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Eng^d by Geo. E. Perine N. York.

Mary Clemmer Ames
A.D. WORTHINGTON & C^o.
Hartford.

TEN YEARS IN WASHINGTON:

OR,

INSIDE LIFE AND SCENES

IN

OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL

As a Woman Sees Them.

EMBRACING

A FULL ACCOUNT OF THE MANY MARVELS AND INTERESTING

SIGHTS OF WASHINGTON; OF THE DAILY LIFE AT THE WHITE HOUSE, BOTH PAST

AND PRESENT; OF THE WONDERS AND INSIDE WORKINGS OF ALL OUR

GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS; AND DESCRIPTIONS AND REVELATIONS

OF EVERY PHASE OF POLITICAL, PUBLIC, AND

SOCIAL LIFE AT THE NATION’S CAPITAL.

By MARY CLEMMER,

Author of “Memorials of Alice and Phœbe Cary,” “A Woman’s Letters from Washington,” etc., etc.

TO WHICH IS ADDED A FULL ACCOUNT OF

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PRESIDENT JAMES A. GARFIELD,

BY J. L. SHIPLEY, A. M.

FULLY ILLUSTRATED

With a Portrait of the Author on Steel, and Forty-Eight fine Engravings on Wood.

[SOLD BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY.]

HARTFORD, CONN.:

THE HARTFORD PUBLISHING COMPANY.

EXCELSIOR PUBLISHING CO., CHICAGO, ILL.

OHIO PUBLISHING CO., CLEVELAND, OHIO.

1882.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, by

THE HARTFORD PUBLISHING CO.,

In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.

CONTENTS.

Ten Years in Washington.

CHAPTER I.
FROM THE VERY BEGINNING.

The Young Surveyor’s Dream—Humboldt’s View of Washington—A Vision of the Future Capital—The United States Government on Wheels—Ambitious Offers—The Rival Rivers—Potomac Wins—Battles in Congress—Patriotic Offers of Territory—Temporary Lodgings for Eleven Years—Old-Fashioned Simplicity—He Couldn’t Afford Furniture—A Great Man’s Modesty—Conflicting Claims—Smith Backs Baltimore—A Convincing Fact—The Dreadful Quakers—A Condescending Party—A Slight Amendment—An Old Bill Brought to Light Again—The Indian Place with the Long Name—Secession Threatened—The Future Strangely Foreshadowed—A Dinner of Some Consequence—How it was Done—Really a Stranger—A Nice Proposal—Sweetening the Pill—A “Revulsion of Stomach”—Fixed on the Banks of the Potomac.

More than a century ago a young surveyor, Captain of the Virginia troops, camped with Braddock’s forces upon the hill now occupied by the Washington Observatory, looked down as Moses looked from Nebo upon the promised land, until he saw growing before his prophetic sight the city of the future, the Capital of a vast and free people then unborn. This youth was George Washington. The land upon which he gazed was the undreamed of site of the undreamed of city of the Republic, then to be. This youth, ordained of God to be the Father of the Republic, was the prophet of its Capital. He foresaw it, he chose it, he served it, he loved it; but as a Capital he never entered it.[it.]

Gazing from the green promontory of Camp Hill, what was the sight of land and water upon which the youthful surveyor looked down? It was fair to see, so fair that Humboldt declared after traveling around the earth, that for the site of a city the entire globe does not hold its equal. On his left rose the wooded hights of Georgetown. On his right, the hills of Virginia stretched outward toward the ocean. From the luxurious meadows which zoned these hills, the Potomac River—named by the Indians Cohonguroton, River of Swans—from its source in the Alleghany Mountains, flowing from north-west to south-west, here expanded more than the width of a mile, and then in concentrated majesty rolled on to meet Chesapeake Bay, the river James, and the ocean. South and east, flowing to meet it, came the beautiful Anacostin, now called Eastern Branch, and on the west, winding through its picturesque bluffs, ran the lovely Rock Creek, pouring its bright waters into the Potomac, under the Hights of Georgetown. At the confluence of these two rivers, girdled by this bright stream, and encompassed by hills, the young surveyor looked across a broad amphitheatre of rolling plain, still covered with native oaks and undergrowth. It was not these he saw. His prescient sight forecast the future. He saw the two majestic rivers bearing upon their waters ships bringing to these green shores the commerce of many nations. He saw the gently climbing hills crowned with villas, and in the stead of oaks and undergrowth, broad streets, a populous city, magnificent buildings, outrivaling the temples of antiquity—the Federal City, the Capital of the vast Republic yet to be! The dreary camp, the weary march, privation, cold, hunger, bloodshed, revolution, patient victory at last, all these were to be endured, outlived, before the beautiful Capital of his future was reached. Did the youth foresee these, also? Many toiling, struggling, suffering years bridged the dream of the young surveyor and the first faint dawn of its fulfillment.

After the Declaration of Independence, before the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, its government moved slowly and painfully about on wheels. As the exigencies of war demanded, Congress met at Philadelphia, Baltimore, Lancaster, York, Princeton, Annapolis, Trenton, and New York. During these troubled years it was the ambition of every infant State to claim the seat of government. For this purpose New York offered Kingston; Rhode Island, Newport; Maryland, Annapolis[Annapolis]; Virginia, Williamsburg.

June 21, 1783, Congress was insulted at Philadelphia by a band of mutineers, which the State authorities could not subdue. The body adjourned to Princeton; and the troubles and trials of its itinerancy caused the subject of a permanent national seat of government to be taken up and discussed with great vehemence from that time till the formation of the Constitution. The resolutions offered, and the votes taken in these debates, indicate that the favored site for the future Capital lay somewhere between the banks of the Delaware and the Potomac—“near Georgetown,” says the most oft-repeated sentence. October 30, 1784, the subject was discussed by Congress, at Trenton. A long debate resulted in the appointment of three commissioners, with full power to lay out a district not exceeding three, nor less than two miles square, on the banks of either side of the Delaware, for a Federal town, with power to buy soil and to enter into contracts for the building of a Federal House, President’s house, house for Secretaries, etc.

Notwithstanding the adoption of this resolution, these Commissioners never entered upon their duties. Probably the lack of necessary appropriations did not hinder them more than the incessant attempts made to repeal the act appointing the Commissioners, and to substitute the Potomac for the Delaware, as the site of the anticipated Capital. Although the name of President Washington does not appear in these controversies, even then the dream of the young surveyor was taking on in the President’s mind the tangible shape of reality. First, after the war for human freedom and the declaration of national independence, was the desire in the heart of George Washington that the Capital of the new Nation whose armies he had led to triumph, should rise above the soil of his native Dominion, upon the banks of the great river where he had foreseen it in his early dream. That he used undue influence with the successive Congresses which debated and voted on many sites, not the slightest evidence remains, and the nobility of his character forbids the supposition. But the final decision attests to the prevailing potency of his preferences and wishes, and the immense pile of correspondence which he has left behind on the subject, proves that next to the establishment of its independence, was the Capital of the Republic dear to the heart of George Washington. May 10, 1787, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Georgia voted for, and New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland against the proposition of Mr. Lee of Virginia, that the Board of Treasury should take measures for erecting the necessary public buildings for the accommodation of Congress, at Georgetown, on the Potomac River, as soon as the soil and jurisdiction of said town could be obtained.

Many and futile were the battles fought by the old Congress, for the site of the future Capital. These battles doubtless had much to do with Section 8, Article 1, of the Constitution of the United States, which declares that Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases 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 of the United States. This article was assented to by the convention which framed the Constitution, without debate. The adoption of the Constitution was followed spontaneously by most munificent acts on the part of several States. New York appropriated its public buildings to the use of the new government, and Congress met in that city April 6, 1789. On May 15, following, Mr. White from Virginia, presented to the House of Representatives a resolve of the Legislature of that State, offering to the Federal government ten miles square of its territory, in any part of that State, which Congress might choose as the seat of the Federal government. The day following, Mr. Seney presented a similar act from the State of Maryland. Memorials and petitions followed in quick succession from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. The resolution of the Virginia Legislature begged for the co-operation of Maryland, offering to advance the sum of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars to the use of the general government toward erecting public buildings, if the Assembly of Maryland would advance two-fifths of a like sum. Whereupon the Assembly of Virginia immediately voted to cede the necessary soil, and to provide seventy-two thousand dollars toward the erection of public buildings. “New York and Pennsylvania gratuitously furnished elegant and convenient accommodations for the government” during the eleven years which Congress passed in their midst, and offered to continue to do the same. The Legislature of Pennsylvania went further in lavish generosity, and voted a sum of money to build a house for the President. The house which it built was lately the University of Pennsylvania. The present White House is considered much too old-fashioned and shabby to be the suitable abode of the President of the United States. A love of ornate display has taken the place of early Republican simplicity. When George Washington saw the dimensions of the house which the Pennsylvanians were building for the President’s Mansion, he informed them at once that he would never occupy it, much less incur the expense of buying suitable furniture for it. In those Spartan days it never entered into the head of the State to buy furniture for the “Executive Mansion.” Thus the Chief Citizen, instead of going into a palace like a satrap, rented and furnished a modest house belonging to Mr. Robert Morris, in Market street. Meanwhile the great battle for the permanent seat of government went on unceasingly among the representatives of conflicting States. No modern debate, in length and bitterness, has equalled this of the first Congress under the Constitution. Nearly all agreed that New York was not sufficiently central. There was an intense conflict concerning the relative merits of Philadelphia and Germantown; Havre de Grace and a place called Wright’s Ferry, on the Susquehanna; Baltimore on the Patapsco, and Connogocheague on the Potomac. Mr. Smith proclaimed Baltimore, and the fact that its citizens had subscribed forty thousand dollars for public buildings. The South Carolinians cried out against Philadelphia because of its majority of Quakers who, they said, were eternally dogging the Southern members with their schemes of emancipation. Many others ridiculed the project of building palaces in the woods. Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts declared that it was the hight of unreasonableness to establish the seat of government so far south that it would place nine States out of the thirteen so far north of the National Capital; while Mr. Page protested that New York was superior to any place that he knew for the orderly and decent behavior of its inhabitants, an assertion, sad to say, no longer applicable to the city of New York.

September 5, 1789, a resolution passed the House of Representatives “that the permanent seat of the government of the United States ought to be at some convenient place on the banks of the Susquehanna, in the State of Pennsylvania.”[Pennsylvania.”] The passage of this bill awoke the deepest ire in the members from the South. Mr. Madison declared that if the proceedings of that day could have been foreseen by Virginia, that State would never have condescended to become a party to the Constitution. Mr. Scott remarked truly: “The future tranquillity and well being of the United States depended as much on this as on any question that ever had or ever could come before Congress;” while Fisher Ames declared that every principle of pride and honor, and even of patriotism, was engaged in the debate.

The bill passed the House by a vote of thirty-one to nineteen. The Senate amended it by striking out “Susquehanna,” and inserting a clause making the permanent seat of government Germantown, Pennsylvania, provided the State of Pennsylvania should give security to pay one hundred thousand dollars for the erection of public buildings. The House agreed to these amendments. Both Houses of Congress agreed upon Germantown as the Capital of the Republic, and yet the final passage of the bill was hindered by a slight amendment.

June 28, another old bill was dragged forth and amended by inserting “on the River Potomac, at some place between the mouths of the Eastern Branch and the Connogocheague.” This was finally passed, July 16, 1790, entitled “An Act establishing the temporary and permanent seat of the government of the United States.” The word temporary applied to Philadelphia, whose disappointment in not becoming the final Capital was to be appeased by Congress holding their sessions there till 1800, when, as a member expressed it, “they were to go to the Indian place with the long name, on the Potomac.”

Human bitterness and dissension were even then rife in both Houses of Congress. The bond which bound the new Union of States together was scarcely welded, and yet secession already was an openly uttered threat. An amendment had been offered to the funding act, providing for the assumption of the State debts to the amount of twenty-one millions, which was rejected by the House. The North favored assumption and the South opposed it. Just then reconciliation and amity were brought about between the combatants precisely as they often are in our own time, over a well-laid dinner table, and a bottle of rare old wine. Jefferson was then Secretary of State, and Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton thought that the North would yield and consent to the establishment of the Capital on the Potomac, if the South would agree to the amendment to assume the State debts. Jefferson and Hamilton met accidentally in the street, and the result of their half an hour’s walk “backward and forward before the President’s door” was the next day’s dinner party, and the final, irrevocable fixing of the National Capital on the banks of the Potomac. How it was done, as an illustration of early legislation, which has its perfect parallel in the legislation of the present day, can best be told in Jefferson’s own words, quoted from one of his letters. He says: “Hamilton was in despair. As I was going to the President’s one day I met him in the street. He walked me backward and forward before the President’s door for half an hour. He painted pathetically the temper into which the legislature had been wrought; the disgust of those who were called the creditor States; the danger of the secession of their members, and the separation of the States. He observed that the members of the administration ought to act in concert ... that the President was the centre on which all administrative questions finally rested; that all of us should rally around him and support by joint efforts measures approved by him, ... that an appeal from me to the judgment and discretion of some of my friends might effect a change in the vote, and the machine of government now suspended, might be again set in motion. I told him that I was really a stranger to the whole subject, not having yet informed myself of the system of finance adopted ... that if its rejection endangered a dissolution of our Union at this incipient stage, I should deem that the most unfortunate of all consequences, to avert which all partial and temporary evils should be yielded.

“I proposed to him, however, 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 place.... It was finally agreed to, that whatever importance had been attached to the rejection of this proposition, the preservation 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 Southern States, and that some concomitant measure should be adopted to sweeten it a little to them. There had before been a proposition to fix the seat of government either at Philadelphia or Georgetown on the Potomac, and it was thought that by giving it to Philadelphia for ten years, and to Georgetown permanently afterward, 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 stomach almost convulsive, agreed to change their votes, and Hamilton agreed to carry the other point ... and so the assumption was passed,” and the permanent Capital fixed on the banks of the Potomac.

CHAPTER II.
CROSS PURPOSES AND QUEER SPECULATIONS.

Born of Much Bother—Long Debates and Pamphlets—Undefined Apprehensions—Debates on the Coming City—Old World Examples—Sir James Expresses an Opinion—A Dream of the Distant West—An Old-time Want—A Curious Statement of Fact—“Going West”—Where is the Centre of Population—An Important Proclamation—Original Land Owners—Well-worn Patents—Getting on with Pugnacious Planters—Obstinate David Burns—A “Widow’s Mite” of Some Magnitude—How the Scotchman was Subjugated—“If You Hadn’t Married the Widow Custis”—A Rather “Forcible Argument”—His Excellency “Chooses”—The First Record in Washington—Old Homes and Haunts—Purchase of Land—Extent of the City.

