Our National Capital: An Address Delivered in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 8, 1877

OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED
IN BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, ON 8 MAY 1877

Speech File, reel 15, frames 231-49, FD Papers, DLC. Other texts in Baltimore American,
9 May 1877; Baltimore Sun, 9 May 1877; Washington Evening Star, 10 May 1877; New
York Times, 11 May 1877; Speech File, reel 15, frames 56-96, 97-146, 147-85, 186-
229, FD Papers, DLC.

When Douglass rose to address his audience at Baltimore’s Douglass Institute
on 8 May 1877, he could not foresee the criticism and resentment that were to
follow the event. En route to participate in the inaugural ceremonies for the
Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, he stopped to deliver the lecture as part
of the St. Paul’s lyceum course at the Baltimore hall named for him. He gave a
reading of his lecture on “Our National Capital,” which he had written and
delivered in Washington, D.C., more than a year previously. But the publica-
tion of short excerpts from this lecture in the Baltimore press and subsequently
in the Washington newspapers proved anything but timely. The Senate had
just confirmed his appointment by President Rutherford B. Hayes as marshal
for the District of Columbia. There had been some local opposition to Doug-
lass’s appointment, and now the reports of his criticism of the strong racial
prejudices of Washington’s white population in “Our National Capital”
sparked an angry drive for his removal. The Washington Evening Star called
his appointment “a mistake” and said that he was “unfit . . . to take charge
of a responsible executive trust.” Another Washington newspaper, the Na-
tional Republican, reprinted a petition circulating the city, asking Hayes to
dismiss Douglass from office. The National Republican also interviewed a
number of prominent Washington citizens—white and black—on the issue.
The whites unanimously agreed that Douglass had behaved improperly and
deserved removal. Several blacks, including John Mercer Langston, dissoci-
ated themselves from Douglass’s criticism of the white Washington communi-
ty, but his friend Charles B. Purvis came to his defense. Washington Evening
Star, 11 May 1877; Washington National Republican, 11, 12 May 1877;
Syracuse (N.Y.) Journal, 12 May 1877; New York Times, 13, 18, 19 May
1877; Washington Evening Star, 14 May 1877; ChR, 17, 24 May 1877;
Douglass, Life and Times, 463-67, 469-70; Holland, Colored Orator, 341-42.

Ladies and Gentlemen:—It is not from any sense of my superior knowl-
edge of men and things at the National Capital, or from any decided
impression of your special destitution of such knowledge, that I venture to
lecture upon the subject announced for this evening; on the contrary, the
selection may be best explained upon the principle that large bodies attract
small ones, and, in the comparison between the large and the small, you are
the large and I am the small. You may know much, and I may know little.
Nevertheless, having spent in Washington, several of the most eventful,
stormy and perilous years of the Republic; having seen it both during and
since the late tremendous war; having been a deeply interested spectator
and student of passing events; and being compelled by my position and
antecedents to view men and things from a peculiar point of observation,
and knowing too, that truth is a very large and many sided matter, and that
it requires a very large variety of men and women to tell it, I have naturally
enough thought it might be well for me to tell my story about our National
Capital.

There is another reason for the selection, not perhaps, so creditable as
the one already stated, yet equally true; I was in want of a subject, and in
want of one that is popular.

I have found that subjects, remote from public thought and feeling, [are
apt to prove]¹Crossed out in typescript. even if not somewhat remote from the thought and feeling of
the speaker himself, [and that anything so remote]²Crossed out in typescript. cannot easily be made
very interesting [to any body].³Crossed out in typescript.

[The law on the subject as I understand it is this:⁴Crossed out in typescript. Popular lectures, or
lectures to be made popular, must [get themselves delivered]⁵Crossed out in typescript. be upon
popular subjects, those in which the public have a warm and vital interest.

Several years ago it was my good or ill fortune to know a lecturer, who
somewhat disastrously set this law at deﬁance.⁶The lecturer in this story was Douglass himself, who delivered his “William the Silent" oration at the Boston Music Hall on the evening of 3 December 1868. As Douglass correctly recalls, the local press gave his lecture mixed reviews. Boston Daily Advertiser, 4 December 1868; Boston Daily Evening Transcript, 4 December 1868. From some cause or other,
perhaps a desire to do something out of the common way, something high,.
grand and surprising, or perhaps from a mere paroxism of self conﬁdence
in which he was made to feel himself equal to any achievement, he ventured

before a brilliant Boston audience (all things in Boston are brilliant)
clad in an intellectual armor which was evidently neither made, measured,
nor meant for him, nor he for it.

He took for his theme the name of a great historical character, a man
who lived and wrought in a remote age and country, a real hero in his day
and generation, and one who had made the friends of civil and religious
liberty immensely his debtor; but, sublime and glorious as was the theme,
it was impossible for the speaker to overcome the barriers of time and
space. For the life of him, he could not bring the subject home to his
audience.

He labored hard and really did his best; he was historical, philosoph-
ical, reformatory and belletristical; but all to no purpose. He made a
tremendous impression upon himself, but his audience escaped entirely. In
spite of his highest ﬂights of oratory, the lights would burn dimly, the air
would grow heavy and somnolency would creep over the weary crowd.
About the most lively and most cheerful moment of the whole of this
intellectual entertainment was when the orator meekly bowed and retired
from the platform.

[One of the most distressing features of this affair was that the speaker
himself had no valid excuse for his palpable failure. He could not make the
fashionable plea of ill health for his robust appearance would have contra-
dicted his words. He could not put the blame upon his bronchial tubes for
his voice was strong and rang through the vast hall like a trumpet. He could
not plead a want of time for preparation; he had had all summer. In fact he
had only his own rashness and folly to blame and like other offenders of this
kind was compelled to admit that his punishment was just.

The morning paper purchased of a noisy news boy at the station, just as
he was leaving Boston for new ﬁelds of glory added the last drop to his
oratorical sorrows. Instead of giving him a splendid puff, a column report,
and sending him on his way rejoicing; it simply dismissed him with less
than six lines, the substance of which was that Frederick Douglass, the well
known colored lecturer, ought to have known better than to have attempted
a lecture upon such a subject in Boston.

Since this bit of bitter experience I have learned wisdom, and in seek-
ing a subject I sternly refused to meddle with foreign affairs, and have
scrupulously shunned the classic shades of antiquity.]⁷Crossed out in typescript.

Fortunate or unfortunate as I may be in my selection of a subject this

evening, [I have at least secured]⁸Crossed out in typescript. it has at least, the advantage of popu-
larity. Whatever may be the character of some things said and done at the
National Capital, the place itself, for a variety of reasons, some good and
some bad, has powerful attractions and is wonderfully popular in the sense
that every body knows a great deal about it and wants to know a great deal
more.

Of all the broad columns of the morning papers, the one containing
news from Washington is, naturally enough, the most generally sought, if
not the most carefully read.

Merchants, bankers, brokers, and other business men, may have their
special corners and columns, which they eagerly scan, but the Washington
column is a column for the whole nation. It is the point from which we learn
not only what storms are in the sky, and where they will be likely to fall, but
what social earthquakes slumber beneath and are likely to rock and rive the
political world, and it would be well for us if we could only learn at the
same time how to avoid the disasters attending both. Interesting from the
ﬁrst as the honored seat of the National Government, Washington should
now be more interesting than ever. There is better reason than ever for such
interest. At no time in its previous history, has it been so truly as now, the
capital of the whole nation.

The vast and wonderful revolution which has, during the last dozen
years, taken place in the conditions and relations of the American people is
nowhere more visible, striking, and complete, than in Washington. A man
who knew the place in the days of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster,⁹Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster. would
hardly know it now. Outside of the public buildings, some of which have
been vastly changed and improved, all the older landmarks of the city have
been obscured, or have wholly disappeared. The spade, the plough and the
pick-axe of the Freedman have changed the appearance of the face of the
earth upon which the city stands. Hills have been leveled, valleys filled up,
canals, gulleys, ditches, and other hiding places of putridity and pesti-
lence, have been arched, drained, and purified, and their neighborhood
made healthy, sweet, and habitable.

The old repulsive market places, so long a disfigurement to the city and
a disgrace to the civilization of the age, have been swept away, and re-
placed by imposing and beautiful structures, in keeping with the spirit of
progress.¹⁰During the 1870s, two of Washington’s principal market places were demolished and rebuilt. In 1872 the Northern Liberty Market at Seventh and K streets was torn down and a new building by that name, which also housed a convention hall, was constructed at Fifth and L streets. At the same time, the sheds of the city's Center Market on Pennsylvania Avenue were replaced by a spacious building erected between Seventh and Ninth streets by the Washington Market Company, which Congress had chartered in 1870. Tindall, History of the City of Washington, 232, 255-56, 265, 363, 383-84; Green, Washington, 1: 326, 352-53.

