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 The National Capital 
 
 Newspaper Articles and Speeches Concerning 
 the City of Washington 
 
 BY 
 
 / 
 
 I 
 
 Theodore W. Noyes. 
 
 Washington, D. C: 
 
 Byron S. Adams, Printer and Publisher. 
 
 1893. 
 
Some of Washington's Grievances, 
 
 A DOLEFUL CRY FROM THE PAST. 
 
 Washington' s Wqful Story — Ante-Natal Grievances — Attempts 
 Upon Its Life — Harsh Treatmetit and Inadequate Support — 
 The Nation' s Ward Starved by Its Guardian. 
 
 From the Washing^ton Evening Star, February i8, 1888. 
 
 Modern cities, though they never yield to mere old age, 
 are often said to be born, to grow to maturity, and to die 
 like persons. They are similarly afflicted with the diseases 
 of infancy. Many a promising young city succumbs to 
 municipal colic, to the gripings of an unwise economy or 
 " old fogy " stinginess, or to municipal fever, with its flush of 
 apparent health and vigor, and its subsequent exhaustion 
 when this fictitious strength has disappeared. It is the 
 latter disease which fills mining regions with the cadavers 
 of cities. After a brief and feverish existence their frames 
 moulder unburied on the mountain sides, cold, inanimate, 
 startling to the solitary traveler. Man's vicissitudes of for- 
 tune are not denied to cities. They are rich, poor, extrava- 
 gant, industrious. Some are born " sucking a silver spoon," 
 blessed in situation and natural resources. Others find life 
 a series of difficulties, sometimes overcome by the indomi- 
 table energy which turns a bog into the firm foundation of 
 dwellings, and views a vast destruction by fire as a mere 
 clearing of the ground to make room for edifices handsomer 
 than those destroyed. But more frequently early disadvan- 
 tages and misfortunes overcome the prospective city, just as 
 circumstances of birth and training often pervert or destroy 
 the higher capacities of the thief's or pauper's offspring. 
 Cities also display a diversity, almost human, in manner of 
 
development. The mining town matures rapidly. The 
 rumor of gold produces a maturity as precocious in cities as 
 that developed by the heat of a tropical sun among persons. 
 Other cities increase in strength slowly but surely. Their 
 lives are long, and often in dying they leave to the world 
 another city sprung from themselves, retaining the ancestral 
 name. Thus it has been suggested, in substance, that Rome 
 is the eternal city, because it is a series of Romes, each with 
 a distinct existence. Death comes in as varied shapes to 
 cities as to persons, and there is a like variety in the resist- 
 ance offered. Mineral deposits fail, rich " finds " are made 
 a hundred miles away, and a Leadville dies and goes to 
 decay within a year. War, fire and pestilence w^ound but 
 do not destroy the commercial city, which finds its mortal 
 stroke in a change in the direction of the flow" of trade. 
 
 Cities, then, in certain aspects of their material develop- 
 ment and decay resemble persons. If the analogy might 
 be carried further, and human emotions be ascribed to per- 
 sonified cities, Washington, finding a tongue, could give 
 utterance to a woful autobiography. 
 
 ANTE-NATAL GRIEVANCES. 
 
 This recital of grievances would find a beginning in 
 events which occurred previous to the city's birth. While, 
 ordinarily, neither individuals nor municipal corporations 
 can complain of ill-treatment at a time when they had no 
 existence, the capital on the Potomac may perhajjs be ex- 
 cused for indulging in a feeble, preliminar}' w^ail over the 
 difficulties which it expei'ienced in being born at all. And 
 this privilege should be granted the more readily in view of 
 the fact that many subsequent evils can be traced to their 
 sources in events of the ante-natal period. 
 
 The location of the national capital was a subject of 
 contention between North and South and between several 
 different states of these sections. The claimants of the 
 honor of providing the permanent seat of government were 
 made unyielding in their demands by state pride and state 
 
jealous}^, and sectional animosities added to the bitterness 
 of the controversy. The subject was a fruitful source of 
 wrangling in the Congress assembled under the articles of 
 confederation. This body met in some one of half a dozen 
 different places, according as convenience suggested or 
 necessity compelled, and from time to time it named a per- 
 manent location, only to reverse its decision when the subject 
 was next discussed. The proposed site on the Potomac, sup- 
 ported hj many southern members, was rejected more than 
 once. In 1783 a location on the Delaware was preferred to 
 one on the Potomac, and in 1784 a commission was appointed 
 to select a site upon the former river. This selection was 
 not made, however, and the contention was bequeathed to 
 the first Congress meeting under the Constitution. The 
 wrangle soon became more heated than ever before. The 
 claims of Philadelphia, Germantown, Havre de Grace, 
 Wright's Ferry, on the Susquehanna, and a location on the 
 Potomac were most strongly urged. On September 5, 1789, 
 the House, by a vote of 31 to 19, passed a resolution fixing 
 the permanent seat of government on the Susquehanna, an 
 action which aroused the bitterest feelings among the 
 Southern members and caused Mr. Madison to afiirm his 
 belief that if a prophet had started up in the Virginia con- 
 vention and foretold the proceeding, Virginia would not 
 have been a party to the Constitution. The Senate inserted 
 Germantown, instead of a site on the Susquehanna, as the 
 seat of government. The House coincided in the amend- 
 ment, and the Capitol would perhaps be now standing in 
 Germantown had not an amendment, affecting the location 
 in no respect, carried the bill back to the Senate, where it 
 failed to receive consideration during the remainder of the 
 session. In the next year this phase of the wrangle was 
 ended. The persistency of Mr. Madison and other Southern 
 members carried the day, but a bargain was necessary to 
 secure the required votes. The bill for the assumption of 
 the state debts by the national government, which was also 
 originally supported by a minority, was passed in conjunc- 
 
tion with a bill to locate the capital on the Potomac by a 
 " log-rolling " arrangement between Hamilton and Jefferson. 
 In July, 1790, the House, by a vote of 32 to 29, and the 
 Senate, by a vote of 14 to 12, decided in favor of the Potomac. 
 After ten years of preparation for the event, during which 
 period a site was selected by President Washington, a board 
 of commissioners contended against obstinacy and avarice 
 in some of the original proprietors of the soil, and work on 
 several public buildings was begun, Washington as the 
 national capital came into being. From its cradle it was 
 surrounded by enemies eager for its life. President Wash- 
 ington was taunted with sordid motives in causing the capital 
 to be placed near his estates on the Potomac. The bargain 
 by which the question was settled was denounced as fraudu- 
 lent and corrupt, and each disappointed and incensed claim- 
 ant of the capital prize in this legislative lottery awaited a 
 chance to gratify revenge and to test the fortune of a new 
 drawing by strangling the successful competitor. 
 
 The first grievance, then, of Washington — the city con- 
 trolled exclusively by Congress, the ward of the nation — is 
 that from its tenderest years its nerves have been unstrung, 
 its growth retarded, and its constitution undermined by a 
 well-founded terror, due to 
 
 THE ATTEMPTS UPON ITS LIFE 
 
 and the threats of sudden and violent destruction made from 
 time to time by its guardian. Like the hero of " Great 
 Expectations," the capital was brought up " by hand," and 
 its guardian was forever " on the rampage." From the day 
 in 1800 when the archives of government were brought 
 from Philadelphia in " seven large boxes and four or five 
 smaller ones," and an army of fifty- four office-holders swelled 
 the population of the city, there have been periodical at- 
 tempts to remove the seat of government, and such removal 
 would have meant, of course, the death of Washington. An 
 Englishman named Weld, who visited the future capital in 
 1796, says: " Notwithstanding all that has been done at the 
 
city and the large sums of money which have been expended, 
 there are numbers of people in the United States living to 
 the north of the Potomac, particularly in Philadelphia, who 
 are still very adverse to the removal of the seat of Govern- 
 ment thither, and are doing all in their power to check the 
 progress of the buildings in the city, and to prevent the 
 Congress from meeting there at the appointed time." Those 
 who had thus opposed the removal to Washington were the 
 same who now endeavored to effect a second removal, and 
 who, as part of their policy, sought to keep the city in a con- 
 dition which would serve as an argument in favor of the 
 change. As a sample of the attacks upon the infant capital, 
 hear a new " Crito," in his " Letters on the Seat of Govern- 
 ment," published in 1807 : " In the meantime, be it known 
 to the good people of the Union, from New Hampshire to 
 Georgia (for I may presume, without fear of contradiction, 
 that ninety-nine hundredths of the youth of the United 
 States grow up to manhood without ever having seen the 
 capital of their country), that the national bantling called 
 the City of Washington remains, after ten years of expensive 
 fostering, a rickety infant, unable to go alone. Nature will 
 not be forced. A sickly child cannot be dressed and dan- 
 dled into a healthy constitution. This embryo of the state 
 will always be a disappointment to its parents, a discredit 
 to the fond opinions of its worthy god-fathers and god- 
 mothers, and an eyesore to all its relations to the remotest 
 degree of consanguinity." Crito's advice, in conclusion, is 
 to remove the seat of government to Philadelphia, " the very 
 focus of foreign and domestic intelligence." Crito's method 
 of using as an argument in favor of death the sickly condi- 
 tion of the nation's " bantling," caused by 
 
 HAKSH TREATMENT AND INADEQUATE SUPPORT 
 
 on the part of its constitutional protectors, seems to have 
 been popular. To neglect the infant, to threaten it con- 
 stantly with destruction, and then to urge its consequent 
 feebleness as a reason for killing it outright, was a favorite 
 
policy with its enemies. After the capture and partial burn- 
 ing of the city by the British in 1814, a misfortune caused 
 mainly by the failure of the government, in spite of remon- 
 strance, to provide it with adequate defenses, a vigorous at- 
 tempt was made by Americans to complete the work of 
 destruction begun by the British. In the course of the 
 debate at that time upon the expediency of removing the 
 seat of government, Representative Lewis of Virginia com- 
 plained that for the last ten or twelve years similar attempts 
 had been made, the effect of which was to create alarm and 
 paralyze improvement to the great injury of the public. He 
 pointed out that hundreds and thousands of individuals had 
 been induced from a perfect confidence in the permanency of 
 the seat of government to expend their all in its improvement, 
 who would be reduced to beggary and want by a removal. 
 A committee to whom the subject was referred reported a 
 resolution, " That it is inexpedient to remove the seat of 
 Government at this time from Washington city." A motion 
 to strike out " inexpedient " and insert " expedient," after a 
 tie vote of 68 to 68, was decided in the affirmative by the 
 speaker. The report, as amended, was referred to the com- 
 mittee of the whole house and was passed after debate by a 
 vote of 72 to 71. When the bill was reported to the House, 
 Philadelphia was inserted as the future capital, and in the 
 end, on the question of engrossing the bill for a third read- 
 ing, it was lost by a vote of 83 to 74. This account of one 
 of the alarming movements which frightened the young 
 capital out of many a year's growth, may serve as a sugges- 
 tion of those which followed. If the stale allusion to the 
 experience of Damocles is ever justifiable, this is the occasion, 
 for the city, in very truth, lived and grew with a threatening 
 sword suspended over its head. The latest assault of vigor 
 by capital-movers was that made in 1869 in favor of St. 
 Louis, by L. U. Reavis and others outside of Congress, and 
 by some Western Senators and Representatives within Con- 
 gress. In reply to the question, " When will the removal be 
 effected ? " Reavis says in his book : " I unhesitatingly answer 
 
that the change will be made within five years from Jan. 
 1,1869, * * * and before 1875 the President of the 
 United States will deliver his message at the new seat of 
 Government in the Mississippi Valley." The capital has 
 not been moved, and will not be moved, except as the result 
 of some extraordinary political convulsion ; but this convic- 
 tion is the growth of recent years, and the mischief done by 
 the constant agitation of the subject in the past can hardly 
 be estimated. 
 
 Though the first of Washington's grievances is the ani- 
 mosity of many among those who should have been the 
 city's protectors, 
 
 THE INDIFFERENCE OP OTHERS NOT ACTIVELY HOSTILE, 
 
 has been an evil of hardly less magnitude. Under the Con- 
 stitution Congress has power of exclusive legislation over 
 the District of Columbia. It is a tract of national territory 
 to be governed by the representatives of the whole people. 
 Its interests are entitled to the thoughtful consideration of 
 every one of its constitutionally appointed legislators. Un- 
 fortunately they have not received, and do not receive, this 
 consideration. In the House discussion of 1871 upon the 
 bill to provide a territorial form of government for the Dis- 
 trict, one of the members of the District committee said that 
 within two years parts of only nine afternoons had been 
 spent in legislation for the capital. The improvement in 
 this respect since that date has not been startling. The an- 
 nouncement that a short time is to be devoted by Congress 
 to District affairs is looked upon by many legislators as an 
 invitation to be absent. Others remain long enough to 
 show that they view their presence and attention as a per- 
 sonal favor to citizens of the District, and not as a part of 
 their Congressional duty. Those Congressmen who consider 
 that the main purpose of their terms is to arm themselves 
 for a re-election are of course bored or disgusted with petty 
 and uninteresting District aifairs. Discussion concerning 
 such affairs furnishes nothing to be quoted in the home 
 
8 
 
 papers for their constituents' benefit and their own glory. 
 Even of those who interest themselves in the District a con- 
 siderable proportion endeavor to utilize it as a field of ex- 
 periment for their political or other hobbies, the practical 
 application of which they would not, in many instances, 
 dare to attempt at home, where there are voters to make 
 their resentment felt in case the experiment should prove 
 hurtful. But the District is the apothecary's cat, to be dosed 
 experimentally with each dubious compound before it can 
 safely be offered to the public. 
 
 The capital could hardly have anticipated such dis- 
 couraging treatment. The early standard of duty set for 
 Congress in the matter of its management of the District 
 was not a low one. In 1803 Representative Bacon made a 
 formidable estimate of the expense and loss of time to the 
 nation, increasing with the growth of the District, which 
 would be involved in the assumption by Congress of the 
 power of exclusive legislation. " Should justice," he said, 
 " be done to the exercise of this power, it was likely that as 
 much time would be spent in legislating for this District as 
 for the whole United States." It is hardly necessary to say 
 that increasing population has not secured a proportionate 
 increase in the Congressional time devoted to District affairs, 
 and, in view of the facts, the very suggestion that the capi- 
 tal's legislature should give one-half its thoughts to the 
 capital's interests seems ridiculous. 
 
 An unfitness for the performance of the duties assigned 
 it has often been urged as part either of 
 
 THE ACCUSATION OR CONFESSION OF CONGRESSIONAL INDIF- 
 FERENCE 
 
 in respect to Washington. In 1803 Representative Ran- 
 dolph remarked in the course of debate that Congress was 
 incompetent to legislate for the District, adding " It was well 
 known that the indolence of other members [than the Dis- 
 trict committee] or their indifference, inseparable from the 
 situation in which they were placed, would prevent Congress 
 
from legislating with a full understanding of the objects be- 
 fore them." Congress for a long time not only accepted the 
 idea of its incapacity to govern the people of the District, 
 but apparently forgot that it had any responsibilities what- 
 ever in respect to the capital city. The excuse of unfitness 
 for failure to furnish the general legislation necessary for the 
 welfare of the residents of the District does not have even a 
 tendency to relieve Congress from the blame which attaches 
 to its neglect to carry out the original plan and implied 
 agreement to build up a magnificent capital on the Poto- 
 mac. It could, at least, have appropriated the money re- 
 quired to meet its obligations, even if, in truth, it found itself 
 incompetent to pass proper laws. But even when most 
 liberal in the disbursement of the people's money, it had 
 not a cent to expend in rendering the people's city attrac- 
 tive. The blaze of glory, which the mere presence of our 
 national legislators casts upon their place of meeting was 
 thought, perhaps, by members of Congress, to hide all defects 
 in the appearance of the capital, and to amount to a satis- 
 faction in full of their constitutional obligations toward the 
 District. For years the national legislature permitted the 
 capital entrusted to its keeping to be an object of derision 
 and contempt to foreigner and citizen. More than that, it 
 contributed by its own neglect to make more wretched the 
 city's forlorn condition, and then joined in the laugh at the 
 latter's expense. 
 
