Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-01-02
For the New Years REooKD-Usros-l
OUR COMMON PROPERTY.
HISTORY AND ROMANCE OF TIE CAPITAL.
OF HE UNITED STATES.
The Capitol Building and its Annals
The White House and It's
Romances.
WASHINGTON, December p. 1881.


seat of Government was located here was
passed July, 1890. The comforts of
home were to be accorded at Philadelphia for
ten years, to quiet Philadelphia, and mean
time new place was TO be planned on the
Potomac river between the mouths Of the
Eastern Branch and Conococheague, and
public editices erected upon it. The actual
! selection and plan were to be left to a COM
mission selected by the President; and thus
the Federal city is an executive act, deliber-
ated between Washington and private citi-
zens.
| THE FIRST STONE
To mark the boundaries of the District of
| Columbia was set at Jones Point. below AL
exandria, on the 18th OF April, 1871. The
location of the Capitol is quite near the
council house of the Indian tribes-the Pow
hattans, Manahoscs and Monacans being
| chief among them, who made the shores of
the Potomac their fishing ground. White
perch, rock fish, carp, and vast ehosls of mi
gratory fish from the sea abt uuded in this
populSus river, most of which varieties are
still extant TO enrich the tables Of the capital
CITY. So late as the early part of the present
century seines were hauled in T;ber creek, a
| tributary stream now obsolete on the identi-
cal portion Of its course which is now covered
! by Pennsylvania avenue, between Ninth and
| Tenth streets. This is the midpoint of that
noble thoroughfare, between the Executive
Mansion and the Capitol, along which stately
professions pass in civil and military pageants
of oft-recurring interest. The site of the ne "
district was not, however, the wilderness it
has been sometimes represented. The Po-
tomac had been explored up to this point, and
as far as the Little Falls above, by Henry
| Fleet. one hundred aud sixty years before.
| Fleet was the first civilized being who ever
looked upon the site of Washington. When
Leonard Calvert arrivedinthe Potomac in 1854
he went up to confer with this adventurous fur
trader, who had been many years in the
country. 1.-THE place." says Fleet, in his
manuscript story Of ascending the river, never
published till 1871, sig, without all question,
| healthful and pleasant snd most convenient
! for habitation the air temperate in summer,
and not violent in winter. 1t aboundeth
with all manner OF fish. the Indians in one
night commonly will catch thirty surgeons
| in place where the river is not over twelve
fathoms broad And for deer, buffaloes,
/ bears, turkeys, the woods do swarm with
them, and the soil is exceedingly fertile !; but,
above this place, the country is rocky and
mountainous, like Canada" GEORGETOWN
(aow West Washington) and Bellhaven Tor
Alexandris), were rather
OLD PLACES
Where the surveys were made for Washing
ton City, the former having been laid out in
1751. AS early as 1779 William Witt, whose
parents resided at Bladeasburg, went to ''a
classical academy at Georgetown;'' and the
Georgetown University, the largest Jesuit
college in the country, will celebrate its ceE-
tennial in 1889.
The name borne by the capital was first
given to it in the following letter addressed
by the first Commissioners to Major Len
FAINT, French officer and engineer who had
been wounded in the siege of Savannah, and
out of whose mind and heart, when occasion
was ripe, sprang the design of Washington
City:
GEORGETOWN, September Q, 1791
SIR: We have agreed thai the Federal District
shall be called "The Territory of Columbia" and
the Federal city, " The City OF Washington" We
have also agreed that the streets be named alpha
| betically one way, and numerically the other the
former divided into north and south letters, the
latter into east and west numbers, from the
Capitol.
We are, etc. signed]
THo5. JOHNSON, STUART and CARROLL.
1t may assist the student of history, if we
may mention by way of contamporaneous
dates, that the capital city was staked out the
year after FraDklin's death, thirty years
before the death of George Ill, in Goethe's
52i year ard Schiller's 32i, l6 years before
the first steamboat, two years fcrs Louis
| XVI. was euillotined, when Luis PHILIPPE
was in Lis 10 i year, while Collt R3cAAm-
| beau was commander If tie French army.
two years after r shesp;erre h-c-i,ne head
! deputy, five years after the death OF Frede--
| lex the Great. while George Stephenson was
boy OF 49, the year john Wesley s, d Mira
beau died, ia N&poleon's % year, the year
Morse was born, in the thild year u ths Lon
| don Times. just alter LAT 4ye;te had beer the
most powerful man in France, three years
before the death of Edward Gibbon. while
Warren Hastings was oD ttial. in Bmke's
! 6lst year, Fox's 42d and Pitts 32d, three
years after the death of Chatham. in TIE
! PopedoIn of Plus VI, while Simon Bolivar
was child eight year old, the year Cooper
translated Homer and in Burns prime.
WASHINGTON CITY,
In its grand plan, is French; ia It's minor
plan. Quake. l. is the city of Philadelphia
griddled across tie city of Versailles, net
work Of squares over radiating star. The
French alliance with America brought to our
shores the draugbtsman of the government
city. As LElfant made it, il remains with
little or no alteration of plar. Few men
have had it in their power TO define so abso-
lutely stage for grand historical and bio
graphical movement. In March, 1892, the
Commi ssioners of the rev city offered pre-
MUM, by advertising in the public papers,
! for plan for the Presidents house, and an
| other for design for the Capitol to be pre-
sented by the 18Th of July, 1893 In April
| of the latter year President Washington APP
proved of the plan of the Capitol presented
! by DIR. William Thornton in response to the
| above advertisement, and on the 81 Of Sc
TENDER, 1893 the following appears in the
records of the Commissioners
The Capitol is in progression the southeast is left
vacant that corner stone is TO be laid with the
sstance of TIE bro .herhood the 18th instant Those
of the craft however dispersed, are requested to
join the work. The soemnity is expected to equal
the occasion.
It wss accordingly laid by General Wash
ington on the 18th of September, 1898, who
delivered, before a large concourse Of citizens
from the vicinity and distance, an impress
i've and appropriate speech. A controversy
.prapg up among the architects which out
lived the life of Washington Six of these in
succession superintended the main building.
It does not appear that any harmony pre-
vailed, and dishonesty was often charged and
sometimes proved. The foundations of the
tirst Capitol were condemned and Obliged to
be rebuilt. After the first Commissioners had
been superseded two of their successors were
found short IN their accounts. All this
sounds strikingly like the current govern
mental experience of the present day. The
public buildings make
CONTINUOUS ROMANCE
In their design, construction and personal as
sociations. Tie public is better satisfied with
the Capitol from year to year, and many men
of culture and travel even prefer the old free
stone original ediice to the spacious and
,stly marble wings. The journals and let.
ter books Of the early Commissioners of the
Federal City are kept on the crypt floor of
the Capitol, and are partly indexed. The
printed documents of Congress continue the
story of those constructions to our day, but
many of them are rare and some missing.
because the Capitol has been three times de-
vastated by fire, which twice chose the library
as the point Of attack. The capital city was
great anxiety TO General Washington for
the remainder of his days. for he was very
sensitive to its success, and it had to suffer
the intense and concentrated fire of criticism
and wit icism, domestic and foreign, as well
as more serious financial adversely He never
beheld any of the glory of it; and the fact
that he had been responsible for it, and had
settled it in the neighborhood of his estates,
probably weighed somewhat upon his spirits