Many and futile were the battles fought by the old Congress, for the site of the future Capital. These battles doubtless had much to do with Section 8, Article 1, of the Constitution of the United States, which declares that Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not exceeding ten miles square,) as may, by cession of particular States and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of government of the United States. This article was assented to by the convention which framed the Constitution, without debate. The adoption of the Constitution was followed spontaneously by most munificent acts on the part of several States. New York appropriated its public buildings to the use of the new government, and Congress met in that city April 6, 1789. On May 15, following, Mr. White from Virginia, presented to the House of Representatives a resolve of the Legislature of that State, offering to the Federal government ten miles square of its territory, in any part of that State, which Congress might choose as the seat of the Federal government. The day following, Mr. Seney presented a similar act from the State of Maryland. Memorials and petitions followed in quick succession from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. The resolution of the Virginia Legislature begged for the co-operation of Maryland, offering to advance the sum of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars to the use of the general government toward erecting public buildings, if the Assembly of Maryland would advance two-fifths of a like sum. Whereupon the Assembly of Virginia immediately voted to cede the necessary soil, and to provide seventy-two thousand dollars toward the erection of public buildings. “New York and Pennsylvania gratuitously furnished elegant and convenient accommodations for the government” during the eleven years which Congress passed in their midst, and offered to continue to do the same. The Legislature of Pennsylvania went further in lavish generosity, and voted a sum of money to build a house for the President. The house which it built was lately the University of Pennsylvania. The present White House is considered much too old-fashioned and shabby to be the suitable abode of the President of the United States. A love of ornate display has taken the place of early Republican simplicity. When George Washington saw the dimensions of the house which the Pennsylvanians were building for the President’s Mansion, he informed them at once that he would never occupy it, much less incur the expense of buying suitable furniture for it. In those Spartan days it never entered into the head of the State to buy furniture for the “Executive Mansion.” Thus the Chief Citizen, instead of going into a palace like a satrap, rented and furnished a modest house belonging to Mr. Robert Morris, in Market street. Meanwhile the great battle for the permanent seat of government went on unceasingly among the representatives of conflicting States. No modern debate, in length and bitterness, has equalled this of the first Congress under the Constitution. Nearly all agreed that New York was not sufficiently central. There was an intense conflict concerning the relative merits of Philadelphia and Germantown; Havre de Grace and a place called Wright’s Ferry, on the Susquehanna; Baltimore on the Patapsco, and Connogocheague on the Potomac. Mr. Smith proclaimed Baltimore, and the fact that its citizens had subscribed forty thousand dollars for public buildings. The South Carolinians cried out against Philadelphia because of its majority of Quakers who, they said, were eternally dogging the Southern members with their schemes of emancipation. Many others ridiculed the project of building palaces in the woods. Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts declared that it was the hight of unreasonableness to establish the seat of government so far south that it would place nine States out of the thirteen so far north of the National Capital; while Mr. Page protested that New York was superior to any place that he knew for the orderly and decent behavior of its inhabitants, an assertion, sad to say, no longer applicable to the city of New York.
September 5, 1789, a resolution passed the House of Representatives “that the permanent seat of the government of the United States ought to be at some convenient place on the banks of the Susquehanna, in the State of Pennsylvania.”[Pennsylvania.”] The passage of this bill awoke the deepest ire in the members from the South. Mr. Madison declared that if the proceedings of that day could have been foreseen by Virginia, that State would never have condescended to become a party to the Constitution. Mr. Scott remarked truly: “The future tranquillity and well being of the United States depended as much on this as on any question that ever had or ever could come before Congress;” while Fisher Ames declared that every principle of pride and honor, and even of patriotism, was engaged in the debate.
The bill passed the House by a vote of thirty-one to nineteen. The Senate amended it by striking out “Susquehanna,” and inserting a clause making the permanent seat of government Germantown, Pennsylvania, provided the State of Pennsylvania should give security to pay one hundred thousand dollars for the erection of public buildings. The House agreed to these amendments. Both Houses of Congress agreed upon Germantown as the Capital of the Republic, and yet the final passage of the bill was hindered by a slight amendment.
June 28, another old bill was dragged forth and amended by inserting “on the River Potomac, at some place between the mouths of the Eastern Branch and the Connogocheague.” This was finally passed, July 16, 1790, entitled “An Act establishing the temporary and permanent seat of the government of the United States.” The word temporary applied to Philadelphia, whose disappointment in not becoming the final Capital was to be appeased by Congress holding their sessions there till 1800, when, as a member expressed it, “they were to go to the Indian place with the long name, on the Potomac.”