As we have seen, the Federal City was the object of George Washington’s devoted love long before its birth. It was born through much tribulation. First came the long debates and pamphlets of 1790, as to whether the seat of the American government should be a commercial capital. Madison and his party argued that the only way to insure the power of exclusive legislation to Congress as accorded by the Constitution, was to remove the Capital as far from commercial interests as possible. They declared that the exercise of this authority over a large mixed commercial community would be impossible. Conflicting mercantile interests would cause constant political disturbances, and when party feelings ran high, or business was stagnant, the commercial capital would swarm with an irritable mob brim full of wrongs and grievances. This would involve the necessity of an army standing in perpetual defense of the capital. London and Westminster were cited as examples where the commercial importance of a single city had more influence on the measures of government than the whole empire outside. Sir James Macintosh was quoted, wherein he said “that a great metropolis was to be considered as the heart of a political body—as the focus of its powers and talents—as the direction of public opinion, and, therefore, as a strong bulwark in the cause of freedom, or as a powerful engine in the hands of an oppressor.” To prevent the Capital of the Republic becoming the latter the Constitution deprived it of the elective franchise. The majority in Congress opposed the idea of a great commercial city as the future Capital of the country. Nevertheless when a plan for the city was adopted it was one of exceptional magnificence. It was a dream of the founders of the Capital to build a city expressly for its purpose and to build it for centuries to come. In view of the vast territory now comprehended in the United States their provision for the future may seem meagre and limited. But when we remember that there were then but thirteen States, that railroads and telegraphs were undreamed of as human possibilities—that nearly all the empire west of the Potomac was an unpenetrated wilderness, we may wonder at their prescience and wisdom, rather than smile at their lack of foresight. Even in that early and clouded morning there were statesmen who foresaw the later glory of the West fore-ordained to shine on far off generations. Says Mr. Madison: “If the calculation be just that we double in fifty years we shall speedily behold an astonishing mass of people on the western waters.... The swarm does not come from the southern but from the northern and eastern hives. I take it that the centre of population will rapidly advance in a south-westerly direction. It must then travel from the Susquehanna if it is now found there—it may even extend beyond the Potomac!”

Said Mr. Vining to the House, “I confess I am in favor of the Potomac. I wish the seat of government to be fixed there because I think the interest, the honor, and the greatness of the country require it. From thence, it appears to me, that the rays of government will naturally diverge to the extremities of the Union. I declare that I look upon the western territories from an awful and striking point of view. To that region the unpolished sons of the earth are flowing from all quarters—men to whom the protection of the laws and the controlling force of the government are equally necessary.”

In the course of the debate Mr. Calhoun called attention to the fact that very few seats of government in the world occupied central positions in their respective countries. London was on a frontier, Paris far from central, the capital of Russia near its border. Even at that early date comparatively small importance was attached to a geographical centre of territory as indispensable to the location of its capital. The only possible objection to a capital near the sea-board was then noted by Mr. Madison who said, “If it were possible to promulgate our laws by some instantaneous operation, it would be of less consequence where the government might be placed,” a possibility now fulfilled by the daily news from the Capital which speeds to the remotest corner of the great land not only with the swiftness of lightning but by lightning itself.

Although the States have more than doubled since the days of this first discussion on where the Capital of the United States should be, it is a curious fact that the centre of population has not traveled westward in any proportionate ratio. According to a table calculated by Dr. Patterson of the United States mint, in 1840 the centre of population was then in Harrison County, Virginia, one hundred and seventy-five miles west of the city of Washington. At that time the average progress westward since 1790 had been, each ten years, thirty-four miles. “This average has since increased, but if it be set down at fifty miles, it will require a century to carry this centre five hundred miles west of Washington, or as far as the city of Nashville, Tennessee.” I state this fact for the benefit of crazy capital-movers who are in such haste to set the Capital of the Nation in the centre of the Continent.

I have given but a few of the questions which were discussed in the great debates which preceded the final locating of the Capital on the banks of the Potomac. They are a portion of its history, and deeply interesting in their bearing on the present and future of the Capital city.

The long strife ended in the amendatory proclamation of President Washington, done at Georgetown the 30th day of March, in the year of our Lord 1791, and of the independence of the United States the fifteenth, which concluded with these words: “I do accordingly direct the Commissioners named under the authority of the said first mentioned act of Congress to proceed forthwith to have the said four lines run, and by proper metes and bounds defined and limited, and thereof to make due report under their hands and seals; and the territory so to be located, defined and limited shall be the whole territory accepted by the said act of Congress as the district for the permanent seat of the government of the United States.” Maryland had ceded of her land ten miles square for the future Capital. Nothing seemed easier than for these three august commissioners, backed by the powerful Congress, to go and take it. But it was not so easy to be done. In addition to the State of Maryland the land belonged to land-holders, each one of whom was a lord on his own domain. Some of these held land patents still extant, dating back to 1663, and 1681. These lords of the manor were not willing to be disturbed even for the sake of a future Capital, and displayed all the irascibility and tenacity regarding price which characterize land-holders of the present day. If we may judge from results and the voluminous correspondence concerning it, left by George Washington, the three commissioners who were to act for the government did not “get on” very well with the pugnacious planters who were ready to fight for their acres—and that the greater part of the negotiating for the new city finally fell to the lot of the great Executive. One of the richest and most famous of these land-owners was David Burns. He owned an immense tract of land south of where the president’s house now stands, extending as far as the Patent Office called in the land patent of 1681 which granted it, “the Widow’s Mite, lyeing on the east side of the Anacostin River, on the north side of a branch or inlett in the said river, called Tyber.” This “Widow’s Mite” contained six hundred acres or more, and David Burns was in no wise willing to part with any portion of it. Although it laid within the territory of Columbia, ceded by the act of Maryland for the future Capital, no less a personage than the President of the United States could move one whit David Burns, and even the President found it to be no easy matter to bring the Scotchman to terms. More than once in his letters he alludes to him as “the obstinate Mr. Burns,” and it is told that upon one occasion when the President was dwelling upon the advantage that the sale of his lands would bring, the planter, testy Davy, exclaimed: “I suppose you think people here are going to take every grist that comes from you as pure grain, but what would you have been if you hadn’t married the widow Custis.”

After many interviews and arguments even the patience of Washington finally gave out and he said: “Mr. Burns, I have been authorized to select the location of the National Capital. I have selected your farm as a part of it, and the government will take it at all events. I trust you will, under these circumstances, enter into an amicable arrangement.”

Seeing that further resistance was useless, the shrewd Scotchman thought that by a final graceful surrender he might secure more favorable terms, thus, when the President once more asked: “On what terms will you surrender your plantation?” Said humble Davy: “Any that your Excellency may choose to name.” The deed conveying the land of David Burns to the commissioners in trust, is the first on record in the city of Washington. This sale secured to David Burns and his descendants an immense fortune. The deed provided that the streets of the new city should be so laid out as not to interfere with the cottage of David Burns. That cottage still stands in famous “Mansion Square,” and the reader will find its story further on in the chapter devoted to the Old Homes and Haunts of Washington. The other original owners of the soil on which the city of Washington was built were Notley Young, who owned a fine old brick mansion near the present steamboat landing, and Daniel Carroll, whose spacious abode known as the Duddington House, still stands on New Jersey Avenue, a little south-east of the Capitol. On the 31st of May, Washington wrote to Jefferson from Mount Vernon, announcing the conclusion of his negotiations in this wise—the owners conveyed all their interest to the United States on consideration that when the whole should be surveyed and laid off as a city the original proprietors should retain every other lot. The remaining lots to be sold by the government from time to time and the proceeds to be applied toward the improvement of the place. The land comprised within this agreement contains over seventy-one hundred acres. The city extends from north-west to south-east about four miles and a half, and from east to south-west about two miles and a half. Its circumference is fourteen miles, the aggregate length of the streets is one hundred and ninety-nine miles, and of the avenues sixty-five miles. The avenues, streets and open spaces contain three thousand six hundred and four acres, and the public reservations exclusive of reservations since disposed of for private purposes, five hundred and thirteen acres. The whole area of the squares of the city amounts to one hundred and thirty-one million, six hundred and eighty-four thousand, one hundred and seventy-six square feet, or three thousand and sixteen acres. Fifteen hundred and eight acres were reserved for the use of the United States.

CHAPTER III.
THE WORK BEGUN IN EARNEST.

Washington’s Faith in the Future—Mr. Sparks is “inclined to think”—A Slight Miscalculation—Theoretical Spartans—Clinging to Old World Glories—Jefferson Acts the Critic—He Communicates Some Ideas—Models of Antiquity—Babylon Revived—Difficulty in Satisfying a Frenchman’s Soul—The Man who Planned the Capital—Who was L’Enfant?—His Troubles—His Dismissal—His Personal Appearance, Old Age, Death and Burial-Place—His Successor—The French Genius “Proceeded”—The New City of Washington—A Magnificent Plan—All About the City—The Major not Appreciated—“Getting on Badly”—L’Enfant Worries Washington—A Record which Can Never Perish—An Overpaid Quaker—Jefferson Expresses his Sentiments—A Sable Franklin—The Negro Engineer, Benjamin Bancker—A Chance for a Monument.

The majority of Congress were opposed to a commercial Capital, yet there are many proofs extant that to the hour of his death George Washington cherished the hope that the new city of his love would be not only the capital of the nation, but a great commercial metropolis of the world. Mr. Jared Sparks, the historian, in a private letter says: “I am inclined to think that Washington’s anticipations were more sanguine than events have justified. He early entertained very large and just ideas of the vast resources of the West, and of the commercial intercourse that must spring up between that region and the Atlantic coast, and he was wont to regard the central position of the Potomac as affording the most direct and easy channel of communication. Steamboats and railroads have since changed the face of the world, and have set at defiance all the calculations founded on the old order of things; and especially have they operated on the destiny of the West and our entire system of internal commerce, in a manner that could not possibly have been foreseen in the life-time of Washington.” Throughout the correspondence of Washington are scattered constant allusions to the future magnificence of the Federal City, the name by which he loved to call the city of his heart, allusions which show that his faith in its great destiny never faltered. In a letter to his neighbor, Mrs. Fairfax, then in England, he said: “A century hence, if this country keeps united, it will produce a city, though not as large as London, yet of a magnitude inferior to few others in Europe.” At that time, after a growth of centuries, London contained eight hundred thousand inhabitants. Three-fourths of Washington’s predicted century have expired, and the city of Washington now numbers one hundred and fifty thousand people.

The founders of the Capital were all very republican in theory, and all very aristocratic in practice. In speech they proposed to build a sort of Spartan capital, fit for a Spartan republic; in fact, they proceeded to build one modeled after the most magnificent cities of Europe. European by descent and education, many of them allied to the oldest and proudest families of the Old World, every idea of culture, of art, and magnificence had come to them as part of their European inheritance, and we see its result in every thing that they did or proposed to do for the new Capital which they so zealously began to build in the woods. The art-connoisseur of the day was Jefferson. He knew Europe, not only by family tradition but by sight. Next to Washington he took the deepest personal interest in the projected Capital. Of this interest we find continual proof in his letters, also of the fact that his taste had much to do with the plan and architecture of the coming city. In a letter to Major L’Enfant, the first engineer of the Capital, dated Philadelphia, April 10, 1791, he wrote: “In compliance with your request, I have examined my papers and found the plans of Frankfort-on-the-Main, Carlsruhe, Amsterdam, Strasburg, Paris, Orleans, Bordeaux, Lyons, Montpelier, Marseilles, Turin, and Milan, which I send in a roll by post. They are on large and accurate scales, having been procured by me while in those respective cities myself.... Having communicated to the President before he went away, such general ideas on the subject of the town as occurred to me, I have no doubt in explaining himself to you on the subject, he has interwoven with his own ideas such of mine as he approved.... Whenever it is proposed to present plans for the Capital, I should prefer the adoption of some one of the models of antiquity, which have had the approbation of thousands of years; and for the president’s house I should prefer the celebrated fronts of modern buildings, which have already received the approbation of good judges. Such are Galerie du Louise, the Gardes Meubles, and two fronts of the Hotel de Salm.” On the same day he writes to Washington: “I received last night from Major L’Enfant a request to furnish any plans of towns I could for examination. I accordingly send him by this post, plans of Frankfort-on-the-Main, etc., which I procured while in those towns respectively. They are none of them, however, comparable to the old Babylon revived in Philadelphia and exemplified.” But these two fathers of their country, as time proved, “did not know their man.” Had they done so, they would have known in advance that a mercurial Frenchman would never attempt to satisfy his soul with acute angles of old Babylon revived through the arid and level lengths of Philadelphia.

The man who planned the Capital of the United States not for the present but for all time, was Peter Charles L’Enfant, born in France in 1755. He was a lieutenant in the French provincial forces, and with others of his countrymen was early drawn to these shores by the magnetism of a new people, and the promise of a new land. He offered his services to the revolutionary army as an engineer, in 1777, and was appointed captain of engineers February 18, 1778. After being wounded at the siege of Savannah, he was promoted to major of engineers, and served near the person of Washington. Probably at that time there was no man in America who possessed so much genius and art-culture in the same directions as Major L’Enfant. In a crude land, where nearly every artisan had to be imported from foreign shores, the chief designer and architect surely would have to be. Thus we may conclude at the beginning, it seemed a lucky circumstance to find an engineer for the new city on the spot.

The first public communication extant concerning the laying out of the city of Washington is from the pen of General Washington, dated March 11, 1791. In a letter dated April 30, 1791, he first called it the Federal City. Four months later, without his knowledge, it received its present name in a letter from the first commissioners, Messrs. Johnson, Stuart, and Carroll, which bears the date of Georgetown, September 9, 1791, to Major L’Enfant, which informs that gentleman that they have agreed that the federal district shall be called The Territory of Columbia, (its present title,) and the federal city the city of Washington, directing him to entitle his map accordingly.

In March, 1791, we find Jefferson addressing Major L’Enfant in these words: “You are desired to proceed to Georgetown, where you will find Mr. Ellicott employed in making a survey and map of the federal territory. The special object of asking your aid is to have the drawings of the particular grounds most likely to be approved for the site of the federal grounds and buildings.”

The French genius “proceeded,” and behold the result, the city of “magnificent distances,” and from the beginning of magnificent intentions,—intentions which almost to the present hour, have called forth only ridicule—because in the slow mills of time their fulfillment has been so long delayed. As Thomas Jefferson wanted the chessboard squares and angles of Philadelphia, L’Enfant used them for the base of the new city, but his genius avenged itself for this outrage on its taste by transversing them with sixteen magnificent avenues, which from that day to this have proved the confusion and the glory of the city. French instinct diamonded the squares of Philadelphia with the broad corsos of Versailles, as Major L’Enfant’s map said, “to preserve through the whole a reciprocity of sight at the same time.”

