The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction (Littlefield History of the Civil War Era) by Mark Wahlgren Summers

Author:Mark Wahlgren Summers [Summers, Mark Wahlgren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2014-10-27T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve: Corruption Is the Fashion

The quickened pace and consolidating force of a restored Union showed itself distinctly in the new Washington. Before the war, Congress met there for six months or so in even-numbered years and four in odd, though members groused their way through cheap-boardinghouse life and could hardly wait to go home again. To a New Englander, Boston remained the true capital, to a westerner, Chicago. A “third rate Southern city,” as the correspondent Mary Clemmer Ames recalled, it had no streetcar lines—only “a few straggling omnibuses.” Capitol Hill reared out of a virtual desert of “arid hill and sodden plain.” Unfinished executive buildings looked best after dark, because Washington was so dimly lighted. The western end of the city lived in “one vast slough of impassable mud” in spring and fall. The length and breadth of its avenues excited admiration; but the hovels and sheds lining them, only dismay. A “nasty stinkin hole,” one visitor summed up, and foreign visitors felt the same way.1

For northerners, the war turned it into a true national capital, a symbol of the Union worth defending. It also turned into one worth seeing. By 1873, Ames wrote, another city, cosmopolitan and stately, was arising. The mire and poplars that distinguished Pennsylvania Avenue had given way to marble buildings. Broad graveled carriage drives had replaced mud-courses, with concrete paving in place of the clefts and holes that pocked roads in old days. Grassy park succeeded “long vistas of shadeless dust.” Fountains marked the crossing of major thoroughfares. Sewer lines carried the waters that once had sat stagnant, green, and malarial.2

War alone could not have made such a change. Credit fell, rather, to Alexander R. Shepherd, president of the board of public works under the District governor. Beginning life as a gas fitter and becoming one of the top business figures in the city and one of its canniest real estate speculators, he had none of the polish of antebellum society and no need for it. He was all will and purpose. In 1870, “intelligent citizens” convinced Congress to put the District under a territorial government with its own legislature and much less input from black voters. At its head was Henry D. Cooke, brother of Jay Cooke and partner in his banking enterprises. His money and the high reputation for piety gave him credit with lawmakers—who, if they were a little short, could always depend on getting credit from him. Shepherd showed a more practical bent, ready to spread patronage and contracts to build a capital city worthy of so great a nation. There must be up-to-date sanitation facilities and well-lit streets; horticulturists planted trees by the thousand. Where ten men had taken salaries in the street department, Shepherd needed eighty-six. Those digging up the streets numbered in the thousands. Water mains replaced wells, brick succeeded wooden pavement, black dwellings were torn down and elite residences put in their place, segregated neighborhoods became the norm, and in 1872 over 1,200 new buildings rose.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.