If his spirit could stand there now and look around upon the masses of soldiers by which his capital is surrounded, how would it address the city of his hopes? When he saw that every foot of the neighboring soil was desecrated by a camp, or torn into loathsome furrows of mud by cannon and army wagons--that agriculture was gone, and that every effort both of North and South was concentrated on the art of killing; when he saw that this was done on the very spot chosen by himself for the center temple of an everlasting union, what would he then say as to that boast made on his behalf by his countrymen, that he was first in war and first in peace? Washington was a great man, and I believe a good man. I, at any rate, will not belittle him. I think that he had the firmness and audacity necessary for a revolutionary leader, that he had honesty to preserve him from the temptations of ambition and ostentation, and that he had the good sense to be guided in civil matters by men who had studied the laws of social life and the theories of free government. He was justus et tenax propositi; and in periods that might well have dismayed a smaller man, he feared neither the throne to which he opposed himself nor the changing voices of the fellow-citizens for whose welfare he had fought. But sixty or seventy years will not suffice to give to a man the fame of having been first among all men. Washington did much, and I for one do not believe that his work will perish. But I have always found it difficult--I may say impossible--to sound his praises in his own land. Let us suppose that a courteous Frenchman ventures an opinion among Englishmen that Wellington was a great general, would he feel disposed to go on with his eulogium when encountered on two or three sides at once with such observations as the following: "I should rather calculate he was; about the first that ever did live or ever will live. Why, he whipped your Napoleon everlasting whenever he met him. He whipped everybody out of the field. There warn't anybody ever lived was able to stand nigh him, and there won't come any like him again. Sir, I guess our Wellington never had his likes on your side of the water. Such men can't grow in a down-trodden country of slaves and paupers." Under such circumstances the Frenchman would probably be shut up. And when I strove to speak of Washington I generally found myself shut up also.
Arlington Heights, when I was at Washington, was the headquarters of General McDowell, the general to whom is attributed--I believe most wrongfully--the loss of the battle of Bull's Run. The whole place was then one camp. The fences had disappeared. The gardens were trodden into mud. The roads had been cut to pieces, and new tracks made everywhere through the grounds. But the timber still remained.
Some no doubt had fallen, but enough stood for the ample ornamentation of the place. I saw placards up, prohibiting the destruction of the trees, and it is to be hoped that they have been spared. Very little in this way has been spared in the country all around.
Mount Vernon, Washington's own residence, stands close over the Potomac, about six miles below Alexandria. It will be understood that the capital is on the eastern, or Maryland side of the river, and that Arlington Heights, Alexandria, and Mount Vernon are in Virginia. The River Potomac divided the two old colonies, or States as they afterward became; but when Washington was to be built, a territory, said to be ten miles square, was cut out of the two States and was called the District of Columbia. The greater portion of this district was taken from Maryland, and on that the city was built. It comprised the pleasant town of Georgetown, which is now a suburb--and the only suburb--of Washington. The portion of the district on the Virginian side included Arlington heights, and went so far down the river as to take in the Virginian City of Alexandria. This was the extreme western point of the district; but since that arrangement was made, the State of Virginia petitioned to have their portion of Columbia back again, and this petition was granted. Now it is felt that the land on both sides of the river should belong to the city, and the government is anxious to get back the Virginian section. The city and the immediate vicinity are freed from all State allegiance, and are under the immediate rule of the United States government--having of course its own municipality;but the inhabitants have no political power, as power is counted in the States. They vote for no political officer, not even for the President, and return no member to Congress, either as a senator or as a Representative. Mount Vernon was never within the District of Columbia.