Magniﬁcent thoroughfares, for which Washington has no rival, have
been lately graded, paved, and parked, and richly adorned on either side
with beautiful and ﬂourishing shade trees. The Capitol grounds, seventy
acres in extent, (full thirty acres larger than the late Horace Greeley al-
lowed for a model farm,) formerly a picture of neglect and ugliness, have
been touched by the genius of Fredrick Law Olmsted,¹¹Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Frederick Law Olmsted (l822- I903) studied at but did not graduate from Yale. After trying out the agricultural and mercantile life, Olmsted toured Europe in 1850 and developed an interest in landscape architecture. In 1852 he accepted a commission from Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times, to travel through the South reporting on conditions he observed, particularly the institution of slavery. Olmsted eventually made three southern tours; his newspaper articles were republished in three books and then in a condensed two-volume edition entitled The Cotton Kingdom (1861). In 1856 he accepted appointment as superintendent of New York City's new Central Park and, with Charles Vaux, prepared a plan that in 1857 won the commission for the park's future design. As secretary general of the U.S. Sanitary Commission (1861-63), Olmsted oversaw much of the hospital and health services for the Union army in the Civil War. He later produced park designs for Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Montreal, and, in 1874, for the Capitol and Washington Monument grounds in Washington, D.C. Olmsted also championed the preservation of the scenic beauty of Niagara Falls and Yosemite Valley and was the ﬁrst commissioner of Yosemite National Park. Elizabeth Stevenson, Park Maker: A Life of Frederick Law Olmsted (New York, 1977); Laura Wood Roper, FLO: A Biography ofFrederick Law Olmsted (Baltimore, 1973); ACAB, 4: 577-78; DAB, 14: 24-28. and clothed with
the entrancing power of landscape beauty.

Splendid mansions of every variety of modern architecture, have been
erected in all parts of the city, as if by enchantment.

In comparison with these elegant dwellings, those great buildings of
twenty years ago look stunned, gloomy and old fashioned, and out of
place.

As you move around the city you will see that outlying tracts of land,
once the broad receptacles of dead animals and where no better scavengers
appeared than the buzzards and the crows, have been reclaimed and added
to the city and made to blossom like the rose.

The magnificent distances of old have been mastered by street railways
in all directions. New lines of them have been built, old ones extended and
now splendid chariots have been added to the conveniences of the people in
getting from one part of the city to the other.

Ample public grounds, parks, and reservations of every shape, size
and situation, have been expensively enclosed, handsomely laid out, and
covered with trees, shrubs and ﬂowers.

One of the most charming features of the capital city, both in its
numerous public and private grounds, is in the abundance and display of
pure water. Numerous fountains, fed by the broad Potomac, send their
pure, bright, crystal spray high in the summer sunlight, clothing the grassy
lawns and shrubbery around them, with more than emerald beauty.

Even the lands surrounding that long neglected and still unfinished
monument, erected to the memory of George Washington, have been, in
the last year or two, greatly improved and beautified, while the monument
itself, in its desolate incompleteness, is a standing reproach to the gratitude
of the Republic.¹²Begun in 1849, the construction of the Washington Monument was not completed until 1885, when the site was publicly dedicated. Green, Washington, 2: 82.

I look forward to the day when this reproach shall be removed, as many
others have been. More has been accomplished in this respect by the spirit
of freedom in Washington during the last three years, than during the
preceding thirty years of the slave power.

Under the new dispensation of liberty, the Federal city has been lifted
out of more than sixty years of mud and mire.

It has broken up the inaction and stagnation, snapped the iron chain of
conservatism which anchored the city to a barbarous past, banished
miasma, improved the value of property, increased the population, and
opened for the city a future of glory undreamed of by its people fifteen
years ago.

This marvelous transformation of Washington, has met the disapproval
of a certain class of our citizens. Like a historical character of earlier times,
who had much to do with the money bag, they think the treasure might have
been expended more wisely in other directions.

The better judgment of the country, however, is, that we cannot easily
do too much to improve the character and beautify the appearance of
Washington. Regard for the welfare, fame and fortune of the national
capital should be commensurate with the ever increasing power, greatness,
and glory of the nation itself.

With the best government in the world, the people of the United States
should have a national capital inferior to that of no other nation in the
world. The sentiment which would improve, beautify and exalt the city of
Washington, is neither weak, unwise, nor transient. It is a natural and
necessary outgrowth of a healthy manly and self respecting patriotism.

To those very broad and high people who are insensible to national

boundaries, and are incapable of any special feeling of country, considera-
tions of this sort have little weight. There are doubtless men of this descrip-
tion in every community, some of them possibly very good men, the best of
the race, men whose country is the world and whose countrymen are all
mankind,¹³Douglass slightly misquotes the masthead motto of William Lloyd Garrison's Boston newspaper, The Liberator. but these are exceptional men.

As a general rule it will be found, that a man who cares nothing for the
character and credit of his country, will care about as little for his own
character and credit.

Of course there is a great deal of cant about patriotism, as there is about
[a great]¹⁴Crossed out in typescript. many other good things in the world. “My country, however
bounded,” said Winthrop, when we were about to take forcible possession
of Texas, and thus rob a neighboring Republic of her rightful possession.¹⁵In a toast at a Fourth of July celebration at Faneuil Hall in Boston, Massachusetts, Whig politician Robert Charles Winthrop (1809-94) declared “OUR COUNTRY,—Whether bounded by the St. John's and the Sabine, or however otherwise bounded or described, and be the measurements more or less,—still our country, to be cherished in all our hearts, to be defended by all our hands!" Winthrop was born in Boston to one of the State's oldest and most prominent families. After graduating from Harvard, he studied law in Daniel Webster's office and joined the state bar. Winthrop served six terms in the state legislature (1834-40), the last three as Speaker. Except for a six-month period in 1842, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1840 to 1850 and was Speaker from 1847 to 1849. Appointed in 1850 to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Webster, Winthrop attracted the ire of many constituents for supporting the Fugitive Slave Law and was defeated for reelection the next year by Charles Sumner. He devoted the remainder of his life to literary and philanthropic pursuits. Robert C. Winthrop, Jr., A Memoir of Robert C. Winthrop (Boston, 1897), 45; BDAC, 1838; DAB, 20: 416-17.
“My country, right or wrong,” says the demagogue, when he knows his
country is clearly in the wrong.¹⁶U.S. naval hero Stephen Decatur originated this oft-repeated phrase in a toast at a dinner in Norfolk, Virginia, in April 1816. H. L. Mencken, A New Dictionary of Quotations on “Historical” Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources (New York, 1942), 226. But whatever may be the cant and
extravagance which gains currency under the garb of patriotism, the senti-
ment itself is pure, natural, and noble; as real as iron, or the ﬂintiest
granite, and more enduring than granite or iron.

The precise quality and value of this feeling, I shall not undertake to
analyse and determine. It may not be the highest and best of which the
human soul is capable; it may not be so noble as gratitude, nor so pure as
love of woman; not so sacred as regard for truth, not so divine as a sense of
the Infinite; but like all these, and more, it is genuine, human, instructive,
and capable of performing an important work in the onward progress of the
world. It is as natural to us as to walk the earth, breathe the air and view the
solemn sky.

In this, the centennial year of American Independence, but little need
be said in proof or in praise of patriotism. The air is full and fragrant with
her achievements. In every direction her deeds and her heroes are mar-
shalled before us in all the panoramic splendor with which poetry and
eloquence can paint them.

We need not go back to the soul stirring and soul trying events of the
Revolution of 1776.¹⁷Douglass alludes to the opening line of Thomas Paine's ﬁrst Crisis paper, 23 December 1776. Political Writings of Thomas Paine, 1: 75. Examples are near [home]¹⁸Crossed out in typescript. us. While we remember
the smoke of battle as it lingers over the Wilderness; while we remember
the impatient cry of “On to Richmond,”¹⁹In each issue from 26 June to 4 July 1861, Horace Greeley’s New York Daily Tribune published a short editorial entitled “The Nation’s War-Cry" that exhorted “Forward to Richmond? Forward to Richmond! The Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there on the 20th of July!" This call was immediately picked up by other Northern newspapers, placing great pressure on the government to launch an offensive in Virginia. New York Daily Tribune, 26 June 1861; Nevins, War for the Union, 1: 214. and the enthusiastic devotion to
the Union which gave the first born of every loyal household to the altar of
country and liberty; while we remember the fresh graves of more than a
quarter of a million of the youth and ﬂower of the nation; while we re-
member the thousands of maimed and mutilated soldiers who offered their
limbs and their lives in exchange for the safety and freedom of their
country, no wordy tribute to the quality and value of patriotism is required
at my unskilled hands. She speaks for herself. Her trophies and her monu-
ments are all around us. Her witnesses are a free country, a united country,
and emancipated millions forever redeemed from the horror of slavery and
chains.

But I return to Washington. Great cities, like great men, have their
distinctive, individual characters and qualities. While all have something
in common, each has something peculiar to itself, and each makes its own
peculiar impression on the outside world. New York is not Boston, nor is
Boston Philadelphia; and neither the one nor the other is Washington.

New York, Boston, and Philadelphia stand for what they are, vast
assemblages of wealth and power; seats of commerce, that touch us on the
cold, calculating and flinty side of our natures.

