Ten Years in Washington

The Young Surveyor's Dream-Humboldt's View of Washington - A Vision of the Future Capital-The United States Government on WheelsAmbitious Offers-The Rival Rivers-Potomac Wins-Battles in Congress-Patriotic Offers of Territory-Temporary Lodgings for Eleven Years-Old-Fashioned Simplicity-He Couldn't Afford Furniture-A Great Man's Modesty-Conflicting Claims-Smith Backs Baltimore-A Convincing Fact--The Dreadful Quakers-A Condescending PartyA Slight Amendment-An Old Bill Brought to Light Again-The Indian Place with the Long Name-Secession Threatened-The Future Strangely Foreshadowed-A Dinner of Some Consequence-How it was Done-Really a Stranger-A Nice Proposal-Sweetening the Pill-A "Revulsion of Stomach "-Fixed on the Banks of the Potomac.

ORE than a century ago a young surveyor, Captain

of the Virginia troops, camped with Braddock's forces upon the hill now occupied by the Washington Observatory, looked down as Moses looked from Nebo upon the promised land, until he saw growing before his prophetic sight the city of the future, the Capital of a vast and free people then unborn. This youth was George Washington. The land upon which he gazed was the undreamed of site of the undreamed of city of the Republic, then to be. This youth, ordained of God to be the Father of the Republic, was the prophet of its Capital. He foresaw it, he chose it, he served it, he loved it; but as a Capital he never entered it.

Gazing from the green promontory of Camp Hill, what was the sight of land and water upon which the youthful surveyor looked down? It was fair to see, so fair that Humboldt declared after traveling around the earth, that for the site of a city the entire globe does not hold its equal. On his left rose the wooded hights of Georgetown. On his right, the hills of Virginia stretched outward toward the ocean. From the luxurious meadows which zoned these hills, the Potomac River-named by the Indians Cohonguroton, River of Swans-from its source in the Alleghany Mountains, flowing from north-west to south-west, here expanded more than the width of a mile, and then in concentrated majesty rolled on to meet Chesapeake Bay, the river James, and the ocean. South and east, flowing to meet it, came the beautiful Anacostin, now called Eastern Branch, and on the west, winding through its picturesque bluffs, ran the lovely Rock Creek, pouring its bright waters into the Potomac, under the Hights of Georgetown. At the confluence of these two rivers, girdled by this bright stream, and encompassed by hills, the young surveyor looked across a broad amphitheatre of rolling plain, still covered with native oaks and undergrowth. It was not these he saw. His prescient sight forecast the future. He saw the two majestic rivers bearing upon their waters ships bringing to these green shores the commerce of many nations. He saw the gently climbing hills crowned with villas, and in the stead of oaks and undergrowth, broad streets, a populous city, magnificent buildings, outrivaling the temples of antiquity-the Federal City, the Capital of the vast Republic yet to be! The dreary camp, the weary march,

A GOVERNMENT ON WHEELS.

privation, cold, hunger, bloodshed, revolution, patient victory at last, all these were to be endured, outlived, before the beautiful Capital of his future was reached. Did the youth foresee these, also? Many toiling, struggling, suffering years bridged the dream of the young surveyor and the first faint dawn of its fulfillment.

After the Declaration of Independence, before the adop tion of the Constitution of the United States, its government moved slowly and painfully about on wheels. As the exigencies of war demanded, Congress met at Philadelphia, Baltimore, Lancaster, York, Princeton, Annapolis, Trenton, and New York. During these troubled years it was the ambition of every infant State to claim the seat of government. For this purpose New York offered Kingston; Rhode Island, Newport; Maryland, Anapolis; Virginia, Williamsburg.

June 21, 1783, Congress was insulted at Philadelphia by a band of mutineers, which the State authorities could not subdue. The body adjourned to Princeton; and the troubles and trials of its itinerancy caused the subject of a permanent national seat of government to be taken up and discussed with great vehemence from that time till the formation of the Constitution. The resolutions offered, and the votes taken in these debates, indicate that the favored site for the future Capital lay somewhere between the banks of the Delaware and the Potomac-"near Georgetown," says the most oft-repeated sentence. October 30, 1784, the subject was discussed by Congress, at Trenton. A long debate resulted in the appointment of three commissioners, with full power to lay out a district not exceeding three, nor less than two miles square, on the banks of either side of the Delaware, for a Federal

town, with power to buy soil and to enter into contracts. for the building of a Federal House, President's house, house for Secretaries, etc.

Notwithstanding the adoption of this resolution, these Commissioners never entered upon their duties. Probably the lack of necessary appropriations did not hinder them more than the incessant attempts made to repeal the act appointing the Commissioners, and to substitute the Potomac for the Delaware, as the site of the anticipated Capital. Although the name of President Washington does not appear in these controversies, even then the dream of the young surveyor was taking on in the President's mind the tangible shape of reality. First, after the war for human freedom and the declaration of national independence, was the desire in the heart of George Washington that the Capital of the new Nation whose armies he had led to triumph, should rise above the soil of his native Dominion, upon the banks of the great river where he had foreseen it in his early dream. That he used undue influence with the successive Congresses which debated and voted, on many sites, not the slightest evidence remains, and the nobility of his character forbids the supposition. But the final decision attests to the prevailing potency of his preferences and wishes, and the immense pile of correspondence which he has left behind on the subject, proves that next to the establishment of its independence, was the Capital of the Republic dear to the heart of George Washington. May 10, 1787, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Georgia voted for, and New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland against the proposition of Mr. Lee of Virginia, that the Board of Treasury should take measures for

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Ten Years in Washington: Life and Scenes in the National Capital, as a Woman ...