A copy of the Gazette of the United States, published in Philadelphia, January 4, 1792, gives us the original magnificent intentions of the first draughtsman of the new city of Washington.

The following description is annexed to the plan of the city of Washington, in the District of Columbia, as sent to Congress by the President some days ago:

PLAN OF THE CITY INTENDED AS THE PERMANENT SEAT OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES, PROJECTED AGREEABLY TO THE DIRECTION OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IN PURSUANCE OF AN ACT OF CONGRESS, PASSED ON THE 16TH OF JULY, 1790, “ESTABLISHING A PERMANENT SEAT ON THE BANKS OF THE POTOMACK.”

BY PETER CHARLES L’ENFANT.

OBSERVATIONS EXPLANATORY OF THE PLAN.

I. The positions of the different grand edifices, and for the several grand squares or areas of different shapes as they are laid down, were first determined on the most advantageous ground, commanding the most extensive prospects, and the better susceptible of such improvements as the various interests of the several objects may require.

II. Lines or avenues of direct communication have been devised to connect the separate and most distant objects with the principals, and to preserve throughout the whole a reciprocity of sight at the same time. Attention has been paid to the passing of those leading avenues over the most favorable ground for prospect and convenience.

III. North and south lines, intersected by others running due east and west, make the distribution of the city into streets, squares, &c., and those lines have been so combined as to meet at certain points with those diverging avenues so as to form on the spaces “first determined,” the different squares or areas which are all proportioned in magnitude to the number of avenues leading to them.

MR. ELLICOTT “DOES BUSINESS.”

Every grand transverse avenue, and every principal divergent one, such as the communication from the President’s house to the Congress house, &c., are 160 feet in breadth and thus divided:

The other streets are of the following dimensions, viz.:

In order to execute the above plan, Mr. Ellicott drew a true meridian line by celestial observation, which passes through area intended for the Congress house. This line he crossed by another due east and west, and which passes through the same area. The lines were accurately measured, and made the basis on which the whole plan was executed. He ran all the lines by a transit instrument, and determined the acute angles by actual measurement, and left nothing to the uncertainty of the compass.

REFERENCES.

A. The equestrian figure of George Washington, a monument voted in 1783 by the late Continental Congress.

B. An historic column—also intended for a mile or itinerary column, from whose station, (at a mile from the Federal House,) all distances and places through the Continent are to be calculated.

C. A Naval itinerary column proposed to be erected to celebrate the first rise of a navy, and to stand a ready monument to perpetuate its progress and achievements.

D. A church intended for national purposes, such as public prayers, thanksgivings, funeral orations, &c., and assigned to the special use of no particular sect or denomination, but equally open to all. It will likewise be a proper shelter for such monuments as were voted by the late Continental Congress for those heroes who fell in the cause of liberty, and for such others as may hereafter be decreed by the voice of a grateful nation.

E. E. E. E. E. Five grand fountains intended with a constant spout of water.

N. B. There are within the limits of the springs twenty-five good springs of excellent water abundantly supplied in the driest seasons of the year.

F. A grand cascade formed of the waters of the sources of the Tiber.

G. G. Public walk, being a square of 1,200 feet, through which carriages may ascend to the upper square of the Federal House.

H. A grand avenue, 400 feet in breadth and about a mile in length, bordered with gardens ending in a slope from the house on each side; this avenue leads to the monument A, and connects the Congress garden with the

I. President’s park and the

K. Well improved field, being a part of the walk from the President’s House of about 1,800 feet in breadth and three-fourths of a mile in length. Every lot deep colored red, with green plats, designating some of the situations which command the most agreeable prospects, and which are best calculated for spacious houses and gardens, such as may accommodate foreign ministers, &c.

L. Around this square and along the

M. Avenue from the two bridges to the Federal House, the pavements on each side will pass under an arched way, under whose cover shops will be most conveniently and agreeably situated. This street is 106 feet in breadth, and a mile long.

The fifteen squares colored yellow are proposed to be divided among the several States of the Union, for each of them to improve, or subscribe a sum additional to the value of the land for that purpose, and the improvements around the squares to be completed in a limited time. The centre of each square will admit of statues, columns, obelisks, or any other ornaments, such as the different States may choose to erect, to perpetuate not only the memory of such individuals whose councils or military achievements were conspicuous in giving liberty and independence to this country, but those whose usefulness hath rendered them worthy of imitation, to invite the youth of succeeding generations to tread in the paths of those sages or heroes whom their country have thought proper to celebrate.

The situation of those squares is such that they are most advantageously seen from each other, and as equally distributed over the whole city district, and connected by spacious avenues round the grand federal improvements and as contiguous to them, and at the same time as equally distant from each other as circumstances would admit. The settlements round these squares must soon become connected. The mode of taking possession of and improving the whole district at first must leave to posterity a grand idea of the patriotic interest which promoted it.

Two months after the publication of those magnificent designs for posterity, Major L’Enfant was dismissed from his exalted place. He was a Frenchman and a genius. The patrons of the new Capital were not geniuses, and not Frenchmen, reasons sufficient why they should not and did not “get on” long in peace together. Without doubt the Commissioners were provincial, and limited in their ideas of art and of expenditure; with their colonial experience they could scarcely be otherwise; while L’Enfant was metropolitan, splendid, and willful, in his ways as well as in his designs. Hampered, held back, he yet “builded better than he knew,” builded for posterity. The executor and the designer seldom counterpart each other. L’Enfant worried Washington, as a letter from the latter, written in the autumn of 1791, plainly shows. He says: “It is much to be regretted that men who possess talents which fit them for peculiar purposes should almost invariably be under the influence of an untoward disposition.... I have thought that for such employment as he is now engaged in for prosecuting public works and carrying them into effect, Major L’Enfant was better qualified than any one who has come within my knowledge in this country, or indeed in any other. I had no doubt at the same time that this was the light in which he considered himself.” At least, L’Enfant was so fond of his new “plan” that he would not give it up to the Commissioners to be used as an inducement for buying city lots, even at the command of the President, giving as a reason that if it was open to buyers, speculators would build up his beloved avenues (which he intended, in time, should outrival Versailles) with squatter’s huts—just as they afterwards did. Then Duddington House, the abode of Daniel Carroll, was in the way of one of his triumphal avenues, and he ordered it torn down without leave or license, to the rage of its owner and the indignation of the Commissioners. Duddington House was rebuilt by order of the government in another place, and stands to-day a relic of the past amid its old forest trees on Capitol Hill. Nevertheless its first demolition was held as one of the sins of the uncontrollable L’Enfant, who was summarily discharged March 6, 1792. His dismissal was thus announced by Jefferson in a letter to one of the Commissioners: “It having been found impracticable to employ Major L’Enfant about the Federal City in that degree of subordination which was lawful and proper, he has been notified that his services are at an end. It is now proper that he should receive the reward of his past services, and the wish that he should have no just cause of discontent suggests that it should be liberal. The President thinks of $2,500, or $3,000, but leaves the determination to you.” Jefferson wrote in the same letter: “The enemies of the enterprise will take the advantage of the retirement of L’Enfant to trumpet the whole as an abortion.” But L’Enfant lived and died within sight of the dawning city of his love which he had himself created—and never wrought it, or its projectors any harm through all the days of his life. He was loyal to his adopted government, but to his last breath clung to every atom of his personal claim upon it, as pugnaciously as he did to his maps, when commanded to give them up. He lived without honor, and died without fame. Time will vindicate one and perpetuate the other in one of the most magnificent capitals of earth. His living picture lingers still with more than one old inhabitant. One tells of him in an unchangeable “green surtout, walking across the commons and fields, followed by half-a-dozen hunting dogs.” Also, of reporting to him at Port Washington in 1814 to do duty, and of first receiving a glass of wine from the old soldier-architect and engineer before he told him what to do. Mr. Corcoran, the banker, tells how L’Enfant looked in his latter days: “a rather seedy, stylish old man, with a long blue or green coat buttoned up to his throat, and a bell-crowned hat; a little moody and lonely, like one wronged.”

COLUMBIA SLAVE PEN. FREEDMAN’S SAVINGS BANK.

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE.

MAJOR L’ENFANT’S RESTING PLACE.

He lived for many years on the Digges’ farm, the estate now owned by George Riggs, the banker, situated about eight miles from Washington. He was buried in the family burial-ground, in the Digges’ garden. When the Digges family were disinterred, his dust was left nearly alone. There it lies to-day, and the perpetually growing splendor of the ruling city which he planned, is his only monument.

He was succeeded by Andrew Ellicott, a practical engineer, born in Buck’s County, Pennsylvania. He was called a man of “uncommon talent” and “placid temper.” Neither saved him from conflicts, (though of a milder type than L’Enfant’s,) with the Commissioners. A Quaker, he yet commanded a battalion of militia in the Revolution, and “was thirty-seven years of age when he rode out with Washington to survey the embryo city.” He finished, (with certain modifications,) the work which L’Enfant began. For this he received the stupendous sum of $5.00 per day which, with “expenses,” Jefferson thought to be altogether too much. In his letter to the Commissioners dismissing L’Enfant, he says: “Ellicott is to go on to finish laying off the plan on the ground, and surveying and plotting the district. I have remonstrated with him on the excess of five dollars a day and his expenses, and he has proposed striking off the latter.”

After Ellicott concluded laying out the Capital, he became Surveyor-General of the United States; laid out the towns of Erie, Warren and Franklin, in Pennsylvania, and built Fort Erie. He defined the boundary dividing the Republic from the Spanish Possessions; became Secretary of the Pennsylvania Land Office, and in 1812 Professor of Mathematics at West Point, where he died August, 1820, aged 66.

Ellicott’s most remarkable assistant was Benjamin Bancker, a negro. He was, I believe, the first of his race to distinguish himself in the new Republic. He was born with a genius for mathematics and the exact sciences, and at an early age was the author of an Almanac, which attracted the attention and commanded the praise of Thomas Jefferson. When he came to “run the lines” of the future Capital, he was sixty years of age. The caste of color could not have grown to its hight at that day, for the Commissioners invited him to an official seat with themselves, an honor which he declined. The picture given us of him is that of a sable Franklin, large, noble, and venerable, with a dusky face, white hair, a drab coat of superfine broadcloth, and a Quaker hat. He was born and buried at Ellicott’s Mills, where his grave is now unmarked. Here is a chance for the rising race to erect a monument to one of their own sons, who in the face of ignorance and bondage proved himself “every inch a man,” in intellectual gifts equal to the best.

CHAPTER IV.
OLD WASHINGTON.

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.

CHAPTER V.
THE CAPITAL OF THE NATION.

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.

CHAPTER VI.
THE WASHINGTON OF THE PRESENT DAY.

Hopes Realized—A Truly National City—Washington in 1873—Major L’Enfant’s Dream—Old and New—“Modern Improvements”—A City of Palaces—The Capital in All Its Glory—Traces of the War—Flowers on the Ramparts—Under the Oaks of Arlington—Ten Years Ago—The Birth of a Century—The Reign of Peace—The Capital of the Future.

And now! The citizen of the year of our Lord 1881 sees the dawn of that perfect day of which the founders of the Capital so fondly and fruitlessly dreamed. The old provincial Southern city is no more. From its foundations has risen another city, neither Southern nor Northern, but national, cosmopolitan.

THE NATIONAL CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.
It covers more than three and a half acres. Over thirteen million dollars have thus far been expended in its erection.

Where the “Slough of Despond” spread its waxen mud across the acres of the West End, where pedestrians were “slumped,” and horses “stalled,” and discomfort and disgust prevailed, we now see broad carriage drives, level as floors, over which grand equipages and pony phaetons glide with a smoothness that is a luxury, and an ease of motion which is rest. Where ravines and holes made the highway dangerous, now the concrete and Nicholson pavements stretch over miles on miles of inviting road. Where streets and avenues crossed and re-crossed their long vistas of shadeless dust, now plat on plat of restful grass “park” the city from end to end. Double rows of young trees line these parks far as the sight can reach. In these June days they fill the air with tender bloom. Gazing far on through their green arcades the sight rests at last where poor Major L’Enfant dreamed and planned that it one day would,—on the restful river, with its white flecks of sails, upon distant meadows and the Virginia hills. Old Washington was full of small Saharas. Where the great avenues intersected acres of white sand were caught up and carried through the air by counter winds. It blistered at white heat beneath your feet, it flickered like a fiery veil before your eyes, it penetrated your lungs and begrimed your clothes. Now where streets and avenues cross, emerald “circles” with central fountains, pervading the air with cooling spray, with belts of flowers and troops of children, and restful seats for the old or the weary take the place of the old Saharas. In every direction tiny parks are blooming with verdurous life. Concrete walks have taken the place of their old gravel-stone paths. Seats—thanks to General Babcock—everywhere invite to sit down and rest beneath trees which every summer cast a deeper and more protecting shadow. The green pools which used to distill malaria beneath your windows are now all sucked into the great sewers, planted at last in the foundations of the city. The entire city has been drained. Every street has been newly graded. The Tiber, inglorious stream, arched and covered forever from sight, creeps in darkness to its final gulf in the river. The canal, drained and filled up, no longer breeds pestilence. Pennsylvania avenue has outlived its mud and its poplars, to be all and more than Jefferson dreamed it would be,—the most magnificent street on the continent. Its lining palaces are not yet built, but more than one superb building like that of the Daily National Republican soars high above the lowly shops of the past, a forerunner of the architectural splendor of the buildings of the future. Cars running every five minutes have taken the place of the solitary stage, plodding its slow way between Georgetown and the Capital. Capitol Hill, which had been retrograding for more than forty years, has taken on the look of a suddenly growing city.[city.] Its dusty ways and empty spaces are beginning to fill with handsome blocks of metropolitan houses. Even the old Capital prison is transformed into a handsome and fashionable block of private dwellings. The improvements at the West End are more striking. Solid blocks of city houses are rising in every direction, taking the place of the little, old, isolated house of the past, with its stiff porch, high steps, and open basement doorway. Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut avenues are already lined with splendid mansions, the permanent winter homes of Senators and other high official and military officers. The French, Spanish, English and other foreign governments have bought on and near these avenues for the purpose of building on them handsome houses for their separate legations. The grounds of the Executive Mansion are being enlarged, extending to the Potomac with a carriage drive encircling, running along the shore of the river, extending through the Agricultural Smithsonian and Botanical garden grounds, thus fulfilling the original intent of connecting the White House with the Capitol by a splendid drive. The same transformation is going on in the Capitol grounds. Blocks of old houses have been torn down and demolished, to make room for a park fit to encircle the Capitol, which can never be complete till it takes in all the rolling slopes which lie between it and the Potomac. No scaffolding and pulleys now deface the snowy surfaces of the Capitol. Unimpeded the dome soars into mid-air, till the goddess of liberty on its top seems caught into the embrace of the clouds. The beautiful Treasury building is completed, and a block further on, the click of ceaseless hammers and the rising buttresses of solid stone tell of the new war and navy departments which are swiftly growing beside the historic walls of the old. Even the Washington monument has been taken into hand by General Babcock, to whom personally the Capital owes so much, and by a fresh appeal to the States he hopes to re-arouse their patriotism and insure its grand completion. Flowers blossom on the ramparts of the old forts, so alert with warlike life ten years ago. The army roads, so deeply grooved then, are grass-grown now. The long shed-hospitals have vanished, and stately dwellings stand on their already forgotten sites. The “boys” who languished in their wards, the boys who marched these streets, who guarded this city, how many of them lie on yonder hill-top under the oaks of Arlington, and amid the roses of the Soldier’s Home. Peace, prosperity and luxury have taken the place of war, of knightly days and of heroic men.

