In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

C H A P T E R 9 Magnificent Intentions HEN CHARLES DICKENS visited Washington, D.C., in the 18405, he dubbed America's capital the "City of Magnificent Intentions" and remarked upon "Spacious avenues, that begin in nothing and lead nowhere; streets, mile long, that only want houses, roads and inhabitants; publicbuildings that need but a public to be complete." Dickens was certainly not the first traveler to note the discrepancy between Pierre L'Enfant's monumental design for the capital city and the reality of the rude town of muddy and rutted streets, weed-filled vacant lots, and malarial bogs punctuated by a few imposing government buildings. During the early decades of the nineteenth century visitors both foreign and domestic found Washington an object of mockery. A bleak and primitive settlement, it lacked culture, commercial life, and even ruralsalubrity; the "contaminated vapour" from the city's notorious swamps spread "agues and other complaints" among its inhabitants.' Yet when Hammond arrived late in 1835, the city was much improved over the town that had existed only a few years before, not to mention the ruin that had been left by the British depredations of 1814. Unlike many of his predecessors , Hammond would not have to negotiate the covered boardwalk that had been the only passage between the House and Senate wings of the Capitol before i. Charles Dickens, American Notes, for General Circulation (New York: Harper, 1842), 97; John Melish, quoted in James Sterling Young, The Washington Community, 1800-1828 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1966), 49. See John W. Reps, Monumental Washington: The Planning and Development of the Capital Center (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967); Daniel Drake Reiff, WashingtonArchitecture, 1791-1861: Problems in Development (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 1971). W James Henry Hammond and the Old South a central hall connecting the two chambers was completed in the late twenties. The building was now crowned by a copper-covered dome that attracted even a casual observer's eye to the legislature's newly impressive seat. Hammond enjoyed as well the convenience of the system of piped water installed in the Capitol in 1832 and the advantages of the macadam surface laid the same year over the dirt ruts of Pennsylvania Avenue, the broad boulevard that connected the legislative halls to the president's house, refurbished after the fires of 1814 and open for a seemingly incessant round of levees and balls. Even if a cow pasture and a frog pond stood behind the Capitol to the southeast, before it, along Pennsylvania Avenue, some of the nation's most illustrious citizens promenaded daily, accompanied by ladies arrayed in the most elegant of American and European fashions. Gradually Washington was becoming less isolated from the rest of the nation as the Jackson administration's egalitarian tone helped to create an atmosphere of governmental accessibility. And the completion of Washington's first railroad connection in the summer before Hammond's arrival promised to aid significantly in bringing the capital city into a central place in the nation's social and cultural as well as its political life.2 Like most congressmen of his day, Hammond moved into a Capitol Hill boardinghouse. Mrs. Lindenberger's establishment was, in all likelihood, one of the area's characteristic three-story brick houses, described by a contemporary as "decent without being in the least elegant." And like most of his colleagues, Hammond shared lodgings with members of his own state delegation, Senators Calhoun and Preston and Representatives Francis W. Pickens of Edgefield and Waddy Thompson of Greenville. These legislators dined together, passed their leisure time together, and shared political ideas and strategies over dinner or breakfast or before the evening's fire; the "mess" was the basic social and political unit of congressmen's lives.' For the Carolina delegation, this boardinghouse interaction was especially significant, for the conflicts of nullification and the open hostility between Jackson and Calhoun had made these states' rights southerners the core of an emerg2 . See Margaret Bayard Smith, The First Fort} Years of Washington Society (New York: Scrihner's, 1906); Eli F. Cooley, A Description of the Etiquette at Washington City (Philadelphia: L. Clarke, 1829); H. Paul Caemmerer, Historic Washington: Capita/ of the Nation (Washington, D.C.: Columbia History Society, 1948); Casimir Bohn, Bohn's Handbook of Washington (Washington, D.C.: C. Bohn, 1956); William Elliot, The Washington Guide (Washington, D.C.: Franck Taylor, 1837); Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington: A History of the Capital...

Share