Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Foreword
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Wartime Washington
- 3 The Freedmen's Bureau in the District of Columbia
- 4 Congressional Reconstruction in the District of Columbia
- 5 Reconstructing the City Government
- 6 Race, Radicalism, and Reconstruction
- 7 A City and a State
- 8 From Biracial Democracy to Direct Rule
- 9 Reconstruction in the Nation's Capital
- Index
- References
9 - Reconstruction in the Nation's Capital
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2012
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Foreword
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Wartime Washington
- 3 The Freedmen's Bureau in the District of Columbia
- 4 Congressional Reconstruction in the District of Columbia
- 5 Reconstructing the City Government
- 6 Race, Radicalism, and Reconstruction
- 7 A City and a State
- 8 From Biracial Democracy to Direct Rule
- 9 Reconstruction in the Nation's Capital
- Index
- References
Summary
“The Capital of the Whole Nation”
In 1877, in a speech delivered in the neighboring city of Baltimore, Frederick Douglass, the District's most eminent black resident, painted Washington's recent progress in glowing terms:
The vast and wonderful revolution which has, during the last dozen years, taken place in the condition and relations of the American people is nowhere more visible, striking, and complete, than in Washington.…Outside of the public buildings, some of which have been vastly changed and improved, all the older landmarks of the city have been obscured, or have wholly disappeared. The spade, the plough and the pick-axe of the Freedman have changed the face of the earth upon which the city stands. Hills have been leveled, valleys filled up, canals, gulleys, ditches, and other hiding places of putridity and pestilence, have been arched, drained, and purified, and their neighborhood made healthy, sweet, and habitable.…
Magnificent thoroughfares, for which Washington has no rival, have been lately graded, paved, and parked, and richly adorned on either side with beautiful and flourishing shade trees.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Washington during Civil War and ReconstructionRace and Radicalism, pp. 311 - 330Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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