The mills of time grind slowly. What a tiny stroke in its cycles is a single century. One hundred years! The year nineteen hundred! Then if the father of his country can look down from any star upon the city of his love he will behold in the new Washington that which even he did not foresee in his earthly life—one of the most magnificent cities of the whole earth.

CHAPTER VII.
WHAT MADE NEW WASHINGTON.

Municipal Changes—Necessity of Reform—Committee of One Hundred Constituted—Mr. M. G. Emery Appointed Mayor—The “Organic Act” Passed—Contest for the Governorship of Columbia District—Mr. Henry D. Cooke Appointed—Board of Public Works Constituted—Great Improvements Made—Opposition—The Board and its Work—Sketch of Alexander R. Shepherd—His Efforts During the War—Patriotic Example.

A sketch of the territorial government which now rules the District of Columbia, will account for new Washington and the many beneficent changes which have renovated the city.

As early as the winter of 1868, efforts were made to secure a united government for the entire District, instead of the triple affair then in operation, viz.: municipal corporations for Washington and Georgetown, and the Levy court for the County. Under that regime no system of general improvements could be established. The District was under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress and was obliged to beg and plead with that body for permission to begin and for appropriations to pay for each improvement, as its increasing business and population imperatively demanded. Again, the extension of the right of suffrage and the consequent increase of the number of ignorant voters, made it apparent that something must be done to prevent the control of the cities falling into the power of a class of petty ward politicians of the very worst order, who had sprung up just after the war, and who had already caused considerable uneasiness in the minds of the solid and thinking portion of the community, by the rapid manner in which they had managed to increase the public debt without showing any corresponding public benefits.

It was at first proposed to have the District governed by commissioners to be appointed by the President, and I believe bills to that effect were introduced into Congress by Senator Hamlin, and Mr. Morrill, of Maine, but were defeated. Of course the proposed change was very unpopular, and the Washington Common Council passed a series of resolutions protesting against any interference with the government then existing. The extravagance and venality of the administration of 1868-9, however, awakened the sober and thoughtful minded citizens to the absolute necessity of a radical and vigorous reform, and during the winter of 1869-70 a committee of one hundred was constituted, to whom was given the task of perfecting a bill granting a territorial government to the District, and of the urging of its passage by Congress. This bill failed to pass that Session, and there next came a bitter political contest, resulting in the election of Hon. M. G. Emery as Mayor of Washington.

The evils which it was supposed Mr. Emery would correct, did not seem to lessen during his administration, and in the following winter the project of a new government was revived and urged with so much vigor that Congress, on the 21st of January, 1871, passed what is now known as the “Organic Act,” establishing and defining the powers of the territorial government of the District of Columbia. Immediately following the passage of this act there appeared four prominent candidates for the governorship of the young territory, viz: Messrs. M. G. Emery, Sayles J. Bowen, Jas. A. Magruder, and Alex. R. Shepherd. Messrs. Emery and Bowen soon subsided, and the contest narrowed to between Messrs. Shepherd and Magruder.

It was unmistakably the popular desire that the appointment should be given to Mr. Shepherd. He had been more prominent than any other individual named in securing the change effected; the nucleus of the Organic Act is said to have been drafted by him, and the energy and sagacity he had shown in his public life pointed him out as peculiarly fit for the position. Besides, he had gained the popular confidence by his unvarying integrity and fearless independence, and by a quality too rarely observed in a public man—positive manliness. Colonel Magruder, the Georgetown candidate, was quite popular in that city, where he had for a number of years been the collector of customs. Though at that time he was not extensively known in Washington, those who were his friends were ardent and untiring in their support. It soon became evident that the appointment of either of these gentlemen would cause extreme dissatisfaction to the supporters of his competitors, and as it was especially desirable that the new government should commence its operations with perfect good feeling pervading all the different parties, a governor was sought who should harmonize all differences, and Henry D. Cooke, of the firm of Jay Cooke & Co., a gentleman of unimpeachable integrity, who had kept aloof from all factions and who, in fact, was one of Mr. Shepherd’s warmest supporters, was at length selected.

Then came the appointment of that body of men, against whom so much abuse has been hurled, but to whose energies the existence of the new Washington I have portrayed is wholly attributable, viz: the Board of Public Works. This Board was at first composed of Messrs. A. R. Shepherd, A. B. Mullett, S. P. Brown, and James A. Magruder, with the Governor as president ex-officio. Since then Messrs. Mullett and Brown have resigned, and their places have been filled by Messrs. Adolf Cluss, and Henry A. Willard.

I may state also that the first Secretary of the District was N. P. Chipman, and that when he was elected as the delegate to Congress, the position was given to E. L. Stanton, the son of the late Secretary Stanton, by whom it is now filled.

All the gentlemen I have named are men of clear intelligence, excellent business capacity, and positive energy.

The amount of labor performed by the Board of Public Works can scarcely be imagined by one who has not lived right here in the District, and observed the complete and almost magical changes that have taken place. Embarrassed at the very commencement of their career by the slipshod manner in which improvements had been carried on under the old corporations, they soon encountered a violent opposition from many citizens who should have heartily supported their efforts. This opposition was organized and persistent, leaving no artifice untried to hinder and check the efforts of the Board, seeking injunction after injunction in the courts, and finally appealing to Congress and effecting an investigation which lasted for four months, and was as searching and minute as any ever attempted by that body, but which ended not only in the absolute acquittal of the Board of every charge alleged, but in a cordial commendation of their acts by the committee which conducted the inquiry.

I wish to give this Board of Public Works the credit to which they are justly entitled. When I read the slanders that are cast upon them, I want to ask the authors if they would prefer the dingy, straggling, muddy, dusty Washington of two years ago to the bright, compact, clean and beautiful city of to-day?

The “head and front” of this Board, the man who has infused a portion of his own enthusiasm into his fellow members, the man to whose comprehensive mind and untiring energy the success of the Board is almost entirely due, who was made vice-president and executive officer by his colleagues because they recognized his great abilities, and were content to follow where he should lead, is Alexander R. Shepherd of Washington.

He is a native of Washington, was born in 1885, and is consequently now but thirty-eight years old. His father died when he was quite a boy, and at the early age of ten years he began the rough struggle of life. He at first started to learn the carpenter’s trade, but finding that unsuitable to his tastes he entered a store, as errand boy. At seventeen he was taken into the plumbing establishment of Mr. J. W. Thompson, as clerk. By industry, fidelity and ability, he at length attained a partnership in that house, and upon Mr. Thompson’s retirement, succeeded to the full control of the business, which under his skillful management has so rapidly grown that it now defies competition with any similar establishment south of New York.

When the war of the Rebellion broke out, Mr. Shepherd was mainly instrumental in forming the Union party in Washington, proving loyal amidst the bitter hostility of many of his best friends. As early as the 15th of April, 1861, he enlisted as a private soldier, and for three months shouldered his musket in defense of the National Capital. In the same year he was elected a member of the Common Council, and again in 1862, when he was made president of that body. In 1867 he was appointed a member of the Levy court, and in that capacity first developed his ability and energy as a public man. He was president of the Citizens’ Reform Association during the Emery campaign, and was, I believe, the prime mover of Mr. Emery’s nomination, and contributed by his efforts largely to that gentleman’s success. At that election Mr. Shepherd was chosen to the Board of Aldermen, which position he held when appointed to the Board of Public Works.

In person Mr. Shepherd is a tall, noble looking man, with a large, well-formed head, sharply-defined features, massive under jaw and square chin, indicative of the indomitable perseverance and firmness which are the most prominent traits in his character. Although a self-made man, he has acquired a fund of information which many a collegian might envy. His mind is thoroughly disciplined, his perceptions keen, his decisions rapid, and his language vigorous and terse. In private life he is universally respected and esteemed. His benevolence is unbounded, and beside subscribing liberally to every public appeal, he performs innumerable acts of private charity, which few know save the grateful recipients.

It was believed by the majority of people that Governor Cooke would retain his position only until the fusion of the irritated factions was effected, and that in the event of his resignation Mr. Shepherd would be appointed his successor. Whether Governor Cooke retires before the end of his term or not, it is the universal belief that Mr. Shepherd will be the second governor of the District of Columbia.

He is a representative man, embodying in his history and character more emphatically, perhaps, than any other man, the new life of the new city of Washington.

CHAPTER VIII.
BUILDING THE CAPITOL.

George Washington’s Anxiety about it—His View of it Politically—Various Plans for the Building—Jefferson Writes to the Commissioners—His Letter to Mr. Carroll—“Poor Hallet” and His Plan—Wanton Destruction by the British, A. D. 1814—Foundation of the Main Building Laid—The Site Chosen by Washington Himself—Imposing Ceremonies at the Foundation—Dedicatory Inscription on the Silver Plate—Interesting Festivities—The Birth of a Nation’s Capital—Extension of the Building—Daniel Webster’s Inscription—His Eloquent and Patriotic Speech—Mistaken Calculations—First Session of Representatives Sitting in “the Oven”—Old Capital Prison—Immense Outlay upon the Wings and Dome—Compared with St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s—The Goddess of Liberty—The Congressional Library—Proposed Alterations—What Ought to be Done.

George Washington believed the building of the Capitol to be identical with the establishment of a permanent seat of government. To the consummation of this crowning building, the deepest anxiety and devotion of his later years were dedicated. Next to determining a final site for the city was the difficulty of deciding on a plan for its Capitol.

Poor human nature had to contend awhile over this as it seems to have to about almost everything else. A Mr. S. Hallet had a plan: Dr. Thornton had one, also. Jefferson wrote “to Dr. Stewart, or to all the gentlemen” Commissioners, January 31, 1793:

“I have, under consideration, Mr. Hallet’s plans for the Capitol, which undoubtedly have a great deal of merit. Doctor Thornton has also given me a view of his. The grandeur, simplicity and beauty of the exterior, the propriety with which the departments are distributed, and economy in the mass of the whole structure, will, I doubt not give it a preference in your eyes as it has done in mine and those of several others whom I have consulted. I have, therefore, thought it better to give the Doctor time to finish his plan, and for this purpose to delay until your meeting a final decision. Some difficulty arises with respect to Mr. Hallet, who, you know, was in some degree led into his plan by ideas which we all expressed to him. This ought not to induce us to prefer it to a better; but while he is liberally rewarded for the time and labor he has expended on it, his feelings should be saved and soothed as much as possible. I leave it to yourselves how best to prepare him for the possibility that the Doctor’s plans may be preferred to his.”

February 1, 1793, Jefferson writes from Philadelphia to Mr. Carroll—

“Dear Sir:—Doctor Thornton’s plan for a Capitol has been produced and has so captivated the eyes and judgments of all as to leave no doubt you will prefer it when it shall be exhibited to you; as no doubt exists here of its preference over all which have been produced, and among its admirers no one is more decided than him, whose decision is most important. It is simple, noble, beautiful, excellently distributed and moderate in size. A just respect for the right of approbation in the Commissioners will prevent any formal decision in the President, till the plan shall be laid before you and approved by you. In the meantime the interval of apparent doubt may be improved for settling the mind of poor Hallet whose merits and distresses interests every one for his tranquillity and pecuniary relief.”

These quotations are chiefly interesting in connection with the fact that poor, pushed-to-the-wall Hallet rebounded afterwards, notwithstanding Jefferson’s enthusiasm over Thornton’s plan, and Washington’s declaration that it combined “grandeur, simplicity and convenience.” The architects preferred the design of Hallet and in building retained but two or three of the features of Doctor Thornton’s plan.

After the burning of the Capitol wings by the British, August, 1814, Mr. B. H. Latrobe, of Maryland, began to rebuild the Capitol on Stephen Hallet’s plan. The foundations of the main building were laid March 24, 1818, under the superintendence of Charles Bulfinch, and the original design was completed in 1825. The site of the Capitol was chosen by George Washington, on a hill ninety feet above tide-water, commanding a view of the great plateau below, the circling rivers, and girdling hills—a hill in 1663 named “Room,” later Rome, and owned by a gentleman named “Pope.”

September 18, 1793, the south-east corner of the Capitol was laid by Washington with imposing ceremonies. A copy of The Maryland Gazette, published in Annapolis, September 26, 1793, gives a minute account of the grand Masonic ceremonial, which attended the laying of that august stone. It tells us that “there appeared on the southern bank of the river Potomac one of the finest companies of artillery that hath been lately seen parading to receive the President of the U. S.” Also, that the Commissioners delivered to the President, who deposited in the stone a silver plate with the following inscription:

“This south-east corner of the Capitol of the United States of America, in the city of Washington, was laid on the 18th day of September, 1792, in the thirteenth year of American Independence; in the first year, second term of the Presidency of George Washington, whose virtues in the civil administration of his country have been as conspicuous and beneficial, as his military valor and prudence have been useful, in establishing her liberties, and in the year of Masonry, 5793, by the President of the United States, in concert with the Grand Lodge of Maryland, several lodges under its jurisdiction and Lodge No. 22 from Alexandria, Virginia.

Signed, Thomas Johnson,
David Stewart,
Daniel Carroll } Commissioners, etc.”

The Gazette continues:—

“The whole company retired to an extensive booth, where an ox of 500 lbs. weight was barbecued, of which the company generally partook with every abundance of other recreation. The festival concluded with fifteen successive volleys from the artillery, whose military discipline and manœuvres merit every commendation.”

“Before dark the whole company departed with joyful hopes of the production of their labors.”

