To George Washington from Thomas Law, 4 February 1797
From Thomas Law
Washington City Feby 4th 1797
Dear Sir
I respect & esteem you too much to intrude often upon your valuable time I am averse to lacerate a mind already wounded by complaint; yet I cannot forbear when I consider that perhaps in the Year 1800 at Mount Vernon, when Congress cannot come to the City,1 you may upbraid me for not candidly assigning to you the causes of the misfortune, when it was in your power to do them away.
I have subscribed my name to one Memorial along with many respectable Proprietors,2 & were we again to address You we should entitle our Representation as England once did a similar one to Rome—Vizt “The Groans of the City.”3
Mr Walker with whom I am not accustomed to correspond has informed me of his Complaint, & as you have promised a thorough investigation, I shall wait for a reference.4
Mr Scot now often visits this end of the City in a certain direction; as Mr Nicholson cannot go out,5 but it is curious that out of only three City Gentlemen who dined with me yesterday; two of them who have long resided here never saw Mr Scot & the third Mr Barry Junr6 only saw him last Week at the office where he went twice & verified his predictions that the Comm. would not do his simple business.
If facts are wanted 1st, I aver that Mr Scot before me in a large Company avowed his partiality to the George Town end & gloried in his refusal to come in to the City & he proves his preference by recent mortgages & purchases.7
2 I aver that When Mr Young Carroll myself & other Proprietors near the seat of Congress waited upon Mr Scot to approve a Petition to the Legislature of Mary land for a Bridge over the Eastern branch,8 he amused us by shewing the Presidents House on the Map & by pointing out where the offices should be & by anticipating the future splendor of that part of the City by the residence of Ambassadors & by the Assemblage of Americans who were great Courtiers.9
Many spirited Patriots who were doomed to destruction under Robespierre diverted their grief & indignation by poetry,10 & pray accept this apology for the following song written to day in the moments of despair about my property.
Rhymes to a Friend in England
“The atlantic I cross’d for America’s shore
And now will endeavor to pen you a ditty
To describe many things you ne’er heard of before
And to tell how they raise a Republican City.
You’d suppose that at first they made streets for the many
And next that the Congress’s House were begun
Ah no! for the public they care not a penny
And only attend to the flattering of One.
As the Presidents salary is very low11
And as too he lives without spendor or State
His House is of stone finely sculptured for show
Scarce a Palace in Europe have I seen so great.
The Commissioners dwell in a Town rather small
For its distance, & not for their interest or gain
Thus they mean to evince they’ve no bias at all
And faith to all parts of the City its plain.
Those who gave to the public the half of their land12
Who meant to improve they affront and despise,
Their great Independance we hence understand
Thus the City of Freedom depends on the Skies.[”]
If after poetry which generally deals in fiction I might speak the language of reason in prose, I should say, that the two public Buildings are too distant. “Divide et impera”13 was a maxim of Despots & when well applied will prevent every thing from rising—Either force should be bent now to the Center or one end of the City should be made to preponderate—Mr Stoddert says, that even George Town & every proprietor of Land in & out of the City would benefit by doing away indecision—Concordia parva crescunt, discordia maxima delabuntur14—Let reason determine which shall have the preference; six Years have passed away in uncertainty, all are watching the trepidations of the Ballance. My preference has been shewn when I had the choice of all the City & I daily see the advantages—The Ice closed George Harbour a fortnight before that of the Eastern branch, & Vessels are now waiting here for near a Week till the frost bound George Town harbour shall open15—If such a Decr & Jany should happen in 1800 what will be the sentiments of the inhabitants be who were importing materials furniture & goods for the Houses of Congress near the Presidents House where only a few days ago a Gentn of respectability from George Town said Congress would meet.16 I know it is impossible almost to impress the idea that I am impartial & disinterested, I will however aver sincerely that I had rather throw the dice which public Edifice should be the Seat of Congress rather than let doubt & dismay spread thro’ the City & contaminate the minds of all around—with apologies for this hasty Lre written at an important Crisis—I remain With unfeigned esteem Most sincerely & respectfully
Thomas Law
I submit some suggestions not from presumption of superior knowledge but because more momentary avocations preclude you from weighing pro’s & con’s.