10 
 
 Some of Washington's Grievances, 
 
 SLOW GROWTH OF THE NEGLECTED CAPITAL. 
 
 Early Descriptions of the City — Washingto7i in Bankruptcy — 
 Geese and Hogs on Massachusetts Avenue — The Flippant 
 Dickens and Melancholy Trollope — Beauties of the New 
 Washington. 
 
 From the Washington Evening Star, February 25, 1888. 
 
 Washington's two grievances — the one against its 
 hostile, the other against its neglectful, guardians — operated 
 together to its disadvantage. The miserable state of the city 
 for three-fourths of a century, during which Congressional 
 disfavor or indifference checked its growth, and the efforts of 
 capital-movers shut out new settlers, and discouraged its 
 residents from improving lands which might soon be made 
 valueless, is attested by all descriptions. The child of the 
 nation, neglected and nearly abandoned by its constitutional 
 protectors, with appearance and health uncared for, insuffi- 
 ciently nourished, and in constant terror of death, did not, 
 wonderful to relate, develop rapidly and vigorously. Be- 
 tween 1790 and 1800, the interval within which the efforts 
 were made to prevent the seat of government from leaving 
 Philadelphia, the private houses erected at Washington were 
 few in number, being mostly empty structures, built as a 
 speculation, or the rude huts of workmen on the President's 
 House and the Capitol. In 1800 the small population was 
 clustered, for the most part, in two settlements, the one 
 called Hamburg, on observatory hill, the other called Car- 
 roUsburg, on James Creek, between the arsenal and the 
 navy yard. The site of the city was covered in the main by 
 marshes, pastures, dense woods, and some cultivated ground 
 
•11 
 
 where wheat, tobacco, and Indian corn were raised. The 
 elevations were overgrown with shrub-oak bushes. There 
 were only two houses on the line of Pensylvania avenue be- 
 tween the President's House and the Capitol. For much of 
 its length this avenue was " a deep morass covered with 
 alder bushes." Chas. W. Janson, an Englishman, said of 
 the place in 1806 : " Strangers after viewing the offices of 
 state are apt to inquire for the city while they are in its very 
 center. * * * Some half-starved cattle browsing among 
 the bushes present a melancholy spectacle to a stranger. 
 Quail and other birds are constantly shot within a hundred 
 yards of the Capitol during the sitting of the houses of Con- 
 gress." Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury, and Mrs. 
 President Adams, complained of the scattered condition of 
 the houses. On the same subject John Law, one of the most 
 prominent of the early citizens of Washington, said : " A 
 loose and disconnected population was scattered over the city, 
 and instead of a flourishing town the stranger who visited us 
 saw for years a number of detached villages, having no 
 common interests, furnishing little mutual support, hardly 
 sustaining a market, and divided by great public reserva- 
 tions." The discreditable capital thus described was the 
 result of leaving a plan of magnificent intentions to be car- 
 ried into execution by a population feeble in numbers and 
 resources, and hampered by the hostility of some and by the 
 indifference and neglect of a great majority of its legislators 
 and constitutional protectors. The same conditions, being 
 permitted to continue, 
 
 RETAINED THE CITY IN ITS PITIFUL PLIGHT 
 
 as the laughing-stock of visitors. In 1814, after the Secre- 
 tary of War had sneered at the suggestion that the British 
 might molest the " sheep walk," and after the national rep- 
 resentatives more than Washington's would-be defenders 
 had permitted the city to be captured, the following was its 
 appearance : " Twelve or fifteen clusters of houses at a con- 
 siderable distance from each other, bringing to our recollec- 
 
12 
 
 tions the appearance of a camp of nomad Arabs, which, how- 
 ever, if connected together would make a verj^ respectable 
 town, not much inferior, perhaps, to the capital of Virginia, 
 and here and there an insulated house ; the whole of it, when 
 seen from the ruins of our public edifices, looking more like 
 the place where proud Washington once stood than where 
 humble Washington now lies." The capital-moving project 
 of 1814 was, as we have seen, a failure, but it was not with- 
 out an effect in deterring intending settlers and in impov- 
 erishing those already in possession. D. B. Warden, in his 
 *' Description of the District of Columbia," published in 1816, 
 says : " The value of lots has diminished on account of the* 
 project of Eastern members of Congress to transfer the seat 
 of Government to some other place." 
 
 Lots were sold but slowly, even at the reduced prices, and 
 the city extended its limits of settlement with proportionate 
 slowness. In 1824 Mr. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, 
 being " sent to the country for his health," removed himself 
 far from the bustle of the city to Clement Hill mansion, on 
 the northwest corner of 14th street and Massachusetts avenue, 
 a location now in the heart of one of the most valuable sec- 
 tions of the city. 
 
 WASHINGTON IN BANKRUPTCY. 
 
 While Congress neglected Washington, its residents 
 were goaded by taunts at the capital of the nation into 
 desperate efforts to perform the task intended to be per- 
 formed by the government, but left undone. Sums beyond 
 their resources were spent upon the improvement of the 
 streets, in erecting city buildings, and in the endeavor to 
 give the capital a commercial footing by digging the Ches- 
 apeake and Ohio canal ; but the effort was beyond their 
 unassisted strength, and the relief of Congress was sought. 
 Senator Southard, in 1835, reported that the debt of the city 
 reached "the enormous sum of $1,806,442.59 ;" that it had 
 no means from which it could apply at that time a single 
 dollar to the discharge of its obligations ; that owing to its 
 
13 
 
 debts in connection with the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, 
 foreign bankers would in all probability become the owners 
 of a great proportion of the property within the capital of 
 the Union ; that the city authorities had been misled into 
 expenditures which did not properly belong to them^ 
 although the views by which they were governed were of a 
 liberal and public-spirited character, and that nothing was 
 found in the conduct of the inhabitants or the authorities 
 to excite in Congress a reluctance to come to their relief. 
 Aid was accordingly granted the bankrupt city, but the- 
 recommendation, made by Senator Southard, after an ex- 
 haustive consideration of the relations between the nation 
 and its capital, that the government should pay regularly 
 a proportion of District expenses, was disregarded, and the- 
 city, though rescued from foreign bankers, was permitted 
 to remain a national disgrace. In 1839 George Combe, the 
 British traveler, described the city as " like a large strag- 
 gling village reared in a drained swamp." 
 
 MASSACHUSSETTS AVENUE ABANDONED TO HOGS. 
 
 By the corporation laws of that period geese and hogs 
 were prohibited from running at large "south of Massa- 
 chusetts avenue," under penalty of seizure. They might 
 traverse the land north of that avenue at their pleasure. 
 Practically, one section of Washington was on the same 
 footing as another, since the domestic animals, in spite of 
 all law, had the freedom of the entire city up to a late date. 
 But what a miortification to the street which now boasts 
 residences upon which fortunes have been lavished that it 
 was once set apart, impliedly, as the boundary of the city's 
 goose and hog-pen. Charles Dickens, in "American Notes," 
 gives us his impressions of neglected Washington in 1842. 
 He playfull)'' refers to it as " the headquarters of tobacco- 
 tinctured saliva," and adds : " It is sometimes called the 
 City of Magnificent Distances ; 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 
 
14 
 
 Capitol that one can at all comprehend the vast designs of its 
 projector, an aspiring Frenchman. Spacious avenues that 
 begin in nothing and lead nowhere, streets, mile long, that 
 only want houses, roads, and inhabitants ; public buildings 
 that need but a public to be complete, and ornaments of 
 great thoroughfares which only need great thoroughfares 
 to ornament, are its leading features. One might fancy the 
 season over and most of the houses gone out of town 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 inscription to record its departed greatness. Such 
 as it is it is likely to remain. * * * It is very un- 
 healthy. Few people would live in Washington, I take it, 
 who were not obliged to reside there ; and the tides of emi- 
 gration and speculation, those rapid and regardless currents, 
 are little likely to flow at any time toward such dull and 
 sluggish water." The discouraging observations of the 
 novelist are only an echo of those in which Americans per- 
 mitted themselves to indulge. The capital's growth was 
 watered by a perpetual shower of disparagement and prophe- 
 cies of evil. Neither plants nor cities flourish under a hot- 
 water treatment. 
 
 THE PROMISE OF BETTER DAYS. 
 
 Between 1840 and 1850 Congress showed a tendency 
 to improve the condition of the District. The personal in- 
 fluence of Mayor W. W. Seaton, one of the editors of the 
 National Intelligencer, is said to be entitled to a large part of 
 the credit for this friendly disposition ; and so unusual was 
 the appropriation of any considerable sum for the benefit of 
 the District that apprehensions were jocularly expressed of 
 the bankruptcy of the United States Treasury if Seaton con- 
 tinued to be mayor. These outlays by Congress quieted to 
 some extent the fear that the capital would be moved, and 
 population increased with unusual rapidity. Since 1810, 
 ■when the city's inhabitants numbered 8,208, the increase 
 
15 
 
 had been at the insignificant rate of about 500 a year, or 
 5,000 for each 10 years. Thus the population in 1820 was 
 13,247; in 1830, 18,326, and in 1840, 23,364. In 1850 at 
 the old rate it should have been about 28,000, but under 
 the encouragement of congressional favor and free from the 
 fear of a present removal of the seat of government, the city 
 swelled its population to 40,000. The initial steps in the 
 work of improving the public grounds were taken by A. J. 
 Downing, the landscape gardener, in 1851-52, but death 
 stopped his labors and no one filled his place. 
 
 In 1862, Anthony Trollope was in Washington. Like 
 Tom Moore, Mrs. Trollope and Charles Dickens, who pre- 
 ceded him, he writes of the city in a dyspeptic spirit. Every- 
 thing disagrees with him. " Washington," he says, " is but 
 a ragged, unfinished collection of unbuilt, broad streets, as 
 to the completion of which there can now, I imagine, be but 
 little hope. Of all places that I know it is the most ungainly 
 and the most unsatisfactory. I fear I must also sa}'' the most 
 presumptuous in its pretensions." 
 
 HOT SHOT FOR MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE. 
 
 Trollope seems to have conceived an especial spite 
 against Massachusetts avenue, now the fashionable residence 
 street of the city, and the vigor of his assaults justifies the 
 suspicion that he was sent on some wild-goose chase, and 
 found the mud of that street particularly disagreeable. 
 ^* Massachusetts avenue runs the whole length of the city, 
 and is inserted on the maps as a full-blown street, about four 
 miles in length. Go there, and you will find yourself not 
 only out of town, away among the fields, but you will find 
 yourself beyond the fields in an uncultivated, undrained 
 wilderness. Tucking your trousers up to your knees you will 
 wade through the bogs ; you will lose yourself among rude 
 hillocks ; you will be out of the reach of humanity. * * * 
 The place is very full during Congress, and very empty 
 during the recess. By which I mean to be understood that 
 those streets which are blessed with houses are full when 
 
16 
 
 Congress meets. I do not think that Congress makes much 
 difference to Massachusetts avenue. * * * ^ stranger 
 finds himself in the position of being sent across the country 
 knee-deep in mud, wading through snipe grounds, looking 
 for civilization where none exists." He adds, in respect to 
 the city : " Desirous of praising it in some degree, I can say 
 that the design is grand. The thing done, however, falls so 
 infinitely short of the design that nothing but disappoint- 
 ment is felt. And I fear that there is no look-out into the 
 future which can justify the hope that the design will be 
 fulfilled. * * * They who belong to it turn up their 
 noses at it. * * * Even in winter, when Congress is 
 sitting, Washington is melancholy; but Washington in 
 summer must surely be the saddest spot on earth." Look- 
 ing upon the city simultaneously with Mr. Trollope one can 
 reply only feebly to his strictures. Unprejudiced descrip- 
 tions corroborate his account of the forlorn condition of 
 Washington at that time. George Alfred Townsend, in a 
 . magazine article, says : " When the rebellion began the fol- 
 lowing was the appearance of the city : Not one street was 
 paved for any great consecutive distance ; there was not a 
 street car in the city ; the Capitol was without a dome and 
 the new wings were filled with workmen. No fire depart- 
 ment worthy of the name was to be seen, and a mere con- 
 stabulary comprised the police, which had to call on the 
 United States marines, as in 1857, when the latter fired upon 
 a mob and killed and wounded a large number of people. 
 The water supply was wholly afforded by pumps and springs. 
 Gas had been in partial use for several years, but little else 
 was lighted except Pennsylvania avenue and the public 
 buildings. * * * Nearly one-half of the city was cut 
 off from the rest by a ditch and called the Island, while an 
 intervening strip of mall and park was patrolled by outlaws 
 and outcasts, with only a bridge here and there for outlet. 
 The riverside was a mass of earthern bluffs pierced by two 
 streets, and scarcely attainable for mire and obstructions. 
 Georgetown communicated with the Capitol by an omnibus 
 
17 
 
 line, and there was no ferry to Alexandria to be remembered 
 as such, except in the sensitive traditions of the oldest resi- 
 dents. * * * In short the city was relatively in embryo 
 as much as when Moore, Weld, Janson, and Basil Hall 
 described it early in the century." 
 
 Washington's leap into prosperity. 
 
 But Mr. Trollope's disgust at the Washington of the 
 present was equalled only by his hopelessness in respect to 
 its future ; and as a prophet he proves a complete failure. 
 From the time when the capital was a camp and hospital, 
 its streets filled with soldiers and resounding with paartial 
 music, its churches saddened by the moan of wounded and 
 dying, its development as a city has been continuous. The 
 greater part of this magical transformation has been wrought 
 within the last eighteen years. In place of a straggling 
 country village, with zig-zag grades, no sewerage, unim- 
 proved reservations, second-rate dwellings, streets of mud 
 and mire, and wretched sidewalks, the modern Washington 
 has arisen a political, scientific and literary center, with a 
 population trebled since 1860 ; a city sustained, improved 
 and adorned by an annual expenditure of more than four 
 million dollars ; with surface remodelled ; with an elaborate 
 and costly system of sewers and water mains ; with about 
 150 miles of improved streets, nearly one-half of which are 
 paved with concrete ; with convenient transportation by 33 
 miles of street railway ; with numerous churches and schools, 
 as well as government buildings of architectural pretensions ; 
 with broad streets shaded for a distance of 280 miles by 
 more than 60,000 trees, destined to make Washington a 
 forest city ; with attractive suburban drives ; with reserva- 
 tions and parkings given a picturesque beauty by shrubbery 
 and rich foliage, statuary, fountains and flowers, and with 
 costly private dwellings, rivalling palaces in size and splen- 
 dor of interior adornment springing up in rapid succession 
 where Trollope sank knee-deep in mud. This wonderful 
 change for the better, effected by certain wise and energetic 
 
18 
 
 agents of the general government whom the District delights 
 to honor, is the result, in part, of a reversal of the conditions 
 which hampered the cit3''s growth. Congress, no longer 
 hostile, or indifferent concerning the pecuniary needs of the 
 District, has spent large sums not only upon public build- 
 ings, but also in the improvement of the city, at first spas- 
 modically, since 1878 systematically. The people of the 
 District, encouraged by the general abandonment of the 
 idea of a removal of the seat of government, have also 
 made extensive outlays. But the main public expense of 
 the work of recreating the city is represented by a present 
 debt of more than $20^,000,000, nearly all of which has 
 been incurred by officials placed over the affairs of the 
 District by the general government in carrying out those 
 " magnificent intentions " concerning the capital, which, by 
 the original plan, the nation and not the District was to 
 execute. If, by any reasoning, the citizens of Washington 
 can be held legally or morally responsible for this debt, it 
 must be said, as was remarked by Senator Southard in the 
 similar case of 1835, that they have been "misled into ex- 
 penditures which do not properly belong to them." 
 
19 
 
 Some of Washinofton's Grievances. 
 
 COMPLAINTS, NEEDS AND HOPES OF THE PRESENT. 
 
 A Little Bill For Back- Pay — The District's Antiquated 
 Laws — Unfilled Marshes and Unfinished Water- Works — 
 The Railroad Dictatorship — Suburban Development — Cur- 
 reiit Needs, 
 
 From the Washington Evening Star, flarch 3, 1888. 
 