Fifty-eight years later, near this spot another corner-stone was deposited bearing the following inscription in the writing of Daniel Webster:—

“On the morning of the first day of the seventy-sixth year of the Independence of the United States of America, in the city of Washington, being the fourth day of July, eighteen hundred and fifty-one, this stone designed as the corner-stone of the extension of the Capitol, according to a plan approved by the President in pursuance of an act of Congress was laid by

MILLARD FILMORE,

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,

Assisted by the Grand Master of the Masonic Lodges, in the presence of many Members of Congress, of officers of the Executive and Judiciary departments, National, State and Districts, of officers of the Army and Navy, the Corporate authorities of this and neighboring cities, many associations, civil and military and Masonic, officers of the Smithsonian Institution, and National Institute, professors of colleges and teachers of schools of the Districts, with their students and pupils, and a vast concourse of people from places near and remote including a few surviving gentlemen who witnessed the laying of the corner-stone of the Capitol by President Washington, on the 18th day of September, 1793. If, therefore, it shall hereafter be the will of God that this structure shall fall from its base, that its foundation be upturned, and this deposit brought to the eyes of men; be it then known that on this day the Union of the United States of America stands firm, that their constitution still exists unimpaired, and with all its original usefulness and glory growing every day stronger and stronger in the affections of the great body of the American people, and attracting more and more the admiration of the world. And all here assembled, whether belonging to public life or to private life, with hearts devoutly thankful to Almighty God for the preservation of the liberty and happiness of the country, unite in sincere and fervent prayer, that this deposit, and the walls and arches, the domes and towers, the columns and entablatures, now to be erected over it may endure forever.

“God Save the United States of America.

DANIEL WEBSTER,

Secretary of State of the United States.”

In the speech made by Mr. Webster on this occasion he uttered the following words:—

“Fellow citizens, what contemplations are awakened in our minds as we assemble to re-enact a scene like that performed by Washington! Methinks I see his venerable form now before me as presented in the glorious statue by Houdon, now in the Capitol of Virginia.... We perceive that mighty thoughts mingled with fears as well as with hopes, are struggling with him. He heads a short procession over these then naked fields; he crosses yonder stream on a fallen tree; he ascends on the top of this eminence, whose original oaks of the forest stand as thick around him as if the spot had been devoted to Druidical worship and here he performs the appointed duty of the day.”

Fifty-eight years stretched between this scene and the last and already the mutterings of civil revolution stirred in the air. Could Webster have foreseen that the marble walls of the Capitol whose corner-stone he then laid would rise amid the thunder of cannon aimed to destroy it and the great Union of States which it crowned, to what anguish of eloquence would his words have risen!

The Capitol fronting the east was set by an astronomical observation of Andrew Ellicott. Its founders were as much mistaken in the direction which the future city would take as they were in the future commerce of the Potomac. They expected that a metropolis would spring up on Capitol Hill, spreading on to the Navy Yard and Potomac. Land-owners made this impossible by the price they set upon their city lots. The metropolis defied them—went down into the valley and grew up behind the Capitol.

The north wing of the central Capitol was made ready for the first sitting of Congress in Washington, November 17, 1800. By that time the walls of the south wing had risen twenty feet and were covered over for the temporary use of the House of Representatives. It sat in this room named “the oven” from 1802, until 1804. At that time the transient roof was removed and the wing completed under the superintendence of B. H. Latrobe until its completion. The House occupied the room of the Library of Congress. The south wing was finished in 1811.

The original Capitol was built of sandstone taken from an island in Acquia Creek, Virginia. The island was purchased by the government in 1791 for $6,000 for the use of the quarry. The interior of both wings was destroyed by fire when the British took the city in 1814, the outer walls remaining uninjured. Latrobe, who had resigned in 1813, was re-appointed after the fire to reconstruct the Capitol. The following December, Congress passed an act leasing a building on the east side of the Capitol, the building afterwards so famous as “Old Capitol Prison,” and which was crowded with prisoners during the war of the Rebellion. Congress held its sessions in this building till the rebuilt Capitol was ready for occupation.

By act of Congress, September 30, 1850, provision was made for the grand extension wings of the Capitol, to be built on such a plan as might be approved by the President. The plan of Thomas C. Walter was accepted by President Fillmore, June 10, 1851, and he was appointed architect of the Capitol to carry his plan into execution. Walter was the architect of Girard College, Philadelphia, and to him we owe the magnificent marble wings and iron dome of the Capitol. The dome cost one million one hundred thousand dollars. The wings cost six millions five hundred thousand dollars. The height of the interior of the dome of the Capitol from the floor of the rotunda is 180 feet and 3 inches. The height of the exterior from the floor of the basement story to the top of the crowning statue is 287 feet and 5 inches. The interior diameter is 97 feet. The exterior diameter of the drum is 108 feet. The greatest exterior diameter is 135 feet, 5 inches. The Capitol is 751 feet, 4 inches long, 31 feet longer than St. Peter’s in Rome, and 175 feet longer than St. Paul’s in London. The height of the interior of the dome of St. Peter’s is 330 feet. The height of the interior of the dome of St. Paul’s is 215 feet. The height of the exterior of St. Peter’s to the top of lantern is 432 feet. The height of the exterior of the dome of St. Paul’s is 215 feet.

The ground actually covered by the Capitol is 153,112 square feet or 652 square feet more than 3 ½ acres. Of these the old building covered 61,201 square feet and the new wings with connecting corridors, 91,311 square feet.

The dome of the Capitol is the highest structure in America. It is one hundred and eight feet higher than Washington Monument in Baltimore; sixty-eight feet higher than Bunker Hill Monument and twenty-three feet higher than the steeple of Trinity Church, New York. Mr. Walter was succeeded by Mr. Edward Clarke, the present architect of the Capitol. Thus far Mr. Clarke’s work has consisted chiefly in finishing and harmonizing the work of his varied and sometimes conflicting predecessors. Under his supervision the dome has been completed, and Thomas Crawford’s grand goddess of liberty, sixteen and one-half feet high, has ascended to its summit while he has wrought out in the interior the most harmonious room of the Capitol—the Congressional Library.

The greatest work which he still desires to do is to put the present front on the rear of the Capitol facing the city, and to draw forth the old freestone fronts and rebuild it with marble, making a grand central portico parallel with the magnificent marble wings of the Senate and House extension. To rebuild the central front will cost two millions of dollars. The face of the Capitol will never be worthy of itself till this is accomplished. The grand outward defect of the Capitol is the slightness and insignificance of the central portico compared with the superlative Corinthian fronts of the wings. Between their outreaching marble steps, beside their majestic monoliths the central columns shrink to feebleness and give the impression that the great dome is sinking down upon them to crush them out of sight. There is something soaring in the proportions of the dome. Its summit seems to spring into the empyrean. Its proud goddess poised in mid-air, caught in their swift embrace, seems to sail with the fleeting clouds. Nevertheless its tremendous base set upon that squatting roof threatens it with perpetual annihilation.

From the very beginning the Capitol has suffered as a National Building from the conflicting and foreign tastes of its decorators. Literally begun in the woods by a nation in its infancy, it not only borrowed its face from the buildings of antiquity, but it was built by men, strangers in thought and spirit to the genius of a new Republic, and the unwrought and unimbodied poetry of its virgin soil. Its earlier decorators, all Italians, overlaid its walls with their florid colors and foreign symbols; within the American Capitol, they have set the Loggia of Raphael, the voluptuous ante-rooms of Pompeii, and the Baths of Titus. The American plants, birds and animals, representing prodigal nature at home, though exquisitely painted are buried in twilight passages, while mythological bar-maids, misnamed goddesses, dance in the most conspicuous and preposterous places. The Capitol has already survived this era of false decorative art.

Congress in 1859 authorized a Commission of distinguished American artists, comprising Messrs. Brown, Lumsden and Kensett, to study, the decorations of the Capitol and report upon their abuses. Their suggestions are beginning to be followed, and yet so carelessly, that after the lapse of fourteen years they need reiteration. The Artist Committee recommended an Art Commission, composed of those designated by the united voice of America. Artists as competent to the office who shall be the channels for the distribution of all appropriations to be made by Congress for art purposes, and who shall secure to artists an intelligent and unbiased adjudication upon the designs they may present for the embellishment of the national buildings. When one remembers some of the Congressional Committees who have decided on decorations for the Capitol even within the last ten years, it is enough to make one cry aloud for a Commission designated by artists, whose art-culture shall at least be sufficient to tell a decent picture from a daub, a noble statue from a pretense and a sham.

In conclusion the Commission of Artists said:—

“The erection of a great National Capitol seldom occurs but once in the life of a nation. The opportunity such an event affords is an important one for the expression of patriotic elevation, and the perpetuation, through the arts of painting and sculpture, of that which is high and noble and held in reverence by the people; and it becomes them as patriots to see to it that no taint of falsity is suffered to be transmitted to the future upon the escutcheon of our national honor in its artistic record. A theme so noble and worthy should interest the heart of the whole country, and whether patriot, statesman or artist, one impulse should govern the whole in dedicating these buildings and grounds to the national honor.”

CHAPTER IX.
INSIDE THE CAPITOL.

A Visit to the Capitol—The Lower Hall—Its Cool Tranquillity—Artistic Treasures—The President’s and Vice-President’s Rooms—The Marble Room—The Senate Chamber—“Men I have Known”—Hamlin—Foote—Foster—Wade—Colfax—Wilson—The Rotunda—Great Historical Paintings—The Old Hall of Representatives—The New Hall—The Speaker’s Room—Native Art—“The Star of Empire”—A National Picture.

Come with me. This is your Capitol. It is like passing from one world into another, to leave behind the bright June day for the cool, dim halls of the lower Capitol. No matter how fiercely the sun burns in the heavens, his fire never penetrates the twilight of this grand hall, whose eight hundred feet measure the length of the Capitol from end to end.

Here, in Egyptian Colonnades, rise the mighty shafts of stone which bear upon their tops the mightier mass of marble, and which seem strong enough to support the world. In the summer solstice they cast long, cool shadows, full of repose and silence. The gas-lights flickering on the walls, send long golden rays through the dimness to light us on. We have struck below the jar and tumult of life. The struggles of a nation may be going on above our heads, yet so vast and visionary are these vistas opening before us, so deep the calm which surrounds us, we seem far away from the world that we have left, in this new world which we have found. Every time I descend into these lower regions I get lost. In wandering on to find our way out, we are sure to make numerous discoveries of unimagined beauty. Here are doors after doors in almost innumerable succession, opening into departments of commerce, agriculture, etc., whose every panel holds exquisite gems of illustrative painting. Birds, flowers, fruits, landscapes, in rarest fresco and color, here reveal themselves to us through the dim light.

It would take months to study and to learn these pictures which artists have taken years to paint. They make a department of art in themselves, yet thousands who think that they know the Capitol well are not aware of their existence. At the East Senate entrance, look at these polished pillars of Tennessee marble, their chocolate surface all flecked with white, surrounding a staircase meet for kings. They are my delight. Look at these foliated capitals, flowering in leaves of acanthus and tobacco. Look up to this ceiling of stained glass, its royal roses opening wide their crimson hearts above you; these too are my delight. I am not one of those who can sneer at the Capitol. Its faults, like the faults of a friend are sacred. I know them, but wish to name them not, save to the one who only can remedy. It bears blots upon its fair face, but these can be washed away. It wears ornaments vulgar and vain, these can be stripped off and thrown out. Below them, beyond them all, abides the Capitol. The surface blemish vexes, the pretentious splendor offends. These are not the Capitol. We look deeper, we look higher, to find beauty, to see sublimity, to see the Capitol, august and imperishable!

THE MARBLE ROOM.
INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.

The four marble staircases leading to the Senate Chamber and Hall of Representatives, in themselves alone embody enough of grace and magnificence to save the Capitol from cynical criticism. We slip through the Senate corridor, you and I, to the President’s and Vice-President’s rooms. Their furniture is sumptuous, their decoration oppressive. Gilding, frescoes, arabesques, glitter and glow above and around. There is not one quiet hue on which the tired sight may rest. Gazing, I feel an indescribable desire to pluck a few of Signor Brumidi’s red legged babies and pug-nosed cupids from their precarious perches on the lofty ceilings, to commit them to nurses or to anybody who will smooth out their rumpled little legs and make them look comfortable.

We are Americans, and need repose; let us, therefore, pass to the Marble Room, which alone, of all the rooms of the Capitol, suggests it—

“The end of all, the poppied sleep.”

Its atmosphere is soft, serene, and silent. Its ceiling is of white marble, deeply paneled, supported by fluted pillars of polished Italian marble. Its walls are of the exquisite marble of Tennessee—a soft brown, veined with white—set with mirrors. One whose æsthetic eyes have studied the finest apartments of the world says that to him the most chaste and purely beautiful of all is the Marble Room of the American Capitol. Americans though we are, we have no time to rest, albeit we sorely need it.

It is not for you or me to linger in marble rooms, maundering of art. Molly, rocking her baby out on the Western prairie, wants to know all about the Senate; baby is going to be a senator some day. Moses, on that little rock-sown farm in New England, has his “chores all done.” He rests in the Yankee paradise of kerosene, butternuts, apples, and cider. Yet to make his satisfaction complete, he must know a little more about the Capitol. Molly and Moses both expect us to see for them what they can not come to see for themselves. So let us peep into the Senate. It can not boast of the ampler proportions of the Hall of Representatives. Its golden walls and emerald doors can not rescue it from insignificance.

The ceiling of this chamber is of cast-iron, paneled with stained glass—each pane bearing the arms of the different States, bound by most ornate mouldings, bronzed and gilded. The gallery, which entirely surrounds the hall, will seat one thousand persons. Over the Vice-President’s chair, the section you see separated from the rest by a net-work of wire, is the reporters’ gallery. The one opposite, lined with green, is the gallery of the diplomatic corps; next are the seats reserved for the Senators’ families. The Senators sit in three semi-circular rows, behind small desks of polished wood, facing the Secretary of the Senate, his assistants, the special reporters of debates, and the Vice-President.

On a dais, raised above all, sits the Vice-President. I have seen six men preside over the Senate. Hamlin, slow, solid, immobile, and good-natured. Foote, silver-haired, silver-toned, the king of parliamentarians. Foster of Connecticut, that most gentle gentleman, who went from the Senate bearing the good will of every Senator whatever his politics. Wade, the most positive power of all, with his high, steep head, shaggy eyebrows, beetling perceptive brow, half roofing the melancholy eyes, the rough-hewn nose, the dogged mouth, and broad immovable chin. Life lines our faces according to its will and gazing on the furrows of this one, one reads the story of the whole battle. Looking, there was no need that its owner should tell what a warfare life had been since the poor farmer-boy, more than half a century ago, turned his face from the Connecticut Valley and striving with the earth beneath his feet dug his way (on the Erie Canal) toward the West to fortune, and to an honorable fame. Then came Schuyler Colfax, who brought into the silent and stately Senate the habits of the bustling noisy house. It was a hard seat for “Schuyler,” that Vice-President’s chair, and he came at last to vacate it regularly by two o’clock that he might write in the seclusion of the Vice-President’s room a few of those ten thousand popular personal letters which made his chief lever of influence with the people and which he always used to write in the Speaker’s chair. As President of the Senate he was usually just, always urbane, never impressive. He had not the presence which filled the seat to the sight, nor the dignity which commanded attention, and silence. Under his ruling the Senate changed its character perceptibly from a grave august body to a buzzing and inattentive one. As the President of the Senate seldom listened to a speaker, the Senators as rarely took the trouble to listen to each other. The question discussed might be of the gravest import to the whole nation, the speaker’s words, to himself, might be of the most tremendous importance to the national weal, just the same he had to empty them upon vacancy, speaking to nothing in particular, while the Vice-President looked another way, and his colleagues went on scribbling letters, whispering political secrets to each other, munching apples in the aisles or smoking in the open cloak-rooms, with feet aloft.

