CHAPTER XLVII. A SUMMING-UP OF SIXTY YEARS.
The progress of Washington City during the past sixty years—1827- 1887—has been phenomenal. The United States of America, then twenty-four in number, now number thirty-eight, bound together by iron bands, then unknown, while the telegraph and the telephone add their usefulness to that of the railroads. Domestic rebellion showed itself, to be overthrown only after a struggle in which the courage and endurance of the North and the South were equally demonstrated. The teeming population of Europe has overflowed into every section of the Republic where wealth is to be won by enterprise and industry. The fertile prairies of the far West not only supply the inhabitants of the Eastern States with food, but they export large quantities of meat and of grain. The workshops and factories resound with the whir of wheels and the hum of well-paid labor, which, in turn, furnishes a market for agricultural and horticultural products. There has been of late a fomentation of ill-feeling and jealously between classes dependent upon each other, and both equally valuable to the nation. But, on the whole, it is impossible to deny that the United States is a free, a prosperous, and a happy country.
The national metropolis has, during these past sixty years, enjoyed peaceful progress. In 1827 the population of the entire District of Columbia was less than seventy-five thousand, of whom sixty-one thousand were inhabitants of the city of Washington; now the population of the District is two hundred and three thousand, and that of Washington is about one hundred and fifty thousand. The increase of wealth has been even greater than the increase of population. Then there was not a paved street, and it was often difficult to extract carriages from mud-holes in the principal thoroughfares; now there are many miles of stone and asphalt street pavements, shaded by thousands of forest trees. Then there were twenty-four churches, now there are over two hundred. Then there were no public schools for white children that amounted to much, and it was forbidden by law to teach colored children, now there are scores of schools, with their hundreds of teachers, and twenty- six thousand six hundred and ninety-six pupils in the white schools, and eleven thousand six hundred and forty pupils in the colored schools—thirty-eight thousand three hundred and thirty-six pupils in all. The streets, then dark at night when the moon did not shine, are now illuminated by electricity and gas. The public reservations are ornamented with shrubs and flowers, while numerous statues of the heroes and the statesmen of the country are to be seen in different parts of the city.
That the tone of society has been wonderfully improved during the past sixty years the earlier chapters of this book bear testimony. Duels and personal encounters are no longer witnessed at the national metropolis, and yet our legislators have not grown craven- hearted, nor do they lack indomitable energy and sound judgment. Neither is it true that Congress has become demoralized by railroad speculations, or degraded by the influence of shoddy, although the war subjected its members greatly to these influences, and some succumbed to them.
When the silver-toned trumpets of peace proclaimed the close of hostilities, Washington suffered from the laxity of morals and corruption attendant upon the presence of a great army of soldiers and a more unscrupulous legion of contractors. "I have seen," said Senator Hoar, on the impeachment of Secretary Belknap before the Senate, "the Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs in the House, rise in his place and demand the expulsion of four of his associates for making sale of their official privilege of selecting the youths to be educated at our military school. When the greatest railroad of the world, binding together the continent and uniting the two great seas which wash our shores was finished, I have seen our national triumph and exultation turned to bitterness and shame by the unanimous reports of the three Committees of Congress, two of the House and one here, that every step of that mighty enterprise had been taken in fraud. I have heard in the highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown old in public offices that the true way by which power should be gained in the Republic is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service, and the true end for which it should be used when gained is the promotion of selfish ambition and the gratification of personal revenge."
The time was when the "Rex Vestiari," as the King of the Lobby styled himself, on a silver cup which he impudently presented to a retiring Speaker, had no difficulty in assembling the leading Congressmen and prominent diplomats around his table to enjoy his exquisite repasts. But there has come a more vigorous code of morality, and society is now rarely disgraced by the presence of these scoundrels.
The tone of the political newspapers of the country has greatly changed since the Democratic organ at Philadelphia, then the seat of Government, thanked God, on the morning of Washington's retirement from the Presidential chair, that the country was now rid of the man who was the source of all its misfortunes. The Federal newspapers at Washington City denounced President Jefferson for his degraded immorality, and copied the anathemas hurled against him from the New England pulpits as an atheist and a satyr. The letters written from Washington to newspapers in other cities used often to be vehicles of indecent abuse, and once one of the caused a duel between two Representatives, which resulted in the death of Mr. Cilley, of Maine. While there is less vituperation and vulgar personal abuse by journalists of those "in authority," the pernicious habit of "interviewing" is a dangerous method of communication between our public men and the people. The daily and weekly press of Washington will compare favorably with that of any other city in the Union.
