In the course of the debate Mr. Calhoun called attention to the fact that very few seats of government in the world occupied central positions in their respective countries. London was on a frontier, Paris far from central, the capital of Russia near its border. Even at that early date comparatively small importance was attached to a geographical centre of territory as indispensable to the location of its capital. The only possible objection to a capital near the sea-board was then noted by Mr. Madison who said, “If it were possible to promulgate our laws by some instantaneous operation, it would be of less consequence where the government might be placed,” a possibility now fulfilled by the daily news from the Capital which speeds to the remotest corner of the great land not only with the swiftness of lightning but by lightning itself.
Although the States have more than doubled since the days of this first discussion on where the Capital of the United States should be, it is a curious fact that the centre of population has not traveled westward in any proportionate ratio. According to a table calculated by Dr. Patterson of the United States mint, in 1840 the centre of population was then in Harrison County, Virginia, one hundred and seventy-five miles west of the city of Washington. At that time the average progress westward since 1790 had been, each ten years, thirty-four miles. “This average has since increased, but if it be set down at fifty miles, it will require a century to carry this centre five hundred miles west of Washington, or as far as the city of Nashville, Tennessee.” I state this fact for the benefit of crazy capital-movers who are in such haste to set the Capital of the Nation in the centre of the Continent.
I have given but a few of the questions which were discussed in the great debates which preceded the final locating of the Capital on the banks of the Potomac. They are a portion of its history, and deeply interesting in their bearing on the present and future of the Capital city.
The long strife ended in the amendatory proclamation of President Washington, done at Georgetown the 30th day of March, in the year of our Lord 1791, and of the independence of the United States the fifteenth, which concluded with these words: “I do accordingly direct the Commissioners named under the authority of the said first mentioned act of Congress to proceed forthwith to have the said four lines run, and by proper metes and bounds defined and limited, and thereof to make due report under their hands and seals; and the territory so to be located, defined and limited shall be the whole territory accepted by the said act of Congress as the district for the permanent seat of the government of the United States.” Maryland had ceded of her land ten miles square for the future Capital. Nothing seemed easier than for these three august commissioners, backed by the powerful Congress, to go and take it. But it was not so easy to be done. In addition to the State of Maryland the land belonged to land-holders, each one of whom was a lord on his own domain. Some of these held land patents still extant, dating back to 1663, and 1681. These lords of the manor were not willing to be disturbed even for the sake of a future Capital, and displayed all the irascibility and tenacity regarding price which characterize land-holders of the present day. If we may judge from results and the voluminous correspondence concerning it, left by George Washington, the three commissioners who were to act for the government did not “get on” very well with the pugnacious planters who were ready to fight for their acres—and that the greater part of the negotiating for the new city finally fell to the lot of the great Executive. One of the richest and most famous of these land-owners was David Burns. He owned an immense tract of land south of where the president’s house now stands, extending as far as the Patent Office called in the land patent of 1681 which granted it, “the Widow’s Mite, lyeing on the east side of the Anacostin River, on the north side of a branch or inlett in the said river, called Tyber.” This “Widow’s Mite” contained six hundred acres or more, and David Burns was in no wise willing to part with any portion of it. Although it laid within the territory of Columbia, ceded by the act of Maryland for the future Capital, no less a personage than the President of the United States could move one whit David Burns, and even the President found it to be no easy matter to bring the Scotchman to terms. More than once in his letters he alludes to him as “the obstinate Mr. Burns,” and it is told that upon one occasion when the President was dwelling upon the advantage that the sale of his lands would bring, the planter, testy Davy, exclaimed: “I suppose you think people here are going to take every grist that comes from you as pure grain, but what would you have been if you hadn’t married the widow Custis.”
After many interviews and arguments even the patience of Washington finally gave out and he said: “Mr. Burns, I have been authorized to select the location of the National Capital. I have selected your farm as a part of it, and the government will take it at all events. I trust you will, under these circumstances, enter into an amicable arrangement.”
Seeing that further resistance was useless, the shrewd Scotchman thought that by a final graceful surrender he might secure more favorable terms, thus, when the President once more asked: “On what terms will you surrender your plantation?” Said humble Davy: “Any that your Excellency may choose to name.” The deed conveying the land of David Burns to the commissioners in trust, is the first on record in the city of Washington. This sale secured to David Burns and his descendants an immense fortune. The deed provided that the streets of the new city should be so laid out as not to interfere with the cottage of David Burns. That cottage still stands in famous “Mansion Square,” and the reader will find its story further on in the chapter devoted to the Old Homes and Haunts of Washington. The other original owners of the soil on which the city of Washington was built were Notley Young, who owned a fine old brick mansion near the present steamboat landing, and Daniel Carroll, whose spacious abode known as the Duddington House, still stands on New Jersey Avenue, a little south-east of the Capitol. On the 31st of May, Washington wrote to Jefferson from Mount Vernon, announcing the conclusion of his negotiations in this wise—the owners conveyed all their interest to the United States on consideration that when the whole should be surveyed and laid off as a city the original proprietors should retain every other lot. The remaining lots to be sold by the government from time to time and the proceeds to be applied toward the improvement of the place. The land comprised within this agreement contains over seventy-one hundred acres. The city extends from north-west to south-east about four miles and a half, and from east to south-west about two miles and a half. Its circumference is fourteen miles, the aggregate length of the streets is one hundred and ninety-nine miles, and of the avenues sixty-five miles. The avenues, streets and open spaces contain three thousand six hundred and four acres, and the public reservations exclusive of reservations since disposed of for private purposes, five hundred and thirteen acres. The whole area of the squares of the city amounts to one hundred and thirty-one million, six hundred and eighty-four thousand, one hundred and seventy-six square feet, or three thousand and sixteen acres. Fifteen hundred and eight acres were reserved for the use of the United States.