Vice-President Wilson, without an atom of parliamentary experience, has already won the hearts and improved the manners of the Senate by simply giving attention to its debates. No matter how tiresome, he steadfastly looks and listens. The humblest speaker—seeing that he has one pair of eyes fixed upon him, one direct immovable point toward which he may direct his remarks—takes heart, and in spite of himself makes a better speech than would be possible were he beating a vacuum, and speaking to nobody in particular. Even his listening constituency and the next day’s Globe is not such an incentive to present inspiration as two steadfast eyes and one pair of good listening ears.

We leave the Senate Chamber by the western gallery. Here in the niche at the foot of the staircase, corresponding to Franklin’s on the opposite side, stands the noble figure of John Hancock. The stairs are of polished white marble and the painting above them leading to the gentlemen’s gallery of the Senate, in its setting of maroon cloth represents the battle of Chapultapec in all the ardor of its fiery action. We saunter on along the breezy corridors through whose open windows we catch delicious glimpses of the garden city, the gliding river and the distant hills, past the Supreme Court room into the great rotunda.

THE SENATE CHAMBER.
INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.

The rotunda is ninety-five feet in diameter, three hundred feet in circumference and over one hundred and eighty feet in height. Its dome contains over eight millions eight hundred thousand pounds of iron, presenting the most finished specimen of iron architecture in the world. The panels of the rotunda are set with paintings of life-size, painted by Vanderlyn, Trumbull and others. The Declaration of Independence; the surrender of Burgoyne; surrender of the British Army, commanded by Lord Cornwallis, at Yorktown, Virginia, October 19, 1781; resignation of General Washington at Annapolis, December 23, 1783, all by Colonel Trumbull; the baptism of Pocahontas by Chapman; landing of Columbus by Vanderlyn; De Soto’s discovery of the Mississippi, by Powell. Like most works of genius these paintings have many merits and many defects. Perhaps the favorite of all is the Embarcation of the Pilgrims in the Speedwell at Delft Haven, by Robert W. Weir. Its figures and the fabrics of its costumes are wonderfully painted; so, too, is the face of the hoary Pilgrim who is giving thanks to God for their safe passage across stormy seas to the land of deliverance; but the enchantment of the picture is the face of Rose Standish. If I were a man, I would marry such a face out of all the faces on the earth, for the being which it represents. These eyes, blue as heaven and as true, would never fail you. No matter how low you might fall, you could see only in them purity, faith, devotion, tenderness, and unutterable love—and all for you.

The group in bas-relief over the western entrance of the rotunda was executed by Cappelano, a pupil of Canova. It represents the preservation of Captain Smith by Pocahontas. The design was taken from a rude engraving of the event in the first edition of Smith’s History of Virginia. The idea is national, but you see the execution is preposterous. Powhatan looks like an Englishman, and Pocahontas has a Greek face and a Grecian head-dress. The alto-relievo over the eastern entrance of the rotunda represents the Landing of the Pilgrims. The pilgrim, his wife and child are stepping from the prow of a boat to receive from the hand of an Indian, kneeling on the rock before them, an ear of corn. Good Indian. He was no relation to the Modoc! Still the little boy evidently has no faith in him for he is tugging at his father’s arm as if to hold him back from that ear of corn or the hand that holds it.

Over the south door of the rotunda we have Daniel Boone and two Indians in a forest. Boone has dispatched one Indian and is in close battle with the other. The latter is doing his best to strike Boone with his tomahawk, but Boone averts the blow, by his rifle in one hand, while the other drawn back holds a long knife which he is about to run through his foe. The action is exciting enough for the New York Ledger, although rendered tangled and cramped by a too narrow space. It commemorates an occurrence which took place in the year 1773. This, as well as the landing of the Pilgrims, was executed by Causici, another pupil of Canova. Over the northern door of the rotunda we have William Penn standing under an elm, in the act of presenting a treaty to the Indians. Penn is dressed as a Quaker, and looks as benevolent as the crude stone out of which he is made will let him. This panel was executed by a Frenchman named Genelot.

THE HALL OF REPRESENTATIVES.
INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.

We pass through the noblest room of the Capitol, the old Hall of Representatives and through the open corridor directly into the new Hall of Representatives. It occupies the precise place in the south wing which the Senate Chamber does in the northern wing. Like the Senate room, the light of day comes to it but dimly through the stained glass roof overhead. Like that, also, it is entire, encircled by a corridor opening into smoking apartments, committee rooms, the Speaker’s room, etc., which monopolize all the out of door air, and every out of door view. The air of the central chamber is pumped into it by a tremendous engine at work in the depths of the Capitol and admitted through ventilators one under each desk. You see these are covered with shining brass plates which by a touch of the foot can be adjusted to admit a current of fresh air, or shut it off, according to the wish of the occupant of the chair above it. In former times these ventilators were uncovered, and then were used to such an extent as spittoons by the honorable gentlemen above them, and filled to such a depth with tobacco quids and the stumps of cigars that the odor from them became unbearable and they had to be covered up.

The Hall of Representatives is 139 feet long, 93 feet wide and 30 feet high with a gallery running entirely around the Hall, holding seats for 1200 persons. Like the Senate, the ceiling is of iron work bronzed, gilded and paneled with glass, each pane decorated with the arms of a State. At the corners of these panels in gilt and bronze are rosettes of the cotton plant in its various stages of bud and blossom. The Speaker’s desk, splendid in proportion, is of pure white marble, while crossed above his head are two brilliant silk flags of the United States. One of the panels under the gallery at his left is filled with a painting in fresco, by Brumidi.

The Speaker’s room, in the rear of his chair across the inner lobby, is one of the most beautiful rooms in the Capitol. Its ornaments are not as glaring as those of the President’s and Vice-President’s rooms, while its mirrors, carved book-cases, velvet carpets and chairs, give it a look of home comfort as well as of luxury. It has a bright outlook upon the eastern grounds of the Capitol, and its walls are hung with portraits of every speaker from the First Congress to the present one.

We pass through the private corridor looking from the Speaker’s room out into the grand colonnaded vestibule opening upon the great portico of the south extension. These twenty-four columns and forty pilasters have blossomed from native soil. Athens, Pompeii, Rome, are left out at last, and looking up to these flowering capitals we see corn-leaves, tobacco, and magnolias budding and blooming from their marble crowns. Every column, every pilaster bears a magnolia, each of a different form, all from casts of the natural flower. And far below, beneath the Representatives’ Hall, there is a row of monolithic columns formed of the tobacco and thistle. It is above the marble staircase opposite, leading to the ladies’ gallery, that we see painted on the wall covering the entire landing, the great painting of Leutze, representing the “Advance of Civilization;” “Westward the Star of Empire takes its way”—is its motto. At the first glance it presents a scene of inextricable confusion. It is an emigrant train caught and tangled in one of the highest passes of the Rocky Mountains. Far backward spread the Eastern Plains; far onward stretches the Beulah of promise, fading at last in the far horizon. The great wagons struggling upward, tumbling downward from mountain precipice into mountain gorge, hold under their shaking covers every type of westward moving human life. Here is the mother sitting in the wagon-front, her blue eyes gazing outward, wistfully and far, the baby lying on her lap; one wants to touch the baby’s head, it looks so alive and tender and shelterless in all that dust and turmoil of travel. A man on horseback carries his wife, her head upon his shoulder. Who that has ever seen it will forget her sick look and the mute appeal in the suffering eyes. Here is the bold hunter with his racoon cap, the pioneer boy on horseback, a coffee-pot and cup dangling at his saddle, and oxen—such oxen! it seems as if their friendly noses must touch us; they seem to be feeling out for our hand as we pass up to the gallery. Here is the young man, the old man, and far aloft stands the advance guard fastening on the highest and farthest pinnacle the flag of the United States.

Confusing, disappointing perhaps, at first glance, this painting asserts itself more and more in the soul the oftener and the longer you gaze. Already the swift, smooth wheels of the railway, the shriek of the whistle, and the rush of the engine have made its story history. But it is the history of our past—the story of the heroic West. It is one of a thousand which should line the walls of the Capitol, feeding the hearts of the American people to the latest generation with the memory of our forefathers, showing by what toilsome ways they followed the Star of Empire and made the paths of civilization smooth for their children’s feet.

CHAPTER X.
OUTSIDE THE CAPITOL.

The Famous Bronze Doors—The Capitol Grounds—Statue of Washington Criticised—Peculiar Position for “the Father of his Country”—Horace Greenough’s Defence of the Statue—Picturesque Scenery Around the Capitol—The City and Suburbs—The Public Reservation—The Smithsonian Institution—The Potomac and the Hights of Arlington.

We come back to the grand vestibule of the southern wing, to the flowering magnolias, tobacco and corn-leaves of the marble capitals, and pass out to the great portico. This is one of the famous bronze doors designed by Rogers, and cast in Munich. How heavy, slow, and still, its swing! The other opens and closes upon the central door of the north wing, leading to the vestibule of the Senate.

Here, from the portico we look out upon the eastern grounds of the Capitol in the unsullied panoply of a June morning, across the closely shorn grass, the borders of roses and beds of flowers, through the vista of maples with their green arcade of light and shadow, to the august form of George Washington sitting in the centre of the grounds in a lofty cerule chair mounted on a pedestal of granite twelve feet high.

This is the grandest and most criticised work of art about the Capitol. The form being nude to the waist and the right arm outstretched, it is a current vulgar joke that he is reaching out his hand for his clothes which are on exhibition in a case at the Patent Office. It is true that a sense of personal discomfort seems to emanate from the drapery—or lack of it—and the posé of this colossal figure. George Washington with his right arm outstretched, his left forever holding up a Roman sword, half naked, yet sitting in a chair, beneath bland summer skies, within a veiling screen of tender leaves is a much more comfortable looking object than when the winds and rains and snows of winter beat upon his unsheltered head and uncovered form. This statue was designed in imitation of the antique statue of Jupiter Tonans. The ancients made their statues of Jupiter naked above and draped below as being visible to the gods but invisible to men. But the average American citizen, being accustomed to seeing the Father of his country decently attired in small clothes, naturally receives a shock at first beholding him in next to no clothes at all. It is impossible for him to reconcile a Jupiter in sandals with the stately George Washington in knee-breeches and buckled shoes. The spirit of the statue, which is ideal, militates against the spirit of the land which is utilitarian if not commonplace.

Nevertheless, in poetry of feeling, in grandeur of conception, in exquisite fineness of detail and in execution, Horatio Greenough’s statue of George Washington is transcendently the greatest work in marble yet wrought at the command of the government for the Capitol. It is scarcely human, certainly not American, but it is godlike. The face is a perfect portrait of Washington. The veining of a single hand, the muscles of a single arm are triumphs of art.

Washington’s chair is twined with acanthus leaves and garlands of flowers. The figure of Columbus leans against the back of the seat to the left, connecting the history of America with that of Europe; an Indian chief on the right represents the condition of the country at the time of its discovery. The back of the seat is ornamented in basso-relievo with the rising sun, the crest of the American arms, under which is this motto: “Magnus ab integro sæculorum nascitur ordo.” On the left is sculptured in bas-relief the genii of North and South America under the forms of the infant Hercules strangling the serpent, and Iphiclus stretched on the ground shrinking in fear from the contest. The motto is “Incipe posse puer cui non risere parentes.” On the back of the seat is the following motto: “Simulacrum istud ad magnum Libertatis exemplum. Nec sine ipsa duraturum.”

One of the greatest works of contemporary art, the masterpiece of a master, it has been the subject of more rude and vulgar jests than any other piece of American sculpture. The painful disparity which so often exists between the judgment of the multitude and the inspiration of the creator has never been more touchingly illustrated than in the following words of Horatio Greenough, concerning this monument to his own genius and to the Father of his country. He says: “It is the birth of my thoughts, I have sacrificed to it the flower of my days, and the freshness of my strength; its every lineament has been moistened with the sweat of my toil and the tears of my exile. I would not barter away its association with my name for the proudest fortune that avarice ever dreamed of. In giving it up to the nation that has done me the honor to order it at my hands, I respectfully claim for it that protection which is the boast of civilization to afford art, and which a generous enemy has more than once been seen to extend even to the monuments of its own defeat.”

Retracing our steps to the rotunda, we turn westward through the main hall of the Congressional Library to the lofty colonnade outside, from whose balcony we look down upon the view which Humbolt declared to be the most beautiful of its type in the whole world. Directly below us, past the western terrace of the Capitol, with its open basin full of gold fishes flashing in the sun, stretch the Capitol grounds. Many varieties of trees already grown to forest hight spread their interlacing roof of cool, green shadow over the malachite sward below. Beds of flowers set in the grass, from the early March crocuses to the November blooming roses, make the grounds fragrant and precious with their presence. Here the dandelion spreads its cloth of gold in early May. Here the chrysanthemums fringe the snow with pallid gold in white December. Now the fountains are lapsing in dreamy tune through the long June hours, and the seats under the trees are filled with visitors. Nurses with children in their arms, old men and women leaning on their staffs, lovers “billing and cooing” through the long twilight and starlight seasons. Beyond spreads the city, every ugly outline hidden and lost in a waving sea of greenery rippling and tossing above it. The great avenues run and radiate in all directions. Pennsylvania Avenue stretches straight on between its border of shade trees to its acropolis one mile distant, the great Treasury gleaming in the sun, and the white chimneys of the Executive Mansion peering above the trees; and still on, till it joins the primitive streets of Georgetown. Massachusetts Avenue, broad, straight, magnificent, spans the city from end to end unbroken. Virginia Avenue to the left, goes on to meet Long Bridge, leading far into the Old Dominion. Directly in front stretches the public reservation yet to be made splendid as the Nation’s Boulevards, but already holding the Congressional gardens and conservatories, the unique towers, and picturesque grounds of the Smithsonian Institution, the broad flower-banded terraces of the Agricultural Department, and the incomplete Washington Monument. Beyond we see the wide Potomac, flecked all over with snowy sails, far down old Alexandria, dingy on its farther shore; opposite the Heights of Arlington, and amid its immemorial oaks; Arlington House with the stars and stripes floating free from its crowning summit.

