y Ij;:: lip" ■ ' 111 ^'l*r liilill m '.fi.'t'''.' I J McCarthy igton, i->. >-■ h 3^ OUR NATIONAL GOVERNMENT OK Life and Scenes in Our National Capital. I'ORTKAYING THE WONDERFUL OPERATIONS IN ALL THE GREAT DEPARTMENTS, AND DESCRIBING EVERY IMPORTANT FUNCTION OF OUR LAW-MAKING BODIES, INCLUDING ITS |)tfi(toricaI, dtmntiMt, ^tUminifitratiDc, T^cpartmcntal, 9trti6tic, anU S>ocial iFtaturcfi. WITH SKETCHES OP THE PRESIDENTS AND THEIR WIVES ANn f>p ALL THE FAMOUS WOMEN WHO HAVE REIGNED JN THE WHITE HOUSE From Washington's to Taft's Administration. EDITKD By Mrs. JOHN A. LOGAN. '^-■■'■ssvS^'<-~. Maw Entrance to the White House. :§>apcrblp 3^Ua6tratrti WITH FIPTT FULL-PAGE PHOTOGUAVURE PLATES FKOM PHOTOGRAPHS MADE BY !>PBCIAfc PERMISSION OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT EXPRESSLY FOR THIS WOKIi. H. L. BALDWIN COMPANY, Publishers, minn?:ap()lis, minx. LIBRARY of CONGRESS Twu CoDies Received MAh 24 ia09 . , Copyrl^nt entry ^^ CLASS a, XXc. No, 2.2.5100 COPY 3, LS3 [ALL RICIHTS RESERVED] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1908, By H. L. Baldwin Company, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. tTO IHHbOni it yiftaV> Concern: — Notice is hereby given by the PubHshers that the >i,v vvtuv... .1. i.ij«i, v^v.ivwv... sale of this book, "OUR NATIONAL GOVERN- MENT," by subscription only, is protected by decisions of the United States Courts, These decisions are by the U. S. Circuit Court of Ohio, rendered by Judge Hammond, and by the U. S. Circuit Court of Pennsylvania, rendered by Judge Kutler, and are that " when a subscription book publishing house, in connection with the author, elects to sell a book purely by subscrip- tion and does so sell it, through agents that are agents in the legal sense and not incie/>ende7it purchasers of the books, the house and author are entitled to the protection of the Courts against any bookseller who invades their rights by an attempt to buy and sell a book so published and sold " Hence, this is to notify booksellers and the public that all our agents are under contract, as our agents, to sell this book by subscription only, and to individual subscribers for their cnvn ■use. They have no right whatever to sell it in any other way, as books are furnished to them only for delivery to individual subscribers; and any interference with our agents to induce them to sell contrary to their contract obligations and our rights, or any sale of this book by any one not an authorized agent, will entitle us to the protection of the Courts. Notice is al.so hereby given th,it this copy of " OUR NATIONAL GOVERNMENT " can be identified wherever found, together with the name of the agent to whom the publishers sup- plied it; and the detection of persons supplying it to booksellers, and the offering of it for sale by a bookseller, will be sufficient justification for us to institute proceedings against both bookselier and agent. We trust this notice will be received in the kindly spirit in which it is given, as it is made simply to protect the author, ourselves, and our agents against infringements which rob us of the legitimate fruits of our labor and investment. Agents and all other persons are requested to inform us at once of the offering of any copies of this book for sale by any bookseller, or by any person not our accredited agent. THE PUBLISHERS, [N presenting this volume, in the preparation of which the utmost care has been taken, and no expense considered too great, I have endeavored to meet the demand for a story of the birth and growth of our National Capital, and for a comprehensive and interesting description of the countless and mighty interests that center there. Few citizens of the United States really appreciate the number and magnitude of the Departments of the Government, or realize how marvelously the volume of business has ex- panded as the population of our ever-widening domain has increased. Many otherwise well-informed people are un- familiar with the workings of the giant activities carried on in these Departments, and much of what I have written will doubtless be a revelation to them. The sketches of the Presidents of the great Republic, from Washington to McKinley, together with those of the ladies of the White House, whose influence has often been " the powA« behind the throne," I am sure will claim the in- ^ (i) 11 PREFACE. terested attention of my readers. The lives and personality of these women have been overshadowed, historically speak- ing, by the more prominent careers of their distinguished husbands or relatives. Every woman will read with pride the record of these women who were called to fill the most prominent and difficult position in the gift of the people. In almost every instance they were lovely and admirable char- acters. Most of them were equipped by birth, education, and social acquirements to adorn this high position ; and some possessed a rare combination of gifts and graces that made them pre-eminent as social queens, and made their reign, as mistress of the "White House, a part of our Xational history. My first introduction to life in the city of Washington was in 1858, General Logan being then a member of Con- gress, and for more than thirty years I have lived there almost continuously, an interested observer of passing events. As the wife of a Senator, I may say that I enjoyed unusual privileges and opportunities to see and know the inner life and activities of the Capital City. I have had my share of the favor of the powers that were, and the honor of being included a-nong the distin- guished guests at both private and official entertainments ; and I have known the pleasure of perso'"'al acquaintance with prominent statesmen, courtly diplom. .dlant com- manders of our Army and Navy, famous scientists and authors, and beautiful, winning, and gifted women, filling with grace and dignity the highest social positions that tlie people could bestow. In these years there have been stormy political times, and troubled years of cruel war, PREFACE. Ill when the very existence of the Nation was threatened, and many happy, prosperous years of peace. Through all, our great Republic has steadily advanced to the highest station among the ruling powers of the world. What I have written has been without prejudice, and with no striving for sensational effect. I know whereof 1 affirm, and this volume may be looked upon as reliable, whether in its liistorical review of the birth and development of our National Capital ; its presentation of the official duties and responsibilities of those who occupy high or humble po- sitions in the government service; its account of the marvel- ously interesting workings of great administrative forces; its biographical sketches of famous characters; its descrip- tions of remarkable events; or its portrayal of everyday life in a city that, from a straggling village in the woods, has grown to be one of the most stately and magnificent of capitals, vying with those of the Old World in picturesque- ness, majestic and splendid architecture, artistic decoration, unique and manifold government industries, and surpassing all of them in its collections of relics and curiosities from every part of the world. It has been,, my aim to show my readers, both by word and pictorial art, the wonders and the workings of the elab- orate machinery of the Government in motion, by leading them thi he great national buildings and explaining what the ai . /of busy men and women workers do and how they do it; to show them the works of art, and the architectural glories and priceless treasures of the Capital ; to portray not only daily life at the White House, past and present, but its brilliant social and official functions as IV PREFACE. well ; in short, to present every interesting phase of life in Washington. My desire is to be remembered as an intelligent guide, leading the reader on from one scene of interest to another, awakening the mind to a finer comprehension of our country's greatness, and inspiring all with a higher and more devoted patriotism. ^ 41 WOMEN'S WORK IN THE TREASURY. COUNTING, IDEN- TIFYING, AND ASSORTING WORN-OUT MONEY (Full Page) . Pacing 249 42 WOMEN EXPERTS IN THE TREASURY IDENTIFYING BURNED MONEY FOR REDEMPTION (Full Page) Pacing 2.52 Vlll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 43 THE FUNERAL OF UNCLE SAM'S PAPER DOLLARS. THE TREASURY DESTRUCTION COMMITTEE DESTROYING $5,000,000 IN PAPER MONEY (Full Page) . . Facing 261 44 WEST FRONT OF THE WHITE HOUSE AND THE PRESIDENT'S NEW OFFICE BUILDING (Full Page) . . . Pacing 284 45 MAKING POSTAGE STAMPS. WOMEN SEPARATING AND PERFORATING THE PRINTED SHEETS (Full Page) Facing 318 46 WHO IS IT FOR? A SCENE IN THE DEAD-LETTER OFFICE. EXPERTS TRYING TO DECIPHER AN ILLEGIBLE ADDRESS ( Full Page ) Facing 332 47 FACSIMILE OF A DEAD LETTER DELIVERED AT ELIZA- BETH, N. J 336 48 FACSIMILE OF A DEAD LETTER DELIVERED AT JERSEY CITY, N. J 337 49 FACSIMILE OF A DEAD LETTER DELIVERED AT NEWARK, N. J 339 50 FACSIMILE OF A DEAD LETTER DELIVERED AT CARTERET, N. J 339 51 FACSIMILE OF A DEAD LETTER DELIVERED AT HART- FORD, CONN. 340 52 FACSIMILE OF A DEAD LETTER DELIVERED AT HOBOKEN, N. J 341 53 FACSIMILE OF A DEAD LETTER DELIVERED AT CLEVE- LAND, N. Y 343 54 WOMEN'S WORK IX THE DEAD-LETTER OFFICE (Full Page) Facing 344 .55 FORECASTING THE WEATHER IN THE INSTRUMENT ROOM OF THE WEATHER BUREAU (Full Page) . . Facing 404 56 THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, AS SEEN FROM THE CAPITOL (Full I'jtgc) Facing 418 57 FIRST-STORY PLAN, LHJRARV OF CONGRESS . . .424 58 SECOND-STORY PLAN, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ... 429 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. IX 59 THE PUBLIC READING ROOM IN THE LIBRARY OF CON- GRESS ^ Full Page ) Facing 430 - 60 INSIDE THE MAIN ENTRANCE TO THE LIBRARY OF COX- GRESS (Full Page) Facing 440 61 THE FOREST OF MARBLE PILLARS ON THE SECOND FLOOR OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (Full Page) . Facing .448- 62 MAIN FLOOR OF THE CORCORAN GALLERY OF ART (Full Page) Pacing 453 63 FOUR HIGH-PLACED WOMEN EXPERTS IN GOVERNMENT SERVICE (Full Page) Facing 461- 64 BEAUTIFUL ARLINGTON, THE SILENT CITY OF THE DEAD (Full Page) Facing 528 y 65 FACE OF MONUMENT TO THE UNKNOWN DEAD OF THE CIVIL WAR 585 66 TOMB AT ARLINGTON TO THE UNKNOWN DEAD OF THE CIVIL WAR (Full Page) Pacing 586 67 PORTRAIT OF GEORGE WASHINGTON) ) {VwU TsLge) Pacing 543 68 PORTRAIT OF MARTHA WASHINGTON ) 69 THE HOME OF GEORGE AND MARTHA WASHINGTON. THE MANSION AT MOUNT VERNON AS IT IS TODAY ( Full Page j ........ Facing 544 70 THE RED ROOM IN THE REMODELED WHITE HOUSE (Full Page ) Faci7ig 554 " 71 THE ROOM IN WHICH WASHINGTON DIED AT MOUNT VERNON (Full Page) Pacing 558- 72 THE NEW TOMB OF GEORGE AND MARTHA WASHINGTON AT MOUNT VERNON ( Full Page) . . . Pacing 562/ 73 THE FAMOUS BLUE ROOM IX THE REMODELED WHITE HOUSE (Full Page) Facing 570 74 THE ATTIC ROOM AT MOUNT VERNON IX WHICH MARTHA WASHINGTON DIED (Full Page) .... Faci7ig 575 X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 75 PORTRAIT OF JOHN ADAMS 1 76 PORTRAIT OF MRS. JOHN (ABIGAIL) K^^" Page) Facing: 576 ADAMS J 77 PORTRAIT OF THOMAS JEFFERSON ^ 78 PORTRAIT OF MRS. MARTHA [ < ^«" Page) Facing 584 JEFFERSON RANDOLPH 79 PORTRAIT OF JAMES MADISON "j 80 PORTRAIT OF MRS. JAMES (" DOLLY") ( (^^^^ T age) Facing 586 MADISON J 81 PORTRAIT OF JAMES MONROE ) V ( Full Page ) Facing 599 83 PORTRAIT OF MRS. JAMES MONROE ) 83 PORTRAIT OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS -j 84 PORTRAIT OF MRS. JOHN h^'^" P^ge) Facing 604 QUINCY ADAMS 85 PORTRAIT OF ANDREW JACKSON '- ( Full Page ) Facing 608 86 PORTRAIT OF MRS. EMILY DONELSON " 87 PORTRAIT OF MARTIN VAN BUREN 88 PORTRAIT OF MRS. ABRAHAM VAN RFuU Page ) ^«.;«^ 619 BUREN (ANGELICA SINGLETON) J 89 PORTRAIT OF JOHN TYLER 90 PORTRAIT OF MRS. JOHN TYLER 91 PORTRAIT OF JAMES K. POLK 92 PORTRAIT OF MRS. JAMES K. POLK (Full Page) i^a««^ 620 ( Full Page ) Facing 626 93 PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON \ {-FvLll Page) Facing 631 94 PORTRAIT OF ZACHARY TAYLOR 95 PORTRAIT OF MILLARD FILLMORE ] 96 PORTRAIT OF MRS. MILLARD , {Full Page) Facing 632 FILLMORE 97 PORTRAIT OF FRANKLIN PIERCE ( Full Page ) Facing 037 PORTRAIT OF MRS. FRANKLIN PIERCE " I LIST OP ILLUSTRATIONS. Xi 99 PORTRAIT OF JAMES BUCHANAN ] 100 PORTRAIT OF MRS. HARRIET LANE [ ( Full Page ) i^acm^ (540 JOHNSTON J 101 PORTRAIT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN ) } ( Full Page ) Facing' 643 102 PORTRAIT OF MRS. ABRAHAM LINCOLN ) 103 THEGREEN ROOM IN THE WHITE HOUSE (Full Page )77a««g- 648 104 PORTRAIT OF ANDREW JOHNSON ( Full Page ) Facittp- (W6 105 PORTRAIT OF MRS. ANDREW JOHNSON ' 106 PORTRAIT OF ULYSSES S. GRANT ) } i Full ra,ge)Fadne- 663 lOr PORTRAIT OF MRS. ULYSSES S.GRANT 108 PORTRAIT OF RUTHERFORD B. I HAYES I [ (Full Page) Facing 674 109 PORTRAIT OF MRS. RUTHERFORD B. | HAYES J 110 THE EAST ROOM IN THE WHITE HOUSE DECORATED FOR A STATE RECEPTION (Full Page) . . Facing 680 111 PORTRAIT OF JAMES A. GARFIELD ( Full Page ) Facing 684 113 PORTRAIT OF MRS.JAMES A. GARFIELD ' 113 PORTRAIT OF CHESTER A. ARTHUR ' ,( Full Page ) Facing 694 114 PORTRAIT OF MRS. JOHN McELROY ' \ V 11.5 PORTRAIT OF STEPHEN GROVER CLEVELAND ( Full Page ) Facing 698 116 PORTRAIT OF MRS. STEPHEN GROVER 1 CLEVELAND J 117 PORTRAIT OF BENJAMIN HARRISON 118 PORTRAIT OF MRS. BENJAMIN [( Full Page ) /^a««^ 706 HARRISON 119 THE RED ROOM IX THE WHITE HOUSE ( Full Page) /^<7««^ 716 120 PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM McKINLEY, Jr. 1 I 121 PORTRAIT OF MRS. WILLIAM W Full Page) Fa««^ 721 McKINLEY, Jr. J Xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 122 A CORNER IN THE LIBRARY OF THE REMODELED WHITE HOUSE (Full Page) Facing 734 123 PORTRAIT OF T HEODORE ROOSEVELT 1 124 PORTRAIT OF MRS. THEODORE K Full Page ) /^ociwg- 742 ROOSEVELT 125 IN THE LIBRARY AT THE WHITE HOUSE ( Full Puge) Facing 732 126 PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM H. TAFT ■) 127 PORTRAIT OF MRS. WILLIAM H. TAFT \ ^'"'" ^'^Se) Facing 756 CHAPTER I. THE SITE OF THE NATIONAL CAPITAL AND HOW IT WAS SELECTED — EARLY TROUBLES AND TRIALS. The Prophet of the Capital — Forecasting (he Future — A Government Moving Slowly and Painfully About on Wheels — Insulted by a Band of Mutineers — Troubles and Trials — Washington's Humble Ideas of a President's House — Renting and Furnishing a Modest Home — Spartan Simplicity — Madison's Indignation — "Going West" — Where is the Center of Population ? — A Dinner and What Came of it — Sweetening a "Peculiarly Bitter Pill" — A "Revulsion of Stom- ach " — End of a Long and Bitter Strife. ..... 33 CHAPTER II. GENERAL WASHINGTON AND OBSTINATE DAVY BURNS — now THE "WIDOWS MITE" WAS SECURED— HOW AND BY WHOM THE CITY WAS PLANNED. Making Peace With Lords of Little Domains — " Obstinate Mr. Burns" — A Pugnacious Scotchman — The " Widow's Mite" — A Graceful Sur- render — Republicans in Theory but Aristocrats in Practice — Who Was Major L'Enfant ? — A Lucky Circumstance — Plans that Were Ridiculed — Men Who Did Nv)t "Get On " Well Together — The Man Who Worried President Washington — Demolishing M;uisioiis With- out Leave or License — An Uncontrollable Engineer — His Summary Dismissal — Living Witliout Honor and Dying Without Fame — A Quaker Successor of " Uncommon Talent" and " Placid Temper" — Five Dollars a Day and "Expenses" — "Too Much" — A Colored Genius for Mathematics — "Every Inch a Man" — Why the Capitol, the White House, Were Set Far Apart 44 ( xiii ) XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. BIRTH OF THE NATION'S CAPITOL — GRAPHIC PICTURES OF EARLY DAYS — SACKED BY THE BRITISH — WASH- INGTON DURING THE CIVIL WAR. Raising the Money to Build the Capitol — Government Lottery Schemes — Hunting for the Capital — "In the Center of the City" — Queer Sen- sations — Dismal Scenes — Sacked by the British — "The Royal Pirate" — Flight of the President— Burning of the White House — Mrs Madison Saves the Historic Painting of General Washington — Paul Jennings' Account of the Retreat — Invaded by Torch Bearers and Plunderers — A Memorable Storm — Midnight Silent Retreat of the British — Disgraceful Conduct of "The Royal Pirate" — "Light up!" — Setting Fire to the Capitol — Dickens' Sarcastic Description of the Capital — "Such as It Is, It Is Likely to Remain" — When the Civil War Opened — Dreary, Desolate, and Dirty — The Capital During the War — Days of Anguish and Bloodshed. . . 