ad not grown, but had been created for
a special purpose. A site had been arbitrarily selected, and a city laid
out on the most magnificent scale. But there was no independent life, for
the city was wholly official in its purposes and its existence. There were
a few great public buildings, a few large private houses, a few hotels and
boarding houses, and a large number of negro shanties. The general effect
was of attempted splendor, which had resulted in slovenliness and
straggling confusion. The streets were unpaved, dusty in summer, and deep
with mud in winter, so that the mere difficulty of getting from place to
place was a serious obstacle to general society. Cattle fed in the streets,
and were milked by their owners on the sidewalk. There was a grotesque
contrast between the stately capitol where momentous questions were
eloquently discussed and such queerly primitive and rude surroundings. Few
persons were able to entertain because few persons had suitable houses.
Members of Congress usually clubbed together and took possession of a
house, and these "messes," as they were called,--although without doubt
very agreeable to their members,--did not offer a mode of life which was
easily compatible with the demands of general society. Social enjoyments,
therefore, were pursued under difficulties; and the city, although
improving, was dreary enough.

Society, too, was in a bad condition. The old forms and ceremonies of the
men of 1789 and the manners and breeding of our earliest generation of
statesmen had passed away, and the new democracy had not as yet a system of
its own. It was a period of transition. The old customs had gone, the new
ones had not crystallized. The civilization was crude and raw, and in
Washington had no background whatever,--such as was to be found in the old
cities and towns of the original thirteen States. The tone of the men in
public life had deteriorated and was growing worse, approaching rapidly its
lowest point, which it reached during the Polk administration. This was due
partly to the Jacksonian democracy, which had rejected training and
education as necessary to statesmanship, and had loudly proclaimed the
great truths of rotation in office, and the spoils to the victors, and
partly to the slavery agitation which was then beginning to make itself
felt. The rise of the irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery
made the South overbearing and truculent; it produced that class of
poli