The great object of the President is to have private Houses ready for Congress & Offices for the various departments—If Congress is intended to meet at the Capitol all future public buildings should be within a convenient distance of the Capitol.
1st Because they may for a time accomodate some Members of Congress also.
2nd Because the workmen employed will put up small Houses adjoining for their own residence.
3rd Because these Buildings will promote others.
4th Because Commerce will be encouraged by the landing of materials within a convt distance from the Capitol & Houses will spring up there also.
Let us examine whether all these advantages are not lost by fixing the Offices on the Presidents Square.
1st The workmen employed will be all from George Town which is three miles from the Seat of Congress.
2nd All the Materials will be landed at too great a distance from the Capitol to aid the City in the least.
It may be urged that the public Offices ought to be close to the President & so they may be hereafter—but the important pressing object now is to ensure the coming of Congress—The Hotel might be purchased for 25000 if not 20000 Ds & Blodget is bound & has given Security to finish it.17
Mr Carroll will build another Hotel at the Capitol.18
The Commissioners & Proprietors have the same Interest & if impartial Commissioners were to call them together & would reside among them, there would soon be displayed a different appearence & Houses would be in abundance for Congress & Lots would sell high & afford funds for public Buildings.19
ALS, DLC:GW.
1. The “Act for establishing the temporary and permanent seat of the Government of the United States,” 16 July 1790, provided for the transfer of Congress and the other branches of the federal government to Washington, D.C., on the first Monday in December 1800 ( 130).
2. Law may be referring to the unfound address of 24 May 1796 from the federal district proprietors to GW pertaining to the residences of the D.C. commissioners (see Law to GW, 6 Oct. 1796, and n.6 to that document).
3. Around the year 446, the Britons sent Flavius Aetius, a Roman general and consul, a letter, which sixth-century Celtic monk Gildas referred to as the “gemitus Britannorum” (groans of the Britons). In that letter, the Britons requested Aetius’s assistance after they had endured a series of raids by Picts and Scots and a subsequent Saxon rebellion and stranglehold on Britain that had led to warfare and food shortages. The famous letter to Flavius Aetius was discussed in many eighteenth-century histories of Britain. Perhaps familiar with these works, Law appropriated the phrase “The Groans” for his own use, to refer to the proprietors’ complaints concerning land appropriations and the locations of the commissioners’ residences.
4. For George Walker’s disputes with the D.C. commissioners over the division of his property and for his complaint about their places of residence, see Walker to GW, 24 Jan., and GW to Walker, 26 Jan.; see also Commissioners for the District of Columbia to GW, 21 Nov. 1796, and n.6 to that document. No letter from Walker to Law on the matter has been identified.
5. Throughout much of 1797, land speculator and Federal City investor John Nicholson rarely left his home in order to avoid creditors and law officers seeking to collect the vast amount of debt he owed. He went to Philadelphia in the winter of 1797 and remained in seclusion there for similar reasons (see , 185–96; see also , 424–25).
6. James Barry was a Baltimore merchant and Law’s trading partner (see Martha Parke Custis Peter to GW, 18 Jan., and n.4 to that document).
7. For D.C. commissioner Gustavus Scott’s residence outside the Federal City and for his property in the area of Rock Creek and the vicinity of Georgetown, see Walker to GW, 24 Jan., and n.5 to that document; see also Law to GW, 6 Oct. 1796. In a letter to GW of 22 Dec. 1797, Law mentioned Scott’s “holding a mortgage with two George town people on City Lots near George Town to the Amt of 120000 Ds.” ( 1:530–31).
