Washington, D.C.

“ The zeal of nationality, the passion of patriotism awoke above the bodies of our slain. National songs, the inspiration of patriots, soared toward heaven. National monuments began to rise consecrated forever to the martyrs of Liberty. Never, till that hour, did the Federal city—the city of George Washington, the first-born child of the Union, born to live or to perish with it,—become to the heart of the American people that which it had so long been in the eyes of the world—truly the Capital of the Nation. ”

“ How much this little interlude, pushed into a corner as it has been by the dignity of history,—how much it tells of the real man! How the statuesque myth and the priggish myth and the dull and solemn myth melt away before it! Wise and strong, a bearer of heavy responsibility beyond his years, daring in fight and sober in judgment, we have here the other and the more human side of Washington. One loves to picture that gallant, generous, youthful figure, brilliant in color and manly in form, riding gayly on from one little colonial town to another, feasting, dancing, courting, and making merry. ”

“ Washington, indeed, is a far more perfect character. Washington stands alone and unapproachable, like a snow-peak rising above its fellows into the clear air of morning, with a dignity, constancy, and purity which have made him the ideal type of civic virtue to succeeding generations. No greater benefit could have befallen the republic than to have such a type set from the first before the eye and mind of the people. ”

“ Washington was nothing but a place in which Congress could meet and politicians carry on their games at high stakes for power and place. New York was the Capital to the New Yorker, Boston to the New Englander, New Orleans to the Southerner, Chicago to the man of the West. There was no one central rallying point of patriots to the universal nation. The unfinished Washington monument stood the monument of the nation’s neglect and shame. ”

“ Washington has no need of you. But in every moment, from the time he drew his sword in the cause of American independence to this hour, living or dead, the American people have needed him. It is not important now, nor will it be in all the coming years, to remind our countrymen that Washington has lived, and that his achievements in his country’s service are above all praise. ”

“ From Maryland to Mexico, the protests of Union men of the South were unheard in the fierce clamor of "On to Washington!"
The Richmond Examiner said: "There never was half the unanimity among the people before, nor a tithe of the zeal upon any subject, that is now manifested to take Washington. From the mountain tops and valleys to the shores of the sea, there is one wild shout of fierce resolve to capture Washington City at all and every human hazard." ”

“ A century from the birth of Washington has changed the world. The country of Washington has been the theater on which a great part of that change has been wrought, and Washington himself a principal agent by which it has been accomplished. His age and his country are equally full of wonders, and of both he is the chief.
It is the spirit of human freedom, the new elevation of individual man, in his moral, social, and political character, leading the whole long train of other improvements, which has most remarkably distinguished the era. Society has assumed a new character ”

“ Let us unite without distinction, French, Americans, all civilized nations. Washington is too great to belong to one nation only. He has served his country well, but he also served humanity. Humanity claims him, and just as you faithfully bring up your children to respect his French companions, Lafayette and Rochambeau, so we, also, teach ourselves, that the life of Washington is the most beautiful of which a good citizen can dream. ”

“ In this spirit he accepted his commission, and rode forth to review the troops. He was greeted with loud acclaim wherever he appeared. Mankind is impressed by externals, and those who gazed upon Washington in the streets of Philadelphia felt their courage rise and their hearts grow strong at the sight of his virile, muscular figure as he passed before them on horseback, stately, dignified, and self-contained. The people looked upon him, and were confident that this was a man worthy and able to dare and do all things. ”

“ Washington, the American "Mecca" for political worshipers, is a beautiful city, but well deserving its "nom de plume" as "the city of magnificent distances;" for any one with whom you have business seems to live five miles from every imaginable point of the compass; and should you be on stern business bent, distance will not "lend enchantment to the view." It is here that the patriot, and the mercenary, the ambitious and the envious gather, and where unity and divergence hold high carnival. ”

“ It does seem as though Providence called our Washington into being, and educated him in the western world just at the time when a great leader was wanted to direct a revolution, and to found on this continent a new and a free, English-speaking nation. Every factor, whether of lineage or culture, in the admirably balanced character of Washington, as well as every aspiration of his heart, from his cradle to his grave, is of high interest to the world. ”

“ Washington was intensely human. In that hour of silent thought his heart must have swelled with a consciousness that he had led his people through a successful Revolution, and now again from the darkness of political confusion and dissolution to the threshold of a new existence. But at the same time he never deceived himself. ”

“ At Washington there is at this moment such a ferment as no other part of the world could exhibit—a spectacle which makes one wonder that any man can be induced to seek for office, or that any Government can be conducted under such a system. ”

“ How nobly, ay, and how sadly, do these feelings of Washington—his humiliating sense of the great responsibility laid upon him when he assumed the office of the chief magistrate of the republic—contrast with the eager aspirations of mere politicians to sit in the seat of that illustrious and conscientious man! How the spectacle illustrates the words of the poet:—
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!” ”

“ Washington, as doubtless you know, is a city of grooves. I don't mean that the streets have grooves. What I have in mind is the city's political cosmos. If you have come to Washington to live, you slip into one groove or another, official or clerical. The Senator rolled around in his groove without the least idea that he was a bond-slave. He lived on the three points of a triangle, as it were—the Senate, his home, and his club. ”

