Chapter Four (1790-1793): Cadmus [Pages 58 to 73]

Chapter Four: Cadmus

35. Honeymoon Portrait

By 1783, Mrs. Anna Brodeau had "made a handsome fortune."¹ Thornton likely met the widow Brodeau and her daughter through Benjamin Rush who got to know them when he wrote an essay on women's education. She ran a finishing school for girls. The Rush connection was important to Mrs. Brodeau who had some doubts about marrying her 16 year old daughter to a man almost twice her age. Rush, when he was 29 years old, had married the 17 year old daughter of Richard Stockton, who like Rush had signed the Declaration of Independence. Mrs. Brodeau told Thornton, then 31 years old, that Rush thought he would make a good husband for her daughter.²

36. Outside the church where Thorntons were married, 1800 engraving

They had a church wedding in Philadelphia on October 13, 1790. Because he did not marry a Quaker, Thornton faced expulsion from the Philadelphia Meeting. Leaving three days later for Tortola avoided immediate upshots from that vexation. However, Thornton did not give the impression that he was running away from anything. The steamboat company was at a crucial juncture with congress coming to town, but Thornton had left orders to make no changes. The boat had been perfected.³

Soon after he got to Tortola, he wrote to Hopkins and the Newport blacks. He didn't hide his marriage and assured them it would not prevent his sacrificing his all in Africa. To Taylor he boasted that he was “daily laboring in your cause.” He reported that he was learning the [page 59] language of Sierra Leone and as well as collecting weapons. He had bought two cannons.⁴ On his voyage back to Tortola, Thornton had a traveling companion other than his bride. Major John Jacob Ulrich Rivardi stayed with him in Tortola for several months. He was a Swiss army engineer and volunteered to draw up a manual of tactics that the freed slaves sent to Africa could use to fight off slave traders and other enemies. Evidently, talking about arming blacks on an island where blacks outnumbered whites ten to one did not give the two visionaries pause.

37. 1809 drawing of Virgin Islands

Thanks to Lettsom vouching for his character, Thornton wrote to and received long letters from Granville Sharp and Thomas Clarkson, leaders of the British anti-slave trade movement. Knowing that the Newport blacks and Hopkins had doubts about his character, Thornton submitted a novel petition to the legislature of the Virgin Islands, which met on another island. He asked them for “a certificate of my moral character,” as well as to his education, “his acquaintance with diseases of hot countries having practiced for some time in the West Indies” and his knowledge of natural history. He explained that he would use their certification to prove his ability to lead blacks back to Africa. He also listed wife, family, and possessions which he would gladly sacrifice. That didn't mean his family knew about the petition. As Thornton wrote to one legislator, he didn't want to raise the hopes of blacks or the ire of whites in the islands.⁵

There is evidence that his wife learned of his passionate hatred of slavery but perhaps not his Africa crusade. Thomas Wilkinson sent his long and his well received poem attacking the slave trade. As Thornton wrote his reply extolling Wilkinson's poem, he commiserated with the Tortola slaves for having to work on the mountain without shade or water. Then he began crying. His wife asked why and he let her read the letter. Then he finished the letter by extolling the virtues of his wife, regretting the death of a mutual poet friend, and intimating that he planned to return to America. He didn't mention Africa.⁶

In the letter, he also watered his Quaker roots with his tears. His "good relations in England..." were "the parents of every good thought I enjoy,...” and thus he wept for his slaves [page 60] and wanted to free them. To be sure, Thornton carved out a place for himself on the right side of history. However, a Quaker educated in Lancashire could do better than Thornton's crusade. In 1791, Thornton's second cousin Robert Foster gave testimony against the slave trade before a parliamentary committee based on his personal experiences. That well organized inquiry was a culmination of months of work by Quakers including Wilkinson to find witnesses to the trade's horrors. It was the beginning of a long campaign that led to the gradual emancipation of slaves on Britain's Caribbean Islands between 1834 and 1838.⁷

Thornton's crusade led to nothing, and he refused to face reality. In a letter to Granville Sharp, he explained away the failures of the mission to Sierra Leone. It was not to be a free republic but a colony. Even so, he was still willing to be "a member, if I could know the terms and be able to obtain the suffrage of its members." He added that in Tortola, emancipation was unlikely. Only a law giving "freedom to every child of a slave born after a fixed period"would gradually end slavery.⁸

More troubling about Thornton's campaign was that by keeping it a closet campaign shared with a few correspondents, he could still act like a typical owner of a slave plantation. Thornton wrote to Sharp ridiculing the government's efforts to investigate slavery in the islands: "Pitt wrote queries to the different islands, but he wrote them to the planters to enquire if the Negroes were well treated!!!" Then a month later, Thornton applied for a mortgage on his share of the plantation offering his slaves as security and assured his correspondent that "There are above a hundred and seventy Negroes upon it, and I believe none more valuable or healthy in the country."⁹ He even told his step-brother how to increase the value of that security. Send slaves to St. Croix and rate them as carpenters in the ship's manifest. He also intimated to his brother and step-father that he wanted to buy another slave plantation. His seeming duplicity may have been prompted by his failure to get his parents to definitively say what was his. Merely getting married did not prompt that reckoning.

