The Story of Washington – The National Capital

The Story of Washington – The National Capital – Charles Burr Todd

The author divides his work into two parts, the first of which is devoted to the historical, the second to the modern city. Frequent use is made of direct quotations from letters, official and private, and interesting scenes and occurrences of national importance are vividly portrayed. The writer has succeeded admirably in telling his story pleasingly and the book contains much information. Its interest is not local, but national, closely connected as the history of the city is with that of the nation. Nothing that belongs to the city seems to have been omitted from the second part. The Capitol, the various departments with their sub-divisions and machinery, the officials of government and their duties, social life at the Capital, public buildings, churches and schools, public institutions, these form but a portion of the contents of the whole. Especially interesting in the first part are the descriptions of scenes in the Senate during the “battles of the giants.”

The Story of Washington - The National Capital

The Story of Washington – The National Capital.

Format: eBook.

The Story of Washington – The National Capital.

ISBN: 9783849653279.

 

Excerpt from the first chapter:

 

Washington, the beautiful capital of to-day, is one of the latest instances of a national capital founded by design. Rome grew on the Tiber because of the seven hills. The great king, Clovis, chose Paris for his capital because its site on an island of the Seine promised protection from his fierce enemies, the Northmen; and the emperor, Charles V., made the wilderness city Madrid his court town because of its inaccessible and defensible position. But the latest example of a people choosing a wilderness site and erecting there its capital, to be enriched by a nation’s revenues, and made historic by its statesmen, orators, and generals, is to be found in our own capital city of Washington. The story of its birth forms one of the most interesting chapters in its history.

The idea of a national capital originated in one of the gloomiest periods of the nation’s history, and as the result of conditions that threatened to destroy it almost before it had begun to live. On Thursday, the nineteenth day of June, 1783, Congress was sitting in the old City Hall at Philadelphia. The English yoke had just been broken. The thirteen colonies were free; but their national unity was by no means established. They were rather a group of independent sovereignties with warring interests — the smaller States arrayed against the larger, the Northern section against the Southern. The Confederacy’s treasury was empty; it had no credit; worse still, it was heavily in debt to its soldiers for arrears of pay, and to the States for money loaned to carry on the war. There was no President, and no capital city to be the rallying point of national feeling and aspirations. On the morning of this nineteenth of June, a courier spurred in with news that a body of the unpaid soldiers, then encamped at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, were under arms and on the march to Philadelphia to demand of Congress their arrears of pay, and that they would be followed next day by all of Armand’s legion, with the same object in view. Congress in great fear appealed to the Executive Council of Pennsylvania for protection, but President Dickinson declared that the State militia could not be relied upon in a matter of this kind, and that the soldiers must be allowed to enter the city. Whereupon, we are told, Messrs. Isard, Mercer, and others, ” being much displeased, signified that if the city would not support Congress, it was high time to remove to some other place.” The next day the mutineers entered the city, and for two days, officered by their sergeants, held Congress in a state of siege. They formed a cordon around the hall where it was assembled, and remained under arms all day, sometimes pointing their muskets at the windows, but refraining from actual violence. After adjournment, as the members came out, mock opposition was made to their passage, but they were finally allowed to retire to their homes. At the evening session a resolution to adjourn to Princeton was introduced and discussed amid the most alarming rumors. The debate continued for several days, but at last, after the city had been five days in the hands of the soldiers, Congress adjourned to Princeton, in New Jersey.

This forced adjournment impressed on the legislators the necessity of establishing a federal capital. If laws were to be made and respected, they said, law-makers must be secured from intimidation. Accordingly, in October, 1783, we find Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, moving that buildings for the use of Congress should be erected on or near the banks of the Delaware or Potomac, provided that a suitable spot could be procured for a federal town, and that the right of soil and exclusive jurisdiction should be vested in the United States. This resolution became a law and endured for six months, when it was repealed. At its next session, in October, 1784, at Trenton, Congress advanced the project still further by appointing three commissioners to lay out a district on either bank of the Delaware.