 Washington's recital of past grievances must be modi- 
 fied somewhat to represent just complaints at the present 
 time. Capital-movers no longer retard the city's growth. 
 The nation's " bantling " no longer fears sudden death. Con- 
 gress fulfills its obligations in respect to the improvement of 
 the District with fidelity. An appropriation equal to one- 
 half of the estimated District expenses is annually made, and 
 considerable sums are frequently appropriated for special 
 purposes which enure to the benefit of the capital. The 
 ward of the nation is properly clothed and fed. There can 
 be little complaint of injustice on the part of Congress in its 
 treatment of the capital so far as outlays of the present are 
 concerned. If the District has a grievance in this respect it 
 consists in the fact that the same principle of dividing ex- 
 penses which now prevails has not been applied to previous 
 outlays, with the result of reimbursing the District for past 
 expenditures beyond its proportion. It is difficult to see 
 how, with justice and consistency, this reimbursement can be 
 avoided by Congress. The General Government, by the fact 
 of planning a magnificent capital, covering a large area and 
 characterized by broad streets, avenues and reservations to 
 an extent unsuitable for a self-supporting commercial city, 
 and by founding this capital in a place comparatively un- 
 inhabited, as well as by the terms of the bargain with the 
 owners of the soil, and by the declarations of its representa- 
 
20 
 
 tives at the founding of tlie city and afterward, showed an 
 intention to build up a national city, at the nation's expense, 
 on a grand scale, irrespective of the future population of the 
 District. The capital was to be primarily a center of federal 
 action, and the occupation of the ground by settlers was 
 merely incidental to this great purpose. It was to be a 
 meeting-place for the use, convenience and entertainment of 
 the people of the entire union, and the expense of its support 
 and adornment was not to be limited by the scanty resources 
 of what permanent population it might acquire. Probable 
 favoritism toward this population was the ground of one of 
 the arguments against the ratification of the clause of the 
 Constitution, which provides for "the ten miles square." In 
 the Virginia convention Patrick Henry said : " The people 
 within that place may be excused from all the burdens im- 
 posed on the rest of society and may enjoy exclusive emolu- 
 ments to the great injury of the rest of the people." And in 
 the course of pamphlet discussion respecting the govern- 
 ment of the District, protest was entered against Congress 
 meeting all the needs of the capital, on the ground that the 
 independence and self-respect of its citizens would be de- 
 graded. Congress seems for a long time to have obeyed 
 this protest so far as to render no assistance whatever worthy 
 the name in the work of capital-making. For more than 
 thirty years, during which period $700,000, had been real- 
 ized from the sale of lots pledged for the benefit of improve- 
 ments, its expenditures upon streets and avenues, which 
 w^ere its exclusive property, were less than $700 per year, 
 and its annual appropriations since that time until a recent 
 period in the city's history, have been widely varying in 
 amount, and at the best inadequate. In 1878 the Govern- 
 ment, which had in the beginning impliedly undertaken to 
 meet all the expenses of capital-making, and then shifted 
 that buiden in the main upon private citizens, decided that 
 justice required it to pay one-half of the District's expenses. 
 The payment of this proportion by the United States as the 
 untaxed owner of one-half the city property, and as in- 
 
21 
 
 terested to that extent in all improvements, had been urged 
 by Senator Southard in 1835. He also advocated 
 
 THE REIMBURSEMENT TO THE DISTRICT 
 
 of whatever it had expended in the past beyond its just pro- 
 portion. Congress has followed only one-half of Senator 
 Southard's advice. If justice requires that the Government 
 should pay a certain proportion of District expenses now, 
 both justice and consistency demand that it should pay the 
 same proportion of the expenses of the years of its indiffer- 
 ence and neglect. It was shown in 1874 that up to date the citi- 
 zens of Washington had expended upon the capital in excess 
 of the amount appropriated by Congress about $13,500,000- 
 A balance should be struck, and whatever sum is necessary 
 to make the expenditures of the General Government upon 
 the capital equal to those of its citizens, for the eighty-seven 
 years of the city's life, should be credited to the District. 
 This act of equity is the more necessary for the reason that 
 the heavy debt, to which reference has been made, guaran- 
 teed by the government, but constituting in effect a mortgage 
 of about 18 per cent, upon the assessed value of private 
 taxable property in the District, weighs heavily upon the 
 citizens of the capital. The indebtedness which bankrupted 
 Washington in 1835 is now increased more than ten-fold. 
 It will be in the distant future, if the time ever comes, when 
 the city will be able to extinguish this debt, which mean- 
 while will rest as an incubus upon the prosperity of the 
 capital. 
 
 Another grievance which is still felt by the District is 
 the avoidance by Congress of general legislation respecting 
 its affairs. It complains that while it needs as much legis- 
 lation as many states, it is granted only a few hours or a few 
 days of each session, to be largely wasted in debate without 
 decision. Members of Congress reply when not too indiffer- 
 ent to attempt an answer, that great national affairs cannot 
 be expected to give way to the petty municipal concerns of 
 an insignificant patch of territory. They are also restrained 
 
22 
 
 by a sense of their own unfitness for such legislation, coupled 
 with the knowledge that injurious mistakes will subject 
 them to hearty abuse by the citizens of the District, who, 
 being without votes, have no other method of expressing 
 their disapprobation. This shirking by Congress of a disa- 
 greeable duty has had an evil effect ujDon the laws of the 
 capital. Complaint was early made upon this score. Mr. 
 J. Elliot, in his " Historical Sketches of the Ten Miles 
 Square," published in 1830, says that no essential changes 
 had been made in the general laws, or in their administra- 
 tion since the cession of the District by Maryland and 
 Virginia, and that the citizens were governed by laws as 
 they existed thirty years previously, which had accumulated 
 for generations, many of them barbarous, long since wisely 
 abrogated by the states in which they prevailed, but still in 
 force in the District. The author adds some specimens of 
 these curious, antiquated laws. 
 
 THE ANTIQUATED LAWS OF THE MODERN CAPITAL. 
 
 Cause of complaint has not been removed since the date 
 of Elliot's demand for reform. The District laws have been 
 aptly compared to those of the Medes and Persians, which 
 change not. The common law and the old British and 
 Maryland statutes in force at the time of cession have not 
 been sufficiently altered by Congress, and these very altera- 
 tions have been sweepingly described by a prominent lawyer 
 of Washington as "little dabs of law, little blistering or 
 caustic acts, dropped at random on the raw body politic, un- 
 adjusted to any want, connected with nothing, remedying 
 nothing, and often worse confusing what no mortal man 
 could understand before." In many respects the laws are a 
 hundred years behind the times. The occurrence in Wash- 
 ington of great trials, like the star-route cases and that of 
 Guiteau, has called the attention of the country to the con- 
 dition of District law, but no substantial improvement has 
 resulted. At present the laws and ordinances are not even 
 collected in a code. To learn even the municipal regula- 
 
23 
 
 tions one must consult the acts of the corporations of Wash- 
 ington and Georgetown, deceased ; the acts of the Levy Court 
 of the County of Washington, deceased ; certain acts of the 
 Legislative Assembly, deceased ; certain regulations of the 
 Commissioners of the District given the force of law, and 
 certain acts of Congress. These ordinances are often contra- 
 dictory, clumsily drawn or incomplete, and need to be re- 
 vised, as well as consolidated and codified. Several fruitless 
 attempts have been made to obtain the necessary legislation 
 by Congress. Successive revisers of the general laws have, 
 since the time of Cranch, exposed in vain to the national 
 legislature the defects, absurdities, and barbarities of the 
 statutes. A code containing only existing laws cannot be 
 passed, because members are unable to refrain from taking 
 advantage of the endless invitations to improvement which 
 are offered, and a revised code cannot, it seems, be passed, 
 because members squabble to such an extent over proposed 
 changes on important subject, that the limited time with 
 which Congress favors the District is consumed without 
 bringing the question to a decision. The House of Repre- 
 sentatives has very recently doubled the number of days de- 
 voted to the affairs of the District of Columbia, and now 
 agrees, if nothing of greater importance interferes, and 
 quorums can be secured, and nobody at the time is possessed 
 of the filibustering mania, to legislate for the capital on two 
 afternoons of each month instead of one. This increase is 
 exceedingly welcome to the people of Washington, and it is 
 hoped that time may now be found to rid the District of some 
 of the English statutes existing at the time of the first emi- 
 gration to Maryland, which are our law merely because 
 " found applicable to local and other circumstances " in tliat 
 state and at that time. They are hardly adapted to the 
 nineteenth century and the capital of the United States. 
 The District should be given a comprehensive code or body 
 of revised statutes, embodying a little of the modern spirit of 
 legislation, both in respect to substantive law and procedure. 
 There are always some faithful and able friends of Washington 
 
24 
 
 in Congress, especially but not exclusively upon the District 
 committees of the two houses, who labor diligently for the 
 District's good, though sometimes discouraged by Congres- 
 sional inertia and by the confusing and contradictory appeals 
 of citizens. To these friends Washington appeals for relief 
 from the clog upon its onward and upward march, which is 
 caused by the mummy of ancient laws now tightly fastened 
 upon it. 
 
 NEGLECT OF WASHINGTON'S HEALTH. 
 
 A grievance both of the past and of the present is found 
 in the fact that the health of the capital has been neglected. 
 The sanitary condition of the city has received insufficient 
 attention from Congress at all times. It will not be neces- 
 sary, however, to point out to the sympathetic reader earlier 
 evils than those of 1888, and everything but mere reference 
 may be omitted in respect to marshes long unfilled within 
 the city limits, in respect to the ditch, festering in the sun 
 and poisoning the air, which formerly existed under the 
 name of the Washington Canal, in respect to imperfect sewer- 
 age and a dozen other sources of disease partially or entirely 
 removed only after years of inaction. A grievance still ex- 
 isting, though the first steps toward its removal have been 
 taken, may be cited, and that will be sufficient. The old 
 Committee of One Hundred, a voluntary association of prom- 
 inent citizens, whose representations to Congress gave the 
 city its new government in 1878, say in their memorial to 
 that body : " The marshes which skirt the entire front of our 
 city are the growth of years of neglect of the commercial and 
 sanitary interests of the nation's capital. The remedy is to 
 be found only in a judicious plan of harbor improvements 
 by which the health and commerce of the city will be alike 
 promoted. Congress has lavished millions on the rivers and 
 harbors of the country, in localities, too, whose claims to 
 national consideration are insignificant as compared with 
 Washington, while comparatively nothing has been done for 
 the harbor of its cajDital, or for the navigation of a great 
 river which has capacity to float its navy and to sustain a 
 
25 
 
 vast marine commerce." The improvement suggested by 
 this quotation is now in progress and over 500 acres have 
 been partially reclaimed. Work has been delayed by ques- 
 tions, believed not to be serious, concerning title to a part of 
 the land to be improved, and by a lack of necessary funds 
 a,s the result of President Cleveland's pocket veto of the last 
 river and harbor bill, which afflicted the just wdth the un- 
 just. There should be no dilly-dallying or half-way meas- 
 ures in the reclamation of the Potomac bottoms. The land 
 that has been partly reclaimed is in no condition to withstand 
 ^ rise in the water, and there is constant danger that floods, 
 freshets and ice-gorges may destroy all that has been accom- 
 plished. There has been, of course, an improvement in the 
 city's health with the filling of marshy flats covered with 
 coarse grasses, which, besmeared with the foul current from 
 one of the city's large sewers, and exposed at low-tide to the 
 heat of the sun, gave to each wind the seeds of disease and 
 death. But a rank vegetation on the half-reclaimed land 
 is still left to decay and to threaten the health of the capital. 
 Congress should make prompt and adequate provision for 
 the vigorous prosecution of the work. The proposed im- 
 provement will not only benefit the city's harbor and health, 
 but it will add to the government reservations, fully reim- 
 bursing the expense of reclamation, several hundred acres 
 of valuable land, which can be converted into an attractive 
 park. 
 
 The healthfulness of Washington is a subject that has 
 b'een much discussed, and the city from its earliest days has 
 been put upon the defensive. At the tim^ when the site of 
 the capital was chosen it was charged and denied that the 
 climate was destructive to Northern constitutions. Mr. 
 Warden (1816), in the first elaborate description of the Dis- 
 trict,, says that the prevailing opinion that Washington is 
 unhealthy is based on prejudice. Mr. J. Elliott (1830), in 
 the work to which reference has been made, says : " The 
 prejudices against the general health of this District have 
 been dissipated by the monthly publication of meteorologi- 
 
26 
 
 cal observations, and the interments in the public grave- 
 yards, authenticated by the board of health." But even the 
 figures of the board of health do not seem to have banished 
 the prejudice entirely, since Dickens, in 1842, pronounced 
 the city " very unhealthy," and that opinion has been re- 
 tained by many up to a recent time. The site would not 
 seem, however, to have been originally objectionable. Henry 
 Fleet, its first white visitor, who was captured in 1621 by 
 the Indians living here, says : " This place, without all ques- 
 tion, is the most pleasant and healthful place in all this coun- 
 try, and most convenient for habitation ; the air temperate 
 in summer and not violent in winter." The charge of 
 unhealthfulness was, doubtless, first made by those who 
 wished the seat of government to be located elsewhere than 
 upon the Potomac. If any reliance can be placed upon sta- 
 tistics, the city's average health has been excellent, and the 
 death-rate of the white population is now reduced to about 
 the minimum reached in large cities, in spite of the sug- 
 gested draAvbacks ; and such of these as now remain ma}'^ 
 be readily removed. Malarial diseases which have pre- 
 vailed to a considerable extent will, it is thought, be almost 
 entirely prevented by the reclamation of the flats. In the 
 absence of its disease-breeding marshes, with its improved 
 sewerage, with abundance of pure water to be secured from 
 the comprehensive system of supply now approaching com- 
 pletion, with its broad, airy streets and its thousands of shade 
 trees, and without the noxious odors of a manufacturing 
 city, it should be one of the healthiest, as it is one of tlie 
 handsomest cities in the world, 
 
 THE REGION OF THE RAILROADS. 
 
 An urgent grievance of the present, which grows more 
 unbearable year after year with the attempts at growth of 
 the sections of the city specially injured, is that which arises 
 from the conduct of the railroads entering Washington. 
 Their illegal occupation of streets and reservations, and the 
 damage and disfigurement which they unnecessarily inflict,. 
 
27 
 
 are known to every reader of The Star, however recent the 
 date of his subscription, and Httle additional comment is 
 necessary. These evils have been exposed in vain for years 
 to the Congress of the United States. The Senate District 
 committee has recently decided to ignore them altogether. 
 It is not at all concerned to discover that with surface 
 tracks, in part illegal, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad dis- 
 figures, obstructs and endangers one whole section of the 
 city, and the Baltimore and Potomac road another. It 
 reads with indifference the long list of persons killed or 
 wounded at the single piece of illegal track known as the 
 Baltimore and Ohio " Y." It hears only with amusement 
 that, in the long strip of land over which the Baltimore and 
 Potomac road is permitted by grace of Congress to rule with 
 absolute power, the people of South Washington find for 
 most of the time an impassable obstruction to travel and 
 traffic, and, if entrance may be secured, a dangerous man- 
 trap. It knows perfectly well, too, that in no city of the world, 
 except in that one whose interests are in part confided ta 
 its vigilant protection, would the present condition of affairs 
 be endured for a day. Yet the regulation of the railroads 
 is a matter to be postponed indefinitely. Almost simulta- 
 neously with this announcement to the railroads of an 
 unlimited license to sponge upon public property, and to 
 vex and injure the people of the city, comes the novel and 
 startling statement from a hitherto valued champion of the 
 District's rights in the Senate that Washingtonians, like the 
 occupants of forts or arsenals to which the government has 
 title, reside in the city and hold their property by suffer- 
 ance, and may be evicted at any time at the pleasure of the 
 government. A combination of these two propositions de- 
 velops the pleasing doctrine that the descendants or assigns 
 of those persons who gave in part and sold in part to the 
 government the portion of the District which it owns, may 
 be evicted by this donee or grantee from that part of the 
 ground which was expressly retained, and which has been 
 improved as private property ; while great corporations to 
 
28 
 
 which government property has been gratuitously loaned, 
 and which, without permission, have appropriated other 
 public property, and use all to the injury of the city and its 
 people, may not be evicted or disturbed. The property 
 owners are Oklahoma trespassers; the law-breaking rail- 
 roads are not. Undoubtedly both branches of the doctrine 
 are unsound in point of law, but waiving all questions of 
 legality, the two announcements might naturally suggest to 
 Congress the effective scheme, beautiful in its simplicity, of 
 quieting complaints against the railroads, and settling the 
 whole complicated problem, by evicting the restless and dis- 
 satisfied citizens, and turning over their property to the all- 
 absorbing railroads. 
 