Meanwhile, Thornton planned to emulate Lettsom at least in so far as making money as a physician so he would not need income from the plantation. He had also told his mother-in-law and his parents that he was going to start a medical practice in Tortola. But even before he left America, he began waffling. While talking with Mrs. Brodeau, he had explained that he really didn't need a profession. She didn't mind that in the least and wrote to him that she looked forward to his becoming a Philadelphia physician or a country gentleman “because I think you might live on a farm as elegantly and independently as any gentleman need to wish with but little assistance from your possessions in the West Indies....”¹⁰

Thornton never described what a practice in medicine would entail, either medically or monetarily. His wife became seriously ill in the spring. In a September 25, 1791, letter to Thornton, her mother wrote that in her daughter's last letter, she “exults in the success of your practice.” Did she celebrate his curing her or his treating others and getting paid for it?

In a letter to his step-father written after he left Tortola, Thornton told him to cool the demands of a man to whom Thornton owed a small sum: “If he exacts the interest of what I thought was a [page 61] friendly act, he ought not to forget the visits I paid to him as a friendly physician sent for in his dangerous moments. The benefit he rendered me I think was repaid.”¹¹ It seems Thornton still was troubled by collecting fees. Thornton wrote at least two letters to Lettsom while he was in Tortola, in July 1791 and May 1792, and in them he did not mention practicing medicine.

Yet, in Tortola he did accomplish something. The study of linguistics was a relatively small world, but in it, Thornton became famous. His essay Cadmus, or a Treatise on the Elements of Written Languages makes clear that he began his linguistic studies at least by the time he toured the Hebrides off Scotland. Unfortunately, the essay doesn't mention anything about his effort to learn African languages or teach his slaves to read and write. Instead, he rakes Samuel Johnson over the coals and conjures a new alphabet out of the ashes to save school children if not the world. If that new alphabet were universally adopted, “a child would be able to read perfectly, in a few weeks provided the language were correctly spelled.” The bulk of the essay describes each of the thirty letters in the new alphabet. He also created symbols to express emotions in writing: use +___+ for irony.¹²

Without a hint of irony, he boasted that with his rationalization of language, many books not rewritten with the new orthography would be forgotten. Plus, dialects would no longer exist. Despite the impact it made at the time, Cadmus is rarely read today. But the man who never finished his M.D. thesis or the dissertations he promised to send to Lettsom, or the "Flora Tortoliensis," finally had something worthy of publication.

38. Title Page of Cadmus

[page 62] Publishing it in London would have enhanced its impact, but that thought did not cross Thornton's mind. He planned to first present it to the American Philosophical Society. In her letters to Thornton, Mrs. Brodeau tried to keep his mind on returning to Philadelphia. At first, she focused on the hapless steamboat company. Congress did not give Fitch any Western land to compensate him for his work of genius. Congress gave him a patent but James Rumsey, a rival inventor, got one too. Meanwhile, Mrs. Brodeau described Fitch's old boat as "in very shattered condition, the new boat by its side without the least improvement."¹³

Thornton shrugged that off. He advised Fitch to get patents for every component of the steam engine. A copper boiler could be patented. The material made the difference. The company had set its sights on New Orleans, then part of the Spanish empire. Just as he wanted to arm blacks returning to Africa, Thornton ordered a small cannon to mount on the boat bound for the Mississippi. In the last twenty years of his life, Thornton would be obsessed with championing his role in inventing the steamboat, but in his long letter to Fitch, he gave all credit to Fitch and Voight. He admitted that in suggesting positions for the paddles on the propelling wheel, he was "giving the undigested reason of the moment against actual experiment." In 1808, he would claim that he invented "certain Improvements in Steam boats, including modes of propelling the same by Paddles."¹⁴

Mrs. Brodeau's finishing school was next to Philadelphia's Society Hill which was a good place to take the pulse of various schemes attracting the city's elite. She kept Thornton posted on the development of the new nation's capital. At first she highlighted the disdain most in Philadelphia had for the project but she also passed on the opinion that as long as George Washington lived, the capital would move to the Potomac River.

In a November 1791 letter to her, Thornton opined that since lots had been sold in the new federal district in October, the government would move there. He continued: “I must own if I purchase it will be in the 10 mile square, and I....” and that portion of the letter discussing that possible future is missing.¹⁵

Since it is missing, it is hard to judge how seriously Mrs. Brodeau got him hooked on land speculation. She owned property herself and likely had intimated to him that it would serve as her daughter's dowry. In another letter, he offered ideas for a lot she owned in Philadelphia: "...the lot upon which your house stands is so centrical and so large that if a good house were built at the bottom of the garden fronting the tavern, and reaching as far as the corner I have no doubt it would pay a very high interest for money expended on it, and I could lay such a plan as would render both houses very conveniently for cow houses and a necessary. I might be able to soon assist you in the expense as well as laying out the plan."¹⁶ A structure large enough for more than the one cow and a detached place where servants could dispose of fecal matter were status symbols in Philadelphia. In the same letter, he vowed that he would invest no more money in the steamboat.