CHAPTER III.
THE WORK BEGUN IN EARNEST.
Washington’s Faith in the Future—Mr. Sparks is “inclined to think”—A Slight Miscalculation—Theoretical Spartans—Clinging to Old World Glories—Jefferson Acts the Critic—He Communicates Some Ideas—Models of Antiquity—Babylon Revived—Difficulty in Satisfying a Frenchman’s Soul—The Man who Planned the Capital—Who was L’Enfant?—His Troubles—His Dismissal—His Personal Appearance, Old Age, Death and Burial-Place—His Successor—The French Genius “Proceeded”—The New City of Washington—A Magnificent Plan—All About the City—The Major not Appreciated—“Getting on Badly”—L’Enfant Worries Washington—A Record which Can Never Perish—An Overpaid Quaker—Jefferson Expresses his Sentiments—A Sable Franklin—The Negro Engineer, Benjamin Bancker—A Chance for a Monument.
The majority of Congress were opposed to a commercial Capital, yet there are many proofs extant that to the hour of his death George Washington cherished the hope that the new city of his love would be not only the capital of the nation, but a great commercial metropolis of the world. Mr. Jared Sparks, the historian, in a private letter says: “I am inclined to think that Washington’s anticipations were more sanguine than events have justified. He early entertained very large and just ideas of the vast resources of the West, and of the commercial intercourse that must spring up between that region and the Atlantic coast, and he was wont to regard the central position of the Potomac as affording the most direct and easy channel of communication. Steamboats and railroads have since changed the face of the world, and have set at defiance all the calculations founded on the old order of things; and especially have they operated on the destiny of the West and our entire system of internal commerce, in a manner that could not possibly have been foreseen in the life-time of Washington.” Throughout the correspondence of Washington are scattered constant allusions to the future magnificence of the Federal City, the name by which he loved to call the city of his heart, allusions which show that his faith in its great destiny never faltered. In a letter to his neighbor, Mrs. Fairfax, then in England, he said: “A century hence, if this country keeps united, it will produce a city, though not as large as London, yet of a magnitude inferior to few others in Europe.” At that time, after a growth of centuries, London contained eight hundred thousand inhabitants. Three-fourths of Washington’s predicted century have expired, and the city of Washington now numbers one hundred and fifty thousand people.
The founders of the Capital were all very republican in theory, and all very aristocratic in practice. In speech they proposed to build a sort of Spartan capital, fit for a Spartan republic; in fact, they proceeded to build one modeled after the most magnificent cities of Europe. European by descent and education, many of them allied to the oldest and proudest families of the Old World, every idea of culture, of art, and magnificence had come to them as part of their European inheritance, and we see its result in every thing that they did or proposed to do for the new Capital which they so zealously began to build in the woods. The art-connoisseur of the day was Jefferson. He knew Europe, not only by family tradition but by sight. Next to Washington he took the deepest personal interest in the projected Capital. Of this interest we find continual proof in his letters, also of the fact that his taste had much to do with the plan and architecture of the coming city. In a letter to Major L’Enfant, the first engineer of the Capital, dated Philadelphia, April 10, 1791, he wrote: “In compliance with your request, I have examined my papers and found the plans of Frankfort-on-the-Main, Carlsruhe, Amsterdam, Strasburg, Paris, Orleans, Bordeaux, Lyons, Montpelier, Marseilles, Turin, and Milan, which I send in a roll by post. They are on large and accurate scales, having been procured by me while in those respective cities myself.... Having communicated to the President before he went away, such general ideas on the subject of the town as occurred to me, I have no doubt in explaining himself to you on the subject, he has interwoven with his own ideas such of mine as he approved.... Whenever it is proposed to present plans for the Capital, I should prefer the adoption of some one of the models of antiquity, which have had the approbation of thousands of years; and for the president’s house I should prefer the celebrated fronts of modern buildings, which have already received the approbation of good judges. Such are Galerie du Louise, the Gardes Meubles, and two fronts of the Hotel de Salm.” On the same day he writes to Washington: “I received last night from Major L’Enfant a request to furnish any plans of towns I could for examination. I accordingly send him by this post, plans of Frankfort-on-the-Main, etc., which I procured while in those towns respectively. They are none of them, however, comparable to the old Babylon revived in Philadelphia and exemplified.” But these two fathers of their country, as time proved, “did not know their man.” Had they done so, they would have known in advance that a mercurial Frenchman would never attempt to satisfy his soul with acute angles of old Babylon revived through the arid and level lengths of Philadelphia.