53 CHAPTER IV. BUILDING THE CAPITOL — HOW WASHINGTON AND JEFFER- SON ADVERTISED FOR PLANS — COMPLETION OF THE CAPITOL. Early Trials and Tribulations— Schemers and Speculators — A "Front Door in the Rear" — Seeking for Suitable Plans — A Troublesome Question — Washington and Jefferson Advertise Premiums for the Best Plan — A Curious "ad" — Some Remarkable Offerings — The Successful Competitor — Carrying Off the Prize — Laying of the Corner-Stoiie by President Wasiiiiigton — A Defeated Competitor's Audacity — President Washington's Rage — Jealousies of Rivals — Congress Sitting in "the Oven" — Crimination and Recrimination — Building Additions to the Capitol — Hoodwinking Congress — How the Money Was Appropriated to Build the Great Dome — A Successful Ruse — Completion of the Building — Its Dimensions and Cost — Curious Construction of the Great Dome 68 CHAPTER V. A TOUR INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE CAPITOL — INTEREST- ING SIGHTS AND SCENES — UNDER THE GREAT DOME — A PARADISE FOR VISITORS. Entering the Capitol Grounds — Inside the Capitol — Bridal Pairs in Washington — Where Do They Come From ? — Underneath the Capi- tol — Using the Capitol as a Bakery — Turning Out 16,000 Loaves of Bread Daily — Marble Staircases and Luxurious Furniture — In the Senate Chamber and House of Representatives — Costly Paintings — Bronzes and Statues — In the Rotunda — Under the Great Dome — CONTENTS. XV In Statuary Hall — Famous Statues and Works of Art — "Brother Jonathan " — The Famous Marble Clock — The Scene of Fierce and Bitter Wrangles — The Bronze Clock Whose Hands Are Turned Back — A Colossal Statue Weighing Twenty-one Tons — Commodore Hull's Expedition to Bring it to America — Climbing to the Top of the Mighty Dome — Looking Down on the Floor of the Rotunda — Under the Lantern — At the Tip-top of the Capitol. . 83 CPIAPTER VI. IN THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES — A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES — CLAIMANTS AND LOBBY- ISTS — GOVERNMENT PRIZES. In the House of Representatives — Scenes of Confusion — The Speaker — A Peep Behind the Scenes— " What Did They Do?" — A Visit to the Senate — Playing Marbles Behind the Vice-President's Chair — Secret Sessions — The Veil Lifted — A Senator's Amusing Experience — Some Revelations — How tiie Senate Works — "Will Carp Eat Gold Fish? " — Curious Requests — "We Want a Baby" — Women With Claims — Professional Lobbyists and Their Ways — Button-holing Sen- ators — " Who are They r " — Importance of " Knowing the Ropes " — Catching the Speaker's Eye — An Indignant Congressman — Catching "the Measles, the Whooping-Cough, and the Influenza" — Shaves, Hair-cuts, and Baths at Uncle Sam's Expense — -Barbers as "Skilled Laborers" — " Working a Committee." 109 CHAPTER VII. A TOUR THROUGH THE WHITE HOUSE FROM ATTIC TO CELLAR — WHITE HOUSE WEDDINGS AND TRAGEDIES. Inside the White House — An Historic Mansion — Reminiscences of the Past— "What Tales the Room Could Tell If It But Had a Tongue"— Why It Is Called the White House — Its Cost — How To Gain Admis- sion — Its Famous Rooms and Their Fiirnisliings — Invited To "Assist" — The Great East Room — Chandeliers That Cost $5,000 Each — Where Mrs. Adams "Dried the Family Wash" — Shaking Hands with Sixty Thousand Persons — A Swollen Hand and a Lame Arm — How an Old Lady Greeted the President — Trying To See the President — Forbidden Rooms — The President's Private Apartments — Efforts to Peep at the White House Kitchen — Indignant Visitors — Weddings in the White House — Tragedies of the White House. , 130 CHAPTER Vin. DAILY LIFE AND SCENES AT THE WHITE HOUSE — THE PRESIDENT'S DOMESTIC ARRANGEMENTS. Official Entertainment at the White House — Social Customs — Daily Life and Scenes — " His High Mightiness" — Only Plain "Mr. Presiiient " — The President's Turnout — Why His Horses' Tails Are Not Docked XVI CONTENTS. — Public Receptions — Five Thousand Decorative Plants — State '■*; ^ners — Who Are Invited — Their Cost — The Table and its Costly ■i-i jrnishings — Decorating the Table — A Mile of Sniilax — Rare China and Exquisite Cat Glass — Who Pays for tlie Dinners — How the Guests Are Seated — Guests Who Are Not Well-bred — In the Attic of the White House— What May be Seen There — A Motly Collection of Articles — " Home Comforts " — Selecting a New Outfit of Linen — A Requisition for " Soap for the Bath Room " — " Proper and Neces- sary" Purchases — Paying the Bills — Who Furnishes the Kettles and Saucepans? — How the White House Is Guarded. . . 145 CHAPTER IX. OFFICIAL LIFE AND WORK AT THE WHITE HOUSE — A DAY IN THE PRESIDENT'S PRIVATE OFFICE. Inauguration Ceremonies — Old Time Scenes — A Disorderly Mob in the White House — Muddy Boots on Brocaded Chairs — Overturning the Punch on the Carpets — Disgraceful Scenes — The Presideut-Elect — Taking the Oath — Kissing the Bible — The Inaugural Ball — How the Retiring President and His Wife Depart From the White House — A Sad Spectacle — Scenes in the New President's Office — A Crowd of Office Seekers — " Swamped" with Applications — Privileged Callers — "Just To Pay My Respects" — The President's Mail — Requests for Autographs — Begging Letters — A Door That Is Never Closed — How the President Draws His Pay — A Deficit of One Cent. . 162 CHAPTER X. THE CABINET — SHAPING THE DESTINY OF THE NATION — THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE AND ITS ARCHIVES. The Great Departments — The President's Cabinet — How It Is Formed — "The Tail of the Cabinet" — "Keeping the Flies oil the Administra- tion" — In the Cabinet Room — What Takes Place at a Cabinet Meet- ing — Spending More than Ills Salary — "Mr. Vice-President," "Mr. Secretary," and "Mr. Speaker" — Two Miles of Marble Halls — In the Office of the Secretary of State — Precious Heirlooms of the Nation — Ilow the Original Declaration of Independence Was Ruined — Originals of All the Proclamations of the Presidents — The United States Secret Cipher Code 181 CHAPTER XL THE STORY OF THE UNITED STATES TREASURY — HOW ITS SECRETS AND WORK ARE GUARDED — A THOUSAND BUSY MAIDS AND MATRONS. In the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury — The Treasury Vaults and Dungeons — "Put the "Building Right Here!" — An Ariny of Clerks CONTENTS. xvii — Where They Come From and Who They Are — Women Wli ^^ave Known " Better Days" — The Struggle for " Office " — How A liiit- ments Are Made — The Story of So'pliia Holmes — Finding $200,000 in a Waste Paper Box — $800,000,000 in Gold and Silver — Inside the Great Steel Cage — The Mysteries of the Treasury — Precautions Against Burglary and Theft — Alarm Bells and Signals — Guarding Millions of Treasure — How a Package Containing $20,000 Was Stolen — The Man with a Panama Hat — A Package Containing $47,000 Missing — Capture of the Thief — The Travels and Adventures of a Dollar — From tiie Dainty Purses of Fair Women to the Grimy Hands of Toil — When a Dollar Ceases To Be a Dollar. . . .201 CH-APTER XII. MYSTERIES OF THE TREASURY— HOW UNCLE SAM'S MONEY IS MADE — WOMAN'S WORK IN THE TREASURY — WHAT THEY DO AND HOW TIIEY DO IT. The Story of a Greenback — The Bureau of Engraving and Printing — The Great Black Wagon of the Treasury — Guarded by Armed Men — Extraordinary Safeguards and Precautions — $4,000,000 in Twelve Pounds of Paper — 200 Tons of Silver — Some Awe-Struck People — Placing Obstacles in the Waj^ of Counterfeiters — How tlie Original Plates Are Guarded — Where and How the Plates Are Destroyed — Secret Inks — Grimy Printers and Busy Women — Who Pays for the Losses — Why Every Bank Bill Must Differ in One Respect from Every Other — Marvelous Rapidity and Accuracy of the Counters — The Last Count of All — Wonderful Dexterity of Trained Eyes and Hands — Counting $25,000,000 a Week — Women Who Have Handled More Money than Anyone Else in the World 233 CHAPTER XIIT. EXTRAORDINARY PRECAUTIONS AGAINST COUNTERFEIT- ERS. BURGLARS, AND THIEVES — WOMEN AS EXPERT COUNTERFEIT DETECTORS — TIIE FUNERAL OF A DOL- LAR. Coming Home To Die — Ill-Smelling Companions — A Dirty-Looking Mob of Dollars — The Experts' Secluded Corner — Among Shreds and Patches of Money — Chewed by Pigs and Rescued from a Slaughter House — Taken from the Bodies of the Dead — An Iowa Farmer's Ex- perience — A ^lichigan Tax Collector and His Goat — Women's Skill in Restoring Worn-out Sloney — Bills Reeking with Filth — Detecting Counterfeits — A Woman's Instinct — "That's Counterfeit!" — How the Treasury Was Swindled by a Woman — An Ingenious Device — Some Precious Packages — The Return of the Dollar — Nearing Its End — From a Palace to " a Pig's Stomach " — The Macerater — Chew- ing Up Over $166,000,000 at One Gulp — The Funeral of a Dollar — " Pulp It Was • to Pulp It Has Returned." .... 249 XVlll CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIY. OFFICIAL "RED TAPE" — SOME LITTLE-KNOWN ACTIVITIES OF UNCLE SAM'S HOUSEHOLD— WONDERFUL WORK AND ASTONISHING FACTS. Official " Red Tape " — Fraudulent Claims — Guardinq; Against Errors in Accounts — An Incident of the Civil War — An Unknown Friend Who Loaned the Government a Million Pounds — Who Was He ? — A State Secret — An Important Meeting at the White House — Signing Ten Million Dollars Worth of Bonds Against Time — How It Was Done — 600 Bookkeepers at Work — Ignorant Country Postmasters — Money Orders that Are Never Presented for Payment — An Unsolved j\Iystery — Thousands of Dollars Not Called For — How the Mone}' Rolls into Uncle Sam's Tills — Smugglers and Their Ways — A Dangerous Class of Defrauders — A Wonderful Pair of Scales — Some Astonishing Facts About Weights and Measures 262 CHAPTER XV. THE UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE — HOW COUNTER- FEITERS, DEFAULTERS, AND THIEVES ARE CAUGHT — SOME REMARKABLE DETECTIVE EXPERIENCES. A Secret Fund for Secret Purposes — Uncle Sam's Detective Bureau — Itb Methods and Mysteries — Expert Sleuth-hounds — Eyes That Are Every- where — Counterfeiters and Their Secret Workshops — A Skillful and Dangerous Class of Criminals — Where They Come From — The Mu- seum of Crime in the Secret Service Rooms — Some Marvelous Coun- terfeits — Running Down a "Gang" — Wide-Spread Nets for Coun- terfeiters, Defaulters, and Thieves — Catching Old and Wary Offenders — Ingenious Methods — An Adroit Counterfeiter and His Sliabby Hand-bag — A Mysterious Bundle — A Surprised Detective — What the Hand-bag Contained — How Great Frauds Are Unearthed — How Suspicious Persons Are Shadowed — A Wonderful Story of Detective Skill — Deceiving the Otllcials — Detective Experiences. . . 274 CHAPTER XVI. THE WAR DEPARTMENT — HOW AN ARMY IS RAISED, EQUIPPED, AND MAINTAINED — WHERE THE BONES OF LINCOLN'S ASSASSINS LIE. In the Office of the Secretary of War — Pins and Tags on the Chess Board of War — Keeping Track of Our Soldier Boys — Soldiers Made of Wax — "Conquer or Die" — Trophies of War — Huge Boxes Labeled Like ColHns — Stored Behind Iron-Grated Doors — Curious Relics From Santiago and the Philippines — Handsome but Harmless Guns — Where and How the Record of Every Soldier Is Kept — Taking Care of the Sick and Wounded — Watching Other Nations — The CONTENTS. XiX Signal Service — A Dapper Man in a Blue Uniform — Watching for Raw Recruits — Passing the Surgeon's Examination — A Soldier's Life — A Surprised Lot of Red-Coats — Where the Bones of Lincoln's Assassins Lie — Dishonored Graves 289 CHAPTER XVII. IN THE NAVY DEPARTMENT— CARING FOR "JACK " AFLOAT AND ASHORE — THE UNITED STATES NAVAL OBSERVA- TORY—RELICS WITH STRANGE HISTORIES. Heroic Deeds Recalled — Duties of the Secretary of the Navy — Disap- pearance of Wooden Warships — Training Jack for His New Duties — Providing for His Comfort Afloat — Old Time Man-of-Wars-^Ien — A Happy Lot of Boys — How the "Man Behind the Gun " Is Edu- cated in Naval Warfare — Collecting Information for Sailors — Bottle Papers and Their use — A Valuable Equatorial Telescope — The Won- derful Clock by Which All Other Timepieces Are Set —The United States Navy Yard — The Naval ]^Iuseum — Objects of Great Historic Interest — " Long Tom " and Its Story — Relics with Strange Hist(;ries — The Marine Corps — A Body of Gallant Fighters — Instances if Their Bravery — The Marine Band 3U0 CHAPTER XYIII. A DAY IN THE POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT — THE STORY OF A LETTER -SOME CURIOUS PWCTS AND INTERESTING EXPERIENCES — RURAL FREE DELIVERY. The Greatest Business Organization in the World — Looking After 80,000 Post-Offices — The Travels of a Letter — The Making of a Postage Stamp — Using 4,000,000,000 Stamps a Year — A Key Thai Will Un- lock Hundreds of Thousands of Mail Bag Locks — Keeping Track of Tens of Thousands of ]\Iail Bags — Why They Never Accumulate — Testing the Ability of Clerks — Remembering 6,000 Post-Oflices — " Star Routes " and What They Are — The Smallest Contract the Gov- ernment Ever Made — Carrying the JMails for One Cent a Year — The "Axeman" — Chopping otf the Heads of Postniasters — Free Rural Delivery — Opposition of Country Postmasters — A Boon to Farmers — How Rural Routes are Established 313 CHAPTER XIX. THE DEAD-LETTER OFFICE — ITS MARVELS AND MYSTERIES — OPENING AND INSPECTING THE "DEAD" MAIL- SOME CURIOUS AND TOUCHING REVELATIONS — THE DEAD -LETTER MUSEUM. What Is a Dead Letter ? — " Stickers " and " Nixies " — 8,000,000 of Dead Letters and Packages a Year — Opening the " Dead " Mail — Guarding XX CONTENTS. the Secrets of Careless Letter Writers — Returning $50,000 in Money and $1 ,200,000 in Checks Every Year —What Becomes of the Valuables Found in Letters — The Fate of Letters That Cannot Be Returned — Deciphering Illegible Scrawls — Common Mistakes — Unusual Errors — Some Odd Directions — " English As She Is Wrote " — Some Queer Requests — Travels of Misdirected Letters — Remarkable Work of an Expert — 60,000 Missent Photographs Every Year — A Huge Book of Photographs — Identifj'ing the Faces of Loved Ones — Tear- Blinded Mothers — Thousands of Unclaimed Christmas Gifts — The Dead-Letter Museum — Odd Things Found in the Mails — Snakes and Horned Toads — The Lost Ring and Its Singular Recovery — A Baby Elephant — The Two Miniatures — Tokens of Love and Remem- brance — Messages from the Loved Ones at Home — Dead-Letter Auction Sales 330 CHAPTER XX. A DAY IN THE PATENT-OFFICE — A PALACE OF AMERICAN INVENTIVE GENIUS AND SKILL — CRAZY INVENTORS — FREAKS AND THEIR PATENTS. The Department of the Interior and Its Functions — The Patent-Office — Issuing One Hundred Patents a Day — Abraham Lincoln's Patent — How To Secure a Patent — Patent Attorneys and How They Obtain Big Fees — Hesitating To Accept a Million Dollars — What Is a Patent? — A Minister Who Discovered "Perpetual Motion" —Preposterous Let ters and Odd Inventions — A Dead Baby Used as a "Model" — A Patent for Fishing Worms out of the Human Stomach — A Patent for Exterminating Lions and Tigers by the Use of Catmint — Killing Grass- Hoppers with Artillery — Crazy Inventors — Freaks and Their Patents — A Patent for a Cow-Tail Holder — Eccentric Letters — Amusing Speci- mens of Correspondence — A Cat and Rat Scarer — The Man with the Long, Black Clerical Coat — An Indignant and Disgusted Applicant — "I am from Bay City" — Great Fortunes from Small Inventions 349 CHAPTER XXI. THE PENSION BUREAU — CLAIMANTS AND THEIR PETITIONS — SNARES AND PIT-FALLS FOR THE UNWARY. A Vast Deluge of Pension Papers — Caring For a Million Pensioners — Disbursing $132,000,000 a Year — The "Alarm Act" — Pension Laws and Regulations — Who Are Entitled to Pensions — Method of Pro- cedure — How Claims Are Filed and ICxamined — Guarding the Rolls Against Fraud — Medical Examinations — Disgruntled Applicants — Suspicious Cases and "Irregular" Claims — "Widows" — Doctors Who Disagree — An Indignant Captain — Living on "Corn-bread and Sour Milk " — Win' Decisions Are Delayed — Special Examinations — Guarding Against Swindlers. Imposters, and Frauds — Claim Agents and Their VVays — Forging Evidence and Affidavits — Pension Attor- neys and Tiieir Tricks —" Swapping" Palmers — Mean and Petty Swindlers — Whom To Avoid — Pawning Pension Certificates — The Disabled Veteran's Best Friend — His Real Enemies. . . 