Several months later, he began what he would always call a serious study of architecture. The inspiration was not Mrs. Brodeau's cow house. It was the announcement for the Capitol design contest that he saw sometime in the late spring of 1792.

39. Design Contest Prospectus

What may have given him confidence to enter it was a letter from Richard Wells, a co-director in the steamboat company. Wells returned to Philadelphia after doing some work in western Pennsylvania for most of a year. He congratulated Thornton on the success of the library: “my friend Doctor Thornton has contributed largely to ornament our city.”¹⁷

So why not design a building to ornament the nation?

Jefferson's prospectus for the design did not make much of the symbolism of the Capitol. [p 63] It noted the size of the Senate chamber, 1200 square feet, and that the room for representatives and the conference room should each be able to seat 300 people each, and that the Capitol must have 12 committee rooms of 600 square feet.

40. The Tortola Design

What architectural historians call Thornton's Tortola design takes a rather cozy view of the divided government described by the Constitution. Thornton designed three separate buildings with two wings of two stories connected by single story corridors to the three story main building that was at least twice the size the two wings combined. The House and Senate chambers were in the main building flanking the conference room and only 60 feet from each other. The purpose of the wings was unclear. The central building's outstanding feature is a massive sloped roof topped by a modest cupola. It has a grand entrance to the first floor fed by two small staircases separated by six columns.

Instead of a monumental Roman building ennobling ceremonial space, it's a comfortable Georgian government house. To better tout Thornton subsequent Capitol design as a work of genius, Glenn Brown speculated that his Tortola design was actually Thornton's design for the President's house. C. M. Harris, editor of Thornton’s published papers wonders if it is actually George Turner’s design for the Capitol. However, Thornton persisted even in his winning design in calling members of the House of Representatives by their French equivalent. The Tortola design’s floor plan has a “Room for Representants.”

[page 64] Thornton had sent his “Fellow Citizen” letter to the commissioners in July and he promised that he would soon return to America. He had another reason to get there sooner than later. The American Philosophical Society gave an annual prize for the best submitted dissertation. He needed to get Cadmus there in time. Then in August, he "was seized with a very violent fever," took to bed, had an "intermission," thought himself out of danger but was too weak to work. He wasn't too weak to think up more schemes.

He hit on an idea to use the many drawings he had made of tropical plants in Tortola to illustrate a natural history of Puerto Rico, a much larger island just to the west of Tortola. Since he had never been to Puerto Rico, he tried to enlist someone who had been there to write the book.¹⁸

He also had breeding livestock on his mind. Sugar plantations had something that gentlemen farmers in America coveted. Caribbean jackasses and jennies had a good reputation. He planned to take some with him to Philadelphia, but they couldn't be accommodated on the ship just slated to leave St. Croix. So he sent them back to Tortola to be cared for by Quash who he also trusted to catch "curious fish," put them in a barrel with a lamb's head and send the barrel to Philadelphia. He told his brother to whom he wrote those instructions that Quash, obviously a slave, would be rewarded.

He wrote that letter a few weeks after he landed in Philadelphia where Mrs. Brodeau had found a first house for the couple two years after their marriage. Thornton had ordered good furniture sent from London to Philadelphia. The Thorntons participated in the intense social scene that accompanied a brief session of congress. He met Alexander Hamilton, another son of the Virgin Islands.

It's not likely Thornton talked about his Capitol design in such company, but evidently he talked about jackasses. In a long letter in which he pondered buying what was called the King's estate on St. Croix for 300,000 pieces of eight, he advised his brother to make sure Quash kept some foals virgin. Thornton wanted them shipped to Philadelphia "as I wish to put them to Genl. Washington's and I find I can sell the breed very well."¹⁹

Once in Philadelphia, Thornton wrote to the commissioners, using his real name, and explained that a serious illness had detained him in Tortola. However, he had learned from George Turner that a decision had not been made. Commissioner Carroll, who Thornton had met in Philadelphia in 1787, wrote back on November 15 welcoming his design and looking forward to seeing it on December 1 when the commissioners had their monthly meeting. Then at the December meeting, Carroll and Commissioner Stuart officially said they would welcome a design from Thornton and said that since Hallet would not finish his revised design until January, Thornton could submit his then. That was likely Hallet's fourth design. Since Hallet's design would go directly to Philadelphia then Thornton might as well submit his design to the secretary of state who would show it to the president.²⁰

In a December 10 letter to the president, Commissioner Stuart gave him an update on the Capitol designs: "Mr Hallet informs us, his plan will be ready by our next meeting, when we propose to send it up to you. From the judgement I could form of it, in it’s unfinished state, I entertain very sanguine hopes that it will meet with approbation. You will have I expect by this time, a plan of Doctor Thornton’s sent to you."

