Books, Maps, and Politics: A Cultural History of the Library of Congress, 1783-1861

Chapter Two. Madison's Vision Realized, 1800–1812

39 CHAPTER TWO g Madison’s Vision Realized, 1800–1812 Once the Library of Congress had been founded in 1800, it followed along the developmental lines sketched out by James Madison in 1783. Congress collected books in a few well defined subject areas to assist it in carrying out its official duties. Under the continuing influence of the tenets of classical republicanism, utility was the rationale for the Library, which meant that luxury, conversely, had to be avoided. This view of the Library of Congress, exemplified by Joint Library Committee member John Randolph and written into the petitions for patronage submittedto the federal government by engineer William Tatham, was also reflected in Library of Congress catalogs of 1802 and 1812. These catalogs show that the areas of history, law, politics, and geography tended to be the most heavily collected. In marked ways, Library of Congress holdings were less catholic than those of the typical social library of the era, in accordance with its legislative orientation. In other ways, the Library did resemble the social libraries fromwhich congressmen had taken books before they created a library of their own. In its institutional structure and architecture, the Library of Congress drew from existing social library models. And by 1812, the Library of Congress had also begun to spend more of its appropriations budget on titles in the belles lettres, a subject which Madison had eschewed com- 40 chapter two pletely and which was not emphasized in the 1802 initial purchase. This allowed the Library to serve a social and recreational purpose for legislators and their families, a role that would become more pronounced as the century progressed. Aside from this function, the Library of Congress in the years preceding the War of 1812 was fashioned as a working libraryfor government officials, and its collections consequently reflected some of the important historical events of the period. Establishment of the Library Despite the failure of Elbridge Gerry’s 1790 proposal for a library, legislators in subsequent years nonetheless quietly went about collecting the books they deemed essential. No record survives to document exactly how or where Congress procured them, but William Dawson Johnston reports that either before or immediately after the removal of the legislature to Washington, but separately from the later acquisitions approved by statute, Congress amassed some 243 volumes.1 Apparently wary of public scrutiny into the matter of a government-funded library, legislators acquired without fanfare the books that they had not authorized purchasing through direct legislation. These books are listed separately in the 1802 catalog, so it is possible to identify the fifty-five titles (not many fewer than the seventy to eighty that Elbridge Gerry had proposed as the basis of a congressional library) collected some time in the 1790s. Among these, many are familiar from Madison’s 1783 list, including the Annual Register, Adam Anderson’s A Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce, Blackstone’s Commentaries, Hume’s History of England, Jacques Necker’s Finances of France, and Vattel’s Law of Nations. In addition, a number of books published after Madison drew up his list—John Adams’s Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787);John BakerHolroyd,EarlofSheffield’s Observations on the Commerce of the American States with Europe and the West Indies (1783); Tench Coxe’s Brief Examination of Lord Sheffield’s “Observations” (1791); Jeremy Belknap’s American Biography (1794); and Jedidiah Morse’s American Geography (1789)—dealt with U.S. history, commerce, politics, and geography, subjects that Madison had identified as central to the government’s interests. Controversial or not, books were too essential to be done without entirely, even withthe LibraryCompany of Philadelphia at the legislature’s disposal. With the relocation of the capital in 1800 to Washington,D.C.,where madison’s vision realized, 1800–1812 41 the legislators would no longer have access to the collections of a wellstocked social library, a congressional library for reference purposes became a justifiable expenditure in the minds of congressmen. The legislature established the Library of Congress in a single paragraph of the “Act to make provision for the removal and accommodation of the Government of the United States.” The fifth section of this act, approved on 24 April 1800, resolved “that for the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the...