 When, if that contingency may be imagined, the sin- 
 cere efforts of alleged champions of the public against cor- 
 porations shall no longer be confined to a field of exercise 
 in localities where the dear people to be tenderly guarded 
 have the right to vote, and when the legislature of the Dis- 
 trict shall pay more regard to the interests intrusted to its 
 guardianship than to the wishes of wealthy politician-making 
 corporations, a wise and statesmanlike plan of regulating 
 the steam railroads of the city will be devised and enforced, 
 which shall clear away surface tracks, check the illegal acts 
 of these squatters upon government property, free the public 
 reservations, and relieve two sections of the city from a 
 burden which throttles, like the old man of the sea upon 
 the shoulders of Sindbad. 
 
 In connection with the broad plan of remedying rail- 
 road evils, which will place a union station at the nearest 
 point to the business center of the city that can be reached 
 by tunneling or with small injury to public and private in- 
 terests, a comprehensive system of local rapid transit by 
 electric or cable railways will be provided, which shall give 
 all parts of the District quick and easy access to such sta- 
 tion or stations. It is evident that in the improved street 
 railways of the future horses must give way to more rapid 
 and less objectionable motors, that grooved rails must take 
 
29 
 
 the place of the present abominations, and that the fran- 
 chises to these corporations, no longer gifts, must become a 
 source of public revenue, outside of that which is derived 
 from them through just taxation of their tangible property. 
 The obstacle will be met here, as in New York, of an 
 appearance of unjust discrimination, if greater burdens for 
 the benefit of the public are placed upon new lines than 
 upon those in existence with which the former will come 
 into competition. But the difficulty may also be overcome 
 here in the same manner in which it is proposed to over- 
 come it in that city. The competition or threatened com- 
 petition of new roads with improved motive power will 
 inevitably drive existing companies to ask from Congress 
 the privilege of using the new motors. Some, too, will wish 
 to extend their lines, and some which have been making un- 
 authorized use of certain streets of the city will ask that 
 their occupation of such streets be legalized. When these 
 applications are made to Congress, without the necessity of 
 recourse to the severe and unjust remedy of a general for- 
 feiture of charters, the opportunity will be conveniently 
 afforded of applying to existing roads the restrictions and 
 exactions which are now found to be wise and proper in 
 granting new franchises. 
 
 Another function of the improved street railway system 
 will be to render substantial assistance in furthering 
 
 Washington's wonderful suburban development, 
 
 a striking feature of the capital's recent history. A city 
 nearly equal in size to the original Washington has been 
 planned outside the present boundaries. New roads and 
 streets have been laid out. Handsome houses have gone 
 up, and so have the prices of lots. Fortunes have been 
 made in the purchase, subdivision and sale of suburban prop- 
 erty. The care of this infant Washington is a need of the 
 present. It should be supplied in equitable proportion to 
 its population and taxable values with city improvements. 
 In time Washington will doubtless stretch a symmetrical 
 
30 
 
 plan of streets and avenues over the whole District. The 
 sooner the lines to which suburban growth may adapt itself 
 are authoritatively laid down the better it will be for the 
 future city. The destruction of one house which interfered 
 with L'Enfant's plan of the original capital caused a his- 
 toric rumpus. What a clash may be expected if the plan- 
 ning of the annex to Washington, to conform as far as is 
 practicable to the streets and avenues of the present city, is 
 delayed until over the greater part of the District only the 
 vexatious choice is given between a wholesale destruction of 
 private improvements, made in good faith, and a departure, 
 in respect to the size and direction of streets, from the general 
 plan ! The task of reconciling public and private interests 
 in this matter has already ceased to be an easy one, and 
 every year adds to the difficulties. 
 
 The development of this infant Washington is not of 
 course to monopolize attention and revenue to the neglect 
 of the present city. Large areas within the existing boun- 
 daries, especially in the sections afflicted by surface railroad 
 tracks and numerous grade crossings, require improvement 
 and denser settlement. Then there are to be supplied all 
 the current needs of a growing city, involving, for in- 
 stance, the steady increase of the police force and of the 
 number of schools to keep pace with the multiplication of 
 those who are to be protected and educated. The columns 
 of the local press, the resolutions of citizens' associations, 
 and the reports of the District Commissioners show that 
 these needs are neither few nor insignificant. 
 
31 
 
 Some of Washington's Grievances. 
 
 NO VOTES, YET NO GRIEVANCE? 
 
 Washington Needs no Elective Franchise in Municipal Affairs — 
 No Repeal of ' ^Exclusive Legislation ' ' Clause — But Right 
 to Vote for Representative^ Senator, and President. 
 
 From the Washington Evening Star, March lo, 1888. 
 
 The idea of withdrawing from state power and the con- 
 trol of its residents a portion of territory to serve as the 
 seat of government under the exclusive jurisdiction of the 
 people of the whole Union, as represented by Congress, 
 seems to have obtained a strong hold upon the minds of 
 the founders of the Republic. Many desired to strengthen 
 the notion of a Union by giving the general government 
 an exclusive territory, a center of federal action, controlled 
 by it alone. State jealousies had some influence in the 
 matter. The jurisdiction of any one state over the seat of 
 government would, it was thought, give that state, to some 
 extent, control over the general government itself. Exclusive 
 jurisdiction and the power to call out the militia would also, it 
 was considered, enable Congress to protect itself in case of 
 riot or other disturbance. The fact, now worn threadbare 
 by constant allusion, was remembered, that Congress, while 
 meeting at Philadelphia, October 21, 1783, had been in- 
 sulted and forced to adjourn to Princeton. The opposition 
 to the plan of giving Congress exclusive jurisdiction over 
 the seat of government seems to have been feeble. No 
 debate upon the clause is reported to have taken place in 
 the Constitutional convention. Objection was made in 
 the Virginia ratifying convention that the District might 
 become an asylum for political criminals or violators of 
 states' rights. But the clause was adopted without much 
 
32 
 
 opposition. By its terms Congress was given the power of 
 exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over this na- 
 tional territory. The legislature of the Union has an author- 
 ity over the District incompatible with the exercise of the full 
 elective franchise by its citizens. Without an amendment 
 to the Constitution Washington can never vote for Presi- 
 dent or Senator or Representative. If there is a political 
 grievance, the Constitution is responsible. The city's com- 
 plaint against Congress is not that it has deprived residents 
 of the right to vote, but that it has failed to take this dis- 
 ability sufficiently into consideration in its treatment of 
 the city. If the United States had attempted to assume 
 no particular control over the capital, and the seat of gov- 
 ernment as a city of Maryland had legislated for itself, and 
 had improved and developed itself only in proportion to 
 the means of its citizens, then the indifference of Congress 
 and the frantic efforts of legislators to avoid a few hours' 
 consideration of its affairs might have some ground of 
 justification. But Washington protests against the appli- 
 cation of a theory and practice which, in combination, have 
 denied it the privileges while burdening it largely with the 
 responsibilities of independence. 
 
 In the performance of its duties as guardian of the capi- 
 tal's welfare, four courses are open to Congress. First, it may 
 leave the relations between the District and the general 
 government unchanged, but give more time and considera- 
 tion to the capital and its affairs, remodeling its laws in 
 accordance with the wishes of its citizens and providing 
 liberally for the improvement of its appearance, for its gen- 
 eral development and for its relief from the heavy debt in- 
 equitably imposed upon it. Congressmen should look upon 
 themselves as the representatives of a national district as 
 well as of their own local districts. It should be remembered 
 that the so-called congressional appropriations for the capi- 
 tal's ordinary expenses are not gifts or beggar's alms, but 
 merely a disbursement of the District revenues, one-half 
 coming from individual tax-paying citizens, the remainder 
 
33 
 
 from the United States as the untaxed holder of one-half of 
 all AVashington property, and much should be done by the 
 government beyond the contribution of this quota. If the 
 capital is to be deprived of privileges which would belong 
 to it as the city of its citizens, it should be made worthy of 
 admiration as the city of the United States, representing in 
 miniature its growth in population, wealth and power. 
 
 UNLIMITED ELECTIVE FRANCHISE IN MUNICIPAL CONCERNS. 
 
 Secondly, Congress may give to the District local sover- 
 eignty and the elective franchise to the limited extent which 
 the Constitution will permit. It has been urged by many 
 that Congress has the ability to delegate its power of general 
 legislation; that the exercise of exclusive authority does not 
 forbid a choice of agencies ; that the government provided 
 for the District should be assimilated to the theory of repub- 
 lican institutions ; and that the natural right of men to gov- 
 ern themselves should be recognized as far as that is possible. 
 And to show that it was never intended by the framers of 
 the Constitution to deprive any portion of the people of the 
 United States of local representative government, the words 
 of Madison in the 43d number of the Federalist are quoted. 
 The other side of the question has been argued with equal 
 abilit}'', and the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia 
 have adopted it. In Roach et al. vs. Van Riswick (Wash- 
 ington Law Reporter, November 10, 1879), it was decided 
 that Congress has no capacity under the Constitution to 
 delegate its delegated powers by bestowing general legisla- 
 tive authority upon the local government of the District, 
 and an act of the so-called legislative assembly of the Dis- 
 trict, upon which the suit was broaght, was declared inop- 
 erative and void. For the present, then, in the absence of 
 an overruling decision by the Supreme Court of the United 
 States, such a delegation of power is unconstitutional, and 
 only the unsatisfactory privileges of a municipal corporation 
 can be conferred. But experience has taught that if the de- 
 cision in Roach against Van Riswick were reversed, and if 
 
34 
 
 the most extensive powers of voting were bestowed which 
 any reasonable construction of the Constitution can grant, 
 the gift would be not merely valueless, but objectionable. 
 The judiciary committee of the House of Representatives, 
 in a report made June 1, 1874, stated the following truths: 
 " In a strict legal sense there can be said to be no such 
 thing as a local government of the District of Columbia, for 
 there can be no government within the District independent 
 of that of the federal government, and whatever local 
 authority there may be now existing, or which may here- 
 after be set up within the District, it can only be regarded 
 legally as an agency of the federal government, and what- 
 ever authority this local government may exercise, it must 
 be regarded as the act of the United States through their 
 delegated representative." The District legislature would 
 in any event act under the restrictions suggested by these 
 words. Its general laws would be mere petitions, void with- 
 out the assent, express or implied, of Congress. A delegate 
 without a vote has little weight in a " log-rolling " body 
 like the House of Representatives. The other officers would 
 be petty town officials, and a voice would still be denied the 
 city in the choice of the executive and legislative officers of 
 the nation. In short, the exercise of suffi-age thus limited 
 would be an expensive farce. M^ithout representation suf- 
 frage is of no value ; and, shut out from the bodies which 
 make its laws and impose taxes upon it, representation of 
 the District under the Constitution in its present shape can 
 be only a sham. 
 
 It is extremel}^ doubtful whether popular suffrage is 
 desirable in the choice of those who are intrusted with 
 purely municipal functions, even in cities where its adop- 
 tion is not opposed by the peculiar objections which con- 
 front it in its application to the affairs of Washington. Ex- 
 perience and observation do not teach that a municipality 
 which is reasonably well-governed will display wisdom by 
 demanding a change of system in order to assimilate itself 
 to ordinary American cities. The latter are notoriously 
 
misgoverned. Incompetent and dishonest officials have 
 been too often chosen in partisan contests, immense munici- 
 pal debts have been contracted, and excessive taxation 
 has been imposed. Statistics show that while state indebt- 
 edness has decreased between the last two censuses, munici- 
 pal indebtedness has vastly increased, far more rapidly than 
 population and valuation, and its amount in American 
 municipalities is now estimated at a billion dollars. The 
 deplorable financial condition of so manj- of our large cities 
 is due, in the main, to unlimited popular suffrage, which 
 has given to non-taxpaying, irresponsible voters 
 
 THE POWER TO EXPEND, EXTRAVAGANTLY AND CORRUPTLY, 
 
 the money supplied by tax-payers. It has placed the con- 
 tributors and non-contributors to a fund upon an equal foot- 
 ing in the matter of deciding how and by whom the fund 
 shall be disbursed. It has enabled the latter, under the 
 guise of taxation, to make a division of the contributions of 
 the former. It has legalized the virtual confiscation of ac- 
 cumulated wealth by aggregated paupers. Under its work- 
 ings, robbers at the head of organized bands of destitute and 
 desperate followers, have been permitted to seize, through 
 mere force of numbers, the purse of more than one city, and 
 to spend its contents at pleasure. The intolerable misgov- 
 -erment of many American cities has not only caused the 
 suggestion of such schemes of reform as the limitation of 
 suffrage to tax-payers, and minority representation, but it 
 has led even to the bold proposition that all power of self- 
 government be withdrawn from these municipalities, and 
 that the management of their affairs be intrusted to the 
 state legislature — a plan which, if adopted, would place 
 them in respect to their internal administration in a condi- 
 tion similar to that of Washington. In theory the powers 
 exercised by the officers of cities are by delegation from the 
 people of the whole state, in whom the ultimate sovereignty, 
 as modified by the Constitution of the United States, resides. 
 In New York, from 1777 to 1821, the officers of muncipal 
 
36 
 
 corporations were appointed by the governor and four sena- 
 tors chosen every year by four subdivisions of the assembly. 
 Instances of the intervention of the state government into 
 the affairs of cities, amounting in some cases to indirect dis- 
 franchisement, have not been lacking in later years. There 
 are serious objections, however, to the plan of granting ex- 
 clusive control over cities to the state government, and it is 
 not likely that the proposition can muster many advocates. 
 But the mere fact that the suggestion has been made indi- 
 cates that the evils which our municipalities endure are so 
 great that the condition of Washington is viewed by some 
 as preferable. The capital may well hesitate before it de- 
 mands a privilege which its possessors are eager to resign, 
 before it seeks to bind upon its own shoulders the burden 
 of which other cities are making desperate efforts to relieve 
 themselves, before it asks, as a boon, the main source of 
 municipal woes. If the doctrine were generally accepted 
 that universal suffrage is demanded by republican princi- 
 ples only in the choice of those officers who exercise purely 
 governmental functions, and not in the selection of agents 
 by municipal corporations to perform duties affecting pri- 
 vate property interests, and if Congress might be depended 
 upon to grant to the tax-payers of the District the financial 
 administration of the capital, some of the objections against 
 an elective system would be removed. But there is no prob- 
 ability of such action by Congress. The same spirit wdiich 
 would force republican forms of government to be observed 
 in the District, though republican rights are not granted 
 therewith, would deny a property qualification for voters. 
 The municipal affairs of the city are now managed by a 
 Commission appointed by the President, and compared with 
 the manner and cost of the performance of similar duties in 
 other cities the work is well and cheaply done. If this 
 method of government should be abandoned, and the uni- 
 versal-suffrage system adopted, there is no reason to believe 
 that Washington would escape the maladministration which 
 prevails in other large cities. The conditions wdiich cause 
 
• 37 
 
 popular suffrage to be baneful in the latter exist to a con- 
 siderable degree at the capital, and in one or two respects 
 
 WASHINGTON HAS ADDITIONAL DISADVANTAGES 
 
 with which to contend. The character of the voting popu- 
 lation of the city, though it would not be a proper ground 
 of objection if it were proposed to invest the residents of the 
 District with the full rights of American citizenship, may 
 be noted when the evils of suffrage are offered without its 
 substantial benefits. About one-third of the inhabitants of 
 Washington are colored, and this number includes thous- 
 ands of the worst as well as the best specimens of the race. 
 In addition to the permanent colored element an army of 
 recruits would be attracted by elections to the city from the 
 farms of Maryland and Virginia, to be used as voting ma- 
 terial by political " bosses," and to be supported as loafers* 
 partly by the wages of politics, partly by charity and partly 
 by jail nourishment. The floating population of non-tax- 
 payers will always be large at the capital, where office- 
 seekers most do congregate, but with the accessions that 
 elections bring the solid citizens would almost certainly be 
 overwhelmed. 
 
