Читать книгу Ten Years in Washington: Inside Life and Scenes in Our National Capital as a Woman Sees Them - Mary Clemmer - Страница 8

Table of Contents

A Ward of Congress—Expectations Disappointed—Funds Low and People Few—Slow Progress of the City—First Idea of a National University—A Question of Importance Discussed—Generous Proposition of George Washington—Faith Under Difficulties—Transplanting an Entire College—An Old Proposition in a New Shape—What Washington “Society” Lacks—The Lombardy Poplars Refuse to Grow—Perils of the Way—A Long Plain of Mud—“The Forlornest City in Christendom”—Egyptian Dreariness—Incomplete and Desolate State of Affairs—The End of an Expensive Canal—The Water of Tiber Creek—American “Boys” on the March—Divided Allegiance of Old—The Stirring of a Nation’s Heart—Ready to March to her Defense—A Personal Interest—Patriotism Aroused—The First-born City of the Republic—Truly the Capital of the Nation.

Washington was incorporated as a city by act of Congress, passed May 3, 1802. The city, planned solely as the National Capital, was laid out on a scale so grand and extensive that scanty municipal funds alone would never have been sufficient for its proper improvement. From the beginning it was the ward of Congress. Its magnificent avenues, squares and public buildings, could receive due decoration from no fund more scanty than a national appropriation. At first Congress appropriated funds with much spirit and some liberality, but there were many reasons why its zeal and munificence waned together. At this day it has not fulfilled the most sanguine expectations of its founders. In Jefferson’s time its population numbered but five thousand persons, and for forty years its increase of population only averaged about five hundred and fifty per annum. Many stately vessels sail down the Potomac to the Chesapeake and the James and out to the ocean; but the Potomac is far from being the highway of commerce. The wharves of Washington and Georgetown are empty compared with those of New York, or even of Baltimore. For generations there was neither commerce nor manufacture to induce men of capital to remove from large cities of active business to the new city in the wilderness, whose very life depended on the will of a majority of Congress. Washington’s idea of the National Capital far outleaped his century. His vision of its future greatness comprehended all that the capital of a great nation should be. He foresaw it, not only as the seat of national commerce, but the seat of national learning. One of the dearest projects of his last days was the founding of a National University at the city of Washington. The following references to this subject in a letter from him to the commissioners of the Federal districts, with an extract from his last will, but faintly express the intense interest which he manifested in the National University, both in his daily life, and familiar correspondence:—

WASHINGTON TO COMMISSIONERS OF FEDERAL DISTRICTS.

“The Federal city, from its centrality and the advantages which in other respects it must have over any other place in the United States, ought to be preferred as a proper site for such a University. And if a plan can be adopted upon a scale as extensive as I have described, and the execution of it should commence under favorable auspices in a reasonable time, with a fair prospect of success, I will grant in perpetuity fifty shares in the navigation of the Potomac River toward the endowment of it.”

FROM WASHINGTON’S WILL.

“I give and bequeath in perpetuity the fifty shares which I hold in the Potomac Company (under the aforesaid acts of the legislature of Virginia) toward the endowment of a University to be established within the limits of the District of Columbia, under the auspices of the general government, if that government should incline to extend a fostering hand toward it. And until such Seminary is established and the funds arising from these shares shall be needed for its support, my further will and desire is, that the profits arising therefrom whenever the dividends are made be laid out in purchasing stock in the Bank of Columbia, or some other bank at the discretion of my executors, or by the Treasurer of the United States for the time being, under the direction of Congress, providing that honorable body should patronize the measure; and the dividends proceeding from the purchase of such stock are to be vested in more stock, and so on, till a sum adequate to the accomplishment of the object be obtained, of which I have not the smallest doubt before many years pass away, even if no aid and encouragement is given by legislative authority, or from any other source.”

The correspondence of Washington and Jefferson abound with consultations concerning this great National University. During his stay in Europe, Jefferson had become personally conversant with its ancient seats of learning, and longed to see somewhat of the splendor of their culture transferred to his own native land. So great was his zeal on this subject, both he and John Adams favored the plan at one time of transferring to this city the entire college of Geneva, professors, students, all. But George Washington opposed the transplanting of an entire body of foreign scholars to the new Republic, almost as earnestly as he did that of a horde of foreign laborers to build the Capitol, he believing both to be inimical to the growth of republican principles and feelings in a newly created republic.