The case is somewhat otherwise with Washington. We naturally view
all her majestic features through the mellow haze of poetry and patriotism.
It is the living centre of our social, as well as of our political civilization.
and is incorporated with all our national thoughts and feelings. In the

remotest sections of the Republic, in the most distant quarters of the globe,
whether amid the splendors of Europe, or the barbarism of Africa; wherev-
er business or pleasure may carry him, an American citizen worthy of the
name, feels himself largely identified with the capital of his nation. He
cannot separate himself from her. He is proud of all which may cover her
name with glory and renown, or grieves for that which shadows her name
with shame and reproach. His solicitude for her character and good name is
analogous to that which an honorable man feels, and ought to feel, for the
character and good name of his own town, neighborhood and family. The
poor man should feel rich and the rich man should feel richer, by reason of
his relationship to it and his ownership in it, for the capital of the nation
belongs alike to all.

I once heard Daniel Webster, [s]tanding with uncounted thousands of
American citizens before him at the base of Bunker Hill monument, sur-
veying the lofty granite shaft, from ground to sky, say, in a voice and
manner that thrilled me, “Welcome, Welcome, for wherever else you may
be strangers, ye are at home here.”²⁰In this, his only claim to having been in the audience, Douglass closely paraphrases Daniel Webster's speech at the celebration of the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument on 17 June 1843. Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, 1: 265.

So happily we may now all say of Washington, “Wherever the Ameri-
can citizen may be a stranger, may be a citizen, he is at home here.”

Elsewhere he may be a citizen of a state, no larger than Delaware; here
he is a citizen of a great nation. Elsewhere he belongs to a section, but here
he belongs to the whole country and the whole country belongs to him. No
American now has a skin too dark to call Washington his home, and no
American now has a skin so white and a heart so black as to deny him that
right. Under the majestic dome of the American [Senate]²¹Crossed out in typescript. Capitol, as truly
as under the broad blue sky of heaven, men of all races, colors, and
conditions may now stand in equal freedom, thrilled with the sentiment of
equal citizenship and common country. The wealth, beauty and magniﬁ-
cence which, if seen elsewhere, might oppress the lowly with a sad sense of
their personal insignificance, seen here, ennoble them in their own eyes,
and are felt to be only fit and proper to the capital of a great nation.

In passing through the city from day to day, and contrasting the present
with the past, I [sometimes think]²²Crossed out in typescript. often reﬂect that an American citizen

cannot do a [much]²³Crossed out in typescript. better thing for himself or for his country than to visit
Washington at least once in his life time.

He need not go there as a Mohammedan goes to Mecca,²⁴Mecca, the holiest city of Islam, is located on the Arabian peninsula, 45 miles inland from the Red Sea. The city is the site of the Kaaba, a small, cube-shaped stone temple believed built by Abraham, and of the Zam-Zam, a sacred well that figured in the biblical account of Hagar and Ishmael. The fifth and final tenet of the Islamic faith is that all believers, unless ill or impoverished, must make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their life. Ferm, Encyclopedia of Religion, 412, 478, 500-02. nor as a
Catholic goes to Rome, nor as an Israelite goes to Jerusalem, but he should
go in the spirit of intelligent patriotism, the better to appreciate the value of
his country and the excellence of Free Institutions.

Washington should loom before our mental vision, not merely as an
assemblage of magnificent public buildings, and a profusion of fine and
fashionable people; not merely as the seat of National power and greatness;
not merely as the fortunate place where the nation’s great men assemble
from year to year to shape the policy, enact the laws, and control the destiny
of the Republic; not merely as the place where the diplomatic skill and
learning of the old world meet and measure themselves in debate with those
of the new, but, as all that, and more. We should contemplate it with much
the same feeling with which we contemplate the national flag itself; as the
Star Spangled Banner, with not one star missing or dimmed; a glorious
symbol of civil and religious liberty, expressive of the best ideas and
institutions yet devised by the wit of man.

There is abroad a feeling strongly opposed to centralization and a
centralizing tendency. It cannot be denied that Washington has some such
tendency, but this is inevitable. It could not be otherwise, and it be the seat
of the national government. Every capital has this national and centralizing
tendency. In Europe all roads lead to Rome.²⁵This Latin proverb had been familiar in English translation since the fourteenth century. Mencken, Dictionary of Quotations on “Historical” Principles, 1048. A man’s heart is with his
treasure,²⁶A paraphrase from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Matt. 6: 21; Luke, 6: 45, and 12: 34. and the heart of a nation is the heart of an individual multiplied.
It is more than a figure of speech when it is said that Paris is France, and that
London is England. While all the high functions of the national govern-
ment have their seat and centre in Washington, the mind and heart of the
nation will and must be drawn thither, and will magnify its importance. In
this natural and necessary tendency, I see no just cause of alarm. Neither
the government nor the people are likely to suffer by it. We are a Republic,
not a despotism. With universal suffrage in their [hearts]²⁷Crossed out in typescript. hands the

people have all power and they [must]²⁸Crossed out in typescript. may be safely trusted to manage
both the centripetal and centrifugal forces of our complex system of gov-
ernment. The broad open sea, fanned by the winds of heaven, is about as
pure as the muddy streams that ﬂow into it. The many are about as good as
are the few. The whole is about as strong as a part, and the nation as a
whole, will be about as wise and just as the individual states.

If comparison shall be made between centralization and sectionalism,
and each shall be judged by its fruits, centralization will appear the least
pernicious of the two doctrines. The American people have suffered far
[more]²⁹Crossed out in typescript. less from the former than from the latter. One tends to unity and
nationality, and the other tends to disorganization and disorder. The one
would adorn and exalt the national capital, and the other would hand it over
to neglect and dilapidation.

Thus far I have given you thoughts concerning Washington, and have
told in what regard the national metropolis should be held by the American
people. I have to speak now more particularly of the fact of Washington; of
its character and composition; of its past, present, and future. It will be
easily seen that the contemplation of the city is one thing, and the city itself
is quite another thing; and that there may be a wide difference between
what it ought to be, and what it may be in reality, and what it may be in the
reforming hand of the future.

In regard to the character and influence of Washington we have to deal
with some broad and striking contradictions. It is natural to assume that the
place where good men assemble must itself be good; that the presence [of
the one must inevitably insure the presence of the other.]³⁰Crossed out in typescript. of good men
will invest with goodness the place where they congregate.

Adorned by the presence of the highest functionaries of the nation, by
the chosen men of every section of our common country; the theatre of
American wisdom, law, and learning; the home of the chief magistrate of
the Republic; the highest forum of American eloquence; the point from
which the whole American press receives its daily inspiration, it should be
as a city set upon a hill,³¹A paraphrase of Matt. 5: 13. a source of light, health and beauty to all who
come within its golden radiance.

Such would seem to be the general rule, and the just expectation.
Unhappily general rules sometimes have many exceptions. Justice is not

always found on the bench, nor purity in the pulpit, nor saints at the altar. It
will not do to assume for Washington, either moral or material preemi-
nence over other cities of the union; on the contrary, Washington, as
compared with many other parts of the country, has been, and still is, a
most disgraceful and scandalous contradiction to the march of civilization.

Of course it is easy to be wise after [the event]³²Crossed out in typescript. experience, and it may
seem [somewhat weak and ridiculous]³³Crossed out in typescript. weak to display [such]³⁴Crossed out in typescript. wisdom
concerning the act of locating the national capital where it [is now lo-
cated]³⁵Crossed out in typescript. now stands, but it is a natural reﬂection, and a part of the subject,
and cannot well be omitted.

Looking to the inﬂuence exerted by simple local surroundings, I have
no hesitation in saying that the selection of Washington as the National
Capital was one of the greatest mistakes made by the fathers of the Re-
public. The seat of government ought never to have been planted there.
This, however, is not to be spoken so much in censure, as in sorrow.

Beautiful and charming as are the shores of the Potomac, they were not
selected as the national seat of government as a matter of absolutely free
and deliberate choice. [T]he capital of the nation was in its infancy in some
sense, a stranger and a sojourner with no rightful abiding place. It was a
bird without a nest and hardly knew of a suitable place in which to build
one. It came to its present location as [a] pigeon will sometimes light upon
a tree, in the absence of a barn, not because it likes it, but because it can do
nothing better. That the capital rested at last upon the shores of the Potomac
was due largely to two causes: First, to the bad manners and brutality of a
Pennsylvania Militia Mob, and, secondly, to the potent inﬂuence of
George Washington. By the first it was insulted and driven from Phila-
delphia; by the second it was invited and lured to its present location.³⁶In 1783 the Continental Congress met in the Philadelphia building later popularly known as Independence Hall. In June of that year, disgruntled Continental Army soldiers left their barracks in Lancaster and Philadelphia and marched on Congress's meeting place to demand settlement of long overdue back pay. The Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council refused to call out the state militia to protect Congress, and Independence Hall was surrounded for a day by 250 armed “mutineers,” who shouted abuse but refrained from violence. That evening Congress adjourned to Princeton, New Jersey, and thereafter met in a series of locations while looking for a permanent site for a capital. Final selection was not completed until the ﬁrst Congress under the new Constitution passed a law on 16 July 1790 authorizing President Washington to choose a ten-mile-square site along the Potomac River separating Maryland and Virginia. The Potomac was selected in part to honor Washington, who resided along its banks at Mount Vernon and who had invested in improving the river as a major commercial artery into the interior. Another reason Congress chose to locate the capital so far south was an arrangement negotiated by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, whereby the federal government assumed unpaid Revolutionary War state debts that were owed primarily by the North, and the South would receive the beneﬁt of having the capital nearby. Green, Washington, 1: 7- 13; Tindall, History of the City of Washington, 21-56; Bryan, History of the National Capital, 1: 8-12.

