst general embarrassments, while Congress withheld any aid whatever, the urgency appeared to the President so great as to induce him to make a personal application to the State of Maryland for a loan, which was successful, and the deplorable credit of the government at that time is exhibited in the fact that the State called upon the credit of the Commissioners as an additional guarantee for the re-payment of the amount, $100,000, to which Washington alludes as follows: “The necessity of the case justified the obtaining it on almost any terms; and the zeal of the Commissioners in making themselves liable for the amount, as it could not be had without, cannot fail of approbation. At the same time I must confess the application has a very singular appearance, and will not, I should suppose, be very grateful to the feelings of Congress.”

I have cited but a few of the tribulations through which the Capital of the nation was born. Not only was the growth of the public buildings hindered through lack of money, but also through the “jealousies and bickerings” of those who should have helped to build them. Human nature, in the aggregate, was just as inharmonious and hard to manage then as now. The Commissioners did not always agree. Artisans, imported from foreign lands, made alone an element of discord, one which Washington dreaded and deprecated. He went down with his beloved Capital into the Egypt of its building. He led with a patience and wisdom undreamed of and unappreciated in this generation, the straggling and discordant forces of the Republic from oppression to freedom, from chaos to achievement—he came in sight of the promised land of fruition and prosperity, but he did not enter it, this father and prophet of the people! George Washington died in December, 1799.

The city of Washington was officially occupied in June, 1800.

The only adequate impression of what the Capital was at the time of its first occupancy, we must receive from those who beheld it with living eyes. Fortunately several have left graphic pictures of the appearance which the city presented at that time. President John Adams took possession of the unfinished Executive Mansion in November, 1800. During the month Mrs. Adams wrote to her daughter, Mrs. Smith, as follows: “I arrived here on Sunday last, and without meeting with any accident worth noticing, except losing ourselves when we left Baltimore, and going eight or nine miles on the Frederic road, by which means we were obliged to go the other eight through the woods, where we wandered for two hours without finding guide or path.... But woods are all you see from Baltimore till you reach the city, which is only so in name. Here and there is a small cot, without a glass window, interspersed amongst the forests, through which you travel miles without seeing any human being. In the city there are buildings enough, if they were compact and finished, to accommodate Congress and those attached to it; but as they are, and scattered as they are, I see no great comfort for them.... If the twelve years in which this place has been considered as the future seat of government had been improved as they would have been in New England, very many of the present inconveniences would have been removed. It is a beautiful spot, capable of any improvement, and the more I view it the more I am delighted with it.”

Hon. John Cotton Smith, of Connecticut, a distinguished member of Congress, of the Federal school of politics, also gives his picture of Washington in 1800: “Our approach to the city was accompanied with sensations not easily described. One wing of the Capitol only had been erected, which, with the President’s house, a mile distant from it, both constructed with white sandstone, were shining objects in dismal contrast with the scene around them. Instead of recognizing the avenues and streets portrayed on the plan of the city, not one was visible, unless we except a road, with two buildings on each side of it, called the New Jersey Avenue. The Pennsylvania, leading, as laid down on paper, from the Capitol to the presidential mansion, was then nearly the whole distance a deep morass, covered with alder bushes which were cut through the width of the intended avenue during the then ensuing winter. Between the President’s house and Georgetown a block of houses had been erected, which then bore and may still bear, the name of the six buildings. There were also other blocks, consisting of two or three dwelling-houses, in different directions, and now and then an insulated wooden habitation, the intervening spaces, and indeed the surface of the city generally, being covered with shrub-oak bushes on the higher grounds, and on the marshy soil either trees or some sort of shrubbery. Nor was the desolate aspect of the place a little augmented by a number of unfinished edifices at Greenleaf’s Point, and on an eminence a short distance from it, commenced by an individual whose name they bore, but the state of whose funds compelled him to abandon them, not only unfinished, but in a ruinous condition. There appeared to be but two really comfortable habitations in all respects, within the bounds of the city, one of which belonged to Dudley Carroll, Esq., and the other to Notley Young, who were the former proprietors of a large proportion of the land appropriated to the city, but who reserved for their own accommodation ground sufficient for gardens and other useful appurtenances. The roads in every direction were muddy and unimproved. A sidewalk was attempted in one instance by a covering formed of the chips of the stones which had been hewn for the Capitol. It extended but a little way and was of little value, for in dry weather the sharp fragments cut our shoes, and in wet weather covered them with white mortar, in short, it was a “new settlement.” The houses, with one or two exceptions, had been very recently erected, and the operation greatly hurried in view of the approaching transfer of the national government. A laudable desire was manifested by what few citizens and residents there were, to render our condition as pleasant as circumstances would permit. One of the blocks of buildings already mentioned was situated on the east side of what was intended for the Capitol square, and being chiefly occupied by an extensive and well-kept hotel, accommodated a goodly number of the members. Our little party took lodgings with a Mr. Peacock, in one of the houses on New Jersey Avenue, with the addition of Senators Tracy of Connecticut, and Chipman and Paine of Vermont, and Representatives Thomas of Maryland, and Dana, Edmond and Griswold of Connecticut. Speaker Sedgwick was allowed a room to himself—the rest of us in pairs. To my excellent friend Davenport, and myself, was allotted a spacious and decently furnished apartment with separate beds, on the lower floor. Our diet was varied, but always substantial, and we were attended by active and faithful servants. A large proportion of the Southern members took lodgings at Georgetown, which, though of a superior order, were three miles distant from the Capitol, and of course rendered the daily employment of hackney coaches indispensable.