CHAPTER XI.
ART TREASURES OF THE CAPITOL.

Arrival of a Solitary Lady—“The Pantheon of America”—Il Penserosa—Milton’s Ideal—Dirty Condition of the House of Representatives—The Goddess of Melancholy—Vinnie Ream’s Statue of Lincoln—Its Grand Defects—Necessary Qualifications for a Sculptor—The Bust of Lincoln by Mrs. Ames—General Greene and Roger Williams—Barbarous Garments of Modern Times—Statues of Jonathan Trumbull and Roger Sherman—Bust of Kosciusko[Kosciusko]—Pulling His Nose—Alexander Hamilton—Fate of Senator Burr—Statue of Baker—His Last Speech Prophetic—The Glory of a Patriotic Example—The Lesson which Posterity Learns—Horatio Stone, the Sculptor—Washington’s Statue at Richmond—Neglected Condition of the Capitol Statuary—Curious Clock—Grotesque Plaster Image of Liberty—Webster—Clay—Adams—The Pantheon at Rome—The French Pantheon—Bar-Maid Goddess—Dirty Customs of M. C’s—Future Glory of America.

A solitary lady has arrived in the old Hall of the House of Representatives; or, as Senator Anthony eloquently calls it, “the Pantheon of America.” “Considering her age,” (as women sweetly say of each other,) “she looks quite young.” What her precise age may be, I am as unable to tell you as that of any other of my friends. The daughter of Saturn and Vesta, we may, at least, conclude that she has lived long enough to look older than she does. Her name is “Il Penserosa,” and, “to judge by appearances,” she seems to have flourished about twenty-five of our mortal years. Yet Milton sung of her in his youth, before an unruly wife and three disobedient daughters, (who perversely wished to understand the alphabet which they read to their blind father,) had made him crabbed and loftily sour towards women—Milton sung of this maid who has but lately arrived in Washington:

“Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,

Sober, steadfast, and demure,

All in a robe of darkest grain

Flowing with majestic train,

And sable stole of cypress lawn,

Over thy decent shoulders drawn;

Come, but keep thy wonted state

With even step and musing gait,

And looks commercing with the skies,

Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.”

Now, if this maiden can keep on holding her head up, with looks perpetually “commercing with the skies” so that it will be impossible for her to see all the tobacco-juice and apple-cores beneath and round about her, it will conduce greatly to her peace of mind. I am sorry that “the Pantheon of America” is not a cleaner looking place. It’s a pity, as we have a Pantheon, that its shabbiness and dirt should flourish to a degree that is absolutely melancholy. I am sure it was in obedience to the law of fitness that the committee of the Congressional Library or some other committee, brought the Goddess of Melancholy in here, to hold her eyes and nose aloft, and to stand supreme queen, regnant of dust and gloom and American “expectoration.” “Hail! divinest Melancholy.” I am glad, judging by your face, that you are of the lymphatic temperament, and that consequently, all this dirt will afflict you less than it does me. But the more I look at your impassive and soulless countenance the more I fear that, after all, you are but a feeble counterfeit of Milton’s goddess or of the divine maiden conceived and born in,

“Woody, Ida’s inmost grove.”

In speaking of this marble, my heart will not let me forget that it was wrought by a hand self-taught; yet no less, standing where it does, it must be measured—somewhat, at least—by the standards of art. The figure, diminutive even in its femininity, suffers to insignificance by being set almost directly behind the gaunt and elongated form of Miss Ream’s “Lincoln;” yet it is in the figure, in its posé and gentle curves, its chaste and graceful drapery, “the stole of cypress lawn, over the decent shoulders drawn” in the firm yet delicate hand which holds it in its place—in these only it is that the artist has caught and fastened in stone the aspect of the “goddess, sage and holy.” The face is meaningless. Not a line, not a curve, not an expression indicates a capacity for melancholy, contemplation or anything else emotional or intellectual. No mortal woman ever really meditated for a minute who did not get her hair pushed back further from her eyes than this, but these regulation locks run straight down the little, senseless Greek face in a mathematical angle, indissolubly banded by a little perked up helmet, embossed with seven stars. Why these stars? “Il Penserosa” was not nearly enough related to “that starred Ethiop queen” Cassiope, to have borrowed the helmet to wear even in the old Hall of the old House of Representatives “in the United States of America.”

As for the Ream statue of Lincoln, (like many people,) the first glance at it is the most satisfactory that you will ever have. It will never look as well again. Some declare this very palpable lack to be in the subject—Mr. Lincoln’s own face and form—but many others note it to be in this representation of them. Mr. Lincoln’s living face was one of the most interesting ever given to man. There was more than fascination in its rugged homeliness; there was in it the deeper attraction of suffering and sympathy. It outrayed from every line engraven there by human pain and love and longing. But no soul can put into a statue or painting more than it has in itself. In this statue of Mr. Lincoln we have his rude outward image, unilluminated by one mental or spiritual characteristic. It is mechanical, material, opaque. Mrs. Sarah Ames, in her bust of Lincoln, which stands just behind our friend, “Il Penserosa,” has transfixed more of the soul of Lincoln in the brow and eyes of his face than Miss Ream has in all the weary outline of her many feet of marble. In the bust the lower part of the face is idealized into weakness. Without his gauntness and ruggedness Lincoln is not Lincoln. But any one who ever saw and felt the deep, tender, sad outlook of his living humanity must thank Mrs. Ames for having reflected and transfixed it in the brows and eyes of this marble.

Just outside of its alcove, at the right hand of the door which enters the New House of Representatives, stand side by side, the two statues from Rhode Island—one of General Green, the other of Roger Williams. That of General Green is spirited and exquisitely fine in detail; while that of Roger Williams is the one ideal statue in our Pantheon. Both were executed in Rome—the first by Henry R. Brown, the second by Franklin Simmons, of Providence, Rhode Island. No portrait of Roger Williams being in existence, Mr. Simmons has evolved from imagination and his inner consciousness a quaint, poetic figure and a dreamlike face, above whose lifted eyelids seems to hover a seraphic smile. Then it is refreshing to turn from the stove-pipe hats, shingled heads and angular garments in which the men of our generation do penance, to the flowing locks, puckered knee-breeches, with their dainty tassels, and the ample ruffs in which the holy apostle of liberty represents his name and time. He holds a book in his hand, on whose cover is inscribed the words, “Soul Liberty,” and, with open, uplifted glance and free posé seems about to step forward into air, with lips just ready to open with words of inspiration.

Opposite, on the other side of the Hall, stand together Connecticut’s contribution—the statues of Jonathan Trumbull and Roger Sherman. They are of heroic size and at first glance are most imposing. When you walk nearer, and soberly survey them, you see that Roger Sherman looks solid and stolid, and you see also (at least, I do,) that old Jonathan Trumbull, with his down-perked head and narrow-lidded eyes, looks like a meditative rooster—an immense human chanticleer, who had paused in his lording career for a minute’s meditation. Mind, I don’t say but this may be a grand statue, in its way, I only observe that it is a very repelling one to me.

Just round the angle of the alcove on a box set on end, covered with tattered black cambric, stands a bust of Kosciusko, by H. D. Saunders. Poor Kosciusko! His nose always needs wiping; and what a pedestal for a Pantheon! A candle or a soap box, probably, half covered with black tags; then on his nose celestial, the dust alights and lodges always. It is so provocative—the tip of it; every bumpkin who approaches it taps or pulls it. Thus, literally, Kosciusko’s nose is seldom clean. One day it was. Some pitying hand had washed the entire face. If you could have seen the difference between Kosciusko clean and Kosciusko exiled, dirty and forlorn! A few steps from this bust stands the statue of Alexander Hamilton, by Horatio Stone—a noble figure, spirited in posture and beautiful in countenance. No painted portrait can give so grand an idea of the great Federalist to posterity. It is eight feet high and represents Hamilton in the attitude of impassioned speech. It is persuasive rather than declamatory, for the lifted hands droop, the face presses slightly forward, the eyes look out from under their royal arches deep and steadfast, while the sunshine pouring down the dome lights up every lineament with the intensity of life. The execution of the statue is exquisite, while in posé and expression it is the embodiment of majesty and power. Burr—who presided over the Senate, who with the pride, subtlety and ambition of Lucifer, planned and executed to live in the future amid the most exalted names of his time—sleeps dishonored and accursed; while the great rival that he hated, whose success he could not bear, whose life he destroyed, comes back in this majestic semblance to abide in the Capitol. Thus we behold in this statue not only a “triumph of art” but also a triumph of that final retributive compensation of justice which sooner or later crushes every wrong. This image of Hamilton looks forth from an era which, across the gulf of our later revolution, seems already remote. It recalls Washington the friend, Jefferson the foe, the war of Colonist and Tory, the war of ideas between Federalist and Republican, the struggles and successes of a splendid career; yet how far removed seem all across the graves of the men of our own generation whom patriotism and death have made illustrious and immortal. Thus nearer and dearer to the hearts of to-day must be the image of “the noblest Roman of them all.” It is a statue of Baker, also executed by Horatio Stone, in Rome, in 1863. Hamilton stands forth in heroic size, while the statue of Baker is under that of life, and barely suggests the grand proportions of the man. Yet the dignity and grandeur of his mien are here, as he stands wrapped in his cloak, his arms folded, his head thrown back, his noble face lifted as if he saw the future—his future—and awaited it undaunted and with a joyful heart. At his side is the plumed hat of a soldier, and on the pedestal on which he stands are graven words from his last speech in the United States Senate, when he replied to Breckenridge, “There will be some graves reeking with blood, watered by the tears of affection. There will be some privation. There will be some loss of luxury; there will be somewhat more need of labor to procure the necessaries of life. When that is said, all is said. If we have the country, the whole country, the Union, the constitution, free government—with these will return all the blessings of a well ordered civilization. The path of the country will be a course of grandeur and glory such as our fathers in the olden time foresaw in the dim visions of years to come—such as would have been ours to-day, had it not been for the treason for which the senator too often seeks to apologize.”

Thus to the land he loved he gave his life—a life so rich in every quality that rounds and completes the highest manhood.

At sight of this mute marble, what memories are stirred! Again, in and around Union Square throbs the vast human mass. Banners wave, cannons boom, drums beat, men march. Every pulse of the air thrills with the cry, “To Arms!” Amid all the orators of that hour, whose voice uttered such burning words as Baker—he who left the seat of a senator for the grave of a soldier. Thank God for our dead who yet live. No land has a more priceless legacy. No soil was ever planted with richer blood. No freedom ever bought with a costlier victory. Let me tell you, public men, amid all your lavish expenditures of money wrung from the people, never begrudge the price you pay for the fit statue of a great character. Line the corridors of the Capitol with the images of the noble and the good, that, by suggestion and semblance, they may arouse to a purer purpose the emulation of the living. In these halls where lobbyists congregate, where money-changers stand with shameless faces offering their venal price for truth and honor, buying and selling the integrity of manhood, give to our eyes at least the memories of high example. If men in the rush of affairs and the absorption of their ambitions take no time to study them, thoughtful women will pause and ponder, and then teach the children who are to rule after us to love and remember.

I look on these statues and think of the man who wrought them—think of him as I saw him every day six years ago, a pale, dissatisfied, restless man, whose hands were busy with uncongenial tasks, but whose brain was haunted with noble ideals, to which he was powerless to give form or substance. Opportunity, the ultimate test of all power, came to him and at last Congress voted ten thousand dollars to Horatio Stone to execute the statue of Alexander Hamilton in Rome. And, lo! the intangible vision of the weary man is embodied in imperishable marble—the most majestic statue beneath the dome of the Capitol. A little way before it is a plaster cast, mounted high on a wooden block, of Houdin’s bronze figure of Washington, the original of which is in the State Capitol at Richmond, Virginia. Such a peaked-headed, idiotic-looking Washington I never saw elsewhere. If he looked like this, it is perfectly plain why he passed through life without ever once having done anything naughty. But if he did look like this he was a stupid mortal to live with. Most of the marbles of our Pantheon are poorly set. Even the seraphic apostle of “soul liberty” stands on a box covered with cinnamon-colored cambric, and his martial brother does likewise. Abraham Lincoln is ensconced within an unpainted wooden fence, and the great lawgivers of Connecticut stand in their big cloaks upon cotton covered boxes. Mrs. Ames’ bust of “Lincoln” is poised on a handsome pedestal of Scotch granite; but, with few exceptions, though not utterly barren of fine marbles, the present aspect of the American Pantheon is chiefly suggestive of crudeness, shabbiness, and—the exorbitant necessity of spittoons. Over the entrance is a clock, having for its dial the wheels of a winged car, resting on a globe. In this car sits a lady called History, with a scroll and pen in hand. Oh! the story she could tell if she could tell the truth. Opposite, twenty-four Corinthian columns of variegated Potomac marble shoot to the roof, and shadow what was once the gallery of the Old Hall of Representatives. In the centre stands a horrid-looking plaster image of Liberty, modeled by Cansici; and under it the American bird, modeled from life and cut in sandstone by Volaperti. Besides, scattered about are portraits of Henry Clay, a mosaic portrait of Lincoln, by Signor Salviato of Venice, of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and of Joshua Giddings.

I have meant to pass nothing over that graces or disgraces our American Pantheon, that you, afar, may see it as it is. In itself it is the most majestic room in the Capitol. Set apart to enshrine the sculptured forms of illustrious dead, already its arches and alcoves are fraught with their living memoirs. Here Webster spoke, here Clay presided, here Adams died.

It is modeled from the Roman Pantheon, and its roof, at least, is like it. We have no proof that the Roman Pantheon was set apart for such a purpose as that to which our own is dedicated; indeed, in the beginning it was supposed to be connected with the Roman baths. To-day it is chiefly sacred to art as the burial-place of Raphael. The French Pantheon, also, was comparatively poor in statues, though boasting of immense compositions in painting, by David and Gros. Herein the great men who have illustrated France appear in the forms of Fenelon, Malesherbes, Mirabeau, Voltaire, Rousseau, Lafayette, and others; while at their feet, as befits their sex, sit History and Liberty, properly employed making wreaths for the heads of these masculine heroes. From the dome look down Clovis, Charlemagne, St. Louis, Louis XIV., XVI., XVII., Marie Antoinette, Madame Elizabeth, with a central glory to represent Deity. The dome of our own rotunda is a florid imitation of this. We have Franklin, Washington, and troops of goddesses, who look like bar-maids; but from the focal apex we have omitted God, whose eye is needed for such an assembly.