There was not, at the time when it was chosen; there is not now and
probably never will be, entire satisfaction with the [present]³⁷Crossed out in typescript. location.
The arguments against it were political, moral, and social, as well as
geographical. Time has in large measure proved the wisdom and soundness
of all these objections.

Seemingly a small matter in itself at the time [when it was done],³⁸Crossed out in typescript.
experience has shown that it contained the seeds of civil war and disunion.

Sandwiched between two of the oldest slave states, each of which was
a nursery and a hot-bed of slavery; surrounded by a people accustomed to
look upon the youthful members of a colored man’s family as a part of the
annual crop for the market; pervaded by the manners, morals, politics, and
religion peculiar to a slaveholding community, the inhabitants of the na-
tional capital were, from first to last, frantically and fanatically sectional. It
was southern in all its sympathies, and national only in name. Until the
war, it neither tolerated freedom of speech, nor of the press. Slavery was its
idol, and, like all idol worshippers, its people howled with rage, when this
ugly idol was called in question.

Like most slaveholding communities, Washington was tolerant of
drinking, gambling, sensuality, indolence, and many other forms of vice,
common to an idle and lounging people. It was the home of the bully and
the duellist. A member of Congress, or an editor, who went there from the
more industrious and civilized parts of the country, found himself at an
immense disadvantage and of small account. He was in an enemy’s land, a
victim of insult and intimidation, and found that he must either submit to
the lash and sting of the most insolent of human tongues, or accept a
challenge to Bladensburg³⁹A village on the east branch of the Potomac River in Prince George's County, Maryland, about ﬁve miles northeast of Washington, D.C., where American forces had been routed by an invading British army on 24 August 1814. Lippincott's Gazetteer of the World: A Complete Pronouncing Gazetteer or Geographical Dictionary of the World, new ed., 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1890), 1: 246. and be shot [down]³⁸Crossed out in typescript. at by a trained duellist.

If, for any reason, however noble, he refused to submit to the barbarous

code of honor, he was branded as a coward, and regarded with con-
tempt and scorn by the elite of Washington society.

The place as it was before the war, might, without an unpardonable
freedom of fancy, be painted as a garden worthy of the best productions,
but mainly choked with poisonous weeds and infested by twisting serpents.

The wealth of Washington was tainted with corruption. Its moral life
was a miserable sham. Its industry was the [terror]⁴¹Crossed out in typescript. wielding of the lash;
its politeness, polished iniquity; its respect for the rights of man was
bounded by the white line; its courage was to whip a negro with his hands
tied; its religion was, like all the rest, a soft raiment, fair without, but foul
within, worn to cover the festering sores of a diseased and leprous body.

Like any other moral monster, there was contamination in its touch.
poison in its breath, and death in its embrace. There was something more
than a wild and witty exaggeration in the saying of senator Brownlow⁴²"Parson" William Gannaway Brownlow (1805-77), Republican senator from Tennessee from 1869 to 1875, was born in Wythe County, Virginia. Orphaned after the family moved to eastern Tennessee, he received little formal education. Brownlow joined the Methodist ministry in 1826 and preached in Tennessee and South Carolina, where he engaged in contentious pamphlet disputes with prominent southwestern Presbyterian and Baptist leaders. Brownlow also owned and edited a series of newspapers in Tennessee: the Elizabethtown Tennessee Whig (1839-40), the Jonesboro Whig (1840-49), and the Knoxville Whig and Independent Journal (1849-61). In 1858 he attracted nationwide attention in a highly publicized debate with the Reverend Abram Pryne of New York on the institution of slavery, which Brownlow argued was divinely sanctioned and economically beneﬁcial. His editorials against secession in 1861, however, prompted Confederate authorities first to suppress his newspaper and then to exile him to the North. He returned to the state with the Federal army in 1863 and became a leader of Tennessee Unionists. Elected governor in 1865, he championed the disenfranchisement of prominent Confederates and employed martial law powers to quell Ku Klux Klan activities. As a U.S. senator, Brownlow proved more interested in pressing the claims of white Unionists for war damages than in ensuring civil rights for blacks. After his Senate term, Brownlow resumed the editorship of the Knoxville Whig. E. Merton Coulter, William G. Brownlow: Fighting Parson of the Southern Highlands (Chapel Hill, 1937); Alexander, Political Reconstruction in Tennessee, 19-20, 33-34, 71-75, 180-98; BDAC, 613; ACAB, 1: 415-16; DAB, 3: 177-78.
when he remarked to a fellow passenger that he must be getting near
Washington, for he began to feel as if he wanted to steal something.

In fostering and fomenting the late slaveholders rebellion, Washington
performed its full share. It sustained Buchanan⁴³James Buchanan. when he trifled with
treason. It applauded Breckenridge⁴³John Cabell Breckinridge. when he served the rebellion better in
the senate with his tongue than he could possibly serve it in the field with
his sword. It stood between President Johnson⁴⁵Andrew Johnson. and deserved impeachment,

and cheered him on in his ministry of disorganization. It smiled upon
the cowardly and murderous assault of Brooks upon Senator Sumner.⁴⁶Preston Brooks and Charles Sumner. It
hatched out in its heat and moral debasement, the horrible brood of as-
sassins who murdered the noble Lincoln and attempted the murder of
Seward.⁴⁷William Henry Seward. Its people would at any time during the great war for union and
liberty, have preferred Davis⁴⁸Jefferson Davis. to Lincoln, and Lee to Grant.

Wise, as I have said, after the event, we can [all]⁴⁹Crossed out in typescript. now plainly see,
that, to place the capital of a great Republic in the midst of such degrading
and barbarous tendencies was a grave mistake and a great misfortune.

Here, as elsewhere, the truth has been demonstrated that there must be
purity at the fountain or there will be foulness in the stream. If the ﬂoor of
the Senate has power, the gallery has inﬂuence. Wholesome legislation is
favored by a good gallery, as well as by a good ﬂoor. The good influence
that was sent by the country to the ﬂoor was often neutralized by the local
inﬂuence that went to the galleries.

Had the National Capital remained in Philadelphia, upon free soil,
amid its loyal and national tendencies; had it breathed the air and heard the
peaceful voice of the [S]ociety of [F]riends, instead of the angry clamor of
the Washington fire eaters, some solution of the slave question might have
been reached far short of rebellion, blood-shed, and assassination.

It is not easy to over estimate the inﬂuence of the people of the District
of Columbia. Aside from American women, they are now the only people
of the Republic denied the exercise of the elective franchise.⁵⁰Residents of the portions of Maryland and Virginia that became the District of Columbia lost their right to vote for national ofﬁces when Congress assumed exclusive jurisdiction over the territory on 1 December 1800. Tindall, History of the City of Washington, 309.

There has of late been much complaint of this discrimination against
the people of the District. But the injustice is, as was forseen by the fathers
of the Republic, more seeming than real. No equal part of the American
people have to day more real power in shaping the destiny of this country
than have the people of Washington and the District of Columbia. What
they have lost by their exclusion from the ballot box is more than made up
to them by their contact with the men who make the laws and administer the
Government. Legislators, judges, and executive officers naturally enough
desire to stand well with their neighbors, and they are seldom so inﬂexible
as not to yield something to accomplish this result.

This neighborhood power of Washington, as already indicated, has
played a high hand in directing public affairs heretofore, and may be safely
depended upon to secure for the people here, ample protection of person
and property without the ballot. But who are the people of Washington and
of the District of Columbia, the people who have given to the place its
peculiar tone and character? The answer is, as already intimated, that they
are mainly of the old slave holding stock of V[irgini]a and Maryland. They
were on the ground when the District of Columbia was ceded to the Federal
Government and have been largely increased by additions from the same
states. They were in part persons of wealth, culture, and reﬁnement. They
had undisputed possession of Washington during the entire existence of the
national capital up to the war to suppress rebellion. They lived in ﬁne
houses, rode in ﬁne carriages, had fine old wines in their cellars, and knew
how to give ﬁne and sparkling champaign [champagne] suppers. Judging
from the social inﬂuence, they were a charming community of gentlemen
and ladies. Association with them easily produced an intermediate class,
known as northern men with southern principles. The sources of their
revenue were, slavery and the Government. Of Uncle Sam’s good things,
Virginia and Maryland always got the lion’s share.