Notwithstanding the unfavorable aspect which Washington presented on our arrival, I can not sufficiently express my admiration of its local position. From the Capitol you have a distinct view of its fine undulating surface, situated at the confluence of the Potomac and its Eastern Branch, the wide expanse of that majestic river to the bend at Mount Vernon, the cities of Alexandria and Georgetown, and the cultivated fields and blue hills of Maryland and Virginia on either side of the river, the whole constituting a prospect of surpassing beauty and grandeur. The city has also the inestimable advantage of delightful water, in many instances flowing from copious springs, and always attainable by digging to a moderate depth, to which may be added the singular fact that such is the due admixture of loam and clay in the soil of a great portion of the city that a house may be built of brick made of the earth dug from the cellar, hence it was not unusual to see the remains of a brick-kiln near the newly-erected dwelling-house or other edifice. In short, when we consider not only these advantages, but what, in a national point of view is of superior importance, the location on a fine navigable river, accessible to the whole maritime frontier of the United States, and yet easily rendered defensible against foreign invasion,—and that by the facilities of inter-population of the Western States, and indeed of the whole nation, with less inconvenience than any other conceivable situation,—we must acknowledge that its selection by Washington as the permanent seat of the federal government, affords a striking exhibition of the discernment, wisdom and forecast which characterized that illustrious man. Under this impression, whenever, during the six years of my connection with Congress, the question of removing the seat of government to some other place was agitated—and the proposition was frequently made—I stood almost alone, as a northern man, in giving my vote in the negative.”

Sir Augustus Foster, secretary of legation to the British minister at Washington, during the years 1804-6, has left an amusing account on record both of the appearance of the Capital and the state of its society during the administration of President Jefferson: “The Spanish envoy, De Caso Yrujo, told Sir Augustus it was difficult to procure a decent dinner in the new Capital without sending the distance of sixty miles for its materials. Things had mended somewhat before the arrival of Sir Augustus, but he still found enough to surprise and bewilder him in the desolate vastness and mean accommodations of the unshaped metropolis.”

Of private citizens Sir Augustus says: “Very few private gentlemen have their houses in Washington. I only recollect three, Mr. Brent, Mr. Tayloe, and Mr. Carroll.”... Most of the members of Congress, it is true, keep to their lodgings, but still there are a sufficient number of them who are sociable, or whose families come to the city for a season, and there is no want of handsome ladies for the balls, especially at Georgetown; indeed, I never saw prettier girls anywhere. As there are but few of them, however, in proportion to the great number of men who frequent the places of amusement in the federal city, it is one of the most marrying places on the whole continent.... Meagre the march of intellect so much vaunted in the present century; the literary education of these ladies is far from being worthy of the age of knowledge, and conversation is apt to flag, though a seat by the ladies is always much coveted. Dancing and music serve to eke out the time, but one got tired of hearing the same song everywhere, even when it was:

“Just like love is yonder rose.”

“No matter how this was sung, the words alone were the man-traps; the belle of the evening was declared to be just like both, and the people looked around as if the listener was expected to become on the instant very tender, and to propose.... Between the young ladies, who generally not only good looking, but good tempered, and if not well informed, capable of becoming so, and the ladies of a certain time of life, there is usually a wide gap in society, young married women being but seldom seen in the world; as they approach, however, to middle age, they are apt to become romantic, those in particular who live in the country and have read novels fancying all manner of romantic things, and returning to the Capital determined to have an adventure before they again retire; or on doing some wondrous act which shall make them be talked about in all after time. Others I have known to contract an aversion to water, and as a substitute, cover their faces and bosoms with hair powder, in order to render the skin pure and delicate. This was peculiarly the case with some Virginia damsels, who came to the halls at Washington, and who in consequence were hardly less tolerable than negroes. There were but few cases of this I must confess, though as regards the use of the powder, they were not so uncommon, and at my balls I thought it advisable to put on the tables of the toilette room not only rouge, but hair powder, as well as blue powder, which had some customers....

“In going to assemblies one had sometimes to drive three or four miles within the city bounds, and very often at the great risk of an overthrow, or of being what is termed ‘stalled,’ or stuck in the mud.... Cards were a great resource during the evening, and gaming was all the fashion, at brag especially, for the men who frequented society were chiefly from Virginia or the Western States, and were very fond of this the worst gambling of all games, as being one of countenance as well as of cards. Loo was the innocent diversion of the ladies, who when they looed pronounced the word in a very mincing manner....

“Church service can certainly never be called an amusement; but from the variety of persons who are allowed to preach in the House of Representatives, there was doubtless some alloy of curiosity in the motives which led one to go there. Though the regular Chaplain was a Presbyterian, sometimes a Methodist, a minister of the Church of England, or a Quaker, or sometimes even a woman took the speaker’s chair; and I don’t think that there was much devotion among the majority. The New Englanders, generally speaking, are very religious; though there are many exceptions, I cannot say so much for the Marylanders, and still less for the Virginians.”

Notwithstanding the incongruous and somewhat disgraceful picture which Sir Augustus paints of the Capital City of the new Republic, he goes on to say: “In spite of its inconveniences and desolate aspect, it was I think the most agreeable town to reside in for any length of time,” which if true insures our pity for what the remainder of our native land must have been.