Inside of the main house, the old lines were kept intact as far as the comfort of its occupants would permit, though the restoration did work some changes. The noble east room, which for many years was decorated in the style of the saloon of a river steamboat, wears now the air of simple elegance designed for it before steamboats were invented; and the state dining-room has been so enlarged that future Presidents will not be forced, on especially great occasions, to spread their tables in the east room in order to spare the diners the annoyance of bumping elbows. Upstairs the changes have been rather of function than of form. The room which, from Grant’s day to McKinley’s, was used for Cabinet meetings, and where our peace protocol with Spain was signed, is now a library; that in which Lincoln read to his official family the first draft of his Emancipation Proclamation is now a bedroom, and a like fate has befallen the former library, where Cleveland penned his Venezuela message. The old lines of partition, however, are all there. Logs still blaze and crackle in the fireplace beside which Jackson puffed his corncob pipe. The windows through which Lincoln looked over at the Virginia hills have not changed even the shape or size of their old-fashioned panes. The places where our first royal guest slept, and where Garfield passed his long ordeal of suffering, remain bedchambers.
Mrs. Roosevelt, who loved the White House and had made a study of its architectural history, personally supervised every stage of its restoration. When the alterations were finished, she took the same interest in the process of refurnishing, so that the final product was, as nearly as modern conditions would permit, the White House of a century ago. The removal of needless obstructions was one of the most successful elements in the renovation, as it made possible the handling of a crowd of fifteen hundred or two thousand people without confusion. Socially, the Roosevelt administration was in every way the most brilliant Washington has ever known. Mrs. Roosevelt was a perfect hostess, and the many-sided President drew about him the leaders in every line of thought and action. In his democracy of companionship and his forceful way of doing whatever he laid his hand to, he was another Jackson; in his attraction for men of letters, students of statecraft, artists, and scientific workers, he revived the best traditions of Jefferson.
The four years of Taft are too fresh in the public memory to call for extended mention. Taft was forced to have his inauguration in the Senate Chamber on account of the execrable weather, for the worst blizzard prevailed on the fourth of March, 1909, that had visited Washington for ten years. The railroads leading into the city were blockaded, so that many passengers who had come from a distance to attend the ceremony were compelled to forsake their trains a mile or more from their destination and plow their own way in, as the sole alternative of camping in the cars for an indefinite number of hours. Only by the utmost diligence on the part of the municipal laborers were the streets kept in condition for the parade to pass, and most of the spectators’ stands erected on the sidewalks were utterly deserted. Mr. Roosevelt having announced, some time before, his intention to leave for New York as soon as he had seen his successor sworn in, Mrs. Taft made the drive between the Capitol and the White House by her husband’s side.
Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey, the next President, signalized his advent by notifying the citizens of Washington that he did not wish any inaugural ball, and the preparations already under way were abandoned. His administration is still writing its own history.
St. John’s, “the President’s Church”
CHAPTER IX
THE REGION ’ROUND ABOUT
NO American city has suburbs more interesting than Washington’s. Those that hold first rank, naturally, are on the Virginia side of the Potomac, the region most redolent of the memory of the great patriot whose name was given to the capital. The Arlington estate, which lies nearest, was never the home of George Washington, but he visited it often, for it belonged by inheritance to the grandson of his wife by her earlier marriage; and George and Martha were so pleased with it that they built a little summer-house about where the flagstaff now stands, whence they could overlook the work going on in the new federal city across the river. Young George Custis, owner of the place, built the spacious dwelling substantially as we now find it, finishing it four years after Washington’s death. He left the property to his daughter Mary, who in 1831 became the wife of Robert E. Lee, then a lieutenant in the regular army, but thirty years later commander-in-chief of the Confederate forces. Their wedding took place in the old drawing-room, where visitors now register their names.
Lee had just reached colonel’s rank when the Civil War broke out. He was opposed to secession, but, faithful to the traditions of State sovereignty in which he had been trained, decided that it was his duty to sacrifice all other ties and follow the fortunes of Virginia. After a painful interview with General Scott, who strove vainly to shake his resolution, he wrote, in the library across the hall from the drawing-room, his resignation of his commission in the United States army. Then, accompanied by his family, he set out for the South, never to return. In a few days the Federal troops took possession of the estate as important to the protection of Washington. Here McClellan worked out his plans for the reorganization of the Union army following the Bull Run disaster. A few years afterward, there being no one at hand to pay the war-tax laid on the land, it was sold under the hammer, and the Government bid it in. Before the sale had been definitely ordered, a Northern relative of the Lees came forward with an offer to pay the levy and costs, but the tax commissioners declined the tender on the ground that the delinquent taxpayer had not made it in person.
Meanwhile, the house had been turned into a military hospital, and the patients who died there were buried close by. When it became necessary to have a soldiers’ burial-ground near Washington, Quartermaster-general Meigs was permitted to lay off two hundred acres of the estate for the purpose. This was the beginning of the National Cemetery of to-day, where about eighteen thousand soldiers and sailors have found a last resting-place.