 An objectionable result of the choice by general vote of 
 minor officers only, with insignificant powers, is the small- 
 bore politician developed by small-bore elections. In the 
 states the politician may hope to rise, step by step, to the 
 governorship of a wealthy, populous and powerful commun- 
 ity, to a seat in the national legislature, or to the presidency. 
 In Washington he must confine himself to petty affairs and 
 limit himself by petty ambitions ; and, naturally, few able 
 and upright men would be tempted by the prospect. 
 
 The commission government, which a sham represen- 
 tative system would displace, has the advantage of bringing 
 the United States and the national capital into those close 
 relations which were anticipated in the plans of our fore- 
 fathers. The members of the commission are appointed by 
 
38 
 
 the President, to whom they report, and the nominations of 
 two of them are approved by the Senate. The Treasurer of 
 the United States is treasurer of the District. Congress alone 
 is responsible for all general legislation. The true relations 
 of Washington to the general government are thus sug- 
 gested at every turn. If the city were permitted to elect 
 local officers and pass local laws it would remove itself to 
 that extent from national consideration, members of Con- 
 gress would be permitted fewer opportunities of learning 
 their full responsibilities in respect to the nation's ward, 
 while the privilege gained would have no compensating 
 advantage. 
 
 It is true that commission governments are not unob- 
 jectionable, but it is believed that the most serious of their 
 evils may be avoided more readily than those of the alter- 
 native system. Among the possible dangers of such a 
 government for Washington are two that are prominent : 
 First, that the executive may appoint as commissioners, not 
 bona fide citizens of the District, interested in its welfare 
 alone, but his own favorites, on the score of personal friend- 
 ship, or as a reward for political services. Secondly, that 
 such commissioners, when appointed, will use the minor 
 positions under their control as similar political rewards to 
 aid the party or the political " boss " in whose interests they 
 have been given office. If the city's government is ever 
 debased into a mere political machine, a death blow will be 
 given to the interests of the District. The capital is the 
 ward, not of a party, but of a nation ; it requires the friendh' 
 legislation of both parties ; and to obtain such legislation 
 its government must be non-partisan. The affairs of Wash- 
 ington are in certain respects confided to the President and 
 commissioners appointed by him as trustees. If President 
 or commissioner takes advantage of this position to benefit 
 himself, or a clique, or a political party, and is not in- 
 fluenced solely by a consideration of the interests confided 
 to his protection a sacred trust is betrayed. 
 
39 
 
 Thirdly, Congress may propose an amendment to the 
 Constitution 
 
 EXTINGUISHING ITS OWN POWER OF EXCLUSIVE LEGISLATION 
 
 and placing the residents of the District upon the same foot- 
 ing in regard to all elections as the citizens of the several 
 states. The prosperity of Washington as the national capi- 
 tal would be endangered by the grant of local sovereignty 
 to its citizens. Even if the nation might be induced to sur- 
 render the control of its property interests in the District 
 entirely to the residents, which is hardly conceivable, it 
 would not be willing to pay one-half of the expenses of the 
 capital with no power of management in respect to its affairs, 
 and with not even a voice in its government. But it is 
 absolutely essential to the welfare of the city that its present 
 financial relations to the United States shall be preserved. 
 The manner of Washington's development renders it utterly 
 unable to meet, unassisted, the expense of sustaining itself 
 as a magnificent national capital. What was said in 1878, 
 when the question was whether the government should pay 
 a fixed proportion of District expenses, might be repeated if 
 under any circumstances the attempt were made to with- 
 draw the support then provided : " As in the beginning the 
 federal city was without population or resources to which 
 its founders could look for its development and improvement, 
 so also at the present time it is wholly without the means 
 either in property, commerce or manufactures, to meet the 
 enormous outlays which the magnificence of the plan re- 
 quires. One-half of its property, and the best half, is owned 
 by the United States, and pays no taxes, and the other half 
 is mortgaged for one-fourth of its value by a debt contracted 
 in exhausting and paralyzing efforts to make it what its 
 patriotic founders designed it to be — a national capital, 
 worthy of the name it bears." If deprivation of suffrage is 
 the only condition upon which citizens of the District are 
 partially relieved from their heavy burdens, they evidently 
 
40 
 
 prefer to remain " political slaves " rather than become bank- 
 rupt freemen. 
 
 The arguments, already recited, which led to the estab- 
 lishment of an exclusively national district must also be 
 weighed when it is attempted to reverse the decision then 
 made. 
 
 The sentiment which identifies the fate of the Union 
 with that of the capital should not be disregarded. Wash- 
 ington has planted the roots of its existence and prosperity 
 in the spirit of American nationality. It has flourished in 
 proportion as this spirit has been strong. The grand designs 
 respecting it were neglected by those, not its enemies, who 
 resented the substantial embodiment of a power superior to 
 that of the state. It again revived when civil war developed 
 the patriotic national sentiment, and Americans learned that 
 the Union is a substantial something to love, to live for, and 
 to die for. The bloodshed of the Revolution gave birth to 
 the spirit of nationality and created the city ; the bloodshed 
 of the civil war revived the spirit and regenerated the city. 
 The imagination may conceive that the soul of the Union is 
 enshrined in this exclusive territory, and that if ever its 
 peculiar existence shall be extinguished the event will be a 
 forerunner of the dissolution of the Union. 
 
 Fourthly, retaining exclusive jurisdiction, Congress may 
 propose 
 
 A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT GIVING THE DISTRICT 
 REPRESENTATION 
 
 in the bodies which legislate for it and tax it, a voice as to 
 the President, who is to appoint the commissioners to man- 
 age its local affairs, and, in general, except as to the privilege 
 of choosing town or county officers, to place the residents of 
 the District upon the same footing as the citizens of the 
 several states. 
 
 A minor discrimination against inhabitants of the cap- 
 ital which needs to be thus remedied is that which denies 
 them the right of bringing suits in the federal courts in those 
 
41 
 
 cases where the privilege is given to the citizens of a state, 
 and which puts them before the national judiciary in a less 
 favorable attitude than that of aliens. (Hepburn vs. Ellzey, 
 2 Cranch., 445.) 
 
 While the District is not a state, and while its citizens, in 
 addition to the denial of the benefits of the federal courts, 
 are forbidden representation, it is subject to direct federal 
 taxation, although the Constitution says that ^'representatives 
 and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states 
 of the Union according to their respective numbers." These 
 words are held to furnish merely a rule of apportionment, 
 and not to limit the power of taxation. (Loughborough vs. 
 Blake, 5 Wheaton, 317.) The District paid its proportion, 
 some $50,000, of the twenty-million direct tax of August 6, 
 1861, the last of the four direct taxes. It has also paid into 
 the national treasury from the commencement of the excise- 
 tax law in 1862 $6,454,907.03, a larger amount than that de- 
 rived from Alabama, Arkansas, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, 
 South Carolina or Vermont. " Taxation without representa- 
 tion" thus prevails at the capital. It is alleged, in justification, 
 that the District (when nearl}'- uninhabited) voluntarily re- 
 signed its right of distinct representation, and irrevocably 
 adopted the whole body of Congress (including its bitter 
 enemies and its lukewarm friends) as the representatives of 
 its interests. Washington was in existence only a few months 
 when its residents began to bemoan their prospective dis- 
 franchisement, their exclusion from participation in national 
 elections. In a pamphlet concerning the " government of 
 the territory of Columbia," published in 1801 by A. B. Wood- 
 ward, it is said : " This body of people is as much entitled to 
 the enjoyment of the rights of citizenship as any other part 
 of the people of the United States. There can exist no neces- 
 sity for their disfranchisement, no necessity for them to re- 
 pose on the mere generosity of their countrymen to be pro- 
 tected from tyranny ; to mere spontaneous attention for the 
 regulation of their interests. They are entitled to a partici- 
 pation in the general councils on the principles of equity and 
 
42 
 
 reciprocity." From the beginning of the century, too, mem- 
 bers of Congress who have viewed the condition of the capital 
 with other emotions than that of indifference have either 
 " felt their hearts bleed " over the enslaved condition of the 
 people, or have denounced the disfranchised as selling their 
 republican birthright for a mess of pottage. In a debate in 
 the House, December, 1800, Representative Smilie said : 
 " Not a man in the District would be represented in the 
 government, whereas every man who contributed to the 
 support of a government ought to be represented in itr 
 otherwise his natural rights were subverted and he was left 
 not a citizen but a slave. It was a right which this coun- 
 try, when under subjection to Great Britain, thought worth 
 making a resolute struggle for, and evinced a determination 
 to perish rather than not enjoy." In 1803 the " unrepubli- 
 can " condition of the District was again a matter of 
 comment, and it was proposed to recede to Maryland and 
 Virginia jurisdiction over the parts of the District originally 
 ceded by them. John Randolph, Jr., in February of that 
 year, said in the House : " I could wish, indeed, to see the 
 people within this District restored to their rights. This spe- 
 cies of government is an experiment how far freeman can be 
 reconciled to live without rights ; an experiment dangerous 
 to the liberties of these states. But inasmuch as it had 
 been already made, inasmuch as I was not accessory to it,. 
 and as at some future time its deleterious effects may be arrested, 
 I am disposed to vote against the resolution." A proposi- 
 tion to recede the territory of Columbia outside of the limits 
 of Washington, caused RejDresentative Clark to say, in 1805, 
 that he spoke of the inhabitants whenever he had occasion 
 to allude to them with pity and compassion, and he most 
 devoutly wished to see them placed in a condition more con- 
 genial to his own feelings, and the feelings of every true 
 lover of civil and political freedom. Alexandria was retro- 
 ceded in 1846, her " galling disfranchisement " being re- 
 ferred to in debate. Georgetown had sought retrocession in 
 1838, but unsuccessfully. 
 
43 
 
 Many of those who favored the exclusive jurisdiction of 
 Congress over the District on the same grounds that caused 
 such a District to be established were yet 
 
 PREPARED TO AMEND THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 when the proper time should come, in order to give the peo- 
 ple of the capital a representation in Congress, the body 
 which, in theory, constitutes their legislature. As early as 
 December, 1800, Representative Dennis said : " If it should 
 be necessary the constitution might be so altered as to give 
 them a delegate to the general legislature when their num- 
 bers should become sufficient." A territorial delegate, which 
 did not then exist, could not have been intended. The time 
 suggested by Mr. Dennis seems to have now arrived. The 
 difficulty of providing Congressional representation for an 
 isolated collection of people, insufficiently numerous in them- 
 selves to be entitled to a representative, is no longer to be 
 met. The population of the District is increasing with ex- 
 traordinary rapidity. In 1880 it numbered 177,638, and in 
 1885, 203,459. The census of 1880 was the first enumer- 
 ation which showed it to have acquired a population that 
 would entitle it to ask admission as a state if it were upon 
 the footing of an ordinary territory. The number of per- 
 sons to be represented by each member of the House of 
 Representatives is, according to the last apportionment, 
 about 152,000. The House committee on territories reports 
 in favor of granting representation to Montana, which, it 
 thinks, will have 170,000 population next November; to 
 Washington territory, which is expected to contain 160,000 
 people at that time, and to New Mexico, which had 134,131 
 persons in 1885. One representative in the House and one, 
 at least, in the Senate, should be granted the District. This 
 arrangement is found to be equitable when the population 
 and growth of the several states are considered. The Dis- 
 trict, by the showing of the census of 1880, already surpassed 
 in point of numbers Nevada (62,265), Delaware (146,654), 
 and Oregon (174,767) ; and the advantage over Delaware 
 
44 
 
 and Nevada is likely to be retained. In addition to these 
 three states, Colorado (194,649), Florida (267,351), Rhode 
 Island (276,351), Vermont (332,286) and New Hampshire 
 (346,984), had less than double the District's population, 
 making the assignment of one Senator to the latter equitable. 
 
 In view of the comparative rate of increase and other 
 considerations, the District is likely to be found in the future 
 ahead of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Delaware, and, 
 perhaps, Connecticut, of the original states, and Vermont 
 and Nevada of the new states. 
 
 The adoption of the fourth plan by Congress would be 
 a compromise between granting only local, qualified suf- 
 frage, which is highly objectionable to the District, and con- 
 senting to absolute self-government, which involves a sur- 
 render of national control over the capital, and to which 
 the United States, as the owner of one-half the city, and 
 the virtual payer of one-half its taxes, would never consent. 
 The wisdom of this course is sustained by all the arguments 
 which go to show that the constitutional power of " exclusive 
 legislation " by Congress should not be hastily yielded, and 
 also by those which maintain that taxation without repre- 
 sentation and inequality of citizens before the law should 
 not be allowed to exist. The District would be placed in 
 certain respects on a level with the states. Taxed like 
 them, it would have like them a voice in the disposition of 
 the general taxes. It would not, however, stand upon pre- 
 cisely the same footing with them, for the states are subor- 
 dinated to the general government only in certain defined 
 particulars, whereas the District would be subordinate in all 
 respects. This inferiority would be indicated, it has been 
 suggiested, by giving the District 
 
 ONE INSTEAD OF TWO SENATORS 
 
 and by a corresponding reduction in its electoral vote. En- 
 jo^nng representation in Congress and participation in the 
 choice of the President, who appoints its local officers, Wash- 
 ington would resemble in its municipal government a city 
 
45 
 
 which, after voting for the governor and legislature of a 
 state, is managed by a commission appointed by the former 
 and approved by the latter. Under this fourth plan the 
 suggestions made in respect to the duty of members of Con- 
 gress as the exclusive legislators for the capital would still 
 be applicable ; the present financial arrangements between 
 the District and the general government would be main- 
 tained ; the expensive transportation of office-holding voters 
 to the states from Maine to Florida and from New York to 
 California would, after the abolition of the office-apportion- 
 ment system, be avoided ; the rights of residents of the 
 District as American citizens would be recognized in a 
 manner which would inflict the smallest possible injury 
 upon the interests of the city a» capital of the United States^ 
 and this spot of national territority with all its patriotic 
 associations would be preserved to the Union. 
 
 If at the time of giving the District the substantial 
 representation suggested it should also be decided that Con- 
 gress can manage the minor concerns of the District more 
 satisfactorily by modifying in details the present form of 
 municipal government, such changes may then be con- 
 veniently made. But every alteration should be based upon 
 a full recognition, first of the absolute necessity of a retention 
 by the general government of such representation in and 
 control of the management of city affairs as will enable it to 
 protect its vast interests here ; second, of the frightful warn- 
 ing from the experience of other large cities against recourse 
 to unlimited popular suffrage as a factor in the decision of 
 purely municipal and financial matters ; and, third, of the 
 vital importance to the District that its local government 
 shall be non-partisan. 
 
 It is conceded that the best method by which Congress 
 can regulate the capital as a city may vary somewhat in 
 details, with altering circumstances, but there is no urgent, 
 present necessity for a change in this respect. The more 
 important question is. Shall not the people of the District,. 
 
46 
 
 who now largely exceed the number of persons represented 
 by each member of the House, be 
 
 ADMITTED TO THE UNION 
 
 as citizens of a quasi-state, and be granted representation 
 in the national legislature, and the privilege of voting for 
 President ? Without disputing for the present the proposi- 
 tion, proved absurd by experience, that they do not need, 
 as citizens of the District, distinct representation in Congress 
 as a local legislature because they are represented in that 
 capacity by all Senators and Representatives, do they not, 
 as citizens of the United States, assembled in sufficiep.t num- 
 bers in a limited space and paying national taxes, require 
 representation in the body which imposes and disburses 
 these taxes ? 
 