That last sentence gives a sense of Thornton waiting in the wings about to triumph when [page 65] Hallet faltered. But Thornton was not the only genius with a personal fortune who had focused his ambitions on the federal city. Stuart's letter to the president was principally about another savior, Samuel Blodget, who had "fertility of genius" and a personal fortune much bigger than Thornton's.²¹

Blodget was the son of a New Hampshire judge. After service during the Revolution, he went to London and made much money in the East India trade. He saw L'Enfant's Plan and the money making potential of a city with 1200 squares divided into building lots. He liked small increments adding together. He would be the founder of the Insurance Company of North America. He sent an agent to the October 1791 auction of lots who bought a few acres not yet divided into squares.

He was in Philadelphia when L'Enfant's exit jeopardized the project. He arranged to get the engraving of the plan printed in Boston. He also persuaded the administration and commissioners to open subscriptions to a $500,000 loan secured by lots, but the nation's first financial panic caused by Wall Street speculators forced him to withdraw the loan.

41. Samuel Blodget by John Trumbull 1784

When he went to Georgetown, he excited the money men there with his vision of the federal city as a money making machine. He created the Washington Tontine that would pool money from investors to buy lots and build houses. He also had ideas about what the Capitol should look like, corresponded with and sent a plan to Jefferson. Its most notable feature was a dome, but otherwise wasn't completed enough to be considered an entry in the design contest. In his reply to Stuart, the president noted that Blodget "...has travelled, I am told, a good deal in Europe; & has turned his attention (according to his own Account) to Architecture & matters of this kind."

Most importantly, he had shown his interest in the city by getting his friends in New England to also buy lots. A disgruntled Georgetown merchant had returned home to Boston telling all that the federal city would and should fail. The president counted on Blodget and his friends to counter that. He wrote to Stuart that Blodget "is certainly a projecting genius, with a [page 66] pretty general acquaintance. To which may be added, if he has any influence in this Country, it must be in a quarter [New England] where it is most needed; and where, indeed, an antitode is necessary to the poison which Mr F——s C——t is spreading; by insinuations, that the accomplishment of the Plan is no more to be expected than the fabric of a vision, & will vanish in like manner." C____t was a Cabot.

The commissioners and president began thinking of Blodget as just the man to be the Superintendent of the City. Washington averred that L'Enfant was the only man he ever knew who he thought could do the job, but Blodget won the president's full support by promising to finance the development of Pennsylvania Avenue. Stuart seemed delighted with the president's endorsement of Blodget, and reminded him that with Hallet around Blodget need not be an architect: "Tho’ he [Blodget] may not be so thorough an Architect as some others, he has certainly turned his attention much to that subject, and may I think be justly allowed to have a very pretty taste for it. And more perhaps is not so very necessary, if Mr Hallet is employed in the same line for the execution of the Capitol, in which Hoben is for the President’s house; which I should suppose very proper—I believe he fully deserves the high opinion Mr Jefferson entertains of him."²²

While Blodget's rise threw Thornton in the shade, James Hoban's work at the President's house raised expectations about how the man who designed the Capitol should go about the business. The 38 year old Irish builder and architect won the design contest for the President's house. There were several other entries but none had a chance. During Washington's Southern tour, several of the leading men in Charleston, South Carolina, told the president that Hoban "had made architecture his study, and was well qualified, not only for the planning or designing buildings, but to superintend the execution of them."

Hoban's response to the design contest announcement was to go to Philadelphia, introduce himself to Washington and carry a letter of introduction from him to the commissioners. He studied the site for the President's house and consulted with the commissioners as he worked on a design. They told the President that they had a good impression of him. Without any ado, the president picked his design. The commissioners hired Hoban to build it. Then in July 1792, Washington walked over the site with Hoban and had him make the building even bigger. There is no record of any subsequent misunderstandings between Hoban and the president.²³

All that background and gossip about Hoban, Hallet and Blodget was likely made known to Thornton, but we can't be sure. In November and December, Turner sat at Thornton's table. Around that table, Thornton likely rolled out the design he made in Tortola. After some delay in getting it back, Turner was probably able to share his design with Thornton.


41A. Above: Floor plan for the Tortola design. Below: Floor plan for Hallet's 1791 design.

[page 67] But Cadmus came first. Thornton was anxious to have it recognized with an award even though, just as with his Capitol design, it missed the deadline for the Philosophical Society's annual medal. Thornton gave David Rittenhouse a rough copy, and promised a fair copy soon. On December 21 the awards committee gave Thornton one of two prizes they awarded that year citing his dissertation as an “ingenious and learned performance” with a “tendency to introduce gradually, greater perfection in speaking and writing the English language.”

