The opening of the Potomac River for navigation, to connect with the Ohio, was a project close to General Washington's heart. He had entertained this dream from the time of his first western venture in 1754. He calculated, plotted, and surveyed distances, and from 1770 onward his mind was set upon the accomplishment. In July of that year he was in correspondence with Thomas Johnson, to whom he wrote: "Till now I have not been able to enquire into the sentiments of any of the Gentlemen of this side in respect to the Scheme of opening inland navigation of the Potomac by private subscription."[55] Washington's trips to the Ohio, in October 1770 and again in September 1784—on both occasions accompanied by Dr. Craik—while in the interest of his western land holdings were also to forward this canal business.
All of this resulted in the founding of the Potomac Navigation Company in 1785, and Alexandria subscribed heavily to the bond issue. By 1829 the first steam locomotive was operating in America and the coming of the steam engine was followed by the collapse of the canal project. Thousands of local dollars were thus lost. When the deflation was complete, financial stagnation followed, from which Alexandria never entirely recovered. During these trying 1830s and 1840s many of her younger men departed for the west hoping to better their fortunes.
Alexandrians did not take kindly to federal jurisdiction of their affairs, and within half a century from 1800—on February 3, 1846—a petition was presented from the citizens of the county and town of Alexandria to the Virginia General Assembly, stating that they had pending before Congress an application for recession to the Commonwealth of Virginia. They asked the Assembly for a law to accept them back into the fold should their request be granted. By act of Congress, dated July 9, 1846, it was provided that: "With the assent of the people of the County and Town of Alexandria, that portion of the territory of the District of Columbia ceded to the United States by the State of Virginia ... receded and forever relinquished to the State of Virginia ..."[56]
Virginia welcomed the recession as a mother would welcome home a maltreated and divorced daughter. Alexandria County (later Arlington County) and the City of Alexandria were accepted on March 13, 1847, just two years short of the latter's centenary.
Fourteen years later the first blood of dreadful civil war was spilled in Alexandria and the city found itself a pawn to arbitrament by the sword. When General Robert E. Lee accepted the command of Confederate forces, a host of Alexandrians followed him into battle. To the citizenry with Southern sympathies, war meant bitter severance once again from Virginia. For the duration of the Civil War, Alexandria, under federal jurisdiction again, became the capital of that part of the state (West Virginia) which refused to secede with the Richmond government. To the old city came a governor and legislature with Northern sympathies, making welcome any federal forces camping on the outskirts of town. Old prints show the Union flag in the hands of marching soldiers on King Street, and camps and cantonments, beginning at the "Round House," extending for miles.
Even so, the best and noblest donned the gray, and Alexandria's own marched out to become part of the 17th Virginia Infantry, C.S.A., upon the bloody battlefields of the South.
With the close of the Civil War, prosperity departed. Fewer and fewer ships came to anchor in the Potomac port, until finally nothing remained to show the important part that Alexandria played for a century in the sea commerce of the world save rotted piles that once supported wharves, and a few grimy, scarred old warehouses whose collapsing roofs and loose bricks threatened the very life of the pedestrian.
Other wars have come and gone and each has had a conspicuous effect upon the town. The tragic era of 1861-65, binding our great nation into an indissoluble union, began likewise the process of cementation which steadfastly links Alexandria to the District of Columbia by bands that are basically nonpolitical (maybe stronger for that same reason). Paradoxically, Alexandria is a free city—part of Virginia, though not characteristic of the State; allied to the District, but no part of it.
Alexandria's cultural heritage has appealed for many reasons to Washington officialdom, and many persons prominent in national affairs have crossed the river to settle and to restore the gracious old homes of bygone days. George Washington's Alexandria is a city at once assured and self-conscious. Confident in its background, its venerable traditions, and its associations with the great in the country's development, Alexandria ponders its destiny.