366 •CONTENTS. Xxi CHAPTER XXII. THE CENSUS BUREAU — COUNTING THE NOSES OF EIGHTY MILLION PEOPLE — HOW AND WHY IT IS DONE. Why the Census Is Taken Every Ten Years — Some Pohitod Questions — Tribulations of Enumerators — "None of Your Business" — Be- ginning of tlie Process — The Scramble for Positions — Pulling Wires'- To Secure Office — How the Census Is Taken — Starting 50,000 Canvassers in One Day — Disagreeable Experiences — Meeting Shotguns and Savage Dogs— "What Is Your Age?" — Irate Females — How the Question Is Answered by Certain Persons — "Sweet Sixteen" — "Fibbing" a Little — Keeping Tabs on the Enumerators — Enormous Amount of Detail — The Punching Ma- chine — Cost of the Census of 1900 — The Land Olhee and Its AVork — Settlers and Homeseekers — The Geological Survey — Its Interesting Work — The Indian Bureau — How Poor " Lo " Is Cared For — The Bureau of Education. 376 CHAPTER XXIII. A DAY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE — THE FARMER'S FRIEND AND CO-WORKER — FREE DISTRIBU- TION OF CHOICE AND PURE SEEDS — HOW THEV MAY BE HAD FOR THE ASKING. The Farmer's Real Friend — The Bureau of Agriculture — What It Has Done and Is Now Doing for Farmers — Investigating Diseases of Do- mestic Live Stock — How It Promotes Dairy Interests — Experiment Stations — Valuable Free Publications for Farmers — Interesting Facts About Mosfjuitoes — How To Kill Insect Pests — Facts for Fruit Growers — Examining 15,000 Birds' Stomachs — Vindicating the Mucli- Maligned Crow — Ccmtrolling tiie Spread of Weeds — Poisonous Plants — Adulterated Seeds — Seeds of New and Clioice Varieties — Testing the Purity of Seeds — Free Distribution of Seeds — How the Finest and Purest Seeds May Be Had for Nothing — Great Opposition of Private Seedsmen — Diseases of Plants — Something About Grasses — The Agricultural Museum. 386 CHAPTER XXIY. THE WEATHER BUREAU — FORECASTING THE WEATHER — WONDERFUL INSTRUMENTS, KITES, AND WEATHER MAPS. Forecasting the Weather — Old Theories of Storms — The Path of Storms — " Old Probabilities " at Home — General Principles of Storms — In the Forecasting-Room — A Curious ^lap and Its Little Tags — "Weather Sharps" at Work — How Weather Observations Are Made — " Fair and Warmer " and " Partly Cloudy ' — Noting the Direction XXll CONTENTS. of the Wind — Where Storms Are First Noticed — General Move- ment of Storms — Traveling 600 Miles a Day — "High" Pressure and "Low" Pressure — Winter Storms — Where They Originate — Where Hurricanes Are Bred — Hot Waves and Cold Waves — Import- ing Weather from Canada — Where Storms Disappear — Perplexing Problems for the Forecaster — Predicting Dangerous Storms — Warn- ings of Danger — Emergency Warnings — A Visit to the Instrument- Room — Ingenious and Delicate Instruments — How New Discoveries are Made — Kites that Fly to a Height of Three Miles — Interesting Experiments with Kites . . 396 CHAPTER XXV. IN THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE — THE PRESIDENT'S LAW- YER— THE SUPREME COURT AND ITS BLACK-ROBED DIGNITARIES — THE HEAVEN OF LEGAL AMBITION. The Majesty of the Law — The Department of Justice — Duties of the Attorney-General — Tlie President's Lawyer — Claims Involving ]\Iil- lions of Dollars — The Highest Legal Tribunal of the Nation — The Supreme Court-Room — Giants of the Past — The Battle Ground of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun — Wise and Silent Judges — Where Silence and Dignity Reign — The Technical "Bench'" — Illustrious Names — Why the Bust of Chief-Justice Taney Was Long Excluded from the Supreme Court-Room — The Man who Hastened the Civil War — The Famous Dred Scott Decision — Its Far-Reacliing Effect — A Sad Figure — Death Conies to His Relief — Sumner's Relentless Opposition — Black-Robed Dignitaries — Ceremonious Opening of the Court — An Antique Little Speech — Gowns or Wigs? — The Robing and Consultation-Rooms — Salaries of the Justices — A Tragedy that Occurred in the Basement of the Law Library — The Dead and Mangled Body of its Designer 408 CHAPTER XXVI. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS — ONE OF THE COSTLIEST AND MOST BEAUTIFUL BUILDINGS IN THE WORLD — ITS MURAL PAINTINGS AND WONDERFUL MOSAICS. A Library for the People — Costly Books and Priceless Treasures of Art Free to All — A Marvelously Beautiful Building — How It Was Planned —Its Great Cost — Approaches to the Building — The Mam- moth Bronze Doors — Entering Into Anotiier World — A Stroll Tlirough Beautiful Marble Halls and Corridors — Marvels in Mosaic — How the Mosaic Ceilings Were Constructed — The Mural Paintings and Wall Decorations — A Fairy Scene by Night — Countless Electric Lights — Famous Mosaic of Minerva — A Marvelous Achievement — The Lan- tern at the Top of the Dome — Architectural Splendors — Ingenious Apparatus for Canying Books — How Senators and Congressmen Receive Books in Three Minutes — An Ingenious Underground Tunnel — Forty -live Miles of Strips of Steel 417 CONTENTS. XXill CHAPTER XXVII. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, CONTINUED — AMONG ITS BOOKS AND PRICELESS TREASURES. Early Struggles of the Library — Starting with 1,000 Books and Nine Maps — Thomas Jeflfersou's Contribution — Destroyed by Fire — A Famous Librarian — Marvelous Growth of the Library — Nearly a Million Volumes — Some Priceless Old Books — A Unique Collection of Political Handbills — Some Remarkable Volumes and Still More Remarkable Illustrations — The "Breeches Bible" — The "Bug Bible "—Eliot's Indian Bible — A Book Which No One Can Read Val- ued at $1,500 — Valuable Manuscripts and Papers of Early Presidents — A Collection of 300,000 Pieces of Music — The Map-Room — A Wonderful Collection of Maps and Atlases — Reading-Room for the Blind — A Unique Institution 439 CHAPTER XXYIII. THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT— THE MOST IMPOSING MON- UMENT EVER ERECTED IN HONOR OF ONE MAN— THE CORCORAN GALLERY OF ART. The Greatest Monument in the World — It Bears No Inscription and Needs None — Piercing the Sky — A Sublime Picture — First Steps to Erect a Monument to the Memory of Washington — A Request that the Re- mains of Washington Be "interred in the Capitol — The Request Re- fused — How the ^loney Was Raised for a Monument — Vexatious Delays — Its Completion and Cost — The Highest Structure of Stone in the World — Its Dimensions and Height — Struck by Lightning — The Ascent to the Top in an Elevator — What It Costs Uncle Sam To Carry Visitors Up and Down — The Corcoran Gallery of Art — Its Treasures of Art — A Wonderful Collection. . . . 453 CHAPTER XXIX. THE CIVIL SERVICE AND ITS MYSTERIES — HOW GOVERN- MENT POSITIONS ARE OBTAINED — WOMEN IN THE DE- PARTMENTS—WOMAN'S INFLUENCE AT THE CAPITOL. What Is the Civil Service? — How Heads of Bureaus Are Appointed — The "Spoils" System — Dilticulty of Obtaining a Government Posi- tion — 'The Importance of Having a "Political Pull" — Attraction of Good Pay and Short Hours — Doing as Little as Possible — How To Obtain a Government Position — Tlie Chances of Getting It — Influ- ence of Local Politicians — The Government Blue Book — Complex Rules and Mysterious Injunctions — Taking an Examination — A Mysterious ^Marking Process ^ What Is "An Eligible " ? — Bitter Dis- appointments and Shattered Hopes — Position Brokers — Mr. Parasite in OtBce — Abject Political Beggars. 461 XXIV - CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXX. OFFICE-SEEKERS AND OFFICE-SEEKING IN WASHINGTON — THEIR DIFFICULTIES AND DANGERS — HOW PLACE AND POWER ARE WON. Those to Whom Washington Is a Whited Sepulcher and a Sham — An Omnivorous Crowd of Phice- and Fortune-Hunters — "Still They Come" — Chronic and Ubiquitous Office-Seekers — Slim Chances of the Average Applicant — Beguiled by Anticipation — " Placed on File and Favorably Considered" — Awakening From a Delusion — "No Vacancies as Yet" — Making Applicants "Feel Good" — Facing Want and Destitution — Dejected and Despairing Office-Seekers — Their Last Hope — Fresh Victims Every Year — A Pathetic Incident — Women in Quest for Office — Remarkable Story of a Young Lady Applicant — Lincoln's Aversion to Office-Seekers — An Interesting Story — A Humorous Incident — A Visit From a Long-Haired Back- woodsman — "I'd Like To See the Gineral." .... 469 CHAPTER XXXI. INSIDE THE GOVERNMENT PRINTING-OFFICE — THE STORY OF A "PUB. DOC. " — PRINTING SPEECHES THAT WERE NEVER SPOKEN. Uncle Sam's " Print Shop " — Using Twenty Tons of Printing-ink a Year — Utilizing the Skins of 50,000 Sheep To Bind Books — Making a Book While You Wait — Tiie Celebrated "Pub. Doc." — What Becomes of Them — Sending Out "Pub. Docs." to All the World — The Convenience of a "Frank" — The Omnipresent "Doc." — All Kinds of "Docs." — A Storehouse of Valuable Facts — The Con- gressional Record — Ready-Made Speeches — What "Leave To Print" Means — Printing Speeches that Were Never Spoken — Hoodwink- ing Dear Constituents — Scattering Fine Speeches Broadcast — "See What a Great Man Am I" — Speeches Written " by Somebody Else " — Printing-office Secrets — Some Interesting Facts. . . . 476 CHAPTER XXXII. THE NATIONAL MUSEUM — A WONDERFUL COLLECTION OF CURIOSITIES AND RELICS — THE ARMY MEDICAL MU- SEUM—INTERESTING SPECIMENS OF THE RESULTS OF "WAR. DISEASE, AND HUMAN SKILL." The Most Wonderful Collection of Curiosities and Relics in the World — Over 4,000,000 Interesting Specimens — Curious Story of How the Museum Was Started — Priceless Relics of Washington — Franklin's Printing-Press — Lincoln's Cravat and Tiircadljare Ofhce Coat — Gen- eral Grant's Presents — Interesting IMemorials of Great Men — Relics From the Maine — A Wonderful Collection of Skeletons — Proving CONTENTS. XXV Man's Descent From Monkeys — The Oldest Locomotive in America — Strange Contrasts — The Army Medical Museum — A Grewsome Place — A Kegimeut of Human Skeletons — The Remains of Criminals — Curious Pathological Specimens — Exhibits of Fatalities of War — All that Remains Above Ground of the Assassin of Lincoln — A Collection of Skulls — Some " Literesting Cases" — The Spleen of Guiteau, the Assassin of Garfield — What Became of the Rest of His Remains — Strange Effects of Rifle Bullets on the Human Body — How Specimens Are Exchanged — Getting Bade "Something Equally as Good " — A Bottled Babv — Part of the Spinal Column of John Wilkes Booth — When the Fatal Bullet Entered. . . .484 CHAPTER XXXIII. lIIE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION — STRANGE STORY OF ITS FOUNDER— ITS WONDERFUL TREASURES — THE NA- TIONAL ZOO AND THE FISH COMMISSION. The Strange Stor}^ of James Smithson — A Most Singular Bequest — Mak- ing Good Use of HisMoney — His Will — "The Best Blood of Eng- land Flows in My Veins" — Plans of the liistitulion — Inside the Building — Its Intent and Object — DitTusion of Knowledge Among Men — Facilitating the Study of Natural History — The Latest Inven- tions and Discoveries — Stimulating Talents for Original Investiga- tions — A Wonderful Exhibit of Stuffed Birds — Insects of Every Size and Color — A Marvelous Collection of Birds' Eggs — The Delight of " Mr. Scientist " — What We " Think " We See —"Weighing a Ray of Light — Some Curious Instruments — Wringing Secrets from the Sun — Doing Many Marvelous Things — The National Zoo — Among the Wild A^iimals — Pelting an Animal Stranger to " See Him Eat" — A Visit to the Fish Commission — Curious Specimens of the Finny Tribe — Sea Horses and Fantastic Creatures — One of the Most Entertaining Exhibits in Washington 495 CHAPTER XXXIV. FOREIGN LEGATIONS AND THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS —THE DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF FOREIGN REPRE- SENTATIVES IN WASHINGTON. The Exposed Side of Diplomatic Life — Looking " Pleasant " — Social Status of Foreign Representatives — Daily Routine — Spies I'pon Our (Government — Social Lions — Aspiring to Diplomatic Honors — Glimpses (jf Foreign Home Life — Peculiar Dress and Queer Customs — Oddities in House Furnishings and Decorations — Social Etiquette — Who Pays the First Visit — Otlicial Calls — The Ladies of the Diplomatic Corps — Why the President Never Crosses the Threshold of a Foreign Legation — Breaches of Etiquette — Topics That Are Never Discussed — Tactless Ministers — (iiving Meddling Aml>assadors Their Passports — Some Notable Examples — The Fate of Foreign Representatives "Who Criticise the President . . 504 XXVI CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXXY. THE NEWS BUREAUS OF WASHINGTON — KEEPING AN EYE ON OTHER NATIONS — HOW NEWS IS INSTANTLY OB- TAINED FROM AND TRANSMITTED TO ANY PART OF THE WORLD. The Washington Headquarters of a Hundred Newspaper Bureaus — Keen Newspaper Men — How the News Is Gathered — Transmitting It to All the World — The Ceaseless Click of the Telegraph — Operations Far Beneath the Surface — The Best-Posted Men in Washington — "Newspaper Sense" — How the Wires for News Are Laid — Antici- pating Future Events — Secret Sources of Information — "Cover- ing" Anything and Anybody — Receiving News " Tips" — Running Down Rumors — Officials Who "Leak" — How Great Secrets Are Unconsciously Divulged — Putting This and That Together — Reporters' Tactics — Keeping an Eye on the State Department — Scenting News — " Work Is Easy When Times Are Newsy " — Study- ing the Weak and Strong Points of Public Men — At the Mercy of Newspapers. 509 CHAPTER XXXYI. WASHINGTON STREET LIFE — SOUTHERNERS, WESTERNERS, AND NEW ENGLANDERS — LIFE AMONG THE COLORED PEOPLE — INTERESTING SIGHTS AND SCENES. A Unique City — Sights and Scenes on Washington Streets — Taking Life Easy — Living on Uncle Sam — Mingling With the Passing Throng — Life in Washington Boarding Houses — Politicians From the Breezy West — Politicians From " Way Down East" — The Ubiquitous "Col- ored Pusson " — The Negroes' Social Status in Washington — Negro Genteel Society — Negro Editors, Professors, and Teachers — The " Smart " Negro Set — Colored Congregations and Church Service — Whistling Darkies — Making Night Hideous — Life in Colored Settle- ments — Some Wealthy Negroes — How They Became Rich — "Bad Niggers " — The Paradise of Children — Morning Sights and Scenes at the Markets — Wliere Riches and Poverty Meet — Fair Women Who Carry Market Baskets — Getting Used to Washington Life. . 518 CHAPTER XXXVII. BEAUTIFUL AND SACRED ARLINGTON— ITS ROMANCE AND ITS HISTORY — THE SILENT CITY OF THE NATION'S DEAD — THE SOLDIERS HOME. Where Peace and Silence Reign — "The Bivouac of the Dead" — The Story of Arlington — The Graves of Nearly 17,000 Soldiers — How CONTENTS. XXVii George "Washington Managed the Property — How General Robert E. Lee Inherited the Estate — The Gathering Clouds of Civil War — A Sad Parting — Leaving Arlington Forever — Approach of the Union Troops — Flight of Mrs. Lee and Iler Children — Her Pathetic Return to the Old Home After the War — The Graves of Distinguished Ollicers — The Tomb to the Unknown Dead — One Grave for Over 2,000 Unknown Soldiers — A Touching Inscription — The Graves of 600 Soldiers of the Spanish- American War — Where the Dead of the Battleship i/rtt/ic Are Buried — Memorial Day at Arlington — Where Forty Soldiers Lie Alone — A Touching Incident — Thinking of the Dim Past — The Tomb of General Logan 527 CHAPTER XXXVIII. A DAY AT MOUNT VERNON— AMID THE SCENES OF GEORGE AND MARTHA WASHINGTON'S HOME LIFE— THEIR LAST RESTING-PLACE. The Old Mansion at Mount Vernon — Its Story — How It Was Saved for tlie Nation — The Married Life of George and Martha Washington — His Life as a Farmer — His Daily Routine — His Large Force of Workmen and Slaves — Out of Butter — Washington's Devotion to His Wife — Ordering Her Clothes — A Runaway Cook — Looking for a Housekeeper — "Four Dollars at Christmas with Which To Be Drunk Four Days and Four Nights " — His Final Illness and Death — The Bod on Which He Died — Dastardly Attempt To Rob His Grave — Death of :Mrs. Washington — The Attic Room in Which She Died — What Was Found in the Old Vault — Removing the Remains to the New Vault — Opening the Coffins — The New Toralr — A Tour Through the Mansion. 