Then Thornton had the 110 page book, Cadmus: or a Treatise on the Elements of Written Language, by a Philosophical Division of Speech, the Power of Each Character, Thereby Mutually Fixing the Orthography and Ortoepy; with an Essay on Teaching the Surd or Deaf, and Consequently the Dumb to Speak printed with an introduction inviting the new Republic to be the marvel of the world by at last having a rational orthography. He had facing pages of the introduction written in the new alphabet. Years later, after Cadmus got a bad review in a British magazine, Turner reminded him that while sitting around a table, he and Mrs. Thornton had told him not to make his introduction too revolutionary.²⁴

41B. Snip of Cadmus's introduction

In a December 14, 1792, letter to the commissioners, Thornton announced his decision to make a new design. He said that his original design was for a building 500 feet long so he had to start anew with a design to fit the designated site for the building. Once again, Thornton got to work. Although widely criticized for not being in Ohio where he was a judge, Turner didn't leave Philadelphia until late in the summer of 1793.²⁵ It is not certain how much advice he gave Thornton. Turner likely told him about the president's obsession with an executive apartment in the middle section of the building. That feature was not required by the prospectus. In his Tortola design, Thornton had a dull looking and low portico. Turner likely advised him to raise it and thus score a point with the president who, thanks to L'Enfant, took his oath of office on a balcony overlooking the multitudes. He likely also shared what he knew about the president’s obsession with oval rooms. Hoban’s winning design of the President’s house had them. Hallet's designs had them. Thornton's Tortola design didn't.

The design Thornton submitted is no longer extant, but he or Turner made two sketches on the back of his Tortola design. The sketches resemble one of Hallet's designs. As architect and historian Donald Hawkins, who discovered the sketches, put it, "The similarities and differences between the sketch and Hallet's designs are of the sort that might have been the result of being drawn by someone who had seen all his drawings and was attempting to give a sense from memory of how things stood in the Capitol design process."²⁶

42. A sketch on back of Thornton's Tortola design

There are no recollections by Thornton or anyone else who might have been involved during those creative four or five weeks. Narrating the nativity of the Capitol around Christmas [page 68] 1792 is impossible. However, in an 1818 letter to Charles Bulfinch, the architect who oversaw the completion of the Old Capitol, John Trumbull described what happened in two sentences: “...an English gentleman, Dr. Thornton, assisted by a Russian officer of engineers, and the Vitruvius Britannicus, had made a drawing and plan for the Capitol or house of government. The doctor requested me to show these drawings to the President, and commend them to his attention, which I did.”²⁷

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a first century BC Roman who wrote a book on architecture. Then in 1715, the Scottish architect Colen Campbell published Vitruvius Britannicus about British architecture. Its 200 plates are mostly elevations but there are many floor plans. Trumbull was likely right about the book. In 1795, Thornton would refer to it in a letter to the president defending the necessity of a basement story in the Capitol.²⁸ Trumbull's memory was obviously hazy. In his letter, he had Thornton making his design at the same time L'Enfant was making his plan. He also made Rivardi a Russian and not a Swiss engineer. However, simply put, after being cued by Turner, Thornton drew a tripartite classical design much like Hallet's and also based on designs he saw in a book. He accentuated the central part that most interested the president with a dome to cover a much larger oval room than Hoban drew for the President’s house.

That Turner and Rivardi never attested to their role in helping Thornton does not prove that they didn't help. Within four months of his design winning the $500 prize, the president and Jefferson lost confidence in it and in Thornton. Turner and Rivardi were dependent on further patronage from the federal government. Why would they claim a role in perpetrating such an embarrassment?

The commissioners had instructed Thornton to give his plan to the secretary of state who would then give it to the president. Thornton came up with a better go-between. Perhaps, Turner told him that Jefferson supported Hallet. Because he was an artist, John Trumbull took an abiding interest in the design of public buildings. He needed walls to hang what he wanted to be a lifelong artistic project, paintings of the men and scenes of the Revolution. He began collecting subscriptions to finance his masterpieces. Thornton was one of many who subscribed, and he was one of few Americans who, thanks to his few months in London showing off his paintings, understood the world of art. He and Trumbull became friends. Trumbull had briefly been an aide-de-camp to Washington during the war which ever after gave him easy access to the president.

43. The 200 plates were mostly elevations and there were many floor plans

[page 69]Does it make sense that Thornton did not present his work to the president himself? Keeping away when he submitted his design might have been a stroke of genius. Alone with Trumbull, the president could concentrate on Thornton's design. He could not turn to Thornton and ask him about his qualifications as an architect. However, in the president's letter to the commissioners extolling Thornton's design, we can almost see the design itself and the beaming architect standing next to it:

I have had under consideration Mr Hallet’s plans for the Capitol, which undoubtedly have a great deal of merit. Doctor Thornton has also given me a view of his. These last come forward under some very advantageous circumstances. The Grandeur, Simplicity and Beauty of the exterior—the propriety with which the apartments are distributed—and the œconomy in the mass of the whole structure, will, I doubt not, give it a preference, in your eyes, as it has done in mine, and those of several others whom I have consulted, and who are deemed men of skill and taste in Architecture. I have therefore thought it better to give the Doctor time to finish his plan, and for this purpose to delay ’till your next meeting a final decision.²⁹

Accompanied by Rivardi, Thornton went to the commissioners' March meeting in Georgetown, gave them his design and hand delivered a letter from the president. It is doubtful that Washington himself handed the letter to Thornton. Throughout this whole process of submission and approval, Thornton had little contact, if any, with the president. Ten months after he submitted his design, Thornton solicited a job as the president's secretary. In that letter, he wrote: “My Situation in Life has precluded me from the honor of being but very partially known to you.”(29A)

The president's letter of introduction to the commissioners extolled Thornton's design: "I have no doubt of its meeting with that approbation from you, which I have given it upon an attentive inspection, and which it has received from all those who have seen it and are considered as judges of such things." It bears remembering, that the president had delayed making a decision since July, none of his advisors or friends were likely to turn thumbs down without great cause. The process had to be brought to an end.

