Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Goin Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a: In Which the ... City and a Government (Jeffersonian America) - Hardcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Catherine Allgor, winner of dissertation awards from Yale University and the Organization of American Historians, is Assistant Professor of History at Simmons College.

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Excerpt

President Thomas Jefferson in Washington City

"O, brave new world that has such people in't!"
                              ?WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, The Tempest 5.1.183-84

Washington city, the new capital of the United States ofAmerica, Anno Domini 1801. The federal government underPresident John Adams had officially removed to the city theprevious June. Almost immediately, people, then as now, engaged in thecity's most popular unofficial sport?Washington-bashing. Disparagingcomments came from new residents and visitors alike, focusing on thecity's rural isolation and its lack of built environment. As one might expect,European travelers supplied some of the most colorful and pithy descriptionsof the aspiring capital. One Englishman, told by his companionthat they were entering Washington City, looked in vain for housesand public buildings. Sure that he had misunderstood his guide, the visitorasked where the city was, only to be told that he was standing in themiddle of it. A fellow countryman, Augustus John Foster, arriving fromEngland to serve as secretary of the British Legation, reckoned that ifCongress had really meant this little town to be their capital, "they wouldhave acted much more wisely than by settling in the swamp."

    Though Europeans took malicious glee in lambasting the upstart city,even patriotic Americans likened their capital to a mule, "without prideof ancestry or hope of posterity." The sight of early Washington inspiredusually taciturn New England folks to heights of invective and wit. Oneof the first arrivals, Ebenezer Mattoon, representative from New Hampshire,wrote to his friend Thomas Dwight, "If I wished to punish a culprit,I would send him to do penance in this place, oblige him to walkabout this city, city do I call it? This swamp?this lonesome drearyswamp, secluded from every delightful or pleasing thing?except the nameof the place, which to be sure I reverence."

    Raconteurs competed to render the wittiest and nastiest verdicts; indeed,some of the sharpest reactions became widely quoted clichés. In1818 Thomas Hubbard, representative from New York, referred to old andaccepted Washington wisdom in a letter to his wife, Phebe. He gleefullyrelated that "Old Abbe Correa, the Portuguese minister (a monk)" and"a man of great powers and learning," had opined "that every man isborn with a bag of folly which attends him through life." AlthoughGeorge Washington had been burdened with only a "small bag, which hekept to himself and never imparted any of it to the world," when "themetropolis of the nation was founded ... he emptied the whole of it intothis city."

    Many early descriptions have contributed to the general view of thenew capital as a "fever-stricken morass," lacking society and civilization.Albert Gallatin, for example, wrote his spouse, Hannah Nicholson Gallatin,that the early congressmen were "discontented ... living like a refectoryof monks, with no other amusement or occupation." However,Washington City was one of the fastest-growing urban settings in theUnited States during the first three decades of the nineteenth century.New buildings were constructed throughout the era, and the populationgrew rapidly. The number of federal government employees grew as well,from 291 in 1802 to 625 in 1829. Further, the geographical isolation andcountry setting that astonished and appalled some more cosmopolitanobservers had quite a different effect on other new arrivals, an effect articulatedby one of the chief players in early Washington City.

    In 1800 Margaret Bayard Smith arrived in Washington as a newlywed.Her new husband, Samuel Harrison Smith (who was also her secondcousin), had won not only her heart but her mind as well. Born into a distinguishedFederalist family, Margaret changed her allegiance and becamean enthusiastic supporter of Thomas Jefferson and the Republican partywhen she married. The couple came to Washington from Philadelphia underJefferson's personal patronage. He wanted Samuel Smith to becomethe editor of the first national American newspaper, the Daily Intelligencer.Samuel Smith justified his patron's trust; he attended Congress every day,recording its proceedings faithfully for his paper's pages.

    Yet it was Margaret Bayard Smith who became posterity's ideal informant.First and foremost, she was consistently there?no mean feat in a cityknown for the transience of its inhabitants. By the 1840s a core of longtimeresidents made up a political and social elite in Washington, but noone could match the Smiths' forty-four-year residence. Both her continuedpresence and her social position assured Bayard Smith a front-row seat atall the events of the day. She quickly became a leader; as her husband rosein prominence and she became enmeshed in the community networks ofthe town, her entrée to places and people proved unparalleled.

    Bayard Smith possessed one more qualification invaluable to anyonecurious about Washington City in the early Republican era. She was awriter, with an artist's sense of the outside perspective. She could renderdescriptions of scenes and assessments of people with a few choice wordsor phrases, in effect a few well-chosen brush strokes. She wrote both reportageand fiction and possessed the writer's double ability to be both ofa situation and outside it, the reason, according to Truman Capote, thatwriters are dangerous people to have around. Though Margaret BayardSmith rarely wrote with malice, she could spot and dispose of pretensionin a manner that bears Capote out.

    Bayard Smith's pen supplied many of the most crucial scenes thatcomprise the historical narrative of the early Republic, yet political historieshave not identified or individualized her, instead mentioning her onlyas a "society matron" or "doyenne." But the Margaret Bayard Smith whostepped upon the Washington scene in 1800 could not have been lessdoyenne-ish. Young, vibrant, and bursting with energy, she was eager towrite to her sisters and family of the new world that greeted her on herarrival. Bayard Smith sustained this enthusiasm for sharing experienceswith her female kin (both natal and marital) for the rest of her life.

    Bayard Smith conscientiously recorded the raw aspects of her newhome. Her description of their arrival echoes Abigail Adams's account ofa woman who looked "in vain for the city." The planned avenues consistedof stone markers, and the roads were only footpaths, presenting an unforgettableimage of the "ungraceful" Capitol, surrounded by "mud,shavings, brick," and other materials for completing it and the adjacentstructures.

    But once they were settled in, Margaret and Samuel Smith discovered adifferent, more delightful side to the new city. The young couple spentlong hours roaming through the countryside of the federal city, enjoyingthe sights, sometimes collecting herbs or flowers. "I seldom enjoyed awalk more than this," she declared after one such ramble, "and had scarcelyresolution to return, although the sun had set." On another "delightfulday," she "sallied forth" with a group of friends; "I will not say we walkedalong ..., the elasticity of the air had given such elasticity to my spiritsthat I could not walk." She did not have to travel far to appreciate the naturalbeauty of the place. Samuel described their house to his sister asstanding "on a commanding hill bounded by one of the handsomeststreams in our country, now descending into a cool valley covered withwood...