Walks about Washington

by Francis E. Leupp

The formalities attending the presentation of general messages have differed at various stages of our national history. John Adams, for example, brought his in person to the Capitol. A military and civic procession escorted him from his house to the Senate chamber, where the Senators and Representatives were assembled in joint session. He was attired with more elegance than was his wont and was accompanied by the members of his Cabinet, the United States Marshal acting as usher; the Vice-president surrendered to him the chair of honor and took a seat at his right while he read his address aloud. In those days, each house appointed a committee to consider the address of the President and to draft a reply to it; when the reply was ready, a committee waited upon him to inquire at what time it would be agreeable for him to receive it, and on the day appointed, the members called upon him in a body to present it.

The message ceremonial was considerably shortened during the administration of President Jefferson, who scandalized some of the sticklers for propriety by reading his first address to Congress clad in a plain blue coat with gilt buttons, blue breeches, woolen stockings, and heavy shoes tied with leather strings. This democratic departure was typical of the way a good many old customs died out. We find most of the later Presidents, till the spring of 1913, rather studiously avoiding the Capitol, meeting Congress seldom outside of the White House, and confining their official communications to written messages presented in duplicate at the doors of the two halls respectively by the hand of an executive clerk. The response of each house, if any is deemed worth while, now takes the form of the introduction of legislation on lines suggested by the President. But the common practice is to cut a message into parts, referring the passages which deal with one class of subjects to one committee, and those which deal with another class to another committee; and in most cases, unless an emergency arises to make further consideration essential, little more is heard of them.

President Wilson has revived the custom of visiting Congress in its own home and there delivering his addresses directly to the lawmakers in a body, assembled for the occasion in the Hall of Representatives. This is a much more effective mode of approaching Congress than sending a written document by messenger, to be drawled through in a singsong voice by tired clerks, simultaneously in both halls, to a gathering of only half-interested auditors. It is also a more certain means of concentrating public attention upon the work of the session. There is a subtle something in the very personality of a President which appeals to the popular imagination. As the one high officer of state elected by the votes of all the people, he stands in their minds as a conservator and champion of their broadest ideals, as contrasted with the narrower sectional interests represented by the members of Congress. When, therefore, he takes his position face to face with the men who are to frame whatever legislation grows out of his recommendations, the whole country instinctively draws near and listens.

It is hard to guess what might happen should it fall to the lot of President Wilson to appear before Congress in person with such a trumpet-call as was sounded in President Harrison’s message on the maltreatment of our sailors in Chile, or President Cleveland’s on the encroachments of England in Venezuela, or President McKinley’s on the failure of his peaceful efforts for freeing Cuba. If the mere reading of these formal messages was so impressive as to paint a vivid picture of the attendant scenes on the memory of all who witnessed them, what an extra touch of the dramatic would have been added had the chief executive of the nation appeared at the Capitol to tell his story himself!

CHAPTER V
“THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE”

ALTHOUGH Pennsylvania Avenue is several miles long, the mile that lies between the hill on which Congress sits and the slope where the President lives is called in local parlance “the Avenue.” Outside of their formal speeches and documentary literature, members of Congress are wont to refer to the White House and its surroundings as “the other end of the Avenue.” This familiar phrase is, like the popular designation of Congress as “the gentlemen on the hill,” a survival from the period when only one hill in town was officially occupied, and the strip of highway connecting it with the group of buildings used by the executive branch of the Government was about the only thoroughfare making any serious pretensions to street improvement. It was along this line that President Jefferson planted the first shade trees; and L’Enfant’s plan made the south side of it the northern boundary of the Mall.

The title which for almost a hundred years the American people have given to the headquarters of their chief public servant is a fine example of historic accident. The White House was not originally intended to be a white house. It was built of a buff sandstone which proved to be so affected by exposure to the weather that as an afterthought it was covered with a thick coat of white paint. From its nearness to several red brick buildings, many persons fell into the way of distinguishing it by its color, and after its repainting to conceal the stains of the fire of 1814 this practice became general. Presidents have referred to it in their messages variously as the President’s House, the Executive Mansion, and the White House. Among the people it was also sometimes known, in the early days, as the Palace. The Roosevelt administration made the White House both the official and the social designation, and fastened the label so tight that there is little reason to expect a change by any successor.

The White House was born under the eye of Martha Washington, was nursed into healthy babyhood by Abigail Adams, received its baptism of fire under Dolly Madison, was popularly christened under Eliza Kortright Monroe, and passed through numberless vicissitudes under a line of foster-mothers stretching from that time to the end of the century, every one carrying it a little further away from its original plan; then Edith Kermit Roosevelt administered a restorative elixir which started it upon a second youth. The evolution of the Capitol, described in an earlier chapter, finds a parallel in the architectural genesis of this building. Its drawings were made and its construction superintended by James Hoban, an Irishman; but a distinguished critic has described it as “designed on classic lines, modified by an English hand, at a time when French art furnished the world’s models in interior detail.” That accounts, of course, for its monumental and palatial features.

But we must bear in mind that its sponsors intended it not only as an official residence for the executive head of the Government, but as a home for the foremost American citizen and his family, and that, in the esthetics of domestic architecture, local influences were most potent. All the Presidents except one, for the first thirty-six years of the republic’s existence, were Virginia gentlemen; so, although broadly following in treatment the Viceregal Lodge in Dublin, the President’s House took on much of the character of the “great house” on a Virginia plantation. This will explain why, in their work of restoration, when the architects were confronted by some gap in their plans which could not be filled by reference to the early records of the house itself, they drew upon the material common to the Virginia mansions of the same period.

By no means the least notable of their revivals was the recognition of the proper front of the building. For a half-century, and perhaps longer, its back door had been used as its main entrance, and most visitors had borne away the impression that that was the face its designer had intended it to present to the world. Nearly all the authoritative pictures helped to confirm this notion, by displaying the north side as confidently as the photographers in Venice take San Marco from the Piazza. The confusion of front and rear came about with other changes wrought by the increase of facilities for land transportation. The rural and suburban architecture of a century ago took great note of watercourses; for in those days wheeled vehicles were rarer than now and vastly less comfortable, the saddle was unsociable, and most travel was by river and canal. Hence the finest houses were built, when practicable, where they would not only command a pleasing view, but present their most picturesque aspect to the passing boats. Doubtless the site of the White House was chosen with reference to the bend which the Potomac made opposite the center of the building, thus opening a view down to Alexandria and beyond. The river was broader then, and probably washed the outer edge of what was intended to be preserved forever as the President’s Park.