Three-fourths of a century have passed since Washington, Jefferson and Adams consulted together concerning the National University of the future. Alas! it is still of the future. The dream of its fulfillment was dearer to the father of his country, probably, than to any other mortal. The explicit provision made for it in his will proves this. That bequest went finally, I believe, to a college in Virginia. Columbia College, feeble, small and old, is the nearest approach to the National University of which the National Capital can boast to-day. Strange after the lapse of nearly a century, the other evening the friends of this feeble and stunted college, including the President of the United Stales, high officials, learned professors, foreign ministers, and gentlemen of the press, assembled in Wormley’s comfortable dining-room, and over an “epicurean banquet” discussed what Jefferson and Washington did in their letters—a National University for the National Capital. The desire of Washington although not yet fulfilled, must in time become a reality. The National Capital, already the centre of fashion, and rapidly becoming the seat of National Science as well as of National Politics and Government, is the natural seat of National Learning. The educational element, the high-toned culture which always marks the mental and moral atmosphere surrounding a university is to-day the marked lack of what is termed “society in Washington.” The United States Government is doing much for science. There is a greater number of persons actively devoted to scientific pursuits in the National Capital than in any other city of the Union. Washington is already the seat of more purely intellectual activity than any other American city. The scientific library of the Smithsonian Institute is one of the best in the world. New departments of the Government devoted to Science are continually being established on sure and ever-spreading foundations. All these facts point to the final and crowning one—the University of the Nation at the National Capital.

For a time, after the incorporation of the city, its founders and patrons zealously pursued plans for its improvement. But failing funds, a weak municipality, and indifferent Congresses, did their work, and for many years “the city of magnificent distances” had little but those distances of which to boast. Jefferson had Pennsylvania avenue planted with double rows of Lombardy poplars from Executive Mansion to Capitol, in imitation of the walk and drive in Berlin known as Unter den Linden. But the tops of the poplars did not flourish, and the roots were troublesome, and in 1832 the hoped for arcade came to naught. In truth Pennsylvania avenue was one long plain of mud, punched with dangerous holes and seamed with deep ravines. The interlacing roots of the poplars made these holes and ravines the more dangerous, till an appropriation, during the administration of Jackson, caused them to be dug up and the entire avenue to be macadamized, notwithstanding a large minority in Congress could find no authority in the Constitution for such an unprecedented provision for the public safety. Every Congress was packed with strict constructionists and economists, who opposed every effort to improve the National Capital. Many, narrow, sectional and provincial, had no comprehension of the plan of a city founded to meet the wants of a great nation, rather than to suit the convenience of a meagre population. A city planned to become the magnificent Capital of a vast people could not fail through its very dimensions to be oppressive to its citizens, if the chief weight of its improvement was laid upon their scanty resources. A National Capital could only be fitly built by the Nation. For many years the Congress of the United States refused to do this to any fit degree, and the result for more than one generation was the most forlorn city in Christendom. At a recent meeting of the friends of Columbia College Attorney General Williams stated that when he first visited Washington, in 1853, the “Egypt” of Indiana could not compare in dreariness and discomfort with the Capital of the Nation.

In 1862 Washington was a third rate Southern city. Even its mansions were without modern improvements or conveniences, while the mass of its buildings were low, small and shabby in the extreme. The avenues, superb in length and breadth, in their proportions afforded a painful contrast to the hovels and sheds which often lined them on either side for miles. Scarcely a public building was finished. No goddess of liberty held tablary guard over the dome of the Capitol. Scaffolds, engines and pulleys everywhere defaced its vast surfaces of gleaming marble. The northern wing of the Treasury building was not even begun. Where it now stands then stood the State departments, crowded, dingy and old. Even the southern wing of the Treasury was not completed as it was begun. Iron spikes and saucers on its western side had been used to conclude the beautiful Greek ornamentation begun with the building. All public offices, magnificent in conception, seemed to be in a state of crude incompleteness. Everything worth looking at seemed unfinished. Everything finished looked as if it should have been destroyed generations before. Even Pennsylvania avenue, the grand thoroughfare of the Capital, was lined with little two and three story shops, which in architectural comeliness have no comparison with their ilk of the Bowery, New York. Not a street car ran in the city. A few straggling omnibuses and helter-skelter hacks were the only public conveyances to bear members of Congress to and fro between the Capitol and their remote lodgings. In spring and autumn the entire west end of the city was one vast slough of impassible mud. One would have to walk many blocks before he found it possible to cross a single street, and that often one of the most fashionable of the city. “The water of Tiber Creek,” which in the magnificent intentions of the founders of the city were “to be carried to the top of Congress House, to fall in a cascade of twenty feet in height and fifty in breadth, and thence to run in three falls through the gardens into the grand canal,” instead stretched in ignominious stagnation across the city, oozing at last through green scum and slime into the still more ignominious canal, which stood an open sewer and cess-pool, the receptacle of all abominations, the pest-breeder and disgrace of the city. Toward the construction of this canal the city of Washington gave $1,000,000 and Georgetown and Alexandria $250,000 each. Its entire cost was $12,000,000. It was intended to be another artery to bring the commerce of the world to Washington, and yet the Washington end of it had come to this!