All this is now considerably changed, and the change has come none
too soon. With the suppression of the rebellion and the abolition of slavery,
the prestige of Virginia has vanished and her glory has departed. She is no
longer the old dominion; no longer the mother of living statesmen, and her
sons are not preferred above all others. They still deport themselves with an
air of dignity; but dignity without station, masters without slaves, lords
without lands, Honorables without honors, idols without worshippers,
shock and repel by reason of contradiction. This old Virginia stock, once
so powerful in Washington and in the counsels of the nation, is now a thing
of the past, an anachronism, a superstition, a dim and ﬂickering light on the
distant and hazy horizon of a fast declining day!

What are these people like, and how have they been affected by their
education, habits and training? The personal appearance of any class of
people, is involuntary evidence given both for and against themselves.
Judged by this rule, the old citizens of Washington are certainly quite
moderate in their own praise. There are good men and good qualities here,
as elsewhere. I am dealing in generalities, leaving exceptions to take care
of themselves.

As a class, the people of Washington, descendants of the old families.
are very easily distinguished from the people of the north, the west and the

east. The difference, however, between them and others, is not so easily
described and deﬁned as perceived. It is general, rather than special. It is
more in dress, gait, conversation, and bearing, than in other personal
striking features. It is moral, rather than physical, and is felt, rather than
seen. There is a leisurely indolence observable in all their movements. If to
be a gentleman is never to be in a hurry, the native born Washingtonian is a
gentleman. He is never in a hurry. In walking, his gait is slow, rather than
measured, and his arms dangle, rather than swing in orderly union with the
motion of his legs and body. In the economy of his life his muscles have had
little to do, and disuse has induced a lack of ability and disposition. He has
the sitting power of a Turk, and may be seen in his easy chair more hours in
the day than any other man in America. He generally walks with a cane,
often sits toying with a cane, and is seldom seen without a cane. He
evidently carries it more as a mark of dignity and as a badge of authority,
than as a means of support. He carries it as the knights and squires of the
olden times wore their swords, more for ornament than for use; more for
pride than for proﬁt. His hat is apt to be drawn a little too low down over his
eyes to be entirely consistent with manly openness of character. In fact he
plainly declares by his whole appearance, that he has no sympathy what-
ever with his present surroundings. He is absorbed in his own thoughts, and
has the air of a man who wishes neither to observe nor to attract observa-
tion. This circumstance gives him a sombre and sinister appearance which,
I admit, may belong less to his real character than to the peculiar relation he
sustains to his present surroundings.

One of the peculiarities of the old Washingtonian families will strike
the ears of all educated people from the north. They all have something of
the negro in their speech, and many of them have it very strong. Even
where there is much culture and refinement, there is often in their speech a
tinge of the negro’s slovenly pronunciation. Born and reared among negro
slaves, learning their first songs and stories from their lips, they have
naturally enough adopted the negro’s manner of using his vocal organs. I
gather from this fact the small consolation that, if the blacks are too low to
learn from the whites, the whites are not too high to learn from the blacks,
and further, that the contact with ignorance promotes ignorance, and the
safety of each is found in the freedom and education of all.

But Washington has among its old inhabitants of the old Virginia class,
another variety, not less typical of southern civilization than those already
described.

They are what are commonly called, by way of extreme contempt,

“Poor white trash.”⁵¹This derogatory term, along with such others as clay eaters, peckerwoods, and crackers, originated in the antebellum period and was applied by travelers and wealthy southerners to the impoverished white inhabitants of the pine barrens and mountainous regions of the South. Residing on barely arable land and frequently beset by such enervating diseases as malaria, hookworm, and pellagra, these people survived primarily by hunting, ﬁshing, and raising hogs. ESH, 991. They never held an office, never owned a slave, and
never called a piece of land their own. They have never aspired to wealth,
education or respectability. In the days of slavery, they touched the master
class only at the lowest point of moral and social degradation. They were
the slave drivers, the overseers, the slavehunters, the spies, the patrol men,
the informers, the watch dogs of the plantation. They were generally on
hand when a refractory negro was to be beaten with many stripes. To be
permitted this luxury of brute enjoyment, they would follow the track of a
negro, as a dog will follow a bone, or as a shark will follow a slave ship.

Since slavery has ceased to disgrace the National Capital, and slave-
hunting and woman whipping are no longer paying occupations, these men
manage to live in a small way by hunting, gunning, ﬁshing, and huckster-
ing. Poor as their mode of living now is, it is a decided improvement,
morally and materially, upon that to which they were reduced during the
prevalence of slavery. Yet, strange to say, these people are in no degree
more happy than formerly. They resent the emancipation of the negroes and
would ﬁght to day if, by that means, they could bring back the old slave
system. They sigh over the lost cause as sincerely as if they had lost
millions by it. The trouble and complaint of these people is not that they
themselves have by this change, fallen lower in the scale of society, but that
the negro has risen higher. The distance between themselves and the negro
has been diminished; that is all.

Human nature is proud and perverse among the low as well as among
the high. A man must be low indeed when he does not want some one
below him. If he cannot have an Irishman, he wants a negro; and if he
cannot have a negro to command, he would like to have a dog! Anything to
be above something; but just now these unhappy people see nothing solid
below themselves, and, consequently, do not know to what the world is
coming.

But I would [not do justice]⁵²Crossed out in typescript. do injustice in the matter of the popula-
tion of Washington if I failed to say a word of another element in the social
composition of the capital, in no degree more agreeable and commendable
than those already referred to.

They are the spoilsmen of every grade and description. They are the
ofﬁce holders, ofﬁce seekers, contract buyers, pension agents, lobbyists,
commissioners, and runbetweens in general. Men are here with all sorts of
schemes and enterprises; some with claims valid and just, and some with
claims neither valid nor just. Some have to secure the extension of a patent
which ought to be extended, and some are here to prevent such extension.
Some are here to contest the seat of a sitting member, and some are here to
assist him.

Some are here to use their inﬂuence for friends at a distance who are
too modest or too timid to come themselves; some are here with heads full
of brains, pockets full of money, and faces full of brass, to lobby through
Congress a great patriotic measure with millions in it, and all are here to
get, if possible, something for nothing.

The faces and movements of these men are a study, and the impression
they make is far from pleasant. There is, here and there in the crowd, a face
of genuine manliness and joy, but the majority of them are wrinkled,
darkened and distorted, by lines that tell of cunning, meanness and ser-
vility. They are restless, eager and anxious.

No where will you ﬁnd a great[er] show of insincere politeness. The
very air is vexed with clumsy compliments and obsequious hat lifting.

Everybody wants favor; everybody expects favor; everybody is looking
for favor; everybody is afraid of losing favor; hence everybody smiles,
bows, and fawns toward everybody else, and everybody knows the full
value and quality of this general self abasement. You will seldom hear an
honest, square, upright, and downright no, in all this eager and hungry
crowd. All look yes, say yes, and smile yes, even when they mean anything
else than yes. In their large and well worn pocketbooks, many of them
carry about with them carefully folded but considerably soiled papers,
written in a solemn official hand, earnestly recommending the bearer for
any office or thing he may want, or he may be able to get; for when the
former is impossible, the latter is always acceptable.

It is easy to see, upon slight inspection, that some of these papers are
very old and have seen much service, and certify to characters which may
have been lost a dozen times since they were written, and thus the biggest
rogues may sometimes have the best papers.

The National Capital is never without a fair representation of these
hungry spoilsmen, but the incoming of a new administration is the signal
for the gathering in force of this remorseless class. The avenues of the city

and the corridors of the capitol and of other public buildings are the literal
whirlpools of social driftwood from every section of the Republic.

Its members are met with in all directions. They are crowding, elbow-
ing, and buttonholing, everywhere.

The least offensive of this multitude are those who come here to obtain
clerkships and other positions in the several Governmental departments.
There is nothing in this service [proper]⁵³Crossed out in typescript. to degrade or to demoralize, and
yet I cannot recommend any young man to seek this mode of livelihood.
The process of getting and holding these ofﬁces, is often both degrading
and demoralizing. It plays havoc with manly independence and true self
respect.

They are usually obtained through intervention of members of Con-
gress and other inﬂuential persons, for political service rendered or to be
rendered, and there is often a strong temptation to resort to improper means
to make an impression upon those whose inﬂuence is sought for this
purpose.

All the dishonesty and duplicity in office seeking and in the pressing of
claims are not on the side of this hungry crowd. The men who serve them,
or profess to serve them, are not always sound or what they seem.

A member of Congress has been known to give a confiding constituent
a strong letter of recommendation to a position in one of the Government
departments and then by another street, outrun the applicant, and say to the
department addressed, that no attention must be paid to it and that his name
was only signed to the letter for buncombe. The apology for this duplicity
and treachery is, political necessity. He cannot afford to make a political
enemy. He would doubtless very gladly give every voter in his District an
ofﬁce, but the voters are too many and the offices too few. He has two cats
in his room and only one mouse in his closet. Hence while he freely signs
your papers, he says to the heads of the departments, “Pay no attention to
my recommendations unless I personally accompany the applicant!”

