Posted by Bob Arnebeck <Swamp1800@aol.com>

In his review of Abbott's book, Lessoff write: "Washington's founders
and planners back in the 1790s set out to create a national city that
emphasized the South's crucial role in the continental republic, not a
regional or border city that presumed the South to be peripheral." I
have not read Abbott's book yet and will because I am intrigued with
his thesis, surely the dream of every tourist promotion director, that
cities actually do take on the character of the often legendary or
picturesque region they are imbedded in.

The founders of Washington, in my research for my book on the city's
founding, certainly didn't set out to create a city to emphasize such
a thing as a southern role. At the same time George Washington was
overseeing the building of the new federal capital, he was trying to
lease his Mount Vernon farms. He begged his English friends to send
over some good English farmers.  The prospect of renting to
inefficient American farmers depressed him. In developing the city of
Washington, he had no illusion that the planters and their sons in
Virginia would suddenly become crackerjacks at urban development. Both
he and Jefferson had the dream of 50 or so German artisans coming
directly to the city. Washington urged George Walker among others who
went to Scotland to bring back skilled artisans from there.

In actuality much of the energy that went into the first decade of
development came from Massachusetts, much of it encouraged by
Washington. In 1800 John Adams, from Massachusetts, had more friends
in the new capital than Jefferson did. Poor Abigail Adams, who really
didn't want to join her husband in the new president's mansion,
finally came out of loyalty to her friends there, her nephew William
Cranch and family, Mr. and Mrs. Tristram Dalton and family, even the
beleaguered speculator James Greenleaf and his family were
acquaintances. All were relatively long time residents of the city.
Jefferson's best friends in the city were John and Abigail Adams. I
could extend the list of New Englanders. While Washington did build a
house in the capital, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe did not. John
Randolph was the city's principal and most biting critic. The Adams
family had a long presence in the city throughout the 19th century.

To be sure, several prominent Marylanders loomed large in the city's
development. But commentators at the time noted how un-Southern those
go-getters were. Thomas Johnson, former governor of Maryland and city
commissioner, did make much of the virtues of slave labor, but less
out of southern habit than as a cockeyed piece of social
engineering. His idea was that once northern laborers were lured down
to work in the city the pool of hired slaves would force them to keep
"cool" and not make exorbitant wage demands.

That said, the New Englanders proved themselve no masters at city
building - bankruptcies were legion. So like the swamp, the sleepy
southern town became a Washington legend to hide continuing failures
of development, until the genius of the American people made the
federal government a billion dollar than a trillion dollar concern
thus allowing the city's urban seed to flourish, as its founders
intended, quite independently of the plantation life nearby.

Bob Arnebeck
Independent Scholar
web page on early Washington: http://hometown.aol.com/Swamp1800

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