 The people of Washington do not wish an unlimited 
 elective franchise in municipal concerns or a repeal of the 
 " exclusive-legislation " clause, with a change of the financial 
 relations between the city and the United States, and many 
 of them, in view of the dangers to be faced in the discussion 
 by Congress of changes of any description in the present 
 government, will continue to favor the first or do-nothing 
 policy on the part of Congress, which was unquestionably 
 wisest as long as the fixed population of the District, not in 
 government employ, was insufficient to entitle it to a repre- 
 sentative in Congress, and which is still wisest so far as the 
 municipal government is concerned. These citizens will 
 doubtless for the reason suggested hesitate to ask the ad- 
 ditional rights to be secured by this constitutional amend- 
 ment. But while the asking and granting of these rights 
 may be in various ways reasonably delayed, they can 
 not be indefinitely postponed. Though representation in 
 their national and local legislature, which alone makes laws 
 for them and taxes them, and may send every man of them 
 to war to be wounded or killed, be denied to the 225,000 
 District residents of the present, will the same denial be 
 given to the half million of the near future, or to the pros- 
 pective million toward which figure as a goal the District's 
 population is pressing ? 
 
47 
 
 Some of Washington's Grievances. 
 
 THE GOOD TIME COMING 
 
 When These Grievances Shall Vanish — And Washingto7i Shall 
 Be Exalted — No Longer Neglected, Starved atid Frightened 
 — But Tenderly Fostered by its Proud Guardian. 
 
 Prom the Washington Evening Star, March 17, 1888. 
 
 As long as Washington is compelled to divert from the 
 funds for its maintenance and development as the capital of 
 the nation between one and two million dollars, paid each 
 year in interest and to sinking fund, and the heavy debt 
 thus indicated rests upon it, draining its resources, the 
 growth of the city will be delayed, and the nation, retarded 
 by its impecunious partner, will need to move slowly in the 
 grand designs of capital making. But with the full adop- 
 tion by Congress of the original and true idea of its duty 
 toward the District in respect to the capital's financial con- 
 cerns, and in the matter of general legislation for its benefit, 
 and in a trustee's protection of all its interests, whether in- 
 vaded by persons or corporations, the city will flourish in 
 far greater measure than during even the last decade. Thus 
 favored the Washington of a not remote future will be still 
 more distinctively a city of magnificent distances than at 
 present. Though Hmited only by the boundaries of the 
 District, it will be compactly knit together by a uniform 
 system of streets and avenues, and by cable or electric 
 railways, which shall utilize additional bridges across in- 
 tervening waterways, such as Eastern Branch and Rock 
 Creek, and bring the most distant parts of the new capital 
 in close proximity to the business center. Or, as an alterna- 
 tive to the bridging of Rock Creek in the city, that stream 
 
48 
 
 may be diverted through a tunnel to hide its urban ugU- 
 ness and to remove the cause of West Washington's 
 isolation. 
 
 SURFACE IMPROVEMENT OF THE DEVELOPED CAPITAL. 
 
 The surface of the city will retain and develop present 
 charms, and be freed from present defects. Overhead j^oles 
 will go, and overhead wires will be buried. A comprehen- 
 sive system of underground conduits will accommodate all 
 pipes which need to be conducted below the surface, and will 
 confine not only telegraph and telephone wires, but also an 
 adequate supply of electric-light wires, for Washington's 
 broad streets are to be brilliantly illuminated at night, and 
 the city will not be entirely content even with the better and 
 cheaper gas to be secured for it by Senator Spooner. The 
 underground Washington, like the surface city, will be 
 planned and constructed with wise forethought, so that con- 
 tinual and extensive excavation of the streets ma}'' be avoided. 
 Warning will be taken from the experience of New York 
 city, in respect to which Mayor Hewitt, in a recent message, 
 said: "During the year 1887, 98 miles of gas mains were 
 laid, 25.58 miles of trench opened for electrical sub-ways, 
 4,791 lineal feet of steam pipes laid, 3,790 feet of salt-water 
 pipes laid, 17,973 excavations made for house connections, 
 15.42 miles of water pipe laid, 7.12 miles of sewer built and 
 many miles of excavations made for repairs of water pipes 
 and sewers, making a sum total so appalling as to furnish 
 no analogy except in the results of a vast earthquake." 
 
 In this Washington of the future the periodical battle 
 over appropriations for street improvements will lose much 
 of its customary desperation, for Congress by liberal lump 
 appropriations for the benefit of its exclusive property, the 
 city streets, will have at least provided the seven millions 
 needed for such improvements in the present city ; and the 
 " neglected sections " will, in great measure, cease from 
 troubling, and the weary apportioners of appropriations for 
 such purposes will, comparatively speaking, be at rest. The 
 
49 
 
 city of asphalt pavements will be the paradise of bicyclists, 
 carriage users and equestrians, and sidewalks fit to be trod, 
 showing the same mercy to man that concrete pavements 
 show to beasts, will replace the present mud-bespattering 
 aggregations of loose bricks. The street-cleaning system will 
 clean the streets. 
 
 Thousands of additional trees will contribute to the 
 city's health and beauty. Attractive residences, with the 
 same pleasing variety of architecture that distinguishes those 
 which now adorn AYashington, will ornament every eligible 
 site in the expanded capital. New public buildings w^ill 
 delight the eye at every turn. They will not be so con- 
 structed as to display to all the world a penurious builder 
 with a contempt for architectural attractiveness, and will 
 not be planted upon the reservations to clog the city's lungs 
 with brick and mortar, to disfigure the capital's grand design, 
 and to torture the spirit of poor L'Enfant, already too much 
 vexed. Among them will be a District government build- 
 ing and a local post-office. In prudent deference to the 
 deep-rooted but contradictory convictions of the owners of 
 eligible sites, the exact location of these buildings will not 
 be here specified, but it may be stated that the local post- 
 office will not then be housed with the Post-Office Depart- 
 ment of the general government, to which it seems likely 
 to be fastened in the near future. 
 
 Washington's beauty as 
 
 THE CITY OF PARKS 
 
 will ripen to perfection. There will be the same profusion 
 of small, multiform reservations sprinkled over the enlarged 
 city at the intersection of streets and avenues, displaying all 
 the adornments that nature and the gardener's and sculp- 
 tor's art can supply. Larger parks will not be wanting. In 
 the southern part of the city the Mall, cleared of railroad 
 tracks, and enlarged by the addition of several hundred 
 acres of reclaimed flats, will make a magnificent park, and 
 furnish a famous driveway by which the visitor, having 
 
50 
 
 swiftly traversed historic Pennsylvania avenue from the 
 President's House to the Capitol, may return to his starting 
 point by way of the Botanical Gardens, Armory Lot, Smith- 
 sonian Grounds, Agricultural Grounds, Monument Lot and 
 White House Grounds, winding through trees, flowers and 
 well-kept turf, and passing buildings of great public inter- 
 est, historic monuments and statues. To the other end of 
 the city Rock Creek Park will furnish a breathing place, 
 with its thousand acres of surface, its beautiful, winding 
 stream, and its wild and diversified scenery. 
 
 In the future Washington the Potomac River will be 
 utilized to its full capacity for the benefit of the trade, 
 health, and pleasure of the city. The present impediment 
 to easy access to the river front, the impassable barrier of a 
 belt of surface railroad tracks, illegally occupied by stand- 
 ing cars, will be sent to join the obstacles of the past — a 
 pestiferous canal, a criminal-infested Mall, and high bluffs 
 which needed to be pierced. The local rapid transit system 
 will bring the Potomac within easy reach. The good harbor 
 to be secured when the flats are filled will meet the demands 
 of the city's growing commerce. Without its malarious 
 marshes, the quickened river will cut large slices from the 
 District's death rate. The upper Potomac, with its narrow, 
 rocky channel and rugged scenery, will delight the fisher- 
 man ; just above the city the broadening stream, with the 
 landings and houses of local boat clubs perched pictur- 
 esquely upon the wooded banks, will allure in ever-increas- 
 ing numbers the oarsmen and their friends, and on the 
 lower Potomac the fifteen or twenty excursion steamers of 
 the present will be vastly multiplied to furnish fresh air 
 cheaply in the heat of summer and to bring joy to children 
 and the poor, and despair to the doctors, druggists, and 
 undertakers. Public floating baths will further contribute 
 to the city's health. Handsome and substantial bridges — 
 perhaps a memorial bridge connecting with a broad avenue 
 leading to Mount Vernon — will furnish communication with 
 Virginia, and the Long Bridge, that shabby, flood-threaten- 
 
51 
 
 ing nuisance of the present, will be only a disagreeable 
 reminiscence. 
 
 In that glittering future the local offices of the District 
 will be bestowed upon District citizens in faithful fulfillment 
 of the promises of party platforms. ^The people of the Dis- 
 trict will be no longer stunted citizens of the United States, 
 but will enjoy representation in both houses of Congress as 
 their legislature, and a voice in the selection of their execu- 
 tive, the President. The government clerks will not be 
 vexed with deceptive examinations for promotion, intended 
 to discharge rather than to promote, but with the victory of 
 true civil service reform and the abolition of the apportion- 
 ment system, which distributes offices, as bandits' plunder, 
 among the states in proportion to their strength, the efficient 
 clerks will be freed from the haunting terror of unreason- 
 able dismissal, and will become a desirable and reasonably 
 permanent element of the city's house-building and voting 
 population. 
 
 LINES UPON WHICH THE CITY WILL EXPAND. 
 
 Washington will be the recognized and only meeting 
 place of the American people in convention assembled. 
 In 1887 it drew to itself gatherings like the International 
 Medical Congress, the National Drill of the militia, and 
 innumerable other conventions, including the representatives 
 of such varied activities as the shippers of the country, the 
 woman suffragists, the laundr3'-men, the carriage makers, 
 the agricultural scientists, the postal clerks, the school super- 
 intendents, and the Evangelical Alliance. With so favorable 
 a start in the desired direction what may not be expected 
 in this respect from the future, which will bring to Wash- 
 ington increased attractions to tempt visitors and enlarged 
 accommodations for the meetings of representative bodies. 
 
 The city will not be pre-eminent in wholesale trade, 
 but long rows of handsome business blocks, in the line of 
 present development, will fully supply all local needs. Nor 
 will the great manufacturing centers of the country find in 
 
52 
 
 Washington a dangerous competitor. According to the 
 census of 1880, Washington was then among the twenty 
 leading cities of the United States in manufactures, with 
 971 estabUshments, and products for the year valued at 
 $11,882,316 ; and it has an excellent water power at George- 
 town, and cheap and easy access to the coal fields. But 
 the capital will never lead in the handling of iron, pork, 
 wheat or cotton. Modelling after Paris rather than Pitts- 
 burg, it will doubtless develop the various branches of light 
 and clean manufacturing, which, with the departmental 
 workshops, will give employment to many and make profit- 
 able returns, without interfering by noises or smells, with 
 the capital's attractions as a residence city. In the latter 
 capacity, Washington will distance every competitor. To 
 live at Washington, not to die at Paris, will become the 
 American aspiration. 
 
 As an educational center the city will also be pre- 
 eminent. George Washington believed in and favored the 
 establishment of a national university at the capital, selected 
 a site for it and added works to faith by contributing stock 
 for its endowment, which afterward, however, unfortunately 
 became worthless. The reasons he gave for the location of 
 the university at this point apply at the present time, and 
 will prevail in the future with the result of giving the city 
 a series of universities in place of the one which Washing- 
 ton proposed. It is in the nature of a special education to 
 pass at the seat of government the years of greatest activity 
 in acquiring knowledge. Nowhere else on the continent 
 will the student of science or of law find in museums and 
 libraries such treasures for his enjoyment. With the in- 
 stitution upon which Mr. Corcoran lavished a million and 
 a half dollars in his life, and $100,000 at his death, as a 
 foundation, a thorough and admirable system of art instruc- 
 tion will be developed and become a notable feature of the 
 educational facilities furnished by the capital. The vast 
 national library, conveniently arranged and easy of access 
 in the immense structure to be erected for its accommodation? 
 
53 
 
 bringing to light the accumulated treasures of learning, now- 
 half hidden and inaccessible at the Capitol, will materially 
 aid Washington to become, as it must become, the home 
 not only of the nation's students but of its authors. With 
 Parisian light manufactures and the factories of the govern- 
 ment departments to give employment to thousands of 
 people, and with the constant accession of residents to the 
 capital as the political, educational, scientific, literary, and 
 art center of the republic, and the leading residence and 
 "show" city of the continent, Washington, catching step 
 with the nation in its forward march, will increase its pre- 
 sent extraordinary percentage of growth in population, and, 
 leaving the quarter-million mark, will stride quickly to its 
 primary goal of half a million. 
 
 Evidently the Washington of 1900, on its hundredth 
 anniversary as the capital, enjoying during the last part of 
 the century the tender regard of its guardian, the nation, 
 will be viewed with pride and affection in Uncle Sam's 
 household, and luxuriating in solicitous attention, much 
 money and good laws, will forget as completely as it can 
 the miseries of its early years, in which the members of the 
 national family were disposed to pronounce it " a disappoint- 
 ment to its parents, a discredit to the fond opinions of its 
 worthy god-fathers and god-mothers, and an eye-sore to all 
 its relatives to the remotest degree of consanguinity." 
 
54 
 
 At the Annual Banquet of the Board of Trade i7i i8gi, Mr. 
 Theodore W. Noyes responded to the toast, ''The Centenary 
 of Washington City,'" as follow s: 
 
 As this double commemoration suggests, the American 
 patent system and the District of Columbia narrowly escaped 
 being twins. For several days, culminating to-night, we 
 have eulogized the first of these approximate twins. We have 
 ascribed the vast national advance of the century in large 
 part to this birth of a century ago. We have ranked among 
 the typical heroes of the age the wonder workers whom this 
 infant, now grown to manhood, has fostered. We consider 
 that no home at the capital, in marble or granite, can be too 
 spacious or too handsome to be suitable for its accommoda- 
 tion. In short, we of Washington say to the inventors : We 
 have praised your hundred-year-old infant and honored its 
 birthday. There is reciprocity in these things. It is time 
 that Columbia's baby was dandled and petted; and as one 
 of the nurses of this infant to-night I propose that we give 
 our baby a show. 
 
 THE DISTRICT A CENTURY AGO. 
 
 When the District corner-stone was laid, thriving George- 
 town was its nucleus of settlement on one side of the river 
 and Alexandria or Belle Haven on the other. The site of 
 Washington itself, a plain, fringed by gradually sloping 
 heights, was a series of pastures, marshes, patches of culti- 
 vated ground, and hills green with many trees. It was pleas- 
 ing to the eye and well adapted to its destined purpose, but 
 those sections now most desirable, both for business and resi- 
 dence purposes, were then the least attractive. The river 
 front was the choicest portion of the city, if the opinions of 
 the earliest purchasers are considered. Capitol Hill was a 
 dense forest, scarcely touched by the woodman's axe. Penn- 
 sylvania avenue was a deep morass covered with alder 
 bushes. Massachusetts avenue, in the now fashionable 
 
55 
 
 northwest, was a bog, undrained in part, as late as 1862, iu 
 which year Anthony Trollope, the EngHsh novelist, waded 
 along it knee-deep through snipe grounds. Upon this founda- 
 tion the capital of to-day has been built — the modern Wash- 
 ington, the focus of national politics, the great gathering 
 place of the people in conventions assembled, with its quarter 
 of a million of population, rapidly increasing and spreading 
 the capital over the whole of the present District; a city 
 sustained, approved, and adorned by the annual expenditure 
 of more than $5,000,000 ; with a clean and economical non- 
 partisan municipal government, a marvel in this respect 
 among great American cities ; with surface remodeled ; with 
 more smooth streets than any other city in the world ; 
 with enterprising business houses, relieving Washington 
 from dependence upon its great commercial neighbors ; with 
 manufactures, not imposing, but respectable, that caused 
 Washington, according to the census of 1880, to rank among 
 the twenty leading American cities ; with manufacturing 
 establishments that have more than doubled in number since 
 1880, notwithstanding the design has been to retain Washing- 
 ton's pre-eminence as a residence city by encouraging only 
 light and clean manufacturing ; with broad streets shaded 
 for several hundred miles with nearly 70,000 trees, destined 
 to make Washington the forest city ; with attractive sub- 
 urban drives, including those which traverse the recent grand 
 acquisition of Rock Creek Park, with its winding stream and 
 its wild and diversified scenery ; with parks and reservations, 
 given a picturesque beauty by shrubbery and abundance of 
 foliage, statuary, fountains and flowers, and with costly 
 dwellings, showing the most varied and pleasing architecture, 
 springing up in rapid succession, where Trollope sunk knee- 
 deep in mud. 
 