In this preeminently deceitful and treacherous atmosphere, promises,
even on paper, do not amount to much. Every body is fed and being fed
upon great expectations and golden promises, and, since the diet is less
than dog cheap, nobody fails of a full supply.

If you happen to want any office and want help to get it, everybody will
cheerfully promise to help you. Your member of Congress will do what he
can for you. Your senator will do what he can for you. Your whole delegation

will do what they can for you. The heads of various departments will
do what they can for you, and even the President of the United States, who
does not permit himself generally to interfere in the matter of departmental
appointment, will do what he can for you.

The amazing thing is however, that, with all this gushing and abundant
promise of help, your name is not on the pay roll; you are still in the cold,
and your chances of getting in, grow beautifully less with every dinner your
friends will permit you to take at Willards, Wormleys, or Welkers.⁵⁴Douglass names three prominent establishments in the vicinity of the White House: the Willard Hotel on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street; the Wormley Hotel on the comer of H and Fifteenth streets; and Mrs. John C. Welker’s restaurant at 727 Fifteenth Street. William H. Boyd, comp., Boyd's Directory of the District of Columbia, Together with a Compendium of Its Governments, Institutions, and Trades, To Which Is Added A Complete List of Physicians, Midwives, Nurses and Lawyers (Washington, D.C., 1876), 553, 563, 575.

It is commonly thought to be a nice and pleasant thing to be a member
of Congress, but I think it would be difficult for a man to ﬁnd any position
more abundant in vexation. A man who gets himself elected to Congress
can seldom do so without drawing after him to Washington a lively swarm
of political creditors who want their pay in the shape of an ofﬁce some-
where in the civil service. They besiege his house at all hours, night and
day, break his bell wires before breakfast, and so crowd his doorway that, if
he is in, he cannot get out without seeing them, and if he is out, he cannot
get in without seeing them. They waylay him as he goes to his house and
dog him to the very doors, and summon him to the cloak room or lobby
after he may have been so fortunate as to have reached his seat in the House
of Representatives.

In all this sort of vexation and trouble he must be too polite or too
prudent to express the slightest sense of annoyance. If he would be a
successful politician he must face it all with [the blandness, patience, and
severity]⁵⁵Crossed out in typescript. blandest suavity and the patience of a true martyr.

But members of Congress are not the only victims of this incessant,
persistent and annoying importunity for help to get official positions. The
hour a man takes up his abode in Washington, his relation to the administra-
tion is inquired into and ascertained. No neutrality is allowed him. He is
instantly weighed, measured, and stamped and duly assigned to one of two
classes; the class which is used by everybody, or the class that uses every-
body.

Once let it get abroad that you are friendly to the administration, or

worse still, that the administration is friendly to you, and you will at once
ﬁnd yourself a famous man. Smiling faces anxious to see you and to serve
their country, will cluster and whirl about your pathway, like the ripe leaves
of declining autumn. If you were never before aware of your greatness, you
will be made aware of it now, as plainly as words can reveal it. Men will tell
you of it oftener than you can muster face to hear it. You will be urged to
sign papers, write letters, and go in person and urge the appointment of
some one of your numerous friends and admirers, every day in the year,
and if you do not sign, write, and go, you will be denounced as a cold and
heartless man.

I have had, since residing in Washington, my full share of this kind of
service. I am usually approached by the dark side of our fellow citizens.
They have been told by somebody, somewhere, that if they can only get to
Washington and find Douglass, they will be quite sure to get an office.

When white men wish my aid, they tell me wonderful things of what
they or their fathers did in the abolition cause, when it cost something to be
known as an abolitionist. Through this class I have learned that there were a
great many more Under Ground Railroad Stations at the north than I ever
dreamed of in the time of slavery and when I sorely needed one myself.

Just what becomes of this ever accumulating and ever dissolving cloud
of place hunters, I cannot engage to tell.

Like the mist and spray which rises over the cataract of Niagara, its
particles are ever meeting and separating in the air. One goes, another
comes, and none stay long. Few are successful in getting what they seek.
There are a hundred applicants for every ten vacancies. The demand is
incomparably greater than the supply and the cry is, “still they come.”

But what shall be said of the middle men, the lawyers, the claim
agents, the office brokers, the commissioners and the professional lob-
byists who infest the seat of the National Government and help to make its
reputation for good or for evil, as the case may be.

Many of these men have been clerks and other officers in the various
departments of the Government. They know the wires to pull, the springs
to touch, and the power to apply, and when, where, and how. They are a
priesthood standing between the simple, the uninitiated, and the solemn
altars of the vast marble temples of the various departments. Their ways
and words are dark, sinuous and mysterious. They know everything, and
stand ready, for a proper consideration, to advise you just how to go to
work upon any little or big job, which you may wish to accomplish. Like
most other priesthoods, they are exposed to many and severe temptations.

If a man comes to Washington and thinks he has a valid claim and a clear
case against the government, and is willing to pay handsomely, to gain it, it
is hard for a claim agent to refuse to make an effort, although he may know
that the effort will be in vain. As a general rule, he does not resist the
temptation, and very likely satisfies the little conscience his business
leaves him, by the common reﬂection; if he does not mislead and fleece the
simple, somebody else, in the line of his profession, will.

I have already said that the people of Washington have no claim to
superiority in the matter of material civilization. The evidence in support of
this assertion is found in the evident neglect with which they have treated
their natural advantages and opportunities for improvement.

A man may not be blamed because he cannot grow bananas in Green-
land and export ice from the tropics, but he may cooperate with nature in
what she favors north or south.

With only a moderate degree of enterprise, energy and industry, the
shores of the Potomac might have rivalled the shores of the Delaware and
the Hudson. Coal, iron, and labor in abundance are at command, and
Washington might easily have been made to listen to the hum and din of
business, and have become a seat of commerce and manufactures. But she
has rejected her natural sources of wealth, progress, and prosperity and
allowed her noble river to run almost useless to the sea. The river is good,
the climate is good, the country and the general surroundings are good. The
people alone are at fault.

A few small crafts toiling or drifting through the long bridge and
loaded with Cumberland coal; a few smaller ones bringing oysters in
winter, and green vegetables in summer, with here and there a little steamer
winding its solitary way up and down, touching at houseless and noiseless
landings along its desolate shores, are about all that the beautiful and broad
Potomac has been made to [say]⁵⁶Crossed out in typescript. serve for navigation and commerce. Her
borders, which ought to be alive with the hum and din of business and lined
on either side with thriving villages, are about as silent as the figure upon
the iron dome of the capitol. Outside of the city of Washington there is,
perhaps, no city in the United States where the lands along a navigable river
front are not more valuable than those lying back and remote from it.
[But]⁵⁷Crossed out in typescript. such is the [disgraceful]⁵⁸Crossed out in typescript. singularity of Washington.

Two causes must explain the destitution of energy, enterprize and
industry which have made this fact possible.
lst the presence and natural influence of slavery.
2d the overshadowing presence and example of the government.

Slavery has left a [disease]⁵⁹Crossed out in typescript. residuum in Washington which, for the
want of a better name, I call “the black boy.” Its inﬂuence seems to be in
the air and few who reside for any length of time at the capital escape [this
disease]⁶⁰Crossed out in typescript. it. Every body is waited upon by the black boy, and every body
wants the black boy to wait upon him. Age and size furnish no criterion as
to the appropriateness of the name. The black boy may be old or young,
large or small, tall or short, seven years or seventy years old, he is always
according to the parlance of slavery, the black boy. Send for a mechanic to
put a shingle on your roof; a plumber to mend your water pipe, or your gas
pipe; or send to anybody else to do the smallest piece of work, and at his
heels you will find the inevitable black boy. He is there to carry the tools, to
tote the water, and to otherwise wait and tend on the Boss.

When the wife of the humble mechanic in Washington goes to do her
marketing, if only to buy a single head of cabbage or a half a peck of
potatoes, like all the rest she must have the black boy to walk behind her
and carry the basket. In some cases the black boy might, by an oriental, be
mistaken for an object of worship, and he might be led to suspect that the
people [in their adoration]⁶¹Crossed out in typescript. have placed these objects at their front doors,
for adoration; but the iron black boy at the front door of a Washington
gentleman is not there for religious purposes. He is simply planted there as
a hitching post for horses. In these black ragged iron images, barefooted
and bareheaded, with one suspender over the shoulder, after the manner of
the black boy in slavery, we may see the kind of Christian civilization
which has ﬂourished here. Next to the degradation of labor by slavery and
the consequent discouragement of industry, stand [illegible word] example
and inﬂuence as illustrated in these figures. Governmental departments are
also a standing temptation to win men from labor and industry. At three
o’clock in the afternoon of the long summer’s day, a multitude of well
dressed, young gentlemen are seen emerging from the majestic marble
structures known as the departments. These young men look like the lilies
of the field that neither toil nor spin.⁶²An allusion to Matt. 6: 28 and Luke 12: 27. They have worked six hours and
their day[’]s work is done.