But the Southern members strenuously opposed this plan, and advanced several weighty and ingenious arguments against it. There was, first, that of locality. The Delaware was not a center of population, nor yet a geographical center; it would be dominated unfairly by Northern ideas; exposed to the insidious influence of the money power lodged in the hands of the merchants of New York and Philadelphia, and be in danger of intimidation from mobs. They proposed as a compromise the banks of the Potomac, a geographical center, a center of population, and, as they argued, soon to be the artery through which the products of the great West should seek the sea. For these statesmen — Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, at least — had already projected a Chesapeake and Ohio canal and a national road which should pierce the Alleghanies at the passes of the Potomac, and render a city on the banks of that river the entrepot of the West; and they ardently desired that this future city should become the national capital. The Northern members were too strong for them, however, and after a heated discussion the original resolution prevailed. But the influence of Washington and Jefferson was exerted to prevent the commissioners from taking action, and we hear nothing more of the project until 1787, when the Constitution, which made of the many States one nation, was adopted. By Article I, Section VIII, Clause 16 of that instrument. Congress was given 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 the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the Legislature of the State in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings.” This section was assented to without debate. Yet strangely enough, nearly two years passed before any action was taken upon it.

At last, at the opening session of the First Congress under the Constitution (New York, 1789), petitions from so many state and municipal bodies asking that the seat of government might be permanently located came pouring in, that Congress was forced to act. The agitation came chiefly from the Southern States, and was reinforced by the powerful influence of Washington, the newly elected President, and of Jefferson and Madison. New York and New England were satisfied with the condition of things, and objected to any agitation of the matter at that time. There were more important questions to be settled, they urged; for instance, the proposition that the Federal Government should assume the war debts of the several States — a question in which they had deeper interest for two reasons: first, because their debts were larger on account of the war than the other States; and second, because their citizens held a disproportionate share of the scrip of all the States. They were also averse to having the national capital removed to any point south of New York. Pennsylvania favored a place called Wright’s Ferry, on the Susquehanna, near Havre de Grace. New Jersey declared for Philadelphia. The Southern States were unanimously in favor of a point on the Potomac. Matters were in this condition when at its first session the House passed a resolution fixing the permanent seat at Wright’s Ferry, as soon as the necessary buildings could be erected, the government in the meantime to remain in New York; but when a bill designed to carry the resolution into effect was introduced, the Southern members combated it with all the eloquence and rhetorical skill at their command. Mr. Madison even went so far as to declare that had Virginia foreseen the proceedings of that day she might never have entered the Union.

” I confess to the House and to the world,” said Mr. Vining, ” that viewing this subject in all its circumstances 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. I look on it as the center from which those streams are to flow that are to animate and invigorate the body politic. 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 on the Western territory from an awful and striking point of view. To that region the unpolished sons of earth are pouring from all quarters, — men to whom, the protection of the law, and the controlling power of government are alike necessary. From these considerations I conclude that the bank of the Potomac is the proper situation.”

In spite of Southern opposition, however, the bill passed the House by thirty-one ayes to nineteen nays. Coming to the Senate, that body amended by striking out the word Susquehanna, and inserting a clause that the permanent seat of the government should be fixed at Germantown, near Philadelphia, whenever Pennsylvania or her citizens should agree to pay one hundred thousand dollars for the erection of the necessary government buildings. When the amended bill came back to the House that body agreed to it, but added a slight amendment that the laws of Pennsylvania should remain in force until repealed by Congress. But this amendment sent the bill back to the Senate, and as that body adjourned without acting upon it, the. bill was lost. But for this little accident Philadelphia’s pretty suburb might now be the federal capital.

The South was quick to improve the opportunity, and resolved to try the force of pecuniary inducements. In December, 1789, Virginia passed an act offering ten miles square of her territory on the Potomac for the federal city, and the sum of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars for the erection of public buildings. The same winter, by concerted action, the Maryland Legislature offered ten miles square on the opposite side of the Potomac, and the further sum of seventy-two thousand dollars for the buildings. These offers, and the resultant discussion, created great excitement throughout the country.

The location of the capital became an issue. Every city in the Middle States desired it, and began to offer inducements to secure it. New York and Philadelphia pointed out that they had gratuitously furnished Congress with “elegant and convenient accommodations,” while its sessions were held in their midst. New Jersey offered to provide suitable buildings at Trenton. Baltimore promised, if she should be chosen, to erect every edifice needed by the federal Legislature. In the midst of the discussion Congress sat (in Philadelphia, 1790), and at an early date a bill was introduced in the Senate ”to determine the permanent seat of Congress and of the government of the United States.” Later a resolution was carried, ” that a site on the river Potomac between the mouth of the Eastern Branch and the Conogocheague be accepted for the permanent seat of government.” The Eastern Branch referred to is that broad and deep estuary now forming the eastern boundary of Washington, on which the Navy Yard is placed. The Conogocheague (pronounced Conogochig) is a stream in Washington County, Maryland, beyond the Blue Ridge.

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