543 CHAPTER XXXIX. THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE -FAIR AND STATELY WOMEN WHO REIGNED IN THE EXECUTIVE MANSION IN EARLY DAYS. A Morning Dream — Memories of Martha Washington — Her Educational Disadvantages — An Average Matron and Thrifty Housewife — Her Virtues and Moral Rectitude — Ministering to the Sulfering Soldiers at Valley Forge — Washington's Letters to His Wife — "My Dear Patsy" — Domestic Affairs at Mount Vernon — Giving Her Husband a Curtain-Lecture — An Englisliman Who Was " Struck With Awe" — Martha Washington's Seclusion and Death — Abigail Adams, Wife of President John Adams — Adams' Early Love Affairs — Life in the Untinished White House — A Lively Picture — Not Enough Coal or Wood To Keep Warm — Some Interesting Details — Drying Uie Family Wash in the Great East Room — Jefferson's Grief at the Death of His Wife — How Jefferson Blacked His Own Boots — A Dignified Foreigner Shocked — "We Saved de Fiddle." .... 570 XXViii CONTENTS. CHAPTER XL. THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OP THE WHITE HOUSE, CONTINUED — THE MOST BRILLIANT SOCIAL QUEEN WHO EVER REIGNED IN THE EXECUTIVE MANSION. A Pamous Social Queen — Gallants in Small -Clothes and Queues — An Indignant Barber — " Little Jim Madison " — " Dolly " Madison's Gifts and Graces — " Tlie Most Popular Person in the United States" — Her Social Nature and Exquisite Tact — Iler Bountiful Table — Ridiculed by a Foreign Minister — Mrs. Madison's Happy Reply — Her Wonder- ful Memory of Persons and Incidents — The Adventure of a Rustic Youth — Thrusting a Cup of Coffee into His Pocket — Her Heroism in the Hour of Danger — Fleeing from the White House — Mrs. Madison's Snuff-Box — " This Is for Rough Work " and " This Is My Polisher" — Two Plain Old Ladies from the West — Unusual Honors by Congress — Her Last Days — Her Death and Burial — Singular Mistakes on Her Monument 586 CHAPTER XLI. THE PRESIDENTS. THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE, CONTINUED — SOME WOMEN OF NOTE — MEMORABLE SCENES AND ENTERTAINMENTS AT THE WHITE HOUSE. A Serene and Aristocratic Woman — Entertaining With Great Elegance — Interesting Incident in Mrs. Monroe's Foreign Life — Visiting Madame Lafayette in Prison — Clianging ihe Mind of Blood-Tliirsty "Tyrants — Sharing the Dungeon of Her Husband — An Opinion Plainly Ex- pressed — An Evening at the White House — Creating a Sensation at a Presidential Reception — An Amusing but Untruthful Picture — Dis- graceful Condition of the White House Surroundings — Using tlie Great East Room for a Children's Play-Room — Mrs. John Quincy Adams — Long and Lonely Journeys — Life in Russia — The Ladies' Costumes — Old-Time Beaux and Belles — "Smiling for the Presi- dency" — A President Who Masked His Feelings — "My Wife Combed Your Head" — Calling on an "Iceberg." . . . 599 CHAPTER XLII. THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES. AND FAMOUS LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE, CONTINUED — PRESIDENTS' WIVES WHO NEVER ENTERED THE EXECUTIVE MANSION. President Andrew Jackson and Mrs. Rachel Robards — The Story of Jack son's Courtship — An Innocent Mistake — Jackson's Resentful Dispo- sition — His Morbid Sensitiveness About His Wife's Reputation — " Do You Dare, Villain, To Mention Her Sacred Name ? " — His Duel with Governor Sevier — A Tragical Experience — Kills Charles Dick- CONTENTS. XXIX inson in a Duel — Mrs. Jackson's Piety — Her Influence Over Her Husband — His Profanity and Quick Temper — ller Unwillingness To Preside at the White House — An Arrow that Pierced Her Heart — Her Agonizing Death — He p]nters the Wiiite House a Widower — Faithful to Her Memory — Children Born in the White House — The Story of a Baby Curl — A Widowed and Saddened Woman — Accept- ing a Clerkship in the Treasury — "Try Him in Irish, Jimmy" — An Astonished Minister — The Wife of President Van IBuren — The Wife of President William Henry Harrison 608 CHAPTER XLIIL THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE, CONTINUED — SOME BRIDES OF THE WHITE HOUSE — A PRESIDENT'S WIFE WHO PRAYED FOR HIS DEFEAT. The Courtship of President John Tyler — Engaged for Five Years — Kiss- ing His Sweetheart's Hand for tiie First Time — An Old-Time Lover — Death of Mrs. Tyler in the White House — The Young and Beautiful Mrs. Robert Tyler — A Former Actress — From the Footlights to the Executive ISIansion — "Can This be IV" — "Actually Living in the White House ! " — Recalling Her Theatrical Career — President Tyler's Second Bride — His Son's Account of the Courtship — The Wife of President Polk — Polk's Courtship — Mrs. Polk's Great Popularity — Acting as Private Secretary to Her Husband — " Sarah Knows Where It Is" — The Wife of General Zachary Taylor — Her Devotion to Her Husband — An Unwilling Mistress of the White House — Praying for Her Husband's Defeat — Shunning the White House and Society — "It is a Plot" — A Lady of the White House Ridiculed and Reproached — " Betty Bli.ss" — A Vision of Loveliness — Death of President Taylor 620 CHAPTER XLLV. THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OF TIIE WHITE HOUSE, CONTINUED — FROM THE VILLAGE SCHOOL TO THE EXECUTIVE MANSION. Mrs. Abigail Fillmore — How She First Met Her Husband, Afterward President Fillmore — A Clothier's Apprentice — An Engagement of Five Years — Building a Humble House with His Own Hands — — Working and Struggling Together —Entering the White House as Mistress — Mrs. Fillmore's Death — The Memory of a Loving Wife — — The Wife of President Franklin Pierce — Entering the White House Under the Shadow of Death — A Shocking Accident — Grief-Stricken Parents — Death of Airs. Pierce — Last Days of President Pierce — The ]Mislake of a Life-Time — James Buchanan's Administration — The Brilliant Harriet Lane — Why Buchanan Never Married — Miss Lane's Reign at the White House — Entertaining the Prince of Wales — Buchanan's Last Days — The Odious Administration of a Vacillat- ing President — Miss Lane's Marriage. ..... 632 1 XXX CONTENTS. CHAPTER XLY. • THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OP THE WHITE HOUSE, CONTINUED — MRS. ABRAHAM LIN- COLN—THE WHITE HOUSE DURING THE CIVIL WAR. The First Love of Abraham Lincoln — His Grief at Her Loss — His Second Love — Engaged to Miss Mary Todd, His Third Love — Wooed by Douglas and Lincoln — The Wedding Deferred — Lincoln's Marriage — Character of Mrs. Lincoln — Fultillment of a Lifc-Long Ambition — The Mutterings of Civil War — Newspaper Gossip and Criticism of Mrs. Lincoln — Noble Work of Women During the Dark Days of the Civil War — Mrs. Lincoln's Neglect of Her Opportunity to Endear Herself to the Nation — The Dead and Dying in Washington — Death of Willie Lincoln — Wild Anguish of His Mother — Tlie President Assassinated — Intense Excitement in Washington — A Nation in Mourn- ing — Mrs. Lincoln's Mind Unbalanced — Petitions Congress for a Pension — Death of Mrs. Lincoln 643 CHAPTER XLYI. THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OP THE WHITE HOUSE, CONTINUED — SOME BRAVE AND HUMBLE MISTRESSES OF THE EXECUTIVE MANSION. The Wife of President Andrew Johnson — A Ragged Urchin and a Street Arab — Johnson's Ignorance at Eighteen — Taught to Write by the Village School-Teacher — He Marries Her — Following the Humble Trade of a Tailor — His Wife Teaches Him While He Works ^Begin- ning of His Political Career — The Ravages of Civil War in Tennessee — Two Years of Exile — Hunted From Place to Place — Secretly Burying the Dead — A Night of Horrors — Re-united to Her Husband — Entering the White House Broken in Healtli and Spirits — "My Dears, I Am an Invalid " — The Reign of Martha Patterson, President Johnson's Oldest Daughter — "We Are Plain People" — Wrestling with Rags and Ruin — Noble and Self-denying Women — Noble Characters of Johnson's Wife and Daughters 656 CHAPTER XLVII. THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE, CONTINUED — MRS. GRANT'S REIGN AT THE WHITE HOUSE. The Youth of Ulysses S. Grant — His Standing at West Point — Intimacy With the Dent Family — Meets His Future Wife— Finding Out " What Was the Matter " — A Ilalf-Drowned Lover — Engagement to Miss Dent — A Bride at a Western Army Post — Assuming New Re- sponsibilities — At the Beginning of tiie Civil War — Mrs. Grant as the Wife of a Gallant Soldier — Her Ceaseless Anxieties — Inspiring I CONTENTS. XXXI and Encouraging Her Husband — His Election to the Presidency — Remembering Old Friends — Marriage of Nellie Grant — General Grant's Reverses 663 CHAPTER XLVIIL THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE, CONTINUED. A Woman of Remarkable Ability — General Hayes' Brilliant Army Record — Wounded Four Times — Mrs. Hayes' Visits to Her Wounded Hus- band — Two Winters in Camp — ^Miuistering to the Sick and Wounded — Mrs Hayes' Reign in the White House — Her Personal Appearance and Traits of Character — Banishing Wine from the President's Table — Her Love of Flovsrers — Returning to Their Modest Home — Death of President and Mrs. Hayes 674 CHAPTER XLIX. THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE, CONTINUED. President James A. Garfield and His Wife — From a Log Cabin to the White House — Garfleld's EnvialjJe War Record — His Marriage and Election to the Presidency — His Tribute to His Devoted Wife — His Assassination — Weary Weeks of Torture — His Death and Burial — Mrs. Garfield's Devotion and Christian Fortitude — A Brave and Silent Watcher — Intense Grief — Leaving the White House Forever — President Chester A. Arthur 684 CHAPTER L. THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE, CONTINUED. A Bachelor President — Managing Mammas with Marriageable Daughters — An Intellectual and Self-Reliant Woman — The President's Engage- ment to Miss Frances Folsom — Preparations for the AVedding — Preparing to Receive Her at the White House — A Beautiful Bride — Winning Universal Admiration — Return to the White House — Retirement to Private Life — A Quiet Home and Domestic Bliss 698 CHAPTER LI. THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE, CONTINUED. Boyhood Days of Benjamin Harrison — His Life on His Father's Farm — His Early ^larriage — Working for $'2.r)0 a Day — Housekeeping in a House of Tiiree Rooms — Helping His Wife with Her Household Duties — Enlists in the Civil War — Eleeted President of the United States — His Wife a True Helpmate — Renovating the White House From Cellar to Garret — Her Illness and Death — The President's XXXn CONTENTS. Marriage to Mrs. Dimmick — His Illness and Death — Affecting Scenes at His Bedside 706 CHAPTEE LII. THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE, CONTINUED. The House in Which William McKinley, Jr., was Born — How He Ob- tained an Education — Enlisting as a Private Soldier in the Civil War — His Conspicuous Gallantry — Begins the Study of Law — Marriage and Early Home Life — Elected President of the Unired States — Mrs. McKinley at the White House — Untiring Devotion of the President to His Invalid Wife — Hands That Were Never Idle — A Patient and Resigned Invalid 721 CHAPTER LIII. THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE, CONTINUED. Theodore Roosevelt Becomes President of the United States — The Story of His Life — His Rapid Rise to Fame — His Ability and Honesty in Public Office — Wh}' He Became the Most Thoroughly Hated Mau in New York — What Some " Old Timers" Thought of Him — His Life on a Western Ranch — Getting Acquainted with Cowboys — Raising a Regiment of "Rough Riders" — "I'm Kinder Holler" — His Personal Bravery on the Battlefield — Elected Governor of New York — Elected Vice-President of the United States — Assuming the Great Office of President of the United States — Mrs. Roosevelt and Her Six Children — An Ideal Wife and Mother — Superintending Her Own Household — Children at the White House — Another Wedding in the Historic East Room — Close of Roosevelt's Administration 742 CHAPTER LIV. THE PRESIDENTS, THEIR WIVES, AND FAMOUS LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE CONTINUED — PRESIDENT AND MRS. TAFT COME TO THE EXECUTIVE MANSION - William Howard Taft Elected to the Presidency as the Successor of Roosevelt — Favored by Birth and Education — Judge Alphonso Taft, His Family and Public Honors — Yale Record of William H. Taft — His Athletic Prowess and Scholarship — Study of Law in Cincinnati — Appointment as Assistant Prosecuting Attorney — His Return to the Law — His INlarriage — Ills Children and Family Life — Rapid Advancement in Public Life — Friendship with Theodore Roose- velt — The Right Man for a Difficult Work — His Conference with the Pope — Satisfactory Adjustment of Friars' Lands — Appointment as Secretary of War — Visit to Panama — Revisiting the Philippines — A Trip Around the World — Mrs. Taft, the New ]\[istress of the White House — Taft, the Man and the Statesman — Estimate of His Public AVork aud Training for the Duties of President . . 756 '^mfi Our National Government CHAPTER L THE SITE OF THE NATIONAL CAPITAL AND HOW IT WAS SELECTED — EARLY TROUBLES AND TRIALS. The Prophet of the Capital — Forecasting the Future — A Government Moving Slowly and Painfully About on Wheels — Insulted by a Band of Mutineers — Troubles and Trials — Washington's Humble Ideas of a President's House — Renting and Furnishing a Modest Home — Spartan Simplicity — Madison's Indignation — "Going West" — Where is the Center of Population ? — A Dinner and What Came of it — Sweetening a "Peculiarly Bitter Pill" — A "Revulsion of Stom- ach " — End of a Long and Bitter Strife. HE Capital of his country should be the Mecca of every citizen of the United States. The richest and most influential man in the Nation has no proprietary rights in its magnificent government buildings, in the marvelous and manifold industries and gigantic operations carried on within them, in its treasures of Art and Literature, its costl}^ paintings and historic statues, and the mammoth collections in its museums, that do not belong equally to the loAvliest and humblest citizen. The thoughts of millions who cannot make pilgrimages hither to behold the sights and scenes of the Federal City with their own eyes, are constantly turned toward it. Indeed, it may be said that to it all roads lead, just as in olden days all roads led to Rome. 3 (33) 34 THE PROPHET OF THE CAPITAL. Ask any native American who it was that first thought of the site of Washington as that of the Capital of the Great Kepublic and he will be very apt to reply by asking : " Who else but George Washington? " His title of the " Father of His Country " was not entirely earned in war. In peace his ideas and his wishes dominated the noble band of patriots that founded the constitutional government, and while there is no real evidence that Washington first marked this site for the Federal City, it is nevertheless probable that he did. At least tradition has it that when as a young surveyor, and Captain of the Virginia troops, he encamped with Brad- dock's forces on Camp Hill * overlooking the present city of Washington, he looked down as Moses looked from Nebo upon the promised land, until he saw growing before his prophetic vision the Capital of a vast and free people then unborn. The woody plain upon which he gazed was to others the undreamed-of site of the yet undreamed-of city of the Republic. This youth, ordained of God to be the Father of the Republic, was the Prophet of its Capital. He foresaw it, in time he chose it, he faithfully served it, he ever loved it ; but as a Capital he never entered it. Gazing from the green promontory of Camp Hill, the young surveyor looked across a broad amphitheater of roll- ing plain, covered with native oaks and undergrowth. It was not these only, tradition tells us, that he saw. His pre- scient vision forecast the future. He saw the gently rising hills crowned with villas, and in the stead of oaks and under- growth, broad streets, a populous city, magnificent buildings, outrivaling the temples of antiquity — the Federal City, the Capital of the vast Republic yet to be ! The dreary camp, the weary march, patient endurance of privation, cold, and hunger, the long, resolute struggle, hard-won victory at last, all these were to be outlived, before the beautiful Capital of his future was reached. Did the youth foresee these, also ? ♦Subsequently and until 1892 the site of tlie United States ObBcrvatory. A GOVERNMENT ON WHEELS. 