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A lot of the discussion on this topic seems to have rested on the technical/scientific definition of a swamp; I'd like to submit that the fact that Washington may not rest on an ecologically-correct "swamp" does not mean we can't say it replaced "swampy ground" which, essentially, makes it a swamp from the perspective if the non-scientists in the room. In what way might observers realistically have called the land around the mall a "swamp" in certain seasons at a certain point in history? - it was sufficiently muddy and mucky that a person could not safely/comfortably walk across it; a swamp, to many people, is that odd space between solid ground and body of water. - the fetid smell was distinctive -- stagnant water is a frequent feature of (ecologically-correct) swamps, and whether the stench came from human and animal waste or vegetable stagnation, it probably amounted to the same nasty olfactory experience. - it was (and is) absurdly hot and humid in the summertime compared to most of the rest of the mid-Atlantic, and therefore reminiscent of the southern US swamps and swamp surroundings like those around New Orleans and in central Florida, which some visitors knew by first-hand experience or reputation. Webster's defines a swamp first by comparison to other wet, forested locations, "A seasonally flooded bottomland with more woody plants than a marsh and better drainage than a bog." (I leave you to look up marshes and bogs yourselves). Webster's also gives a broad secondary definition that seems to qualify it in DC's 19th-century incarnation: "A lowland region saturated with water." (http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=swamp) So I would submit that rather than "debunking the myth" that Washington was built on a swamp, we can actually "contribute to the understanding" of the environmental state of Washington and how it changed over time. Certainly we can point to a period when non-scientists would objectively react "yuck, what a swamp!" when confronted with the state of the land between the Capitol and the White House -- and political correctness aside, why should this not be enough to invite a deeper understanding of why many say Washington was built on a swamp, rather than a stern corrective on the topic? >From a "psychological history" perspective, it's interesting to observe that the three factors of swampiness noted above adversely affect people, but not plants or animals -- and it's people, after all, who get to do the defining. Has there been a genuine shift in what people might call a "swamp," given greater ecological sensitivity achieved at the greater distance from nature that almost all of us live in today, or would the same circumstances still prompt the quick designation "swamp" from most people? >From a "history of science" perspective, has the nomenclature and its specificity changed over time? Could you have correctly and accurately called th Mall area a "swamp" 150 or 200 years ago, or has this always been an scientifically "inaccurate" way to describe the area? It seems that this argument that the swamp is a historical "myth" relies on the notion that a scientific definition trumps a non-scientific definition, and in our technologically-obsessed age that may be the case. But assuming scientists had bothered to define these not-solid-ground, not-body-of-water areas with any precision at that time, and assuming that calling DC a "swamp" would have been considered a travesty at the time, would anybody have cared? As for "swamps" that are not swamps, I point you to: "Congaree Swamp Monument," which "rests on a floodplain of the Congaree River and is not a true swamp ," http://www.nps.gov/cosw/ . This news, if taken seriously by the swamp-naysayers, could be fatal to the reputation of Francis Marion, a military leader dubbed "Swamp Fox" by the British against whom he fought in 1780 -- the name he got because he retreated to the "swamps" around Charleston where the British couldn't /wouldn't follow (probably because they were smelly and mucky, and absurdly hot if you're in full military dress of the era). The "Great Swamp" of New Jersey, "actually a mixture of Marshland, Meadowland, dry Woodland and brush-covered Swampland" (http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/8665/about.html). So perhaps we can be reassured that while people say Washington was built on a swamp, we didn't actually get any closer to officially calling any area of the city a swamp inaccurately -- more than South Carolina or New Jersey can claim! -- ------------------------------------------ Sara Cormeny * web site designer sara@paperlantern.com 1614 T St NW * Washington DC 20009 http://www.paperlantern.com 202.462.4954 * FAX 202.478.0385 Matthew Gilmore H-DC list co-editor, web editor dc-edit@mail.h-net.msu.edu http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~dclist/ [list website] http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/lists/subscribe.cgi?list=H-DC [subscribe to H-DC] Remember to check http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lm&list=h-dc for past list messages.
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