 IN TWENTY YEARS. 
 
 The greater part of this transformation has been accom- 
 plished within the last twenty years. The wretched condition 
 of the capital for three-fourths of a century is attested by all 
 descriptions. In connection with the gift to it of nearly 
 
56 
 
 three-fourths of the soil of Washington, in order to sell lots 
 carved from this gift, the nation promised that Washington 
 should be the permanent seat of government, and pretended 
 that this permanent capital would be improved at national 
 expense without regard to the scanty population that would 
 be at first attracted to it. Having secured this magnificent 
 donation and pocketed the proceeds from the sale of lots the 
 nation utterly failed to meet its promises. It frequently 
 threatened to remove the capital, which meant, of course, 
 the death of Washington. It practically abandoned the work 
 of street improvement and capital-making to the scanty resi- 
 dent population. There was no wonder that the District 
 grew slowly. 
 
 The nation has now returned halfway to the original and 
 appropriate idea of the federal city. This guardian, who for 
 three-fourths of a century was unfaithful to his trust, now, 
 without making the slightest restitution for the wrongs of 
 the past, shares the expenses of the ward whom he equitably 
 bound himself in the beginning to support — and some men 
 call it charity ! The people of the District are not subject to 
 this or any other reproach upon their public spirit, so far as 
 their relations to the nation are concerned. They have 
 risked life and shed blood in every national war. They fur- 
 nished the first volunteers, and supplied more troops in 
 excess of their quota in the civil struggle than any state ex- 
 cept one. They have paid their proportion of every national 
 tax, direct and indirect. They have contributed in propor- 
 tion to population far more than any other American com- 
 munity for national purposes. They gave to the nation 
 five-sevenths of the soil of Washington — an acquisition pro- 
 nounced by Jeff'erson " really noble." They tlms supplied 
 a fund from which most of the original public buildings were 
 erected. Those that since then have been constructed at 
 national expense are offset by attractive homes aggregating 
 millions of dollars in value with which they have adorned 
 the city and swelled its taxable property. Nearly all the 
 work of street improvement and capital-making, which for 
 
57 
 
 three-fourths of a century was done, was done by them. 
 From 1790 to 1878, according to the report of a Secretary of 
 the Treasury, they expended $14,000,000 more than the 
 United States in this, tiie nation's task, in addition to $25,- 
 000,000 spent on local government, schools, and for other 
 municipal purposes. Under this burden they worked them- 
 selves into virtual bankruptcy in 1835, and so in recreating 
 the city after 1870 the main expense of the achievement was 
 represented by the grievous debt of some $20,000,000. In 
 both cases they took upon themselves national burdens, and 
 were led by public-spirited motives, as the Senate committee 
 reported in 1835, into expenditures which did not properly 
 belong to them. 
 
 They are none the less public-spirited, patriotic citizens 
 because they owe no allegiance to a state. Their city has 
 planted the roots of its existence and prosperity in the spirit 
 of American nationality, and has flourished as that spirit has 
 been strong. For themselves, they are Americans or they are 
 nothing ; the people of No Man's land ; men without a coun- 
 try. It is well for the nation that their Americanism is in- 
 tense in proportion to its concentration, for that which lies 
 next to the heart of the republic must be flesh of its flesh, 
 pulsating with its warmest, richest life blood, or it will be a 
 ■canker, collecting alien poisonous matter and eating at the 
 nation's vitals. 
 
 THE district's SECOND CENTURY. 
 
 In the District's second century it will keep step in every 
 respect with the progress of the nation ; it will be the re- 
 public in miniature. In every branch of municipal develop- 
 ment, whether attractiveness, health, trade, commerce, con- 
 venience, or comfort is the aim, the city will be made a 
 model. With the republic's intellectual growth there will 
 be a corresponding increase in the capital's importance as 
 the brain centre from which influences in every branch of 
 learning, in science and art, in education, in literature and 
 politics, flow to every corner of the nation. The fact will 
 
58 
 
 also be fully recognized that trees and parks and streets, and 
 structures of granite and marble, do not alone suffice to con- 
 stitute the ideal capital. There must be men full of the 
 national spirit and fit, from favoring conditions, to show 
 forth the American character in the blaze of the capital to 
 the inspection of the world. 
 
 And when all possible wonders have been wrought in 
 the inanimate capital its people will be considered. They 
 will be relieved from the burden of ancient laws, utterly un- 
 fit for a modern community, that cling about their necks 
 and choke them like tlie old man of the sea on the shoulders 
 of Sinbad. Injurious discriminations in all respects will be 
 removed. The District has been pronounced a state under 
 the treaty with France, a construction conferring privileges 
 on aliens, but not a state under the Constitution, whose peo- 
 ple can sue in the federal courts. The Supreme Court of 
 the United States says in express terms that we stand in a 
 more unfavorable attitude toward the national judiciary 
 than aliens. The District is a state when direct taxes are 
 to be collected, but not a state when representatives are 
 apportioned, though the Constitution couples the two 
 things. 
 
 In the District's second century, when its population 
 numbers half a million or a million, it will be not merely 
 a state when burdens are imposed, but sometimes, at least, 
 without radical change in the municipal government, a state 
 when privileges are bestowed. In the good time to come 
 the Washingtonian as well as Washington will be exalted. 
 Nativity at the capital of the proud republic of ancient 
 times was a world-wide honor. To be a Roman was to be 
 greater than a king. Birth at the capital of the modern 
 republic, far greater than that which ruled from the Seven 
 Hills, will be the just cause of a profounder pride than that 
 which found expression in the words, " I am a Roman." 
 
 SAID A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 
 
 The orator at the laying of the District corner-stone one 
 hundred years ago petitioned and prophesied : " From this 
 
59 
 
 stone may a superstructure arise whose glory, whose magnifi- 
 cence, whose stability, unequalled hitherto, shall astonish the 
 world." 
 
 Upon the threshold of the District's second century we 
 can do no better than to repeat this prayer and prophecy, so 
 suggestive of the bright anticipations concerning the federal 
 District which prevailed at its creation. We sometimes hear 
 lofty reflections concerning the narrow views of the founders 
 of the republic. In respect to the capital we shall do well 
 if we fulfill the hopes, prophecies and anticipations of the 
 forefathers and not prove narrower than they. It was their 
 idea that Washington should be a federal city, developed by 
 the nation and subject to its control ; but it was not their 
 idea that it should be without people. Its grand framework 
 indicates the expectation of a large population. Washing- 
 ton's imagination covered the fair fields and wooded hills of 
 his namesake city with the homes of a numerous, busy and 
 happy people, a people not to outward appearance aliens, 
 politically, and less than aliens judicially, but clothed with all 
 American rights not absolutely inconsistent with the foster- 
 ing control by the nation of the national capital. He pre- 
 dicted that the city of the nation a century thence, if the 
 country kept united, would be, " though not as large as Lon- 
 don, yet of a magnitude inferior to few others in Europe." 
 
 One hundred years ago a great mind conceived the idea 
 of a statue of perfect symmetry and beauty. This idea was 
 impressed upon the snowy whiteness of the heart of a huge 
 block of marble and the statue's outlines lay hid beneath the 
 stone's rough and discolored surface. For a century at in- 
 tervals men have worked with drill and blast, with pick and 
 chisel, to reach the heart of this rocky mass and to expose 
 to sunlight and the eyes of men the perfect statue. Stroke 
 by stroke the statue is uncovered. Inch by inch it rises in 
 dazzling and perfect loveliness from all that is coarse and 
 rude and ugly in the stone and earth of its surroundings, as 
 the goddess of beauty rose in days of old from the rough 
 gray surface of the ocean. The century-old ideal of Wash- 
 
60 
 
 ington is fast becoming real, tangible, visible. It is for us 
 of the republic's second century to give the finishing touches 
 to the work designed one hundred years ago. Let no blunder- 
 ing chisel mar the delicate outlines of the developing statue 
 whose beauty, half concealed, half exposed, assures to 
 America and the world a perfect embodiment of the ideal 
 capital. 
 
61 
 
 Welcome G. A. R. 
 
 From the Washington Evening Star, September 19, 1892. 
 
 Washington greets the Grand Army of the Republic I 
 This is not the first time that the capital has warmly- 
 welcomed the soldiers of the Union. When in those anxi- 
 ous April days of incipient war Pennsylvania for the east 
 with partly armed militia, and Minnesota for the west with 
 a company of regulars hastened to reinforce the District vol- 
 unteers in defense of the nation's city, all of loyal Washing- 
 ton gave hearty and grateful greeting to friends in need. 
 When only a day later the volunteers of the sixth Massa- 
 chusetts regiment, thoroughly organized and well equipped, 
 forced their way with bloodshed through riotous Baltimore 
 and entered the city with the marks of conflict in behalf of 
 the capital still upon them, that enthusiastic welcome was 
 repeated and redoubled. And when after a week of suspense 
 and mortal apprehension, the capital saw the seventh New 
 York regiment with glittering bayonets and flying flags 
 march up Pennsylvania avenue to the inspiring sound of 
 martial music it saluted these fine soldiers as the forerun- 
 ners and representatives of the nation already in arms in 
 its defense. Anxiety was swept away in an instant by this 
 conclusive manifestation of the people's inflexible mandate : 
 " The Union and the Union's city must and shall be pre- 
 served ! " And the cheering of thousands, wild with joy, 
 gave inadequate expression to the heartfelt welcome with 
 which Washington greeted this advance guard from the vast 
 army of its volunteer defenders. The scene was repeated 
 when in 1864, Early threatened feebly-defended Washing- 
 ton, and Gen. Wright with two divisions of the sixth corps 
 hastened in the very nick of time from the Potomac through 
 the city to the relief of the menaced fortifications in the 
 northern suburbs. And when at the close of the war the 
 
62 
 
 Army of the Potomac and Sherman's army of the west 
 marched in grand review on successive days up Pennsyl- 
 vania avenue, Washington, through their deeds the assured 
 capital of a united republic, saluted these heroes with wav- 
 ing flags and patriotic songs and enthusiastic cheering, and 
 covered with garlands of flowers many participants in the 
 great procession. 
 
 Now the soldiers of the Union again tread in martial 
 array the streets of the capital and again Washington greets 
 them mth a welcome feebly and inadequately expressed in 
 •decorations, in illuminations, in music, in varied and 
 hearty hospitality — a welcome which contains within itself 
 the aggregated warmth and enthusiasm and gratitude of all 
 these greetings of the past. As it gladly hailed its soldier 
 visitors in detachments during the war, so now it rejoices to 
 receive them in the mass through their representatives of 
 the Grand Army. Protector and protected after the lapse of 
 nearly thirty years salute each other, and naturally the 
 handshaking is hearty, the welcome a royal one. 
 
 It is not alone, however, a natural gratitude for services 
 rendered at the time of the war which causes Washington 
 to be keenly appreciative of its present visitors. The 
 soldiers did more than defend and preserve the capital. For 
 this very labor of protection aroused a national interest in 
 and regard for the thing protected, that had been hitherto 
 lacking. The capital was not only saved, but since the war 
 and through the war's influence it has been fostered and de- 
 veloped and made in appearance a seat of government 
 worthy of the nation. 
 
 What the people fought for and defended the people 
 came to love, and from this affection grew the determination 
 to permit the capital to remain no longer a national humil- 
 iation but to cause it to become instead a source of national 
 pride. Washington greets the Grand Army with double 
 gratitude as its physical preserver against armed forces, and 
 as the representative of that patriotic national sentiment, 
 revived and nourished by the war, upon which the pros- 
 
63 
 
 perity and even the very existence of the capital largely 
 depend. 
 
 The veterans in their turn have reason to revisit with 
 lively emotions the capital which they defended and to re- 
 spond feelingly to the city's greeting. Washington was the 
 focal point of the struggle. In the chess game of civil war 
 the capital was the Union king, often checked, but never 
 checkmated, threatened again and again by the enemy's 
 queen, the fine Army of Northern Virginia under Lee, dis- 
 turbed by the demonstrations and achievements of the adver- 
 sary's Presbyterian bishop, Stonewall Jackson, and most 
 seriously menaced by the eccentric and rapid movements 
 of the enemy's cavalry knight. The soldier takes in the 
 capital the natural interest in that for which he has fought, 
 upon which his anxious thoughts have centered. Here, too, 
 are individual associations. Here thousands were con- 
 verted from raw recruits into soldiers, and camp and drill 
 ground are to be eagerly revisited. Here thousands lay 
 wounded in the hospitals, and the sites of these structures 
 are clothed for many with sad but abiding associations. 
 Here is the spot in the Capitol building where one spread 
 his blanket ; here is all that remains of the old fort in M^hich 
 many days full of pleasant and thrilling memories were 
 spent ; here is the house which opened wide its hospitable 
 doors to another when dejected, weary, foot-sore and rain- 
 drenched he dragged himself through the streets of Wash- 
 ington after the Bull Run disaster, and here is the 
 magnificent avenue up which he marched amid the cheering 
 of the people with troops to beat off the enemy from threat- 
 ened Washington, or with 150,000 comrades in the joy and 
 pride of final victory in the grand review. Here in the 
 War Department and the museums are trophies and relics 
 of the war ; here are monuments to a number of the old 
 commanders, and here, full of mournful interest, are the 
 buildings associated with the assassination of the martyred 
 President, cemeteries containing thousands of the soldier 
 dead and tombs of such leaders as Sheridan and Logan. 
 
64 
 
 In revisiting the sites of the extensive and costly forti- 
 fications which were constructed about Washington the 
 veteran will find that the influences of peace have almost 
 entirely conquered the formidable armament of war. The 
 rain and the wind have crumbled the threatening piles of 
 earth, nature has thrown over the signs of man's prepara- 
 tion for mortal combat a mantle of grass and vines, shrubs 
 and bushes, and, if the sword has not been beaten into the 
 plowshare, at least the woodwork of grimly menacing forts 
 has been converted into fire wood or the building material 
 of negro shanties. Upon the very spot occupied some thirty 
 years ago by cannon the unconscious picnicking party may 
 lunch with merrymaking. 
 
 The city itself then resounded with the tread of march- 
 ing regiments, the rumble of supply wagons and of ambu- 
 lances bearing the wounded or coffins wrapped in flags, the 
 shrill sound of the fife, the roll of the drum and the roar of 
 cannon at the navy yard artillery camp and the arsenal. 
 Its encircling hills were dotted with white tents and floating 
 flags, its public buildings were hospitals, soldiers' quarters 
 or army provision depots. Mounted sentries w^ere seen at 
 the corners of the streets with drawn sabers, barracks 
 appeared everywhere and military huts and military tents 
 were pitched in the dust or mud of the unbuilt area. From 
 the city, as well as from the forts, bristling with cannon, that 
 crowned every eminence, all notable signs of belligerency 
 have disappeared. 
 
 As at the capital, which is the nation in miniature^ 
 peace has conquered war, and the indications of hatred and 
 combat and fratricidal bloodshed have been obliterated, so 
 from the reunited nation itself, from the minds and hearts 
 of men, may all traces of the prejudices and passions of the 
 war be soon effaced ! 
 