35 Many toiling, struggling, suifering years bridged the dream of the young surveyor and the first faint dawn of its fulfill- ment. After the Declaration of Independence, before the adop- tion of the Constitution, the government of the United States moved siuwly and painfully about on wheels. As the exigencies of war demanded, Congress met at Philadel- phia, Baltimore, Lancaster, York, Princeton, Annapolis, Trenton, and New York. During these troubled years it was the ambition of every infant State to claim the seat of government. For this purpose New York offered Kingston ; Rhode Island, Newport; Maryland, Annapolis; Virginia, AVilliamsburg. Juno 21, 1783, Congress was insulted at Philadelphia by a band of mutineers that the State authorities could not sub- due. The body adjourned to Princeton ; and the troubles and trials of its itinerancy caused the subject of a per- manent national seat of government to be taken up and discussed witli great vehemence from that time till the form- ation of the Constitution. This insult led Congress to deter- mine tliat wherever the Capital was placed, it should be in a district freed from any State control. The resolutions offered, and the votes taken in these debates, indicate that the favored site for the future Capital lay somewhere be- tween the banks of the Delaware and the Potomac — " near Georgetown," says the most oft-repeated sentence. October 30, 1T84-, the subject Avas discussed by Congress, at Trenton. A long debate resulted in the appointment of three Commis- sioners, with full power to lay out a district not exceeding three, nor less than two miles square, on the banks of either side of the Delaware, for a Federal toAvn, Avith the power to buy land and to enter into contracts for the building of a Federal House, President's house, house for Secretaries, etc. Notwithstanding the adoption of this resolution, these Commissioners never entered upon their duties. Probably 36 WASHINGTON'S FAVORED PROJECT. the lack of necessary appropriations did not hinder them more than the incessant attempts made to repeal the act appointing the Commissioners, and to substitute the Potomac for the Delaware, as the site of the anticipated Capital. Although the name of President Washington does not appear in these controversies, even then the dream of the young surveyor was taking on in the President's mind the tangible shape of reality. First, after the war for human freedom and the declaration of national independence, was the desire in the heart of George Washington that the Capi- tal of the new Nation whose armies he had led to triumph, should be located upon the banks of the great river which rolled past his home at Mount Vernon and at the point "where he had foreseen it in his early dream. That he used undue influence with the successive Congresses which debated and voted on many sites, not the slightest evidence remains, and the nobility of his character forbids the supposition. But the final decision attests the prevailing potency of his preferences and wishes, and the immense pile of correspond- ence which he has left on the subject proves that, next to the establishment of its independence, the founding of the Capital of the Republic w^as dear to his heart. May 10, 1787, Massachusetts, NeAV York, Virginia and Georgia voted for, and New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and JMaryland against the proposition of Mr. Lee of Virginia, that the Board of Treasury should take measures for erecting the necessary public buildings for the accommodation of Con- gress, at Georgetown, on the Potomac River, as soon as the land and jurisdiction of said town could be obtained. But these and other proposed measures led to no immediate results. ^ ^ -Many and futile were the battles fought by the old Con- tinental Congress over the important but troublesome ques- tion. These battles doubtless had much to do with Section 8, Article 1, of the Constitution of the United States, which RIVALRY OF THE STATES. 37 declares that Congress shall have power to exercise exclu- sive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not exceeding ten miles square), as may, by cession of par- ticular 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 Constitu- tion, 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 build- in!]:s to the use of the new o^overnment, and Cono:ress met in that city April G, ITS'.). On May 15 following, Mr. White of Virginia presented to the House of Representatives a resolve of the Legislature of that State, offering to the Fed- eral 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. Memo- orials and petitions followed in quick succession from Penn- sylvania, New Jerse}^ and Maryland. The resolution of the Virginia Legislature begged for the co-operation of Mary- land, offering to advance the sum of $120,000 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 immedi- ately voted to cede the necessary land, and to provide $72,- 000 toward the erection of public buildings. " New York and Pennsylvania gratuitously furnished elegant and convenient accommodations for the govern- ment" during the eleven years which Congress passed in those States, and offered to continue to do the same. The Legislature of Pennsylvania went further in lavish generos- ity, and voted a sum of money to build a house for che Pres- ident. When George Washington saw the dimensions of the house which the Pennsylvanians were building for the President's Mansion, he informed them ot once that he 38 BITTERNESS AND CONTENTION. would never occupy it, much less incur the expense of buy- ing suitable furniture for it. In those Spartan days it never entered into the designs of the State to buy furniture for the " Executive Mansion." Thus the Chief Citizen, instead of accepting a pretentious dwelling, rented and furnished a modest house belonging to Mr. Robert Morris. Meanwhile the great battle for the permanent seat of government went on unceasingly among the representatives fbf conflicting States. No modern debate, in length and bit- terness, has surpassed this of the first Congress under the Constitution. Kearly all agreed that New York was not sufficiently central. There was an intense conflict concern- ing 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 Conoco- cheague on the Potomac. Mr. Smith proclaimed the advan- tages of Baltimore, and the fact that its citizens had sub- scribed $40,000 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 height 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. September 5, 1789, a resolution passed the House of Representatives "that the permanent seat of the govern- ment of the United States ought to be at some convenient place on the banks of the Susquehanna, in the State of Pennsylvania." The passage of this bill aAvoke the deepest ire in the members from the South. Mr. Madison declared that if the proceedings of that day could have been fore- SHOULD IT BE A COMMERCIAL CITY ? 39 seen by Virginia, that State would never have condescended to become a party to the Constitution. The bill passed the House by a vote of tliirty-one to nineteen. The Senate amended it by striking out " Susque- hanna," and inserting a clause making the permanent seat of government Germantown, Pennsylvania,- provided the State of Pennsylvania should give security to pay $100,000 for the erection of public buildings. The House agreed to these amendments, but it was at the very close of the session and never reached final action. In the long debates and pamphlets of 1790, the questiou as to whether the seat of the American government should be a commercial capital was warmly discussed. Madison and his party argued that the only way to insure the power of exclusive legislation to Congress as accorded by the Con- stitution 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 Avith an irritable mob brimful of wrongs and griev^ances. This would involve the necessity of an army standing in perpetual defense of the capital. Lon- (h)n and "Westminster were cited as examples where the com- mercial importance of a single city had more influence on the measures of government than the whole empire out- side. Sir James Macintosh was quoted, wherein he said " that a great metropolis was to be considered as the heart of a political b:)dy — 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 Cap-"! ital of the Pepublio becoming the latter, the Constitution deprived it of the elective franchise, and hence residents of 40 LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE. the District of Columbia have never had a vote in federal elections and for many years no vote even in local afifairs. In view of the vast territory now comprehended in the United States the provision made by Congress for the future growth of the country may seem meager and limited. But when we remember that there were then but thirteen States, that railroads, telegraphs, and the wonderful electric inventions of modern times were undreamed of as human possibilities — that nearly all territory 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 foreordained to shine on far-off generations. Said 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 center of population will rapidly advance in a southwesterly direction. It must then travel from the Susquehanna if it is now found there — it may even extend heyond the Potomac^ These are 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. Bitterness and dis- sension were even then rife in both Houses of Congress. 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 o]iposed 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 Ham- ilton Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton thought that HAMILTON'S ANXIETY. 4] the North would yield and consent to the establishment of the Capital on the Potomac, if the Soutli would agree to the amendment to assume the State debts. Jefferson and Ham- ilton 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 legis- lation of the present day, can best bo told in Jefferson's own words, quoted from one of his letters. He says : "Hamilton was in despair. As I was going to the Presi- dent's one day I met him in the street. lie walked me backward and forward before the President's door for half an hour. He painted pathetically the temper into which the leo:islature had been wrouoht ; the disf]:ust of those who Avere 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 center n 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 gov- ernment, 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 dissolu- tion 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 42 SWEETENING THE DOSE. reasonable men, consulting together coolly, could fail by some mutual sacrifices of opinion to form a compromise Avhich 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 preserva- tion 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 ob- served 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 Avas passed." June 28, 1790, to carry out the agreement an 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 Conococheague." This was finally passed, July 16, 1790, and entitled "An Act establishing the tempo- rary and permanent seat of the government of the Unitctl States." The w^ord "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." The long strife ended, and the permanent Capital of the United States was fixed on the banks of the Potomac, in THE CONTROVERSY ENDED. 43 the amendatory proclamation of President "Washington, done at Georgetown the 30th day of March, in the year of our Lord 17D1, and of the independence of the United States the fifteenth, wliich 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." CHAPTEK II. GENERAL WASHINGTON AND OBSTINATE DAVY BURNS — HOW THE "WIDOW'S MITE" WAS SECURED — HOW AND BY WHOM THE CITY WAS PLANNED. Making Peace With Lords of Little Domains — " Obstinate Mr. Burns" — A Pugnacious Scotcliman — The " Widow's Mite" — A Graceful Sur- render — Republicans in Theory but Aristocrats in Practice — Who Was Major L'Eufant ?— A Lucky Circumstance — Plans that Were Ridiculed — Men Who Did Not " Get On " Well Together — The Man Who Worried President Washington — Demolishing Mansions With- out Leave or License — An Uncontrollable Engineer — His Summary Dismissal — Living Without Honor and Dying Without Fame — A Quaker Successor of "Uncommon Talent" and "Placid Temper" — Five Dollars a Day and "Expenses" — "Too Much "— A Colored Genius for Mathematics — " Every Inch a Man " — Why the Capitol, the White House, and Government Buildings Were Set Far Apart. IIA.T part of the district of ten miles square fall- ing within the boundaries of Maryland and designated for the center of the Federal City, while covered with sturdy trees, seamed with gullies and, in fact, nearly as wild as when it had been the camping ground of the savage Manahoacs, was nevertheless the private property of a few indi- viduals, one or two of them holding patents dating back for more than a hundred years. Following the cession of the land by Maryland, therefore, the next step in the settlement of the government was to make peace with these lords of their little domains. With one exception they sought and welcomed the establishment of the proposed city, three of them being appointed Commissioners for the purpose. (44) AN EARLY OBSTRUCTIONIST. 45 Tlie single exception was a pugnacious little Scotchman named David Burns. Ho owned an immense tract of land south of where the White House now stands, extending as far as that which the Patent Office called, in the land patent of 1081 which granted it, "the Widow's Mite, lyeing on the east side of the Anacostia River, on the north side of a l)ranch or inlett in the said river, called Tyber." This "Widow's Mite" contained 600 acres or more, and David Burns was at first in nowise willing to part witli any portion of it. Although it lay within the District 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 David Burns one whit, and even the President found it no easy matter to bring tlie Scotch- man to terms. More than once in his letters he alludes to him as " the obstinate Mv. Burns," and it is told that upon one occasion when the President was dwelling upon the advantage that tlie 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 tc/iaf, would you have been if you hadiit married the widow Custisf " After many interviews and arguments even the patience of Washington finally gave out, and he said : "Mr. Burns, T 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 arrange- ment." Seeing that further resistance was useless, the shrewd Scotchman thought that by a final graceful surrender he might secure more favorable conditions ; thus, when the President once more asked : " On what terms will you surrender your plantation?" Davy humbly rejilied : "Any that your Excellency may choose to name." The deed con- 46 THE LAND PURCHASED. veying the land of David Burns to the Commissioners in trust is the first on record in the city of Washington. This sale secured to him and to his descendants an immense for- tune. The deed provided that the streets of the new city should be so laid out as not to interfere with the cottage where David Burns lived in the most humble manner, with his daughter who was to become one of the richest heiresses of Washington. The other original owners of the land on which the city of Washington was built cheerfully accepted the proposed terms, and on the 31st of May AVashing- ton wrote to Jefferson from Mount Vernon, announcing that the owners had 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 pro]:>rietors should retain every other lot. The remaining lots were to be sold by the government from time to time and the proceeds applied towards the improvement of the place. The land comprised within this agreement contained over 7,100 acres. 