“ If we compare him with the great men who were his contemporaries throughout the nation; in an age of extraordinary personages, Washington was unquestionably the first man of the time in ability. Review the correspondence of General Washington—that sublime monument of intelligence and integrity—scrutinize the public history and the public men of that era, and you will find that in all the wisdom that was accomplished or was attempted, Washington was before every man in his suggestions of the plan, and beyond every one in the extent to which he contributed to its adoption. ”

“ Washington yet lives on earth in his spotless example; his spirit is in Heaven. Let his countrymen consecrate the memory of the heroic general, the patriotic statesman, and the virtuous sage. Let them teach their children never to forget that the fruits of his labors and his example are their inheritance. ”

“ The first American in the broad national sense, there has never been a man more thoroughly and truly American than Washington. It will be a sorry day when we consent to take that noble figure from "the forefront of the nation's life," and rank George Washington as anything but an American of Americans, instinct with the ideas, as he was devoted to the fortunes of the New World which gave him birth. ”

“ To the world Washington represented the young republic, and he was determined to extort from England the first acknowledgment of independence by compelling her to recognize the Americans as belligerents and not rebels. Washington cared as little for vain shows as any man who ever lived, but he had the highest sense of personal dignity, and of the dignity of his cause and country. Neither should be allowed to suffer in his hands. ”

“ What Westminster Abbey and Hall were to the Englishman, what Notre Dame and the Tuileries were to the Frenchman, the unfinished and desecrated Capitol had never been to the average American. Anarchy threatened it. In an hour the heart of the nation was centered in the Capital. The nation was ready to march to its defence. Every public building, every warehouse was full of troops. Washington city was no longer only a name to the mother waiting and praying in the distant hamlet; her boy was camped on the floor of the Rotunda. ”

“ Let him who looks for a monument to Washington look around the United States. Your freedom, your independence, your national power, your prosperity, and your prodigious growth are a monument to him.
Kossuth.
More than all, and above all, Washington was master of himself. If there be one quality more than another in his character which may exercise a useful control over the men of the present hour, it is the total disregard of self when in the most elevated positions for influence and example. ”

“ It should be kept in mind that in the study of the National Capital we are studying the seat of government of the greatest nation in the world, a city that was laid on a broad, firm foundation, and although neglected for decades during the last century, the twentieth century has seen Washington transformed into a city in keeping with the dignity, power, and wealth of this great Nation. ”

“ From the aristocratic tables and home comforts of Mount Vernon and Belvoir, the youthful Washington began roughing it in the forests and along the streams of the Shenandoah. He had begun to adapt himself to the primitive conditions of his country and to share the coarse fare of the commoners that composed the civilization of the new world. ”

“ This was the first part of a general plan which he had conceived of visiting while in office all portions of the Union. The personal appearance of the President, representing the whole people, would serve to bring home to the public mind the existence and reality of a central government, which to many if not to most persons in the outlying States seemed shadowy and distant. But General Washington was neither shadowy nor distant to any one. Every man, woman, and child had heard of and loved the leader of the Revolution. ”

“ It was the extraordinary fortune of Washington that, having been intrusted in revolutionary times, with the supreme military command, and having fulfilled that trust with equal renown for wisdom and for valor, he should be placed at the head of the first government in which an attempt was to be made on a large scale to rear the fabric of social order on the basis of a written constitution, and of a pure representative principle. A government was to be established without a throne, without an aristocracy, without castes, orders, or privileges ”

“ The growth of Washington is not only modern, it is of yesterday. The city was really little more than a village up to the date of the late war; and it was only in 1871 that the impetus was given to the public enterprise that has covered it with palaces, private and public. It is the only city of America in which the streets are kept as cleanly and as orderly as London and Paris. ”

“ As in our own times, big business found opportunity to fatten itself on the needs of the people. The greatness of Washington is in startling evidence when it is seen how he not only had to conduct a war and guide an unprovided army split up into rival sections, but he had to be statesman and diplomat enough to manage a menagerie of ideas ranging through the congressional sessions like animals broken loose in a circus. ”

“ With such ancestry, it is no wonder today that “numbers” make one of the biggest businesses in Washington. The policy racket far exceeds bookmaking, the Number 1 source of gambling revenue in all others parts of the country.
Before the plane which brings the arriving traveler to Washington lands at the National Airport, on the Virginia side, it swoops gracefully over the city in a salute. The tall, needle-like Washington Monument and the familiar dome of the Capitol arise through a sea of green, to dominate the landscape. ”

“ Washington is the only city in the world built exclusively to serve as a capital. Just after the Revolution, Congress, sitting in Philadelphia, was grossly insulted by the unpaid returning troops, against whom the city offered no adequate protection. Congress then adjourned to the collegiate halls of Princeton, where resolutions were offered to erect buildings for the exclusive use of Congress, either on the Delaware River or on the Potomac River. ”

“ These circumstances added much to my satisfaction on my first day’s visit to the seat of Government. I met and shook hands with many old friends, residing either here or in Georgetown. Washington no longer presents the outside of vice, and that circumstance speaks highly of those, who have so zealously laboured to improve the morals, and mend the hearts, of the great mass of the citizens. Their labors must have been great, otherwise such success would not have followed their works. ”