 It is not in the disappearance of military features alone 
 that the veteran will note a change in Washington. At the 
 outbreak of the war East Washington was in the main a 
 broad expanse of barren plain. South from the Capitol were 
 
65 
 
 hovels and brick kiln excavations. South Washinaton in 
 general was an island cut off from the main city by a fester- 
 ing canal and the mall, which was then the lurking place 
 of criminals. In the northwest beyond 7th street and be- 
 tween M and Boundary streets there were swamps and com- 
 mons and patches of meadow. Cows, swine, goats and geese 
 had the freedom of the city. Anthony Trollope, who visited 
 Wasliington in 1862, like Tom Moore, Mrs. Trollope and 
 Charles Dickens, who preceded him, gives an unfriendly but 
 not imaginative description of the city. " Washington," he 
 says, " is but a ragged, unfinished collection of unbuilt, broad 
 streets, as to the completion of which there can now, I imag- 
 ine, be but little hope. Of all places that I know it is the 
 most ungainly and the most unsatisfactory." Trollope seems 
 to have conceived an especial spite against Massachusetts 
 avenue, which is now one of the finest residence streets in 
 the city, and the vigor of his assaults justifies the suspicion 
 that he was sent on some wild goose chase and found the 
 mud of that street particularly disagreeable. " Massachusetts 
 avenue runs the whole length of the city and is inserted on 
 the maps as a full-blown street about four miles in length. 
 Go there and you will find yourself not only out of town, 
 away among the fields, but you will find yourself beyond 
 the fields in an uncultivated, undrained wilderness. Tuck- 
 ing your trousers up to your knees you will wade through 
 the bogs ; you will lose yourself among wide hillocks; you 
 will be out of the reach of humanity. * * * A stranger 
 finds himself in the position of being sent across the country 
 knee deep in mud, wading through snipe grounds, looking- 
 for civilization where none exists." 
 
 In place of the straggling country village, with zig-zag 
 grades, no sewerage, unimproved reservations, second-rate 
 dwellings, streets of mud and mire and wretched sidewalks, 
 which the Union soldier and Anthony Trollope saw when 
 Washington was a camp and hospital, there is now spread 
 before our soldier visitors the magnificent city of to-day. 
 
 The capital, more than trebling its population since 
 
66 
 
 1860, has not only built up its ragged collection of unfin- 
 ished streets, and the bogs and swamps and commons that 
 dotted and surrounded them, but has spread settlement over 
 the then encircling heights on the northwest and northeast 
 and the duty and responsibility of planning and developing 
 a new Washington, more extensive in area than the orig- 
 inal city, which shall not be inharmonious and discreditable 
 when compared with the work of the forefathers, is imposed 
 upon the legislators of to-day. The streets of depthless mud 
 and blinding dust are now in large measure concreted and 
 fringed with thousands of shade trees. In the matter of 
 smooth streets the capital is foremost among the cities of the 
 world. Broad Pennsylvania avenue, with its rough cobble- 
 stones of the war times, has been converted through the 
 skillful use of asphalt into the finest parade street that any 
 capital can boast, the veteran treads concrete instead of 
 cobblestones, and when the work of erecting public build- 
 ings along it in accordance with the original plan, already 
 revived and initiated, shall be fully accomplished, and its 
 surroundings thus acquire suitable dignity and impressive- 
 ness, this historic avenue will rival in all respects the 
 famous streets of the capitals of the old world, whether the 
 boulevards of Paris, Unter den Linden in Berlin, the Ring 
 Strasse of Vienna or Andrassy street in Buda-Pesth. Mas- 
 sachusetts avenue, where Trollope floundered in the mud, 
 displays to-day as a specimen residence street of the modern 
 Washington buildings of the most varied and attractive 
 architecture. W^ithout a street car at the outbreak of the 
 war the District now has over a hundred miles of street 
 railway, which promise soon to furnish through the general 
 adoption of the best forms of improved motor, a model local 
 rapid transit system to the capital. Then pumps and 
 springs supplied the city with water; now through the great 
 aqueduct, largely built while the war was in progress, the 
 waters of the upper Potomac are lavished upon Washing- 
 ton. The then unfinished public buildings have been com- 
 pleted, and, with additional structures which have been 
 
a 7 
 
 erected, adorn the city. The stub which represented the 
 Washington monument has become the towering, impres- 
 sive shaft of to-day. Intellectual progress has been as 
 marked as material development, and Washington no longer 
 a mere political camp ground, is becoming the educational, 
 literary and scientific center of the republic. The reserva- 
 tions and parking, then neglected and unkempt, the browsing 
 place of the cow and the wallowing place of the hog, have 
 been improved and adorned, and now in a number of them 
 the statues of men who were then struggling to save the 
 Union and the capital, at the head of other men who are 
 present here to-day, stand out in marble or bronze in a 
 picturesque setting of flowers and rich foilage. Each vet- 
 eran, as he beholds the present capital, may take to himself 
 a share of credit for the change. For, as already indicated, 
 the protection rendered by the nation to its capital and the 
 national spirit revived by the war have caused the wonderful 
 transformation. The relation of the soldiers to this devel- 
 opment, which gives to the welcome of the city an addi- 
 tional degree of grateful warmth, may also inspire the vet- 
 erans with a stronger, deeper pride in the beautiful city, 
 which in its rudimentary stages they protected and pre- 
 served, and which in its present shape they helped directly 
 and indirectly to create. 
 
 From its pitiable plight of thirty years ago the capital 
 has become an object of interest, pride, and affection to 
 Americans of all sections of the republic. In the cosmo- 
 politan population of the modern city northerners, southern- 
 ers, and westerners are mingled. The latter, not so very long 
 ago in the dependent condition of residents of national 
 territory, struggling for greater national attention to their 
 affairs, and for more thoughtful consideration of their needs 
 and grievances b}'^ a legislative body in which they had no 
 real representation, and sensitively resenting misconcep- 
 tions, born of sectional ignorance, concerning their resources, 
 spirit, and tendency, can sympathize with a community 
 whose present politically resembles in some respects their 
 
()8 
 
 past, and they should be able to legislate with peculiar 
 wisdom and consideration for this bit of national soil, doing 
 to the capital as they would that the nation had done unto 
 them in the times that are gone. 
 
 But the strongest hold of the capital upon north and 
 west — upon patriotic Americans everywhere — arises from 
 the fact that it embodies the national idea. Washington 
 was brought into being as peculiarly and exclusively the 
 home and abiding place of the nation as distinguished from 
 the states. Instead of selecting as the capital an existing city 
 of some state, the nation determined to create a capital, 
 which should be largely owned and exclusively controlled 
 by the republic itself. With this purpose in view it acquired 
 by gift title to five-sevenths of the soil of the city that it 
 created, and reserved to itself by tlie organic law the consti- 
 tutional power of exclusive legislation in this capital. It 
 planned a magnificent city upon unimproved lands, and sold 
 lots upon the implied agreement that the capital should be 
 permanent and that the grand design on paper of tlie nation's 
 city would be made a reality by the nation. The capital 
 was the crystallization of the national idea, it was the sub- 
 stantial embodiment of the abstract Union, the materializa- 
 tion of a power superior to that of the state. It owes no di- 
 vided allegiance to a state, arousing jealousies in the other 
 states. It is the city of the nation, the whole nation. 
 
 The south is not excluded by any means from bonds of 
 sympathy with the capital. The passing of slavery removes the 
 point of greatest sensitiveness that was touched by the exist- 
 ence of a national city and no abstract view concerning the re- 
 lations of state and nation needs to interfere longer with 
 pride in and affection for the capital of the south, as well as 
 of the north, and east, and west. The city was founded by 
 southerners and the dangers that menaced its infancy were 
 warded off by them. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Clay, 
 Crawford, Calhoun and Jackson are on the first page of the 
 list of the capital's friends. The west and north have sup- 
 plied their full quota of notable names to this list, especially 
 
69 
 
 since the war. The great men from all sections who have 
 delighted to enroll themselves among those who have 
 labored hardest to make the capital worth}' of the republic, 
 rebuke and put to shame the notion which seems to have 
 gained some prevalence in Congress that the brains of legis- 
 lators are not broad enough to consider thoughtfully both 
 capital and national affairs, and that it is statesman-like 
 therefore to disdainfully ignore the capital. There is no act 
 of the forefathers which gives more convincing evidence of 
 wise forethought than the creation and general design of 
 the national city. What they planned the men of to-day 
 are to fully carry out. There is in addition the new Wash- 
 ington that has sprung up outside of the original bound- 
 aries, which needs its George Washington, its Jefferson, its 
 L'Enfant. If without loss of dignity and to their lasting 
 credit Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson could throw them- 
 selves, as they did, enthusiastically into the labor of secur- 
 ing for the capital bridges across the Potomac, there is no 
 statesman of to-day so great that he will not acquire new 
 laurels by the performance of a similar and much-needed 
 task for the present city. There can be no more ennobling 
 and patriotic labor than that which associates one's name 
 with those of the illustrious forefathers in developing and 
 adorning the city of the Union, the nation in miniature, 
 fostering the national sentiment, realizing the national as- 
 piration, gratifying the national pride. 
 
 What is done for the capital is done for the nation and 
 for the promotion of national sentiment. All three advance 
 together. The national value of the true capital as a unify- 
 ing patriotic influence is not to be disregarded or underrated. 
 When the southerners seceded they left Washington with 
 regret and looked forward to the predicted early date when 
 they would return to legislate under the southern flag. 
 They have returned to the city which southerners founded, 
 protected and loved, and they legislate under the southern 
 flag — the flag of the Union — south, north, east and west. 
 And many of them thank God to-day that it is so. They 
 
70 
 
 are here not as captives in a strange .city, but as prodigals 
 returned to a home, the house of their forefathers, rich in 
 associations both joyful and pathetic, standing upon land in 
 which they have an interest, and governed exclusively by 
 the Union, of which they are a part. In Washington every 
 American is at home, whether the pine, the cypress or the 
 Cottonwood grew above him. Plere is the altar of American 
 patriotism, not to be approached under the scriptural in- 
 junction without reconciliation with our brother of the 
 south, or north, or east, or west. At Washington all Ameri- 
 cans come together on equal terms with a common interest. 
 The west learns the east, the north the south and vice versa. 
 All sections are bound more closely together. Prejudices 
 are softened and gradually removed. National sentiment 
 dominates, the American spirit is developed and patriotism 
 is strengthened. In the national crucible sectional jealous- 
 ies and hatred are removed and the pure gold of American 
 patriotism remains. 
 
 George Washington foresaw this unifying, nationalizing 
 function of the capital, and for that reason proposed to locate 
 in it the national university which he projected. Here, he 
 said, the susceptible j-outh of the land, in the atmosphere of 
 the nation's city and viewing the workings of the general 
 government, would be impressed with a love of our national 
 institutions, counteracting both foreign influences and sec- 
 tional sentiments. The university of which he dreamed was 
 never born, but, carrying out his idea on a grander scale, 
 the capital has itself become a national universit}', in which 
 all Americans are students, for the promotion of liberal, 
 enlarged and patriotic Americanism, teaching love of 
 country and making of all of us better citizens. 
 
 Superstition and tradition have associated the fate of 
 more than one of the great nations of the world with that of 
 some material object. 
 
 " While stands the Colosseum Rome shall stand, 
 When falls the Colosseum, Rome shall fall." 
 
 The future of the empire built on physical force is in 
 
.71 
 
 fancy intertwined with the fate of the vast structure in which 
 exhibitions of that force in the bloody contests of gladiators 
 and the slaughter of martyrs were habitually displayed. It 
 may be that our republic has its material symbol. The 
 close relation between the nation's city and the patriotic 
 national sentiment has been noted. Washington is not 
 merely the republic's political heart, from which the influ- 
 ences flow that determine the destin}' of the nation. It is 
 also the soul of the Union as an entity, forbidding the idea 
 that the republic has no higher life than that of a mere 
 hodge-podge of states. At once the bond and token of union 
 the nation's city and the spirit of American nationality are 
 entertwined. The former flourishes as the latter is strong. 
 It sickened when that influence controlled which negatived 
 tlie national idea and viewed the state as supreme. It again 
 revived when civil war developed the patriotic national 
 sentiment and Americans learned that the Union is a sub- 
 stantial something to love, to live for and to die for. The 
 bloodshed of the Revolution gave birth to the spirit of nation- 
 ality and created the city ; the bloodshed of the civil war 
 revived the spirit and regenerated the city. Sincere and en- 
 thusiastic love of country is what keeps alive the modern re- 
 public and gives it prosperit}'^ and glory. Both capital and 
 nation have planted the roots of their existence in this 
 patriotic sentiment. The Union and its peculiar residence 
 and part property, hallowed by every association which can 
 keep patriotism alive, rest upon the same supports. The 
 imagination can readily conceive that the spirit of nation- 
 ality, the soul of the Union, is enshrined in this exclusive 
 territory, and that if ever its peculiar existence shall be ex- 
 tinguished the event will be a forerunner of the dissolution 
 of the Union. 
 
 All through the doubtful stages of the civil struggle the 
 sound of the busy workman's tools was heard in the Capitol 
 building, cheering evidence of the national confidence in 
 the result of the warfare, and the cannon from miles of forts 
 announced the finishing touches to the magnificent dome 
 
72 
 
 which poises and floats lightly in the air its white lines of 
 curving, swelling beauty. As this mighty dome, crowned 
 by Liberty, grew into marvelous loveliness amid the turmoil 
 and din of war about it, so the patriotic sentiment developed 
 in beauty and power from the cannon smoke and bloodshed 
 of the civil struggle. While the nation's city and its Capitol 
 with freedom-surmounted dome endure the republic will 
 stand, for the patriotic sentiment, " the fine, strong spirit of 
 nationality " endures also, the foundation of the existence of 
 both. 
 
 Our symbol of national unity and perpetuity is not a 
 ruin, telling of the decay of the rule of force and of the over- 
 throw of the unquestioned supremacy of men of blood and 
 iron, but a living, growing, developing city, typifying the 
 vitality, continued prosperity and grand destiny of the re- 
 public which it shows forth in miniature and which it is 
 destined forever to reflect. In exact accordance with the 
 progress of the nation, Washington, where beats the pulse of 
 the republic's heart blood, will develop. Inevitably, there- 
 fore, it will be, not in the corruption of ancient capitals, but 
 in republican simplicity of morals, in every phase of intel- 
 lectual advancement and in every outward material attrac- 
 tion the greatest among the great capitals of the world. 
 
 The soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic are 
 passing away. Year by year the number of those able to 
 respond in the body at a muster fast decreases. Year by 
 year Valhalla claims an increasing host. Soon the last 
 veteran will be gathered to his companions in arms. 
 
 But while the republic itself endures the Grand Army 
 of the Republic can not die. The distinguishing and abiding 
 feature of the Grand Army is not the fact of war, of fratri- 
 cidal bloodshed, but the enthusiastic, dominating love of 
 country which drove thousands into unaccustomed war as 
 by a common, irresistible impulse. This spirit is imperish- 
 able and will inspire the youth of a new grand army, proud 
 of the deeds of their fathers and forefathers, to whatever 
 may be accomplished for their country from love of country. 
 
73 
 
 If war with a foreign aggressor calls Americans to defence 
 of the republic sons and successors will take the places of the 
 disappearing veterans and emulate in battle the patriotism, 
 courage, and endurance of the soldiers whom we greet 
 to-day. If no war threatens — which may God grant ! — the 
 grand army of peace will take the field, enlisting the youth 
 of America in defence of the republic against the national 
 perils of avarice and corruption, and calling upon them for 
 the same patriotic bravery and persistence in well-doing 
 that is displayed by the soldier against an armed foe. 
 
 The undying patriotic spirit of the Grand Army will 
 live in the hearts and minds of all true Americans, harden- 
 ing their muscles for war in a righteous cause and devel- 
 oping for peaceful times another Grand Army by which 
 blows equally effective shall be delivered against evils that 
 menace the republic, the creed of whose soldiers shall be 
 that it is sweet and pleasant both to live and die for one's 
 country. 
 
 To-day the Union's city and the Union's army clasp 
 hands in the warm, fraternal greeting of kindred and sym- 
 pathetic natures, issuing from a common source, both born 
 of patriotic Americanism, both material manifestations of 
 the spirit of American nationality. 
 
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