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 ; but 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 cul- ture, 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 from travel and observation. Next to Washington he took the deepest per- sonal interest in the projected Capital. Of tliis interest we find continual proof in his letters, also of the fact that his THE MAN WHO PLANNED THE CITY. 47 taste had much to with the phm and architecture of the coming city. In a letter to Washington dated Philadelphia, April 10, 1791, he wrote: "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 pro- cured while in those towns respectively. They are none of them, however, comparable to the old Babylon revived in Philadelphia and exemplified." Evidently it did not occur to these two fathers of their country 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 Philadel])hia. The man who planned the Capital of the United States, not for the present but for all time, was Pierre Charles L'Enfant, born in France in 1755. He was a lieutenant in the French provincial forces, and with others of his countrymen was early drawn to these shores by the mag- netism of a new people, and the promise of a new land. He offered his services to the revolutionary army as an en- gineer in 1777, and was appointed captain of engineers February 18, 1778. After being wounded at the siege of Savannah, he was promoted to major of engineers, and served near the person of "Washington. Probably at that time there was no man in America who possessed so much genius and art-culture in the same direction as Major L'Enfant. In a new land, where nearly every artisan had to be imported from foreign shores, the chief designer and architect surely would have to be. It seemed a fortunate circumstance to find on the spot a competent engineer for the prospective Capital. The first public communication extant concerning the *Othor i)lans were those of Carlsruhe, Amsterdam, Strassburg, Paris, Orleans, Bordeaux, Lyons, Moutpelier, Marseilles, Turin, and Milan 48 THE CITY NAMED. laying out of the city is from the pen of General Wasb ington, dated March 11, 1791. In a letter dated April 30, - 1791, he first called it the " Federal City." Four months later, without his knowledge, it received its present name in a letter from the first Commissioners, Messrs. Johnson, Stuart, and Carroll, which bears the date of Georgetown, September 9, 1791, to Major L'Enfant, which informs that gentleman that they have agreed that the federal district shall be called The Territory of Columbia, and the federal city The City of Washington, directing him to entitle his map accordingly. In March, 1791, we find Jefferson addressing Major L'Enfant in these words : " You are desired to proceed to Georgetown, where you will find Mr. Ellicott employed in making a survey and map of the federal territory. The special object of asking your aid is to have the drawings of the particular grounds most likely to be approved for the site of the federal grounds and buildings." r The French genius " proceeded," and behold the result, the city of " magnificent distances," and from the begin- ning, of magnificent intentions, — intentions whicli for years called forth only ridicule, because in the slow mills of time their fulfillment Avas so long delayed. As Thomas Jefferson wanted the chessboard squares and angles of Philadelphia, L'Enfant used them for the base of the new city, but his genius avenged itself for this outrage on its taste by trans- versing them with sixteen magnificent avenues, which from that day to this have proved the confusion and the glory of ■ the city. The avenues were named after the states. The great central avenue running a length of over four miles from the Anacostia to Rock Creek was named after Pennsylvania. The commonwealth of Massachusetts was dignified by a parallel avenue of equal length on the north, and Virginia in like manner on the south. The avenues crossing the AN INTRACTABLE GENIUS. 49 great central thoroughfare were named after New York, New llam[)shire, New Jersey, Mar3^hind, the Carolinas and Georgia, while Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont were given shorter and non-intersectiug avenues in the rather unpromising northwest, though, contrary to the gen- eral belief, they could not have been regarded as possibili- ties quite so remote as those avenues east of the Capitol which later received the names of the new states Kentucky and Tennessee, the former running south from Pennsyl- vania avenue and the latter north. At any rate the small New England states ultimately had the satisfaction of seein2: their avenues become the finest residential streets of tlie city. ', Two months after the publication of his magnificent de- signs for posterity, Major L'Enfant was dismissed from his exalted place. He was a Frenchman and a genius. The patrons of the new Capital were not geniuses, and not Frenchmen, reasons sufficient why they should not and did not "get on" long in peace together. Without doubt the Commissioners Avere provincial, and limited in their ideas of art and of expenditure ; with their colonial experience they could scarcely be otherwise; while L'Enfant was metro- politan, splendid, and willful, in his Avays as well as in his designs. Hampered, held back, he yet " builded better than he knew," — builded for posterity. The executor and the designer seldom counterpart each other. L'Enfant worried Washington, as a letter from the latter written in the autumn of 1791, plainly shows. He says: " It is much to be regretted that men who possess talents which fit them for peculiar purposes should almost in- variably be under the influence of an untoward disposition. I have thought that for such employment as he is now engaged in for prosecuting public works and carrying them into effect, Major L'Enfant was better qualified than anyone who has come within my knoAvl- 60 THE RETIREMENT OF L'ENFANT. edge in this country, or indeed in any other. I had no doubt at the same time that this was the light in which he considered himself." At least, L' Enfant was so fond of his new "plan" that he would not giv^e it up to the Commissioners to be used as an inducement for buying city lots, even at the command of the President, giving as a reason that if it was open to bu3^ers, speculators would build up his beloved avenues (which he intended, in time, should outrival Yersailles). with squatter's huts — just as they afterwards did. Tlien Duddington House, the abode of Daniel Carroll j one of the Commissioners, was in the way of one of his triumphal avenues, and he ordered it torn down without leave or license, to the rage of its owner and the indignation of the Commissioners. Duddington House was rebuilt by order of the government in another place. ISTevertheless its first demolition was held as one of the sins of the uncontrollable L'Enfant, who was summarily discharged March G, 1Y92. His dismissal was thus announced by Jefferson in a letter to one of the Commissioners : " It having been found im- practicable to employ Major L'Enfant about the Federal City in that degree of subordination which was lawful and proper, he has been notified that his services are at an end. It is now proper that he should receive the reward of his past services, and the wish that he should have no just cause of discontent suggests that it should .be liberal. The President thinks of $2,500, or $3,000, but leaves the de- termination to you." Jefferson wrote in the same letter: " The enemies of the enterprise will take the advantage of the retirement of L'Enfant to trumpet the whole as an abortion." Bat L'Enfant lived and died within sight of the dawning city of his love which he had himself created — and never wrought it or its projectors any harm through all the days of his life. He was loyal to his adopted government, but to his last breath clung to every atom of ELLICOTT AND HIS ASSISTANT. 51 his personal claim upon it, as pugnaciously as he did to his maps when commantled to give them up. He lived without honor, and died without fame. Time has vindicated one and will perpetuate the other in one of the most magnificent capitals of the earth. He lived for many years on the Digges farm, situated about eight miles from Washington, and was buried in the family burial-ground in the garden. When the Digges family were disinterred, his dust was left nearly alone. There it lies to-day, and the perpetually growing splendor of the ruling city which he planned is his only monument. Major L'Enfant was succeeded by Andrew Ellicott, a practical engineer, born in Pennsylvania. Ellicott was called a man of "uncommon talent" and " placid temper." Neither saved him from conflicts with the Commissioners. A Quaker, he 3^et commanded a battalion of militia in the Revolution, and " was thirty-seven years of age when he rode out with Washington to survey the embryo city." He finished (with certain modifications) the work which L'Enfant began. For this he received the stupendous sum of $5.00 per day, which, with "expenses," Jefferson thought to be altogether too much. In his letter to the Commission- ers dismissing L'Enfant, he says : " Ellicott is to go on to finish laying off the plan on the ground, and surveying and plotting the district. I have remonstrated with him on the excess of five dollars a day and his expenses, and he has proposed striking off the latter." Ellicott's most remarkable assistant was I>enjaniin Bancker, a negro, the first of his race to distinguish himself in the new Republic. He was born with a genius for mathematics and the exact sciences, and at an early age was the author of an Almanac which attracted tlie attention and commanded the praise of Thomas Jefferson. When he came to "run the lines" of the future Capital, he was sixty years of age. The color-line could not have been drawn very 53 COMMENT, AND AN EXPLANATION. tensely at that time, for the Commissioners invited liim to an official seat with themselves, an honor which he de- clined. The picture given us of him is that of a sable Franklin, large, noble, and venerable, with a dusky face, white hair, and Quaker coat and hat. Nothing calls forth more comment from strangers than the distance between the Capitol and many of the Executive Departments. It is still a chronic and fashionable complaint to decry the time and distance it takes to get anywhere. We are constantly hearing exclamations of what a beautiful city Washington would be with the Capitol for the center of a square formed by a cliain of magnificent public build- ings. John Adams wanted the Departments around the Capitol. George Washington, but a short time before his death, gave in a letter the reasons for their present position. He says: "AVhere or how the houses for the President and the public offices may be fixed is to me, as an individual, a matter of moonshine. But the reverse of the President's motive for placing the latter near the Capitol was my motive for fixing them by the former. The daily inter- course which the secretaries of departments must have with the President would render a distant situation extremely inconvenient to them, and not much less so would one be close to the Capitol ; for it was the universal complaint of them all, that while the Legislature was in sessiofi, theij could do little or no business, so much were they interrupted hj the individual visits of memhers in office hours, and by calls for paper. Many of them have disclosed to me that they have been obliged often to go home and deny themselves in order to transact the current business." The denizen of the pres- ent time, who knows the Secretaries' dread of the average besieging Congressman, will smile to find that the dread was as potent in the era of George Washington as it is to-day. A more conclusive reason could not be given why Capitol and Departments should be a mile or more apart. CHAPTER HI. BIRTH OF THE NATION'S CAPITOL — GRAPHIC PICTURES OF EARLY DAYS — SACKED BY THE BRITISH — WASHING- TON DURING THE CIVIL WAR — THEN AND NOW. Raising the Money to Build the Capitol — Government Lottery Schemes — Hunting for the Capital — "In the ('enter of the City" — Queer Sen- sations — Dismal Scenes — Sacked by the British — "The Royal Pirate" — Flight of the President— Burning of the White House — Mrs. Madison Saves the Historic Painting of General Washington — Paul Jennings' Account of the Retreat — Invaded b}^ Torch Bearers and Plunderers — A Memorable Storm — Midnight Silent Retreat of the British — Disgraceful Conduct of "The Royal Pirate" — "Light up 1 " — Setting Fire to the Capitol — Dickens' Sarcastic Description of the Capital — "Such as It Is, It Is Likely to Remain" — When the Civil War Opened — Dreary, Desolate, and Dirty — The Capital During the War — Days of Anguish and Bloodshed. 'X going throitgli "Wasliington''s correspondence one finds tliat there is scarcely anything in tlie past, present, or future of its Capital, for which the Father of his Country has not left on record a wise, far-reaching reason. His letters are full of allusions to the annoyance and dilficulty attending the raising of sulhcicnt money to make the Capitol and other public buildings tenantable by the time specified, 1800. He seemed to regard the prompt completion of the Capitol as an event identical with the jicrpetual establish- ment of the government at Washington. Virginia had made a donation of $120,000, and Maryland one of $72,000; these were now exhausted. After various efforts to raise money by the forced sales of public lots, and after abortive (53) 54 FEDERAL LOTTERIES. attempts to borrow money, at home and abroad, on the credit of these lots, amidst general embarrassments, while Congress withheld any aid whatever, the urgency appeared to the President so great as to induce him to make a per- sonal application to the State of Maryland for a loan of |l 00,000, which was successful. The deplorable condition of the government credit at that time is exhibited in the fact that the State called upon the personal credit of the Commissioners as an additional guarantee for the re-pay- ment of the amount. When in 1Y92 financial distress was very acute, the government asked Samuel Blodget of Philadelphia to pro- mote the city's growth by a lottery scheme, the immediate necessity being a hotel. He at once instituted what was called " Federal Lottery No. I " for $50,000, the tickets be- ing seven dollars each, with 1,679 prizes, the first being the hotel itself. The drawing took place in 1793, after the people of Georgetown had bought up a large remnant of tickets to save the scheme from failure. Federal Lottery No. II was instituted to build a row of houses west of the White House, a block which became known as " The Six Houses," and though very unpretentious they were long conspicuous in a city which consisted largely of streets. The record of Federal Lottery No. I, a quaint book Avhose leaves are brown with age, is now one of the relics treas- ured in the Library of Congress. Not only was the growth of the public buildings hin- dered through lack of money, but also through the "jeal- ousies and bickerings " of those who should have helped to build them. Human nature, in the aggregate, was just as inharmonious and hard to manage then as now. The Com- missioners did not always agree. Artisans, imported from foreign lands, of themselves made an element of discord, one Avhich Washington dreaded and deprecated. He led. with a })atience and wisdom undreamed of and unappreci- IN SIGHT OF THE PROMISED LAND. 55 ated in this generation, the straggling and discordant forces of the Republic from oppression to freedom, from chaos to achievement — he came in sight of the promised land of fruition and prosperity, but he did not enter it, this Father and Prophet of the people! George