[page 70] The design Thornton took to Georgetown was soon lost so it is impossible to see why the president thought it was so attractive. In his 1876 lecture to the American Institute of Architects convention, Adolph Cluss speculated on why the amateur Thornton "carried the day" over the professional architect: When Thornton copied architectural drawings he found in books, he must have used the line and wash technique popular with landscape artists of the day. The pen gave an outline of a structure not its true dimensions, and a wash of color filled the space in a way to please the eye rather than to relate precisely to the interior structure of the building. Thornton made, as Cluss put it, "a neatly washed elevation." Thornton had enough talent as a painter to give a striking impression of a Classic facade. Cluss found confirmation of his characterization of the elevation in Latrobe's critique of it in 1804. By that time Thornton had drawn another elevation that copied his original design. Latrobe argued that "being simply pictorial, [it] could not claim dignity and consideration as an architectural composition."

From what the president wrote about Thornton's design and how Thornton behaved in Georgetown, it seems they never discussed the design. Because someone hand delivers a letter does not necessarily mean that one has read the contents of the letter. In his letter, the president worried about the cost of the building. Once in Georgetown, Thornton extolled its grandeur. Hallet heard him say it would not be finished in thirty years.(29B) The president evidently didn't understand that according to the contest's rules, the designer had to estimate how much the building would cost. Instead the president left that to the commissioners: "How far the expense of such a building, as is exhibited by the plan, will comport with the funds of the City, you will be the best judges, after having made an estimate of the quantity of materials and labour to be employed in executing it." The commissioners, who hosted Thornton in Georgetown, grumbled back to the president: "We have no estimate Accompanying the Plan, nor can one be formed soon which could give much satisfaction."³⁰

Both the president and the commissioners understood what an architect could do. In February, while the president was flush with his enthusiasm for Thornton's plan, James Hoban gave him an estimate of cost of the President's house if it was bigger, 77,000 Pounds Sterling or around $300,000. That shocked Washington enough that he instructed the commissioners to have Hoban shrink the plan back to his original dimensions.³²

The commissioners were the first to question Thornton about his design. In anticipation of that, Thornton brought Rivardi to Georgetown. He was a military engineer, acted like one and impressed the commissioners. In January 1794, they set out to hire him to level the city and told the president why: "Mr Rivardi is not a Shewy man, but he seems to us one of those Characters, who maintains the Ground he has gained.…" Could they have been comparing him to Thornton, a self-admitted enthusiast who seemed to understand everything save the cost of his design?

In a letter to the president, the board was emboldened to express the first criticism of Thornton's design, but only after echoing all the president had written: "the rooms for the different Branches of Congress and the Conference Room, are much to our satisfaction and its outward appearance we expect will be Striking, & pleasing. On the whole it gains our preference tho. we cannot but fear that several of the Small Rooms, of which there seems to us, there are more than necessary will want Light, perhaps by lessening the number of them the Objection may in some Measure be obviated—." Then they grumbled about "no estimate Accompanying the Plan...."³³

In 1793, congress once again had a short session, and the president was at Mount Vernon by April 3. Thornton once again went to Georgetown for the commissioners' meeting. Here was a potential historical painting worthy of Trumbull: the president and the three commissioners awarding Thornton the prize for his Capitol design. Unfortunately, the president was in no mood for any ceremony. Being inaugurated for a second term gave him no joy. The city already named for him was giving him no pleasure.

An Irish mathematics teacher in Alexandria had just pointed out that the head surveyor Andrew Ellicott's lines marking streets and squares were wrong. James Dermot knew Commissioner Stuart and while the former was deep in his cups after the ceremonial laying of the cornerstone of the President's house in 1792, he intimated to the latter that the surveys were bogus. Stuart told Commissioner Johnson who was not surprised since Andrew Ellicott insisted on surveying by the stars and not with a chain.

By stars made for a paper before the Philosophical Society; by chains made for an accurate survey. The expense and slow pace of the surveying, even with hired slaves to clear trees, had kept the commissioners in a slow boil. That the commissioners took the word of a school teacher over his caused Ellicott to explode. He was the only person associated with the city that the president saw before he crossed the Potomac. In no uncertain terms, he ordered him to take orders from the commissioners.

The president's only notice of Thornton was to write a one sentence letter to the commissioners: "I approve of the Plan of Doctr Thornton for a Capitol to be erected in the City [page 73] of Washington." The next day he wrote a long letter to the commissioners, spelling out in no uncertain terms, that he was too busy to study every problem and make every decision pertaining to the city and its buildings. It was up to them to keep disputes from bothering the president. He didn't mention Thornton.