A sad feature of Washington life is the legion of Congressional claimants, who come here session after session, and too often grow old and destitute while unsuccessfully prosecuting before Congress a claim which is just, but in some respects irregular. These ruined suitors, threadbare and slipshod, begging or borrowing their daily bread, recall Charles Dickens' portraiture of the Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce Chancery suite, which had become so complicated that no one alive knew what it meant. The French spoilation claims that were being vigorously prosecuted in 1827 are yet undetermined in 1886. None of the original claimants survive, but they have left heirs and legatees, executors and assignees, who have perennially presented their cases, and who are now indulging in high hopes of success. Government, after more than fourscore years of unjustifiable procrastination, is at last having the claims adjudicated, and in time the heirs of the long-suffering holders will be paid.
Up to the commencement of the great Rebellion, Washington was socially a Southern city, and although there have since been immigrations from the Northeast and the Northwest, with the intermediate regions, the foundation layer sympathizes with those who have returned from "Dixie" to control society and direct American politics. Many of those known as the "old families" lost their property by the emancipation of their slaves, and are rarely seen in public, unless one of the Virginia Lees or the daughter of Jefferson Davis comes to Washington, when they receive the representatives of "the Lost Cause" with every possible honor. There are but few large cities at the South, and intelligent people from that section enjoy the metropolis, where they are more at home than in the bustling commercial centres of the North, and where their provincialisms and customs are soon replaced by the quiet conventialities and courtesies of modern civilization. There are a few of the old camp-followers here who perfected their vices while wearing "the blue" or "the gray," and they occasionally indulge in famous revels, when, to use one of their old army phrases, they "paint the town red."
Washington society does not all centre around the Capitol, or in the legal circle that clusters around the Supreme Court, on in the Bureaucracy, where vigor of brains atones for a lack of polish, or among the diplomats, worshiped by the young women and envied by the young men. Vulgar people who amass fortunes by successful gambling in stocks, pork, or grain can attain a great deal of cheap newspaper notoriety for their social expenditures here, and some men of distinction can be attracted to their houses by champagne and terrapin, but their social existence is a mere sham, like their veneered furniture and their plated spoons.
Meanwhile, Washington, from a new settlement of provincial insignificance, has become the scientific and literary, as well as the political capital of the Union. Unfitted by its situation or its surroundings for either commerce or manufactures, the metropolis is becoming, like ancient Athens, a great school of philosophy, history, archaeology, and the fine arts. The nucleus of scientific and literary operations is the Smithsonian Institution, which, under the direction of Professor Spencer F. Baird, reflects high honor upon its generous founder, and is in fact what he intended it should be—an institution "to increase and diffuse knowledge among men."
In the National Museum there is a judicious admixture of the past and present, and still more, happily blending with these, are not only the wonders of the vegetable and floral kingdom, but of those geological, zoological, and ethnological marvels which it is the privilege of this age to have brought to light and classified. It is not only the storehouse of the results of scientific expeditions fitted out by the United States, but the depository of the contributions of foreign nations, which added so much to the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876. The work of the United States Fish Commission is too well known to require description, and is of itself well worth a journey to Washington. Then there are the museums of the State, the War, and the Navy Departments, with that of the Department of Agriculture and the Army Medical Museum.
The Observatory, with its magnificent instruments for astronomical purposes, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Naval Hydrographic Bureau, each with its stores of maps and charts; the Bureau of Education, the Indian Office, the General Land Office, and the Geological Survey are all scientific institutions of acknowledged position. The Corcoran Art Gallery, and the Roman Catholic and the Protestant Colleges, with their law and medical schools, add to the scientific and artistic attractions of the capital, while the facilities afforded by the Congressional and other libraries for study and research are of such a superior character that many men engaged in scientific pursuits have been attracted here from other sections.
There are also in Washington the Philosophical, the Anthropological, and the Biological Societies, devoted to general scientific investigation, and at the Cosmos Club the scientists develop the social side of their natures. The house long occupied by Mrs. Madison has been fitted up by the Club, the membership of which includes about all of the prominent scientific men in the city, and it is said that there are more men of distinction in science in Washington than in any other city in the country.
L'ENVOI
It is not without regret that I lay down my pen, and cease work on the Reminiscences of Sixty Years, of my life. As I remarked in the Preface, my great difficulty has been what to select from the masses of literary material concerning the national metropolis that I have accumulated during the past six decades, and put away in diaries, scrap-books, correspondence with the press, and note-books. Many important events have been passed over more lightly than their importance warranted, while others have been wholly ignored. But I trust that I have given my readers a glance at the most salient features of Life in Washington, as I have actually seen it, without indulging in sycophantic flattery of men, or glossing over the unpleasant features of events. "Paint me as I am," said Cromwell, and I have endeavored to portray the Federal Metropolis as I have seen it.
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