Washington died in' December, 1799. The City of Washington was officially occupied in June, 1800, The only adequate impression of what the Cai)ital was at the time of its first occupancy Ave must receive from those Avho beheld it with living eyes. Fortunately several have left graphic pictures of the appearance which the city presented at that time. Probably the earliest account we have was that written in his diary by Thomas Twining, an energetic Englishman who visited this country in 1795 and was entertained by Washington. He had arrived at George- town from Baltimore one April day and on the next set out on horseback to see the new Capital, elaborate ])lans of which he had seen at Baltimore and which he had supposed must be truly magnificent. The following is taken from his diary : " Having crossed an extensive tract of level countrv somewhat resembling an English heath, I entered a large wood through which a very imperfect road had been made, principally by removing the trees, or rather the upper parts of them, in the usual manner. After some time this indis- tinct way assumed more the appearance of a regular avenue, the trees having been cut down in a straight line. Although no habitation of any kind was visible, I had no doubt but I was now riding along one of the streets of the metropolitan city. I continued in this spacious avenue for half a mile, and then came out upon a large spot, cleared of wood, in the center of which I saw two buildings on an extensive scale and some men at work on one of them. . . . Ad- vancing and speaking to these workmen they informed me that I was now in the center of the city and that the build 56 PEN PICTURES OF THE CAPITAL. ing before me was the Capitol, and the other destined to be a tavern, . . . Looking from where I now stood I saw on every side a thick wood pierced with avenues in a more or less perfect state." President John Adams took possession of the unfinished Executive Mansion in November, 1800. During the month, Mrs. Adams wrote to her daughter, Mrs. Smith, as follows : "I arrived here on Sunday last, aiul without meeting with any accident worth noticing, except losing ourselves when we left Baltimore, and going eight or nine miles on the Frederic road, by which means we were obliged to go the other eio:ht throuo-h the woods, where we wandered for two hours without finding guide or path . . . but woods are all you see from Baltimore till you reach the city, which is only so in name. Here and there is a small cot, without a glass window, interspersed amongst the forests, through which you travel miles without seeing any human being. In the city there are buildings enough, if they were com pact and finished, to accommodate Congress and those at- tached to it; but as they are, and scattered as they are, I see no great comfort for them." Hon. John Cotton Smith, of Connecticut, a distinguished member of Congress, of the Federal school of politics, also gives his picture of Washington in 1800: "Our approach to the city was accompanied with sensations not easily de- scribed. One wing of the Capitol only had been erected, which, with the President's house, a mile distant from it, both constructed with white sandstone, were shining objects in dismal contrast with the scene around them. Instead of recognizing the avenues and streets portrayed on the plan of the city, not on3 was visible, unless we except a road, with two buildings on each side of it, called the New Jersey Avenue. The Pennsylvania, leading, as laid down on paper, from the Ca])itol to the presidential mansion, was then nearly the whole distance a deep morass, covered with alder A FORLORN *'NEW SETTLEMENT". 57 bushes which were cut through the width of the intended avenue during the then ensuing winter. Between tlie President's house and Georgetown a block of houses had been erected, which then bore, and may still bear, the name of the six huildings. There were also other blocks, consist- ing of two or three dwelling houses, in different directions, and now and then an insulated wooden habitation, the in- tervening spaces, and indeed the surface of the city gener- ally, being covered with shrub-oak bushes on the higher grounds, and on the marshy soil either trees or some sort of shrubbery. The roads in every direction were muddy and unimproved. A sidewalk was attempted in one instance by a covering formed of the chips of the stones which had been hewn for the Capitol. It extended but. a little Avay and was of little value, for in dry weather the sharp frag- ments cu our shoes, and in Avet Aveather covered them with white mortar ; in short, it was a ' new settlement.' The houses, with one or two exceptions, had been very recently erected, and the operation greatly hurried in view of the approaching transfer of the national government. A laud- able desire was manifested by what few citizens and resi- dents there were, to render our condition as pleasant as circumstances would permit.'" The visitor who notes that the name of Thomas IVIoore does not appear among the poets in the decorations of the beautiful Library of Congress will be told of the facetious lines he wrote when he visited the city soon after its occupa- tion by the government: "This famed metropolis, where fancy sees, Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees ; Which traveling fools and gazetteers adorn With shrines unbuilt and heroes yet unborn." Washington was incorporated as a city by act of Con- gress, passed l^Iay 3, 18(>2. The city, planned solely as the National Capital, Avas laid out on a scale so grand and ex- 58 THE SACKING OP THE CITY. i tensive that scanty municipal funds alone would never have been sufficient for its proper improvement. From the be- ginning it was the ward of Congress. Its magnificent ave- nues, squares, and public buildings, could receive due deco- ration from no fund more scanty than a national appropria- tion. For a time, its founders and patrons zealously pursued plans for its improvement. But failing funds, a weak mu- nicipality, and indifferent Congresses, did their work, and for many years "the city of magnificent distances" had little but those distances of which to boast. The National Capital was sacked by the British under Admiral Cockburn, known as " The Royal Pirate," and Major-General Ross, an audacious Irishman, on August 24, 1814. The United States had been at war with England for two years, and Admiral Cockburn had been cruising about Chesapeake Bay with an English fleet for a year, robbing villages and farmhouses and devastating the whole Chesapeake coast. Although President Madison had earh- received warning that British troops were expected to co-operate with Cockburn along the Potomac, he was not aroused to the danger that menaced the Capital. "On July 1, 1814, the President received word that an English fleet with a large force of seasoned Peninsula vet- erans on board had reached Bermuda and was about to sail for the Potomac. The States were called upon for 93,500 militia. About 5,000 reported, mostly raw recruits. An unseemly squabble over the appointment of a general to com- mand this army followed. With no cavalry, no vessels, no mounted guns, and only a few thousand undisciplined troops, the people of Washington, who then numbered about 6,000, heard of the approach of the enemy August 18. They were panic-stricken. Many left the city, and the streets were filled with wagons loaded Avith household effects. The British land force, consisting of 4,500 disciplined troops and three cannon, disembarked at Benedict, August THE FLIGHT OP PRESIDENT MADISON. 59 21, and marching rapidly across fifty miles of country appeared on the river bank opposite Bladensburg, at noon, August 24, and prepared to cross the bridge. This was but six miles from the Capital. President Madison and his Cab- inet rode out on horseback to see the struggle. The little American army Avas formed in three lines, too far apart to support each other. There were actually three command- ing officers, — General "Winder, Secretary of State Monroe, and Secretary of War Armstrong. The Secretaries repeat- edly changed the order of battle, without the knowledge of General Winder, and so confused the troops that when Winder gave a command regimental officers held consulta- tions as to whether they should obey him or the cabinet officials. For three hours the battle raged furiously, then the militia gave way before a heavy column, and the American forces retreated to Maryland. The President and his Cabinet scattered and fled, the President continuing his flight into Virginia, where he hid in a hovel for two da3^s before he ventured to return to the Capital. Dolly Madison, the famous mistress of the White House, was also forced to flee, but before she Avent she removed from its frame the historic picture of General Washington in the White House, and also saved many Cabinet pa])ers and rec- ords, sacrificing her own personal effects to do so. "^ The British forces halted a mile and a half from the city, but finding no officials to negotiate a pecuniary ransom for the property at their mercy, Ross, with his far less scrupulous companion in iniquity — Cockburn — with a corps of torch bearers and plunderers rode into the Capital at 8 o'clock in the evening. They lost no time in burning and destroying everything connected with the government. The blazing houses, ships, and stores brilliantly illumined the sky, while the report of exploding magazines, and the crashing of falling roofs, gave evidence of the Avanton destruction that went steadily on. A detachment was sent 60 UNWELCOME GUESTS. to destroy the President's house, and it is related by Gleig, an English writer, that they " found a bountiful dinner spread for forty guests. This they concluded was for the American officers who were expected to return victorious from the field of Bladensburg." Gleig goes on to say that the British soldiers plundered the house, taking a great deal of President Madison's private propertv, and then sat down to the feast. " Having partaken freely of wine, they fin- ished by setting fire to the house which had so liberally entertained them." This story, often quoted, has, at least so far as relates to the " feast," been pronounced absolutely false. But Mr. Madison's faithful slave, Paul Jennings, a man of unusual intelligence and education, who afterwards bought his freedom from Mrs. Madison and lived for many years a respected citizen of Washington, has left on record his observations of what happened. He says : " On that very morning Gen. Armstrong assured Mrs. Madison there was no danger. The President, with Gen. Armstrong, Gen. "Winder, Col. Monroe, et al., rode out on horseback to Bladensburg to see how things looked. Mrs. Madison ordered dinner to be ready at three o'clock, as usual. I set the table myself, and brought up the ale, cider, and wine and placed them in the coolers, as all the Cabinet and several military gentlemen and strangers were expected. While waiting, at just about three, as Sukey, the house-servant, was lolling out of a chamber window, James Smith, a colored man who had accompanied Mr. Madison to Bladensburg, galloped up to the house, wav- ing his hat, and cried out : ' Clear out, clear out ! General Armstrong has ordered a retreat.' " A.11 then w;is confusion. Mrs. Madison ordered her carriage, and passing through the dining-room caught up what she could crowd into her old-fasliioned reticule, and then jumped into tlie chariot witli her servant girl, Sukey, and Daniel Carrol, who took charge of them. Jo. Bolin MRS. MADISON'S EXPERIENCES. Gl drove them over to Georgetown heights. The British were expected in a few minutes. Mr. Cutts, her brother-in-law, sent rae to a stable on 14th St. for his carriage. People were running in every direction. John Freeman (the col- ored butler) drove off in the coachee with his wife, child, and servant; also a feather-bed lashed on behind the coachee, which was all the furniture saved. " Mrs. Madison slept that night at Mrs. Love's, two or three miles over the river. After leaving that place, she called in at a house and went upstairs. The lady of the house, learning who she was, became furious, and went to the stairs and screamed out : ' Mrs. Madison, if that's you, come down and go out ! Your husband has got mine out fighting, and, d you, you sha'n't stay in my house. So get out.' Mrs. Madison complied, and went to Mrs. Minor's, a few miles further on." During the night a terrible storm came up, and the rain extinguished the conflagration. General Winder meantime had rallied his men, and they were beginning to appear on the outskirts of the city. The British, scattered by the hur- ricane, and fearing retribution, stole away by night under cover of the tempest, in a panic of causeless fear. They left their dead unburied, and their wounded to the care of the Americans. It Vv'^as a stealthy but ])recipitate retreat. Sa3's a British writer : " The troops stole to the rear by twos and threes, and when far enough removed to avoid observation, took their places in silence and began the march. No man spoke. Steps were planted lightly a!id we cleared the town without exciting observation." They reached Benedict on August 20, and embarked on the oOth with their booty. During their occupation of the city a detachment of the British force marched to the Capitol. Only two wings of the building were finished, and these were connected by a wooden passage-way, erected wliere the Botunda now stands. British officers entered the House of Representatives, where 63 THE TORCH IN THE CAPITOL. Admiral Cockburn, seating himself in the speaker's chair, called the assemblage to order and held a mock session of Congress. " Gentlemen," said he, " the question is, Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned ? All in favor of burning it will say ' Aye.' " There was a general affirm- ative response. And when he added, " Those opposed will say ' Nay,' " silence reigned for a moment. " Light up ! " cried the bold Briton ; and the order was soon repeated and obeyed in all parts of the building, while soldiers and sailors vied with each other in collecting combustible material for their incendiary fires. The books on the shelves of the Library of Congress were used as kindling wood for the north wing ; and the much admired full length portraits of Louis XVI, and his queen, Marie Antoinette, which had been presented by that unfortunate monarch to Congress, ,_were torn from their frames and trampled under foot. The capture of the Capital aroused the nation, and Con- gress was compelled to investigate the causes that led to its easy fall and partial destruction. Many eminent men were smirched, but responsibility was never fixed. The total damage done to government property by the British was over $3,000,000. Of the "Washington of 1842, at the completion of its first half century of existence, Charles Dickens says in his " American Notes " : — " It is sometimes called the ' City of Magnificent Dis- tances,' but it might with greater propriety be termed the * City of Magnificent Intentions ' ; for it is only on taking a bird's-eye view of it from the top of the Capitol that one can at all comprehend the vast designs of its projector, an aspiring Frenchman. Spacious avenues, that begin in noth- ing, and lead nowhere ; streets, miles long, that only want houses and inhabitants ; public buildings that need but a public, to be complete ; and ornaments of great thorough- fares, which only lack great thoroughfares to ornament — AT THE OPENING OF THE CIVIL WAR. (i3 are its leading features. One might fancy the season over, and most of the houses gone out of town forever with their masters. To the admirers of cities it is a Barmecide Feast : a pleasant field for the imagination to rove in ; a monument raised to a deceased project, with not even a legible inscrip- tion to record its departed greatness. Such as it is, it is likely to remain." Such indeed it continued to remain for another quarter of a century. When the Civil War opened, Washington was a third-rate Southern city of about 61,000 