However, after their April meeting, the commissioners did report to the president on what they had been discussing with Thornton. He joined a discussion about building the Capitol on "the high flat" of the hill and not on "the pitch."

When L'Enfant left the project. Ellicott pointed out flaws in his plan. Because L'Enfant put the Capitol on the side of a hill, workers would have to waste time leveling the hill. Ellicott had told the commissioners to move the site of the Capitol 600 feet to the east and assured them that wouldn't force any other changes to the plan. The president said no, and gave no reason. Men might come and go but the plan must stay the same.

A year later, Hoban warned that more dirt would have to removed from the hill than expected. In their letter to the president, the commissioners noted that and added that "Doct. Thornton threw out an idea that the Capitol might be thrown back to the desirable spot and the center ornamented with a Figure of Columbus—The idea seems not to be disapproved by Mr Blodget, and Ellicot thinks there’s room enough—"³⁵

That gave the president the opportunity to congratulate Thornton for a brilliant idea. He didn't reply to the letter, and the commissioners attempt to use Thornton to get the president to move the Capitol came to naught.

Evidently, Thornton left Georgetown before the board adjourned their April meeting. He was back in Philadelphia by April 5 and attended a meeting of the American Philosophical Society. That was the same day that the board notified him by letter that he had won the prize. Unexplained at the time was why Thornton did not stay in Georgetown and become engaged in building his design. In his 1896 article, Glenn Brown explained that "Thornton would not agree to spend his whole time supervising the work....." In his 1914 history of the city, Wilhelmus. B. Bryan put it this way: "...he had declined the offer tendered by the commissioners of superintendent of the capitol." Bryan's book is almost entirely based on primary documents, especially the records of the commissioners. In this instance, he cited Brown's history of the Capitol. Evidently, C. M. Harris, editor of Thornton's published papers, found no documentary evidence that he was offered the job as superintendent or that he had any interest in it. Harris puts it this way: "...Thornton made no attempts to oversee the execution of his own design or to pursue a career in architecture. He was sensitive to the bias against professional men shared by most of the American gentry, the class of substantial land holders to which one part of him belonged, but he also preferred and was best suited for a broader field of endeavor." Which is to say, he had lost his sensitivity to living off slave labor.

Obviously, since Thornton could not estimate the cost of building his design, the board would not want him to supervise its construction. However, in their April 5 letter, the commissioners wanted more from Thornton, but first they reminded him to have, so to speak, his banker talk to their banker: "The President has given his formal approbation of your plan. You will therefore be pleased to grant powers or put the business in a way of being closed on the acknowledgement your success entitles you to." Evidently, Thornton did get the $500, and in cash not the medal of that value. He didn't ask for a lot, obviously because many squares had not been surveyed.

Then the commissioners asked "As soon as the nature of the work and your convenience will permit, we wish to be in possession of your explanations and remarks with the plan for we wish to mark out the ground, make preparations and even begin to lay the foundation this fall."

Then on April 10, the board sent the plan to Hallet and asked him for an estimate. C. M. Harris contends that Thornton sent and the board received more drawings and explanations to the commissioners before April 10. Thus, board's request was an honest effort to elucidate greater depths of Thornton's genius before they handed his plans over to Hallet.

However, it is unlikely that Hallet had all of Thornton's addendums to his design when he estimated its cost. The postal service of the day was not that quick, nor was Thornton. The board may have felt obliged to at least get Thornton to fulfill more of the requirements of the design contest: "drawings will be expected of the Ground-plan, Elevations of each Front, and Sections through the Building, in such Directions as may be necessary to explain the Internal Structure; and an Estimate of the cubic Feet of Brick-Work composing the whole Mass of the Walls." That raises the question: why did Thornton enter a contest which required him to exhibit the expertise of a trained architect? An obvious answer is that his motive was to ingratiate himself to the slave holding gentry that he admired and open up vistas of land speculation and other gentlemanly endeavors like breeding prize mules and race horses. As it turned out, commissioners Johnson, Carroll and Stuart never sent Thornton another word asking about or discussing the Capitol.

[page 71]Nothing Thornton wrote that remains in his papers in the Library of Congress recalls how he learned of his winning the design contest and how he reacted. He also did not share that moment in any letter he wrote to Lettsom. In Mrs. Thornton's papers there are some notes jotted on a 1793 almanac including expenses and income. The trip to the federal city cost 28 pounds 11 shillings. Thornton made money by selling Pounds for dollars at a 72% discount. He bought two carriage horses for $375. He sent out 23 copies of Cadmus including one to the commissioners. He evidently brought casks of rum and brandy from Tortola, drew bottles from it and gave or sold them to Turner, Rivardi, and Blodget as well as four other gentlemen. But there is no note that he won the design contest.(XX)

There was also no news about it in the newspapers. Congress adjourned on March 4 after Washington's second Inauguration. The administration had displayed L'Enfant's Plan to the members before its publication, but there is no evidence that they had any idea about the winning design for its future home. In his letters to the commissioners, Washington expressed two worries: the whole project would be ridiculed or damned for being extravagant. Therefore, the less said about the Capitol design the better.