Human bitterness and dissension were even then rife in both Houses of Congress. The bond which bound the new Union of States together was scarcely welded, and yet secession already was an openly uttered threat. An amendment had been offered to the funding act, providing for the assumption of the State debts to the amount of twenty-one millions, which was rejected by the House. The North favored assumption and the South opposed it. Just then reconciliation and amity were brought about between the combatants precisely as they often are in our own time, over a well-laid dinner table, and a bottle of rare old wine. Jefferson was then Secretary of State, and Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton thought that the North would yield and consent to the establishment of the Capital on the Potomac, if the South would agree to the amendment to assume the State debts. Jefferson and Hamilton met accidentally in the street, and the result of their half an hour’s walk “backward and forward before the President’s door” was the next day’s dinner party, and the final, irrevocable fixing of the National Capital on the banks of the Potomac. How it was done, as an illustration of early legislation, which has its perfect parallel in the legislation of the present day, can best be told in Jefferson’s own words, quoted from one of his letters. He says: “Hamilton was in despair. As I was going to the President’s one day I met him in the street. He walked me backward and forward before the President’s door for half an hour. He painted pathetically the temper into which the legislature had been wrought; the disgust of those who were called the creditor States; the danger of the secession of their members, and the separation of the States. He observed that the members of the administration ought to act in concert ... that the President was the centre on which all administrative questions finally rested; that all of us should rally around him and support by joint efforts measures approved by him, ... that an appeal from me to the judgment and discretion of some of my friends might effect a change in the vote, and the machine of government now suspended, might be again set in motion. I told him that I was really a stranger to the whole subject, not having yet informed myself of the system of finance adopted ... that if its rejection endangered a dissolution of our Union at this incipient stage, I should deem that the most unfortunate of all consequences, to avert which all partial and temporary evils should be yielded.
“I proposed to him, however, to dine with me the next day, and I would invite another friend or two, bring them into conference together and I thought it impossible that reasonable men, consulting together coolly, could fail by some mutual sacrifices of opinion to form a compromise which was to save the Union. The discussion took place.... It was finally agreed to, that whatever importance had been attached to the rejection of this proposition, the preservation of the Union and of concord among the States was more important, and that therefore it would be better that the vote of rejection should be rescinded to effect which some members should change their votes. But it was observed that this pill would be peculiarly bitter to Southern States, and that some concomitant measure should be adopted to sweeten it a little to them. There had before been a proposition to fix the seat of government either at Philadelphia or Georgetown on the Potomac, and it was thought that by giving it to Philadelphia for ten years, and to Georgetown permanently afterward, this might, as an anodyne, calm in some degree the ferment which might be excited by the other measure alone. So two of the Potomac members, [White and Lee,] but White with a revulsion of stomach almost convulsive, agreed to change their votes, and Hamilton agreed to carry the other point ... and so the assumption was passed,” and the permanent Capital fixed on the banks of the Potomac.
CHAPTER II.
CROSS PURPOSES AND QUEER SPECULATIONS.
Born of Much Bother—Long Debates and Pamphlets—Undefined Apprehensions—Debates on the Coming City—Old World Examples—Sir James Expresses an Opinion—A Dream of the Distant West—An Old-time Want—A Curious Statement of Fact—“Going West”—Where is the Centre of Population—An Important Proclamation—Original Land Owners—Well-worn Patents—Getting on with Pugnacious Planters—Obstinate David Burns—A “Widow’s Mite” of Some Magnitude—How the Scotchman was Subjugated—“If You Hadn’t Married the Widow Custis”—A Rather “Forcible Argument”—His Excellency “Chooses”—The First Record in Washington—Old Homes and Haunts—Purchase of Land—Extent of the City.
As we have seen, the Federal City was the object of George Washington’s devoted love long before its birth. It was born through much tribulation. First came the long debates and pamphlets of 1790, as to whether the seat of the American government should be a commercial capital. Madison and his party argued that the only way to insure the power of exclusive legislation to Congress as accorded by the Constitution, was to remove the Capital as far from commercial interests as possible. They declared that the exercise of this authority over a large mixed commercial community would be impossible. Conflicting mercantile interests would cause constant political disturbances, and when party feelings ran high, or business was stagnant, the commercial capital would swarm with an irritable mob brim full of wrongs and grievances. This would involve the necessity of an army standing in perpetual defense of the capital. London and Westminster were cited as examples where the commercial importance of a single city had more influence on the measures of government than the whole empire outside. Sir James Macintosh was quoted, wherein he said “that a great metropolis was to be considered as the heart of a political body—as the focus of its powers and talents—as the direction of public opinion, and, therefore, as a strong bulwark in the cause of freedom, or as a powerful engine in the hands of an oppressor.” To prevent the Capital of the Republic becoming the latter the Constitution deprived it of the elective franchise. The majority in Congress opposed the idea of a great commercial city as the future Capital of the country. Nevertheless when a plan for the city was adopted it was one of exceptional magnificence. It was a dream of the founders of the Capital to build a city expressly for its purpose and to build it for centuries to come. In view of the vast territory now comprehended in the United States their provision for the future may seem meagre and limited. But when we remember that there were then but thirteen States, that railroads and telegraphs were undreamed of as human possibilities—that nearly all the empire west of the Potomac was an unpenetrated wilderness, we may wonder at their prescience and wisdom, rather than smile at their lack of foresight. Even in that early and clouded morning there were statesmen who foresaw the later glory of the West fore-ordained to shine on far off generations. Says Mr. Madison: “If the calculation be just that we double in fifty years we shall speedily behold an astonishing mass of people on the western waters.... The swarm does not come from the southern but from the northern and eastern hives. I take it that the centre of population will rapidly advance in a south-westerly direction. It must then travel from the Susquehanna if it is now found there—it may even extend beyond the Potomac!”
Said Mr. Vining to the House, “I confess I am in favor of the Potomac. I wish the seat of government to be fixed there because I think the interest, the honor, and the greatness of the country require it. From thence, it appears to me, that the rays of government will naturally diverge to the extremities of the Union. I declare that I look upon the western territories from an awful and striking point of view. To that region the unpolished sons of the earth are flowing from all quarters—men to whom the protection of the laws and the controlling force of the government are equally necessary.”