Among the other newspaper men in Washington were William Hayden, Congressional reporter for the National Intelligencer, who afterward succeeded Mr. Houghton as editor of the Boston Atlas; Lund Washington, equally famed as a performer on the violin and writer of short-hand; Samuel L. Knapp, a graduate of Dartmouth College, who abandoned the law for journalism and corresponded with the Boston Gazette, and James Brooks, a graduate of Waterville, afterward the founder of the New York Express and a Representative in Congress, who was the correspondent of the Portland Advertiser and other papers.
Prominent as an adopted citizen of Washington and as a personal friend of President Adams was Dr. William F. Thornton, Superintendent of the Patent Office, who had by personal appeals to his conquering countrymen, in 1814, saved the models of patents from the general conflagration of the public buildings. He was also a devoted lover of horse-racing, and on one occasion, when he expected that a horse of his would win the cup, Mr. Adams walked out to the race-course to enjoy the Doctor's triumph, but witnessed his defeat. After the death of Dr. Thornton and of his accomplished wife, it became known that she was the daughter of the unfortunate Dr. Dodd, of London, who was executed for forgery in 1777. Her mother emigrated to Philadelphia soon afterward, under the name of Brodeau, and brought her infant daughter with her. In Philadelphia she opened a boarding-school, which was liberally patronized, as she had brought excellent letters of recommendation and displayed great ability as a teacher. The daughter grew up to be a lady remarkable for her beauty and accomplishments and married Dr. Thornton, who brought her to Washington in 1800.
Congress had placed on the statute-book stringent penal laws against gambling, but they were a dead letter, unless some poor dupe made a complaint of foul play, or some fleeced blackleg sought vengeance through the aid of the Grand Jury; then the matter was usually compounded by the repayment of the money. The northern sidewalks of Pennsylvania Avenue between the Indian Queen Hotel and the Capitol gate, was lined with faro banks, where good suppers were served and well-supplied sideboards were free to all comers. It was a tradition that in one of these rooms Senator Montford Stokes, of North Carolina, sat down one Thursday afternoon to play a game of brag with Mountjoy Bailey, then the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate. That body had adjourned over, as was then its custom, from Thursday until Monday, so the players were at liberty to keep on with their game, only stopping occasionally for refreshments. The game was continued Friday night and Saturday, through Saturday night and all day Sunday and Sunday night, the players resting for a snatch of sleep as nature became exhausted. Monday morning the game was in full blast, but at ten o'clock Bailey moved an adjournment, alleging that his official duties required his presence in the Senate Chamber. Stokes remonstrated, but the Sergeant-at-Arms persisted, and rose from the table, the Senator grumbling and declaring that he had supposed that Stokes would have thus prematurely broken up the game he would not have sat down to play with him.
Whist was regularly played at many of the "Congressional messes," and at private parties a room was always devoted to whist-playing. Once when the wife of Henry Clay was chaperoning a young lady from Boston, at a party given by one of his associates in the Cabinet, they passed through the card-room, where Mr. Clay and other gentlemen were playing whist. The young lady, in her Puritan simplicity, inquired: "Is card-playing a common practice here?" "Yes," replied Mrs. Clay, "the gentlemen always play when they get together." "Don't it distress you," said the Boston maiden, "to have Mr. Clay gamble?" "Oh! dear, no!" composedly replied the statesman's wife, "he 'most always wins."
There were only a few billiard-rooms, mostly patronized by the members of the foreign legations or visiting young men from the Northern cities. Ten-pin alleys were abundant, and some of the muscular Congressmen from the frontier would make a succession of "ten strikes" with great ease, using the heaviest balls. Some of the English residents organized a cricket club, and used to play on a level spot in "the slashes," near where the British Legation was afterward built, but the game was not popular, and no American offered to join the club.
[Facsimile]
Your obedt servt.
William H. Crawford
William Harris Crawford was born in Virginia, February 24th, 1772;
was United States Senator 1807-1813; Minister to France, 1813-1815;
Secretary of War, 1815-1816; Secretary of the Treasury, 1816-1825;
Judge of the Northern Circuit Court of Georgia, 1827, until he died
at Elberton, Georgia, September 15th, 1834.
CHAPTER IV. PROMINENT SENATORS OF 1827.
The old Senate Chamber, now used by the Supreme Court, was admirably adapted for the deliberations of the forty-eight gentlemen who composed the upper house of the Nineteenth Congress. Modeled after the theatres of ancient Greece, it possessed excellent acoustic properties, and there was ample accommodation in the galleries for the few strangers who then visited Washington. The Senate used to meet at noon and generally conclude its day's work by three o'clock, while adjournments over from Thursday until the following Monday were frequent.
John C. Calhoun was Vice-President of the United States, and consequently President of the Senate—a position which was to him very irksome, as he was forced to sit and dumbly listen to debates in which he was eager to participate. He had been talked of by some of the best men in the country as a candidate during the then recent Presidential election, but the North had not given him any substantial support. Regarding each Senator as an Ambassador from a sovereign State, he did not believe that as Vice-President he possessed the power to call them to order for words spoken in debate. Senator John Randolph abused this license, and one day commenced one of his tirades by saying: "Mr. Speaker! I mean Mr. President of the Senate and would-be President of the United States, which God in His infinite mercy avert," and then went on in his usual strain of calumny and abuse.
Mr. Calhoun was tall, well-formed, without an ounce of superfluous flesh, with a serious expression of countenance rarely brightened by a smile, and with his black hair thrown back from his forehead, he looked like an arch-conspirator waiting for the time to come when he could strike the first blow. In his dress Mr. Calhoun affected a Spartan simplicity, yet he used to have four horses harnessed to his carriage, and his entertainments at his residence on Georgetown Heights were very elegant. His private life was irreproachable, although when Secretary of War under Mr. Monroe, he had suffered obloquy because of a profitable contract, which had been dishonestly awarded during his absence by his chief clerk to that official's brother-in-law.