Now a young man who comes here to engage in some industrial pursuit
and to begin the business of life must be well stocked with energy, industry
and manly ambition, if he is able to resist the desire to be arrayed like one of
these, and ten chances to one, he does not resist. He compares his lot with
that of the clerks and other officers in the departments; measures his ten
hours of labor with their six, and finds his just four hours too long. Besides,
the clerks are clean; he is soiled; the clerks look fresh and he is tired. He is
disgusted by the contrast; sighs and seeks for office and, if he succeeds,
that is about the last of him for any useful business or calling in the world.
Men are worked upon by what they work upon, and when once a man finds
himself [ﬁlled]⁶³Crossed out in typescript. fitted to a desk and stool, and becomes rooted and
grounded into the routine of a Government Clerk, he is seldom fitted for
anything else in life.

Though slavery has now disappeared from Washington, and disap-
peared forever, its footprints are yet visible and deep, and will long remain
so. They are seen here in the general exercise of force and cruelty. It is
amazing how much is done with the whip in the spirit of slavery, at the
capital. None persuade; all drive.

The negro is no exception to the rule. In whatever else he may have
failed to learn from the old master class, he has not failed to learn their
cruelty.

Woe to the horse, the ox, the mule, or the boy, where he is master.
Having been a subject of the lash himself, he might be supposed to abhor it;
but, on the contrary, he now believes in it, and is [ever]⁶⁴Crossed out in typescript. even fanatical in
his faith. He has never known any other way.

You may see him here with his team all the way from Prince George’s
County,⁶⁵Prince George’s County, Maryland, lies on the eastern border of the District of Columbia. Lippincott's Gazetteer, 2: 1806. and wherever you see him, he is bent upon making a sensation.
The crack of his long whip is like the report of a Colt’s revolver. He is as
noisily free with his husky voice and terrible lash in the streets and avenues
of Washington, as he would be while fording a stream a dozen miles from a
human habitation, and, strange to say, no one here seems to be shocked,
either by the unseemly noise or by the cruelty.

The [team]⁶⁶Crossed out in typescript. outfit is one that can only be seen in a land of slavery. It
belongs to a bygone age and a bygone civilization. It is an odd shaped, left
handed, knock kneed, wobbling concern; a cross between a one horse cart

and a two horse lumber wagon; drawn by two bony horses and two vicious
looking mules and accompanied by the colored brother with the long whip
and husky voice.

The wagon contains two lean lank sided hogsheads of tobacco, a litter
of fodder for the animals, and a large brown jug. The horses and mules
have corn husks for collars, bed cords for bridle reins, knotted ropes for
traces, and sheep skins for saddles; and the inevitable jug has a corn cob for
a cork. The wagon that came here full, goes away empty, and the jug that
came here empty, goes away full, and the man who came here sober, goes
away drunk.

I now turn from the past with its gloom to the present with its promise,
and to the future with its glory.

l have already spoken of the great change which has taken place in the
physical condition of Washington. The charge in its moral condition is
equally vast and wonderful.

Men breathe freer here than ever they did before. Northern men with
northern principles may now speak and write without the liability of being
knocked down by street bullies and hired assassins, as in the time of
slavery. The Senate is no longer a theatre of threats and brutal intimidation.

The colored people of Washington constitute one third of its popula-
tion,⁶⁷In 1870 the official population of the city of Washington was 35,455 blacks and 73,731 whites. For the entire District of Columbia the comparable ﬁgures were 43,422 blacks and 88,298 whites. Green, Washington, 1: 21. and the change in their condition is truly marvelous. Some of the
school buildings erected for the education of their children would do no
discredit to the finest towns and cities of the north, and the freedom from
annoyance with which these children are allowed to go and come from
school, with their books and slates in their hands, is one of the most
encouraging features of the times.

Washington, from being one of the most oppressive and illiberal cities
of the Union, toward the colored race, has now become one of the most
enlightened and liberal to that race. A colored man may now go to market,
or attend church, or funeral, without a written permit from master or
mayor. He is no longer arrested for being a stranger, and sold out of prison
to pay his jail fees.

The moral tone of Washington has likewise been improved in many
other respects.

Under the old dispensation, when slavery ruled and ruined, Washington

was not a desirable place of residence for the wives and daughters of
members of Congress and others whose business or pleasure took them
thither. Gentlemen came here alone and lived here alone.

In the absence of good women and the family, man sinks rapidly to
barbarism. In the olden times Members of Congress came here and left
behind them all the restraints and endearments of home. Their manners and
morals were shaped by those of the restaurant, the hotel and the gambling
hall, and other resorts of men of the world.

But now, thanks to the abolition of slavery, thanks to the increasing
inﬂuence and power of the North, thanks to the spirit of improvement,
thanks to the increase of cheap and easy modes of travel, Members of
Congress and others who have business at the Capital can bring their
families with them and surround themselves with all the restraints and
endearments of home.

I do not pretend to say that Washington is at all perfect. There is of
course within her borders a full share of vice and crime of every conceiv-
able kind and quality, but I do [not]⁶⁸Crossed out in typescript. mean to say that there is now much
less of these, in proportion to [the]⁶⁹Crossed out in typescript. numbers, than under the old regime,
and that this is especially true in respect of the inﬂuential classes.

Washington is still, and, in the nature of things, must continue to be, a
city of boarding houses and hotels; but it is also rapidly becoming a city of
sweet and beautiful homes. All signs indicate that the national capital will
ultimately become one of the most desirable cities for residence, in the
world.

The delightful mildness of its winters; the grace, elegance, beauty, and
captivating power of its presidential and other receptions; the increasing
attractions to wealth, art, and science afforded by it; the eloquent debates in
[the]⁷⁰Crossed out in typescript. Congress, [of the nation,]⁷¹Crossed out in typescript. will draw men of thought, taste, lei-
sure, and refinement, as well as men and women of fashion, to the National
Capital for permanent residence.

The beautiful hills around it, so long neglected, will in time, be oc-
cupied like those of Boston and other great American cities.

One word about Congress; for to speak of Washington without speaking

of Congress is [liking for]⁷²Crossed out in typescript. like speaking of the body and [neglect-
ing]⁷³Crossed out in typescript. saying nothing of the soul; like shaping the garment and not
[illegible word] the person; [for]⁷⁴Crossed out in typescript. Congress is the light and life of Wash-
ington and the true index to the character and mental resources of the
nation.

Whether we look down upon the orderly confusion of the House of
Representatives, or upon the stately dignity and decorum of the Senate, we
see, as in a mirror, the image of the Republic with all its virtues and vices,
its beauties and deformities, its wisdom and its follies, with the age and
body of our times. It is a grand place to read and study the American
people.

A very brief acquaintance will convince one that Congress is not the
place for either a vain man or a weak man. He may be a very great man at
home and a very small man in Congress. It is one thing to be weighed and
measured by ones friends, neighbors, and admirers, but quite another thing
to be measured in comparison with the chosen representatives of forty
millions of people. In this presence your weak man will easily sink to
nothingness, and your vain man, if not hopelessly blind and insensible,
will have his vanity completely taken out of him. The floor, the gallery, the
streets even, are all against him. He will be allowed to pass in a crowd, but
will ﬁnd no admiring eyes feasted upon his ﬁne face, his ﬁne ﬁgure or his
ﬁne clothing. The people [here]⁷⁵Crossed out in typescript. there gathered are accustomed to hear
and see great men. They are experts, they know at a glance the genuine
from the spurious, the false from the true, the sheet iron thunder of the stage
from the royal thunder of heaven.

Whatever may be the faults of our representative system, the fault of
sending weak and vain men to Congress is not very prominent among
them. Occasionally one, by means of money or of an artiﬁcial reputation,
gets himself elected, but his race is generally short and far from glorious,
and he gets leave to stay at home with ready and amazing unanimity.

The question is often asked, “How does the Congress of to day as a
legislative body, compare with the Congress as it was in the earlier days of
the Republic?”

In answer, I say at once, but not without reflection, that I have no
sympathy with the cant and superstition which accords all the greatness,
wisdom, eloquence, and statesmanship to the past, and is perpetually
mourning over the departed glory of the American Senate and House.

There is reason to believe that the men of our times are about as good
and great as were the men of any time in the life of the Republic.

Congress has during the last ten or fifteen years been called upon to
meet and dispose of questions which required as much nerve, wisdom and
statesmanship, as any in the course of the earlier history of the Republic. In
my judgment these questions have been met and disposed of as wisely and
as firmly, by the statesman of to day, as they would have been by those of
the first half century.

Here as elsewhere, distance lends enchantment to the view. There is in
human nature a weakness akin to sentiment, that sighs for the good old
times. “Speak nought but good of the dead,”⁷⁶A rough translation of a maxim in Diogenes Laertius's sketch of Chilon in Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R. D. Hicks, 2 vols. (1925; Cambridge, Mass., 1950), 1: 71. is that which posits all bad
with the present. The assumption of superiority of the past over the present,
is against fact, law and experience and is usually born of disappointment
and discontent.

