Walks about Washington

by Francis E. Leupp

Not all the associations which cling about the Capitol are confined to politics or legislation, science or business. The old Hall of Representatives was, in the early days of the last century, long used for religious meetings on Sundays, the Speaker’s desk being converted temporarily into a pulpit. One of the first preachers who held stated services there was a Swedenborgian. When the custom had become well established, most of the clergymen of the city consented to take the Sundays in a certain order of succession. Sir Augustus Foster, a secretary of the British Legation during Jefferson’s administration, has left us his impressions of the meetings:

“A church service can certainly never be called an amusement; but, from the variety of persons who were allowed to preach in the House of Representatives, there doubtless was 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, sometimes even a woman, took the Speaker’s chair, and I do not think there was much devotion among the majority. The New Englanders, generally speaking, are very religious; but though there are many exceptions, I cannot say so much for the Marylanders, and still less for the Virginians.”

Probably this comment on the worldly element entering into the meetings was called forth by their gradual degeneration into a social function. The hall came to be regarded as a pleasant Sunday gathering-place for friends who were able to see little of one another during the secular week. They clustered in knots around the open fireplaces, apparently quite as interested in the intervals afforded for a bit of gossip as in the sermon. The President was accustomed to attend from time to time; and possibly it was by his order that the Marine Band, nearly one hundred strong and attired in their brilliant red uniforms, were present in the gallery and played the hymn tunes, as well as some stirring march music. Their attendance was discontinued later, as their performances attracted many common idlers to a hall already crowded almost to suffocation with ladies and gentlemen of fashion, and thus increased the confusion.

Partly as a result of this use of the hall, the habit of treating Sunday as a day for social festivities of all sorts reached a point where the strict Sabbatarians felt called to remonstrate. One, a clergyman named Breckenridge, preached a sermon denouncing the irreligious frivolities of the time, which created a great sensation. He addressed his remarks directly to Congress. “It is not the people,” said he, “who will suffer for these enormities. It is the Government. As with Nineveh of old, your temples and your palaces will be burned to the ground, for it is by fire that this sin has usually been punished!” And he cited instance after instance from Bible history, showing how cities, dwellings, and persons had been burned for disrespect of divine law.

One day in the fall of 1814, after the British had left the city scarred with blackened ruins, Mr. Breckenridge was passing the Octagon house, when he was hailed by Dolly Madison from the doorway.

“When I listened to that threatening sermon of yours,” she exclaimed, “I little thought that its warnings would be realized so soon.”

“Oh, Madam,” he answered, “I trust that the chastening of the Lord may not have been in vain!”

It was, however, as far as any permanent change in the habits of the people was concerned. There was a brief interval of greater sobriety due to the sad plight of the community; then Sunday amusements resumed their sway with as much vigor as of old.

Although to the eye of the casual visitor the Capitol seems so quiet and well-ordered a place that it practically takes care of itself, the truth is that it is continually under pretty rigid surveillance. It has a uniformed corps of special police, whose jurisdiction covers everything within the limits of Capitol Park; besides this, the Superintendent of the Capitol has general oversight of the building, and the officers of the House and Senate look after their respective wings. When Thomas B. Reed of Maine became Speaker, he found the House wing a squatting ground for a small army of petty merchants who had crept in one by one and established booths for the sale of sandwiches and pies, cigars, periodicals, picture cards, and souvenirs, obstructing the highways of communication between one part of the building and another. He proceeded to sweep them all out. There was loud wailing among the ousted, and some who could command a little political influence brought it to bear on him, but in vain; and for more than twenty years thereafter the corridors remained free from these intruders. With the incoming of the Sixty-third Congress, however, discipline began to relax, and, unless the House acquires another Speaker with Mr. Reed’s notions of propriety and the force of will to compel obedience, we shall probably see the hucksters camping once more on the old trail.

Outside of the building the rules are as well enforced as inside. When Coxey’s Army of the Commonweal marched upon Washington in 1894, its leader advertised his intention to make a speech from the Capitol steps, calling upon Congress to provide work and wages for all the idle laborers in the country. Under the law, no harangue or oration may be delivered anywhere on the Capitol grounds without the express consent of the presiding officers of the two chambers of Congress. Remembering the way the lawmakers had been intimidated by a mob at Philadelphia in the early days of the republic, neither the Speaker nor the President of the Senate was willing that Coxey should carry out his plan; and the Capitol police, without violence or display of temper, made short work of the proposed mass meeting. On another occasion, the performers for a moving-picture show attempted to use the steps of the Capitol as a background for a scene in which a man made up to resemble the President of the United States was to play an undignified part; the police pounced down upon the company, confiscating the apparatus and escorting the actors to the nearest station-house. A like fate befel an automobilist who, on a wager, tried to drive his machine up the steps of the main portico. Occasionally a bicycler, ambitious to descend this staircase at full speed, has proved too quick-witted for the officers, but as a rule they are at hand when needed.