44. An 1818 map with the only copy of what is supposed to be the winning design

Today, the design contest is viewed as a seminal event in the creation of a national icon, but then it was scarcely noted. In the 1850s, American magazines treated the public to pictures of the new enlarged Capitol years before it was finished.³⁴ In 1792, the L'Enfant plan offering some 6,000 lots for sale became the symbol of the city. A semblance of Thornton's design was not published until used as an illustration, along with an elevation of the President's house, on a map of the city published in 1818. The Capitol is tucked down in the right corner and labeled "The East Front of the Capitol of the United States, as originally designed by William Thornton and adopted by George Washington, President of the United States."

That there was no publicity at the time didn't mean that the federal city shrank from public notice. After being appointed Superintendent, and graciously offering to be paid in building lots, Blodget had persuaded the president and commissioners to hold a "Lottery for the Improvement of the Federal City,"nationwide lottery with 50,000 tickets at $7 a ticket. The money raised [page 72] would finance building a "Superb Hotel" on 8th Street NW just above Pennsylvania Avenue, at a cost of $50,000. There would also be many cash prizes, including one for $10,000. Blodget arranged for a contest to decide the plan of hotel. On April 9, out of ten entries, the commissioners chose Hoban's and "workmen are already at the foundation."(34A)

On blank pages of a 1794 almanac, Mrs. Thornton noted that her husband bought 42 tickets, her mother bought 3 and she bought four. They won $250 and so lost $113 on the lottery.(37)

Go to Chapter Five

Footnotes to Chapter Four

1 Sarah Bache to Franklin, 1 June 1783,

2 Clark, "Doctor and Mrs. William Thornton p. 151.

3 Papers of William Thornton, WT to Fell, 21 June 1802.

4 WT to Taylor. 19 January 1791, Proceedings of the Free African Union Society, p 37, also WT to Hopkins, 29 September 1790 pp. 32ff

5 Papers of William Thornton., WT to VI Council 25 February 1791 pp. 129 ff; J. Doty to WT 25 February 1791, in Thornton and Negro Colonization, p. 42 misdated

6 Papers of William Thornton, WT to Wilkinson 31 July 1791,

7 Beck, Ben, Foster Family Webpage

8 Papers of William Thornton, WT to Sharp 5 May 1792;

9 Papers of William Thornton, WT to Quentin Dick, 2 June 1792, to J. B. Thomason, 29 November 1792

10 Papers of William Thornton, Brodeau to WT 25 Sept 1791; Clark's "Dr. and Mrs. Thornton" has several letters from Brodeau beginning on pp 151ff.

11 Papers of William Thornton, WT to Thomason, 24 April 1793

12 Cadmus, pp.25, 26, 79, 92

13 Clark, 151-4.

14 Papers of William Thornton, WT to Fitch 21 June 1791, complete letter in Harris, pp. 141-7; WT to Madison, 9 December 1808

15 Papers of William Thornton,WT to Brodeau, 3 Nov. 1791

16 Papers of William Thornton,WT to Brodeau 2 Nov 1791, Harris 165-6.

17 Papers of William Thornton,Wells to WT 11 May 1792, Harris 185-7

18 WT to Stevens, 2 September 1792, Harris p. 207.

19 Papers of William Thornton,WT to J.B. Thomason, 29 November 1792

20 Commrs. to WT 4 December 1792, Harris p. 229

21 Stuart to Washington, 10 December 1792,

22 GW to Stuart, 30 November 1792; Blodget to Jefferson, 10July 1792, Founders online; Hafertepe, Kenneth, "Banking Houses in the United States, 1781-1811, Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 35, no. 1 2000, pp. 9-14, 17-24;

Arnebeck on Blodget, pp. 69ff; another good source are the historic nomination documents for Blodget's Philadelphia house, Keeping Philadelphia Greenville Mansion.

23 GW to Commrs., 8 June 1792; Commrs. to GW, 19 July 1792; to trace Hoban's career in the city click here for excerpts from Through a Fiery Trial.

24 WT to Rittenhouse, 16 November 1792, Harris p. 216; Papers of William Thornton,Turner to WT 2 June 1799,

25 GW to Jefferson, 10 March 1793

26 Hawkins, "Graphic Origins of the Capitol Rotunda" The Capitol Dome, Vol. 50 Number 3, Summer 2013, p. 11.

27 Trumbull to Bullfinch, 28 Jan 1818 p 271, Life of John Trumbull

28 WT to GW, 2 November 1795, Harris, p. 330

29 GW to Commrs, 31 January 1793

29A. WT to GW, 29 November 1793

30 GW to Commrs, 3 March 1793

31 WT to GW 29 November 1793

32 GW to Commrs, second 3 March 1793 letter

33 Commrs to GW, 12 March 1793,