The magnificent facade which leads to the Houses of Parliament in Westminster Palace is nine hundred feet long, paneled with tracery and decorated with rows of majestic statues of the kings and queens of England, from the conquest to the present time. Let us hope that it will never be defiled from beginning to end, as our own magnificent legislative halls, with tobacco-juice from the mouths of demoralized men. The earth has never had but one absolutely perfect building, in itself the final consummate flower of art—the Parthenon—consecrated first to woman, the Virgin House, sacred to Athena. Beneath its pure and perfect dome there was nothing to divert the gazer’s contemplation from the simplicity and majesty of mass and outline. The whole building, without and within, was filled with the most exquisite pieces of sculpture, executed under the guidance of Phidias. The grand central figure was the colossal statue of the Virgin Goddess, wrought by the hand of Phidias himself. The weight of gold which she carried, says Thucydides, was forty talents. Could a wooden fence guard so much gold in our Christian Pantheon to-day? It was a happy thought which dedicated this old hall of the nation to national art, but it far outleaped its century. That which shall truly be the Pantheon of America is not for us. The children of later generations, a far-off procession, may come up hither to worship the diviner forms of the future, the majestic statues of the nation’s best—its sons grand in manhood, its daughters divine in womanhood; but, with here and there a rare exception, our eyes who live to-day will see them not.

CHAPTER XII.
WOMEN WITH CLAIMS.

The Senate Reception Room—The People Who Haunt It—Republican “Ladies in Waiting”—“Women with Claims”—Their Heroic Persistency—A Widow and Children in Distress—Claim Agents—The Committee of Claims—A Kind-hearted Senator’s Troubles—Buttonholing a Senator—A Lady of Energy—Resolved to Win—An “Office Brokeress”—A Dragon of a Woman—A Lady who is Feared if not Respected—Her Unfortunate Victims—Carrying “Her Measure”—The Beautiful Petitioner—The Cloudy Side of her Character—Her Subtle Dealings—Her Successes—How Government Prizes are Won.

The room itself means only grace, beauty and silence. The moment had not come for dis-illusion, thus I went forth without a word regarding its human aspect.

To-day, dear friends, we will go in and face that. We sit down in the shadow of this Corinthian pillar, and, looking out see the most noticeable fact is that this lofty apartment is thronged with women. A number are conversing with senators; others are gazing toward the doors which lead into the Senate. Some seem to be waiting with eager eyes and anxious faces; others are leaning back upon the sofas in attitudes of luxurious listlessness. Do you ask why they are here? Are they studying the stately proportions and exquisite finesse of the ante-room? Not at all. It is not devotion to the aesthetic arts nor the inspiration of patriotism, which brings these women thither. They are a few, only a very few, of the women—with “claims,” who, through the sessions of Congress haunt the departments, the White House and the Capitol.

THE LADIES’ RECEPTION ROOM.
INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.

The dejected looking woman on the sofa opposite is a widow, with numerous small children. You may be certain by the unhopeful expression of her face that it is her own claim which, almost unaided and alone, she is trying to “work through” Congress. Her home is far distant. She borrowed money to come here, she borrows money to support her children, money to pay her own board; borrows money to pay the exorbitant fees of the claim-agent, who, constantly fanning the flame of “great expectations,” assures her every day that Congress will pay her the thousands which she demands for her losses—will pay her this very session. Meantime the session is almost ended, and the widow’s claim, on which hangs such a heavy load of debt and fear, lies hidden and forgotten in the pigeon-hole of the Committee of Claims. While it lies there, gathering dust, she a cheaply clad, care-faced woman, no longer young, and never pretty, has grown to be most burdensome to Senator ——, especially to the chairman of that committee. Irksome, not to be desired, is the importunate presence of this forlorn woman. No less irksome to these functionaries is the sight of her hundred sisters in distress—more or less; poor widows, with small children, with personal claims upon the Government. The chairman dreads the sight of this woman and of her like. He dreads it the more that he is perfectly certain that her case is not reached, and will not be this session. A kind-hearted man, he is unwilling to set the seal of despair on her face by telling her the truth. She finds it out at last, and then remembering all his evasions, in her disappointment and hopeless poverty, she denounces him as “deceitful and heartless,” whereas the honorable gentleman was only trying to be kind. Meanwhile the Senate is too much interested in immense claims involving millions, to be paid out of the National Treasury, too much absorbed in the discussion of the universal, to be able to come down to the small particular of a poor widow, with hungry children, whose only heritage was lost in the war. In time, whose cycles may be as long as those of the Circumlocution Office and the Court of Chancery—but some time, when the widow has borrowed and spent more money than the whole claim is worth, it may be investigated, and full or partial justice done. In either case, it will take more than she receives to pay the many expenses which she has incurred during her long years of waiting. Do you wonder that her face looks doleful while she waits for Senator —— to come in to answer her card, sent into the Senate Chamber. Here he is and we can hear what he says, “I am very sorry, Madame; but it has grown to be too late. I fear that your case can not be reached this session.” Poor woman. It would have been better for you to have staid at home, kept out of debt, worked with your hands to have supported your children. That would have been a hard life, but not so hard as the mortification, suspense, and defeat of this, and the long years of labor after all.

See that sharp-faced woman, with darting, prying eyes. She rushes in one door and out of another. She hurries back. She meets a senator, and “button-holes him,” after the fashion of men, and begins conversing in the most importunate manner. He makes a retreat. Lo! in a moment she attacks another, leading him triumphantly to a sofa, where we witness a teté-a-teté[teté-a-teté], on the feminine side, carried on with marked emphasis and much gesticulation. This woman not only has one claim in Congress, she has many, and not one her own. She is a claim-agent, an office-brokeress. She buys claims, and speculates in them as so much stock. She takes claims on commission, deluding many a poor victim into the belief that “my influence” and “my friends,” Senator So-and-So and Secretary P. Policy, will insure it a triumphant passage and a remunerative end, “without fail.” It is not strange, through sheer pertinacity and by dint of endless worrying, she often succeeds. She is purely feline in her tactics—ever alert, watchful, wary, cunning, and so she worries her victims and wins. She is one of the world’s disappointed, dissatisfied ones; so, more than all else, we will be sorry for her. What God meant to be a fair life has been striven away in one weary struggle for the worldly honor and conventional prestige lying just above her reach. And to her the most pleasurable excitement in all the claim profession is the delusion that it affords her of personal power and of association with the great!

Pardon me, good friends, for calling a name. I must call it, for it is true. Here comes a very dragon of a woman. I am as afraid of her as if she had horns. I was going to say that she was a man-woman, which is the greatest monstrosity of the genus feminine. But I honor my brethren too much for such a comparison, and so will simply say-in manners, she is a dragon. The men whom she seizes must think so; they give her her way, because they are afraid of her. Too well they know that, if they do not yield her point—if they do not at least promise her their influence—if they do not assure her that they will do all in their power to carry “her measure”—that she will attack them in the street, in the legislative lobbies, in the quiet of their lodgings, everywhere, anywhere, till they do. She is no covert power. She proclaims aloud that she has come to Washington to carry a measure through Congress to establish some man in power. And she does it because her tongue is a scourge and her presence a fear.

Leaning back in a chair, no one near her, you see a fair woman, whose beautiful presence seems at variance with the many anxious and angular and the few coarse women around her. The calmness of assured position, the serene satisfaction of conscious beauty, envelop her and float from her like an atmosphere. We feel it even here. Plumes droop above her forehead, velvet draperies fall about her form. We catch a glimpse of laces, the gleam of jewels. Look long into her face; its splendor of tint and perfection of outline can bear the closest scrutiny. Look long, and then say if a soul saintly as well as serene looks out from under those penciled arches, through the dilating irises of those beguiling eyes. Look, and the unveiled gaze which meets yours will tell you, as plainly as a gaze can tell, that adulation is the life of its life, and seduction the secret of its spell. This beauty would not blanch before the profanest sight; it is the beauty of one who tunes her tongue to honeyed accents, and lifts up her eyelids to lead men down to death. She comes and goes in a showy carriage. She glides through the corridors, haunts the galleries and the ante-rooms of the Capitol—everywhere conspicuous in her beauty. All who behold her inquire, Who is that beautiful woman? Nobody seems quite sure. Doubt and mystery envelop her like a cloud. “She is a rich and beautiful widow,” “She is unmarried,” “She is visiting the city with her husband.” Every gazer has a different answer. There are a few, deep in the secrets of diplomacy, of legislative venality, of governmental prostitution, who can tell you she is one of the most subtle and most dangerous of lobbyists. She is but one of a class always beautiful and always successful. She plays for large stakes, but she always wins. The man who says to her, “Secure my appointment, make sure my promotion, and I will pay you so many thousands,” usually gets his appointment, and she her thousands. Does she wait like a suppliant? Not at all. She sits like an empress waiting to give audience. Will she receive her subjects in promiscuous assemblage? No; if you wait long enough you will see her glide over these tessellated floors, but not alone. Far from the ears of the crowd, in rooms sumptuous enough for the Sybarites, this woman will dazzle the sight of a half-demented and wholly bewildered magnate, and then tell him what prize she wants. With alluring eyes and beguiling voice she will besiege his will through the outworks of his senses, and so charm him on to do her bidding. He promises her his influence; he promises her his power; her favorite shall have the boon he demands, whether it be of emolument or power.

Thus some of the highest prizes in the Government are won. Unscrupulous men pay wily women to touch the subtlest and surest springs of influence, and thus open a secret way to their public success. No longer the question is: Shall women participate in politics? shall they form a controlling element in the Government? But, as there are women who will and do exert this power, shall it remain abject, covert, equivocal, demoralizing, base? Or shall it be brave and pure and open as the sun?

CHAPTER XIII.
THE CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY.

Inside the Library—The Librarian—Sketch of Mr. Spofford—How Congressional Speeches are Manufactured—“Spofford” in Congress—The Library Building—Diagram—Dimensions of the Hall—The Iron Book Cases—The Law Library—Five Miles of Book Shelves—Silent Study—“Abstracting” Books—Amusing Adventure—A Senator in a Quandary—Making Love under Difficulties—Library Regulations—Privileged Persons—Novels and their Readers—Books of Reference—Cataloguing the Library—The New Classification—Compared with the British Museum—Curious Old Newspapers—Files of Domestic and Foreign Papers—One Hundred Defunct Journals—Destruction of the Library by English Troops—An Incident of the War of 1814—Putting it to the Vote—“Carried Unanimously”—Wanton Destruction—Washington in Flames—A Fearful Tempest—The Second Conflagration—35,000 Volumes Destroyed—Treasures of Art Consumed—Congressional Grants—The New Library—Extensive Additions—The Next Appropriation—The Grand Library of the Nation.

The most remarkable fact of the present connected with the Congressional Library, is its Librarian, Mr. Ainsworth R. Spofford.

Mr. Spofford was appointed Assistant Librarian by President Lincoln, December 31, 1864, and upon the resignation of Mr. Stephenson the same month succeeded him as Librarian. Mr. Spofford was formerly connected with the secular press of Cincinnati, Ohio, and was also engaged in the book trade in the same city. But neither fact accounts for his almost unlimited practical knowledge of books of every age and in every language. He is himself a vast library in epitome. If you wish to inform yourself upon any subject under the sun, if you have any right or privilege to inform Mr. Spofford of that fact, in five minutes you will have placed before you a list, written down rapidly from memory, of the best works extant upon the subject named, and in as few moments as it will take to find them, and draw them forth from their dusty nests, you will have them all heaped on a table before you, ready for your search and research, and all the headaches they will be sure to give you.

Mr. Spofford has the credit among experts of writing many Congressional speeches for honorable gentlemen whose verbs and nominatives by chronic habit disagree, and whose spelling-books were left very far behind them, but who nevertheless are under the imperative necessity of writing learned speeches of which their dear constituents may boast and be proud. By the way, a lady in private life in Washington,—a scholar and caustic writer,—used to earn all her pin money, before her ship of fortune came in, by writing, in the solitude of her room, the learned, witty and sarcastic speeches which were thundered in Congress the next day, by some Congressional Jupiter, who could not have launched such a thunder-bolt to have saved his soul had it not been first forged and electrified by a woman. The Librarian of Congress is too much absorbed by his routine labors to have much time or strength to spare for the writing out of Congressional speeches. But daily and almost hourly he suggests and supplies the materials for such speeches. When a member whose erudition is not remarkable, stands up in his seat, backing every sentence he utters on finance, law or politics, by great authority, more than one mentally exclaims, “Spofford!” We know where he has been. Mr. Spofford is a slight gentleman in the prime of life, of nervous temperament with very straight, smooth hair, classic features and a placid countenance. Always a gentleman, his patience and urbanity are inexhaustible, if you have the slightest claim upon his care. If you have not, and he has no intention of being “bothered,” his “shoo fly” capabilities are equally effectual. Like most book-people, Mr. Spofford’s nervous life far outruns his material forces. He needs more sunshine, air and out-of-door existence, as most Americans do. Therefore I here cast him a crumb of sisterly counsel, born of gratitude and selfishness. Spend more time on the Rock Creek and Piney Branch roads, on the hills and by the sea, Mr. Spofford. Then may you live long, prosper, and grow wiser, for the sake of my books, and everybody’s!

The halls of the Library of Congress are among the most chaste, unique and indestructible of all the halls of the Capitol. The Library occupies the entire central portion of the western front of the original Capitol. The west hall extends the entire length of the western front flanked by two other halls, one on the north the other on the south side of the projection.

DIAGRAM OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

The west hall which a few years since made the whole Library, is 91 feet 6 inches in length, 34 feet wide and 38 feet high, the other two halls of the same hight are 29 feet 6 inches wide and 95 feet long. The halls are lighted by windows looking out upon the grounds of the Capitol and by roof lights of stained glass. The ceiling is iron and glass, and rests on foliated iron brackets each weighing a ton. The pilasters and panels are of iron painted a neutral hue tinged with pale green and burnished with gold leaf. The floors are of tessellated black and white marble. The iron book-cases on either side rise story on story, floored with cast-iron plates, protected by railings, and traversed by light galleries. Including the Law Library, these halls contain 26,148 feet, or nearly five miles of book-shelving, and contain over 210,000 volumes. The iron floors are covered with kamptulicon floor cloth, a compound of India-rubber and cork, which possesses the triple advantage of being clean, light and cheap. The leg of every chair has a pad of solid India-rubber under it. Nobody is allowed to speak above a whisper; thus the stolid turning, or the light flutter of leaves make the only sound which stirs the silence. Alcove after alcove line the halls, but with the exception of two devoted to novels and other light reading, left open for the ladies of members’ families, they are all securely locked and protected by a net-work of wire, and thus the chance of pilfering and of flirting are both shut in behind that securely fastened little padlock.

THE CENTRAL ROOM, CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY.
INSIDE THE CAPITOL.—WASHINGTON.