An impartial reading of the speeches made in the American Senate
during the last decade, side by side with those made by Clay, Calhoun,
Webster, and Benton,⁷⁷Thomas Hart Benton. will show that the former are in all respects quite
equal to the latter.

The trouble is in our standard of judgement. If the Conklings,⁷⁸Roscoe Conkling (1829-88), Republican politician, was born in Albany, New York. He trained for the law in Utica, was admitted to the bar in 1850, and served as district attorney for Oneida County from 1850 until he was elected mayor of Utica in 1858. The following year he entered the U.S. House of Representatives, serving until an 1862 defeat, but returning in 1865 for one term. Serving in the Senate from 1867 until 1881, Conkling ardently advocated Ulysses Grant's Reconstruction policies. A champion of the political spoils system, Conkling opposed the civil service reforms advocated by Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and James A. Garﬁeld. During Garfield's administration Conkling and a colleague, Thomas C. Platt, resigned from the Senate to protest Garﬁeld's appointment of a former liberal Republican to a key patronage job in the New York City customs house. Platt and Conkling were chagrined when they lost their anticipated reelections. Conkling resumed law practice in New York City. David M. Jordan, Roscoe Conkling of New York: Voice in the Senate (Ithaca, N.Y. , 1971); Donald Barr Chidsey, The Gentleman from New York: A Life of Roscoe Conkling (New Haven, 1935); ACAB, 1: 706-07. the

Mortons,⁷⁹Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton (1823-77) was born in Wayne County, Indiana. Removed from school at the age of ﬁfteen and apprenticed to his brother, a hatter, Morton practiced that trade for four years. He then studied at Miami University and began the practice of law in Centreville, Indiana, in 1847. Morton rose quickly to prominence in his new profession, largely owing to his successful representation of railroad special interests. In 1852 he was elected to a one-year term as a state circuit court judge. Although initially a Democrat, Morton left that party in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor of Indiana in 1854. Elected lieutenant governor in 1860, he succeeded to the governorship when Henry S. Lane was chosen U.S. senator. He served in that ofﬁce from 1861 to 1867 and during the Civil War engaged in bitter political conflicts with Peace Democrats in the state legislature. From 1867 until his death, Morton was a U.S. senator. He soon broke with Andrew Johnson and became a leader of Republican radicals and later an advocate of inﬂationary “soft money" policies. William Dudley Foulke, Life of Oliver P. Morton, Including His Important Speeches, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, 1899); E. Orville Johnson, “Oliver P. Morton: A Study of His Career as a Public Speaker and of His Speaking on Slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction Issues" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1957); BDAC, 1365; ACAB, 4: 431-32; DAB, 13: 262-64. the Thurman’s,⁸⁰The son of a Methodist minister, Alan Granberry Thurman (1813-95) moved from his Lynchburg, Virginia, birthplace to Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1819. He studied law with his uncle, U.S. Senator William Allen, and then became his partner. After a single term as a Democratic congressman (1845-47) he returned to the law and was elected to the state supreme court in 1851, serving as its chief justice from 1854 to 1856. During the Civil War Thurman aligned with the Peace wing of his party. In 1867 he lost a close gubernatorial election to Rutherford B. Hayes, but the Democratic majority in the state legislature then elected him to the U.S. Senate. During his two terms (1869-81) Thurman was a strong opponent of Reconstruction and civil rights legislation. In 1877 he served on the Electoral Commission and voted to award the disputed state returns to Democrat Samuel G. Tilden. Thurman ran as the vice-presidential candidate on the unsuccessful Democratic ticket of 1884. The Biographical Cyclopaedia and Portrait Gallery with an Historical Sketch of the State of Ohio, 2 vols. (Cincinnati, 1883-87), 1: 195-97; BDAC, 17-14; DAB, 18: 515-16. and Bayards,⁸¹Scion of a family inﬂuential in Delaware and national politics from the Revolution to the New Deal, Thomas Francis Bayard, Sr. (1828-98), was the great-grandson, grandson, son, nephew, and father of U.S. senators and himself held that ofﬁce from 1869 to 1885. After training for a mercantile career in New York City and Philadelphia, Bayard returned to his Wilmington birthplace in 1848 to study and practice law. From 1854 to 1858 he resided in Philadelphia but then settled permanently in his native state, where in 1869 he was elected to replace his father in the U.S. Senate. A lifelong Democrat, Bayard championed free trade and hard money. In 1876, 1880, and 1884 he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination. During Cleveland's ﬁrst administration Bayard served as secretary of state, and during his second, as ambassador to Great Britain. Charles Callan Tansill, The Congressional Career of Thomas Francis Bayard, 1869-1885 (Washington, D.C., 1946); idem, The Foreign Policy of Thomas F. Bayard (New York, 1940); BDAC, 528; ACAB, 1: 199. do not seem as tall as their
predecessors in the American Senate, it is not because they have fallen
lower, but because the people have risen higher, and view these statesmen
from a loftier altitude. We stand further from Monarchical man worship
now than we did thirty years ago. The distance between the people and
their leaders can never be so great in a Republic as in a monarchy.
There has been of late much talk of the removal of the national capital

to some point further west and nearer to our geographical centre than
Washington.

The possibility of some such removal has possibly done something
against [the]⁸²Crossed out in typescript. its prosperity and improvement [of the place],⁸³Crossed out in typescript. for why
expend money and adorn the city if we are soon to desert it?

It does not appear at all probable that the American people can in any
conceivable circumstances be brought to do so unwise a thing as would be
the removal of the national capital [from the city of Washington].⁸⁴Crossed out in typescript. Fond of
change and restless as the American people are, they are nevertheless very
practical withal, and are generally willing to let well enough alone. While
the affairs of the nation flow along smoothly in their ordinary channels;
while the country is at peace at home and at peace abroad; while no great
public danger threatens from any quarter, the argument for keeping the
national capital where it is, will be much stronger than any which can be
brought in favor of removal. Here as elsewhere, possession is nine points of
the law. The right of the capital to its present location has been established
by peaceful occupation during seventy years. Great convulsions in nature
or in society, may shake it, but, without wars, revolutions or earthquakes,
the National Capital may be depended upon to remain at Washington.

Its right to remain here is defended by all the forces and appliances of
modern civilization. Steam and lightning have overcome and put to silence
all arguments based upon time and space.

Besides, great cities like other great institutions, have within them-
selves a powerful tendency to create conditions favorable to their own
permanence. The magnificent public buildings, the Capitol, the Interior,
the Post Ofﬁce, and the State Department buildings which have been the
result of long years of labor and hundreds of millions of money; buildings
equal to those of nations which count their years by thousands; all speak
eloquently for permanence. Every stone in the massive marble and granite
walls cries out, trumpet tongued⁸⁵Macbeth, act 1, sc. 7, line 19. against the expense and folly of re-
moval.

There are moral as well as material conditions ever increasing tending
to fix and fasten the capital where it is. It is a great place and great things
have been done in it, and every such [ great thing]⁸⁶Crossed out in typescript. circumstance serves by

association to rivet the capital where it is, and to weaken the disposition to
remove it elsewhere.

But strong and immovable as are its present foundations, mighty as are
the considerations and associations which bind it where it is, I would
rather, you would rather, and every friend of human liberty would rather,
welcome its destruction by revolution, whirlwind or earthquake, than to
see it again the hot bed of slavery, treason and assassination. Better that
there should not be here one stone left upon another, and that its ruins be
given to the bats and owls, than that it should again take its ancient char-
acter and office in American affairs.

But no such condition of things can await our National Capital. Where
it is and what it is, and what it promises to be, let it stand, now and forever.
In its present character, no capital in the world has or can have a higher and
more beneﬁcent mission. While it stands there is a chance for the spread of
freedom and free institutions in the world, for, while it stands, it is a sign of
the permanence and success of the Republic. No longer sandwiched be-
tween two slave states; no longer a standing contradiction to the spirit of
progress and to the civilization of the age; no longer isolated from the
outside world and dependent upon a single railroad; no longer the hot bed
of slavery and the internal slave trade; no longer the enemy of free speech
and a free press; no longer the patron of the Bowie knife, the pistol and the
bully; no longer a place shunned by humane men and upright women; no
longer the frantic party of one section against another; no longer anchored
to a barbarous past in which the footsteps of men were marked with blood;
Washington may not only become one of the most beautiful and attractive
cities in the world, but one of the grandest agents in the work of spreading
peace on earth and good will toward men.⁸⁷Douglass alludes to Luke 2: 14.

In its grandeur and signiﬁcance, it may be a sign and a bond of the
American Union, a pledge of the righteousness that exalts a nation,⁸⁸Prov. 14: 34. a
place where the best men and the best women from all sections of our
widely extended country shall delight to meet and bury their differences,
renew their covenants of patriotism, and shake hands, not over a bloody
chasm, but over a free, prosperous, happy and progressive REPUBLIC.

Creator

Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895

Date

1877-05-08

Publisher

Yale University Press 1991

Type

Speeches

Publication Status

Published