Capitol Hill, dreary, desolate and dirty, stretched away into an uninhabited desert, high above the mud of the West End. Arid hill, and sodden plain showed alike the horrid trail of war. Forts bristled above every hill-top. Soldiers were entrenched at every gate-way. Shed hospitals covered acres on acres in every suburb. Churches, art-halls and private mansions were filled with the wounded and dying of the American armies. The endless roll of the army wagon seemed never still. The rattle of the anguish-laden ambulance, the piercing cries of the sufferers whom it carried, made morning, noon and night too dreadful to be borne. The streets were filled with marching troops, with new regiments, their hearts strong and eager, their virgin banners all untarnished as they marched up Pennsylvania avenue, playing “The girl I left behind me,” as if they had come to holiday glory—to easy victory. But the streets were filled no less with soldiers foot-sore, sun-burned, and weary, their clothes begrimed, their banners torn, their hearts sick with hope deferred, ready to die with the anguish of long defeat. Every moment had its drum-beat, every hour was alive with the tramp of troops going, coming. How many an American “boy,” marching to its defence, beholding for the first time the great dome of the Capitol rising before his eyes, comprehended in one deep gaze, as he never had in his whole life before, all that that Capitol meant to him, and to every free man. Never, till the Capital had cost the life of the beautiful and brave of our land, did it become to the heart of the American citizen of the nineteenth century the object of personal love that it was to George Washington. To that hour the intense loyalty to country, the pride in the National Capital which amounts to a passion in the European, in the American had been diffused, weakened and broken. In ten thousand instances State allegiance had taken the place of love of country. Washington was nothing but a place in which Congress could meet and politicians carry on their games at high stakes for power and place. New York was the Capital to the New Yorker, Boston to the New Englander, New Orleans to the Southerner, Chicago to the man of the West. There was no one central rallying point of patriots to the universal nation. The unfinished Washington monument stood the monument of the nation’s neglect and shame. What Westminster Abbey and Hall were to the Englishman, what Notre Dame and the Tuileries were to the Frenchman, the unfinished and desecrated Capitol had never been to the average American. Anarchy threatened it. In an hour the heart of the nation was centered in the Capital. The nation was ready to march to its defence. Every public building, every warehouse was full of troops. Washington city was no longer only a name to the mother waiting and praying in the distant hamlet; her boy was camped on the floor of the Rotunda. No longer a far off myth to the lonely wife; her husband held guard upon the heights which defended the Capital. No longer a place good for nothing but political schemes to the village sage; his boy, wrapped in his blanket, slept on the stone steps under the shadow of the great Treasury. The Capital, it was sacred at last to tens of thousands, whose beloved languished in the wards of its hospitals or slept the sleep of the brave in the dust of its cemeteries. Thus from the holocaust of war, from the ashes of our sires and sons arose new-born the holy love of country, and veneration for its Capital. The zeal of nationality, the passion of patriotism awoke above the bodies of our slain. National songs, the inspiration of patriots, soared toward heaven. National monuments began to rise consecrated forever to the martyrs of Liberty. Never, till that hour, did the Federal city—the city of George Washington, the first-born child of the Union, born to live or to perish with it,—become to the heart of the American people that which it had so long been in the eyes of the world—truly the Capital of the Nation.