inhabitants. Even its mansions were without modern improvements or conveniences, while the mass of its buildings were low, small, and shabby in the extreme. The avenues, superb in length and breadth, in their proportions afforded a painful contrast to the hovels and sheds which often lined them on both sides for miles. Scarcely a public building was fin- ished. No Goddess of Liberty held tutelary guard over thej dome of the Capitol. Scaffolds, engines, and pulleys every- where defaced its vast surfaces of white marble. The northern wing of the Treasury building was not even begun. Where it now stands then stood the State depart- ments, crowded, dingy, and old. All Public offices, magnificent in conception, were in a state of incompleteness. Everything worth looking at seemed unfinished. Everything finished looked as if it should have been destroyed generations before. Even Pennsylvania Avenue, the leading thoroughfare of the Capital, was lined with little two- and three-story shops, which in architectural comeliness had no comparison with their ilk of the Bowery, New York. Not a street car ran in the city. A few straggling omnibuses and helter-skelter hacks were the only public conveyances to bear members of Congress to and fro between the Capitol and their remote lodgings. In spring and autumn the entire west end of the city was one vast slough of impassible mud. One would 64 IN DAYS OF STRIFE. have to walk many blocks before he found it possible to cross a single street, and that often one of the most fashion- able of the city. " The waters of Tiber Creek," which in the magnificent intentions of the founders of the city were "to be carried to the top of Congress House, to fall in a cascade of twenty feet in height and fifty in breadth, and thence to run in three falls through the gardens into the grand canal," stretched in ignominious stagnation across the city, oozing at last through green scum and slime into the still more ignominious canal, the receptacle of all abomina- tions, the pest-breeder and disgrace of the city. Capitol Hill, dreary, desolate, and dirty, stretched away into an uninhabited desert, high above the mud of the West End. Arid hill and sodden plain showed alike the horrid trail of war. Forts bristled above every hill-top. Soldiers were entrenched at every gate-way. Shed hospi tals covered acres on acres in every suburb. Churches, art- halls, and private mansions were filled with the wounded and dying of the Union armies. The noisy rumbling of the army wagon disturbed every hour of the day and night. The rattle of the anguish-laden ambulance, the piercing cries of the sufferers whom it carried, made morning, noon, and night too dreadful to portray. Tlie streets were filled with marching troops, with new regiments, their hearts strong and eager, their virgin banners all untarnished as they marched up Pennsylvania avenue, playing '' The girl I left behind me" as if they came to holiday glory — and to easy victory. Later the streets were crowded with soldiers, foot-sore, sun-burned, and weary, their clothes begrimed, their banners torn, their hearts sick with hope deferred, ready to die with the anguish of long-delayed triumph. Every moment had its drum-beat, every hour was alive with the tramp of troops going, coming. How many an American youth, marching to its defense, beholding for the first time the great dome of the Capitol THE AWAKENING OF LOYALTY. 65 rising before his eyes, comprehended in one deep gaze, as he had never before in his whole life, all that that Capitol meant to him, and to every freeman. Never, till the Capi- tal had cost the life of the dauntless patriots of our land, did it become to the heart of the American citizen of the nineteenth century the object of personal love that it was to George Washington. Up to that hour the intense loyalty to country, the pride in the Kational Capital Avhich amounts to a passion in the European, had been in the American diffused, weakened, and brolvcn. In ten thousand instances. State allegiance had taken the place of love of country. Washington was nothing but a place in which Congress"^ could meet and politicians carry on their games at high stakes for power and place. ]S"ew York Avas the Capital to the New Yorker, Boston to the Kew Englander, New Orleans to the Southerner, Chicago to the man of the West. There was no one central rallying point of patriots. The unfinished Washington monument stood the monument of the nation's neglect and shame. What Westminster Abbey and Hall were to the Englishman, what Notre Dame and the Tuileries were -to the Frenchman, the unfinished and desecrated Capitol had never been to the average American. Anarchy threatened it. In an hour the loyal sons of the nation were awake to the danger that menaced the Capital, and ready to march to its defense. Washington City was no longer only a name to the mother waiting and praying in the distant hamlet — her hoy was encamped on the floor of the Rotunda. No longer a far-off mirage to the lonely wife — her husband was on guard upon the heights which surrounded the Capital. No longer a place good for noth- ing but political schemes to the village sage — Ms so?i, wrapped in his blanket, slept on the stone steps under the shadow of the great Treasury, or paced his beat before the Presidential mansion. The Capital was sacred at last to tens of thousands whose beloved languished in the wards 66 A CITY SACRED AND BELOVED. of its hospitals or slept the sleep of the brave in the dust of its cemeteries. Thus from the holocaust of war, from the ashes of our sires and sons, arose new-born the holy love of country, and veneration for its Capital. The zeal of nationality, the passion of patriotism, awoke above the bodies of our slain. National songs, the inspiration of patriots, were sung with ' enthusiasm. National monuments began to rise, conse- crated forever to the martyrs of Liberty. Never, till that hour, did the Federal City, — the city of George Washing- ton, the first-born child of the Union, born to live or to perish with it, — become to the heart of the American peo- ple that which it had so long been in the eyes of the world i^ — truly the capital of a great Republic. The citizen of our times sees the dawn of that perfect day of which the founders of the Capital so fondly dreamed. The old provincial Southern city is no more. From its foundations has risen another city, neither Southern, North- ern, Eastern nor Western, but national, cosmopolitan. , Where the " Slough of Despond " spread its black nmd across the acres of the West End, where pedestrians were " slumped " and horses " stalled," and discomfort and dis- gust prevailed, we now see broad asphalt carriage drives, (level as floors and lined on each side by palatial resi- dences,) over which splendid equipages glide with a smooth- ness that is a luxury, and an ease of action Avhich is rest. Where ravines and holes made the highway dangerous, now asphalt pavements stretch over miles on miles of inviting road. Where streets and avenues crossed and re-crossed their long vistas of shadeless dust, now plat on plat of rest- ful grass " park " the city from end to end, and luxuriant trees with each succeeding summer cast a deeper and more protecting shade. Old Washington was full of small Saharas. Where the great avenues intersected, acres of white sand were caught STATELY, BEAUTIFUL WASHINGTON 67 up and carried through the air by counter winds. It blis- tered at white heat beneath your feet, it flickered like a fiery veil before your eyes, it penetrated your lungs and begrimed your clothes. Kow emerald " circles," with cen- tral fountains cooling the air with their crystal spray, refresh alike the young and the old who are ever to be found among the flowers and beneath the shades of these beautiful parks. Pennsylvania Avenue has outlived its mud. More than one superb building now rises high above the lowly shops of the past, a forerunner of the architec- tural splendor of the buildings of the future. Swift and commodious street cars have taken tlie place of the solitary stage, plodding its slow Avay between Georgetown and the Capitol. Stately mansions have risen in every direction, taking the place of the small, isolated houses of the past, with their stiff porches, high steps, and open basement door- ways. No scaffolding and ])ulleys now deface the snowy sur- faces of the Capitol. Complete, its grand dome pierces the sky till the Goddess of Liberty on its top seems enveloped in the clouds. Flowers blossom on the sites of old forts, so alert with warlike life during the Civil War. The army roads, so deeply grooved then, have long been grass-grown. The long shed-hospitals vanished years ago, and splendid dwellings stand on their already forgotten sites. The " boys '' Avho languished in their wards, the boys who proudly marched these streets, who guarded this city, alas ! far too many of them were laid to rest years ago on ^^onder hill-top under th^ oaks of Arlington, and in the cemetery of the Soldiers' Home ! "* CHAPTER lY. BUILDING THE CAPITOL — HOW WASHINGTON AND JEFFERSON ADVERTISED FOR PLANS — COM- PLETION OF THE CAPITOL. Early Trials and Tribulations — Schemers and Speculators — A "Front Door in the Rear" — Seeking for Suitable Plans — A Troublesome Question — Washington and Jefiferson Advertise Premiums for the Best Plan — A Curious "ad" — Some Remarkable Offerings — The Successful Competitor — Carrying Off the Prize — Laying of the Corner-Stone by President Washington — A Defeated Competitor's Audacity — President Washington's Rage — Jealousies of Rivals — Congress Sitting in "the Oven" — Crimination and Recrimination — Building Additions to the Capitol — Hoodwinking Congress — How the Money Was Appropriated to Build the Great Dome — A Successful Ruse — Laying of the Second Corner-Stone by Daniel Webster — Completion of the Building — Its Dimensions and Cost — Curious Construction of the Great Dome — Its Weight and Cost. NE of the first essentials of the Capital city was a Capitol building. The plans for such a struc- ture, had occupied the minds of the founders of the young government long before L'Enfant had surveyed the ground and designated the brow of the eastern plateau as the site for the Capitol. Cherishing a vision of the future metropolis with a fervo]' and clearness hardly ecpuiled since the apocalyptic vision of the aged apostle at Patmos, the earnest patriots of those days may have pictured the spacious plateau extending eastward to the Anacostia, two miles or more, as occupied by the mansions of the cultured and the wealthy, while the lower lands to the west fell to the humbler classes and (68) GROWTH OF THE INFANT CITY. 69 the commercial interests. This has been assumed to be the case, because an exorbitant price was placed upon some of this land to the eastward. One of the largest of the original proprietors, and the one whose acres included most of this high plateau, was Daniel Carroll, a man of culture and of high standing in Maryland. lie was a man in whom "Washington placed the greatest confidence, and was chosen one of the Commission- ers for the laying out of the city. Naturally he anticipated that his land would command enormous prices. Specu- lators ^y3re at once eager for it and bought several acres, largely with promises to pay. Stephen Girard, then the wealthiest man in Philadelphia, offered $250,000 for a portion of the estate, but Carroll asked a round million. The result, it is assumed, was that the city grew in the other direction where land was cliea]ier, wliile Carroll, who had acquiesced always in AYashington's plans, died prac- tically penniless, and obstinate Davy Burns became one of the richest men of the cit3\ It is assumed also that because of the anticipations of greater growth to the eastward, the Capitol, like the Irishman's shanty which had its front door at the rear, now stands with its majestic back to the fashionable and thriv- ing part of the city. But there are no good grounds for the assumption. In the first place it is unreasonable to suppose that the founders would have placed the White House — the center about which society would inevitably circle — a mile and a half away in a location which would not attract home seekers among the elite. Then, too, all the public buildings planned were located to the west of the Capitol. Furthermore, a recent careful study of the plans which were originally accepted for the Capitol, and upon which the construction proceeded for some years, plainly indicates that it was originally intended to have the main entrance, not on the east, but on the west. 70 ADVERTISING FOR PLANS. It was amid the trials and tribulations attending the early days of construction, so painful to the placid soul of Washington and so exasperating to the more impatient Jef- ferson, that the position of the main entrance was changed. As we now look at this stately pile of marble, crowned by its magnificent soaring dome, we can hardly realize that it did not spring forth a completed whole, like Athena from the head of Jove, and that it had an extremely complex and precarious infancy. The question of how to get suitable plans for the build- ing was very troublesome to Washington and Jefferson. Finally the following advertisement, written by Jefferson and revised by Washington, was printed in New York and Philadelphia papers : A PEEMIUM of a lot in the city to be designated by impartial judges and |500 or a medal of that value at the option of the party will be given by the Commission- ers of the Federal Buildings to persons who, before the 15th day of July, 1792, shall produce them the most approved plan, if adopted by them, for a Capitol to be erected in the city ; and $250 or a medal for a plan deemed next in merit to the one they shall adopt. The building to be of brick and to contain the following compartments, to wit : "A Conference Room. j To contain 300 "A Room for Representatives ( persons each. "A Lobby or ante-chamber to the latter. } "A Senate Room of 1,200 square feet of area. "An ante-chamber or Lobby to the latter. "Twelve rooms of 600 feet square are each for committee rooms and clerks to be half of the elevation of the former. " Drawings will be expected to the ground plats, elevations of each front and sections through the building in such directions as may be necessary to explain the material, structure and an estimate of the cubic feet of brick work composing the whole mass of the wall. Thos. Johnson, Dd. Stewart, )■ Co7nmi88i■ Commissioners, etc." Daniel Carroll, ) The Gazette continues : " The whole company retired to an extensive booth, where an ox of 500 lbs. weight was barbecued, of which the company generally partook with every abundance of other recreation. The festival concluded with fifteen successive volleys from the artillery, whose military discipline and manoeuvres merit every commendation. "Before dark the whole company departed with joyful hopes of tha production of their labors." 74 OBSTINATE ARCHITECTS. Finding that he could not procure official changes in the plan, Hallett had the boldness to change whatever he wished without asking authority. He was reprimanded, threatened to resign, refused to surrender the plans, and was discharged. "When Washington saw the unauthorized changes Ilallett had made he expressed his disapproval in terms his dignity seldom permitted. As if to secure them- selves against further dangers of this kind Di'. Thornton was made one of the Commissioners of the District, and the construction of the building was begun substantially on his plans. But other troubles quickly appeared. Hallett's place as superintendent was filled in the fall of 1794 by the selection of George ITadfield, who had come highly recommended as one who would with becoming maekness and subordination carry out the designs ; but he had been at work only a short time Avhcn he too began to suggest changes, which, not meeting with favor, he proceeded to make on his own authority. AVashington again vigorously disapproved ; Hadfield resigned ; the Commissioners hastened to accept ; Hadfield reconsidered, ;ind was a