8. Law, Notley Young, Daniel Carroll of Duddington, Walker and other proprietors of the federal district had petitioned the Maryland legislature in 1795, in the hopes “of forming a company for the purpose of erecting a bridge over the Eastern branch [now the Anacostia River] … from the lower end [foot] of Kentucky avenue, in the city of Washington.” On 23 Dec. 1795, the legislature passed an act that granted the petitioners’ request and authorized them to open “books for receiving and entering subscriptions for the said undertaking, to the amount of” 225 shares. The law also incorporated the Eastern Branch Bridge Company (, chap. LXII). The proposed bridge, referred to for a time as the Lower Bridge, was not completed until January 1804. It was one of two main bridges over the Eastern Branch in which Law was involved (see , 103). Pierre Charles L’Enfant had proposed a bridge across the Anacostia River above Evans Point (see Daniel Carroll to GW, 13 Jan. 1795, and n.7 to that document).
9. The “Map” probably refers to Andrew Ellicott’s plan of the Federal City, which was engraved by James Thackara and John Vallance in 1792. A proposal had been made to erect ambassador residences and executive buildings near President’s Square (now Lafayette Square). See Commissioners for the District of Columbia to GW, 1 Oct. 1796 (first letter), and n.5 to that document; and the commissioners to GW, 31 Jan. 1797.
10. Among the most famous French poets imprisoned and executed during the Reign of Terror was André Chénier. His poetry served both to provide solace during his captivity and to denounce the fanatical regime under the Jacobin leader Maximilien-François-Marie-Isidore de Robespierre. One such poem included Chénier’s famous “La Jeune Captive.” André’s brother, Marie-Joseph Chénier, also composed works that were critical of Robespierre. For more on poetry during the French Revolution and for the poets who met their deaths at the guillotine, see Robert Sabatier, Histoire de la poésie française (6 vols., Paris 1975) 4:230–32, 243–71.
11. Congress had set the president’s annual salary at $25,000 (see 72, 318).
12. This line refers to the proprietors of the federal district.
13. This Latin phrase translates as “divide and rule.”
14. The Latin phrase concordia res parvæ crescunt, discordia maximæ dilabuntur, taken from Sallust, translates as “with concord small things increase, with discord the greatest things go to ruin.” The phrase was often employed to discuss the decline of great states due to civil discord.
15. For the cold weather and frozen waterways near Virginia, Washington, D.C., and other locations along the eastern seaboard in early 1797, see GW to James Anderson, 8 Jan., n.14; see also Anderson to GW, 11 Jan., n.11. A report dated “NewYork, Dec. 30 [1796]” noted that the “navigation” of the Eastern Branch (now Anacostia River) had “not been obstructed by the ice during the late frost” (Boston Price-Current and Marine Intelligencer, 9 Jan. 1797). This suggests that the river did not freeze over until sometime in January.
16. For the recent conjecture that Congress would be forced to hold its sessions in the President’s House upon its transfer to Washington, D.C., in 1800, see Walker to GW, 24 January.
17. Law refers to the hotel offered as the grand prize in a lottery organized in 1793–94 by then-D.C. superintendent Samuel Blodget, Jr. For more on the hotel, valued at $50,000, and for security given by Blodget for its completion, see Budd & Pryor to GW, 31 Oct. 1796. Both GW and Law later invested in a hotel on Capitol Hill (see GW to Law, 2 Oct. 1797, and GW to Law, 24 Oct. 1798, in 1:378–79; 3:136–37).
18. For the plans of Daniel Carroll of Duddington to erect a tavern near the U.S. Capitol and for the hotels with which he was later associated, see his letter to GW of 6 Feb., and n.5 to that document; see also Commissioners for the District of Columbia to GW, 7 Feb., n.1.
19. No reply to Law from GW has been found.
For GW’s demand that the D.C. commissioners reside in the Federal City, see GW to Alexander White, 17 May 1795; GW to the Commissioners for the District of Columbia, 22 May 1796; and GW to William Thornton, 26 Dec. 1796.