Chapter Six: Hallet Dismissed

Chapter Six: Hallet Dismissed

57. In 1948 the White House was gutted prior to a complete renovation. The building is about the size of the North Wing of the Old Capitol. This photo gives an idea of the shallow sandstone foundation of both building (be sure to click photo to enlarge it.

Meanwhile the first story of the President's house had been built. The man who deserved most of the credit was an elderly emigrant from Scotland related to a Georgetown tavern keeper. Collen Williamson came down from New York City and supervised both the quarrying of stone down river and the mostly Scottish emigrants who laid the stone. He boasted of building stone castles in Scotland and assured the commissioners that no bricks were needed. James Hoban, an emigrant from Ireland who had won the design contest for the building, hired a crew of mostly Irish carpenters. He also scouted building materials other than stone. He pleased the commissioners by at the same time alerting them to the dimensions of the tasks at hand and assuring them that problems could be solved. While Williamson didn't appreciate the slave laborers the board insisted on hiring once L'Enfant left, Hoban welcomed them, bought a few slaves himself and put them at work at the President's house. He would collect their wages, of course.

Meanwhile up on Capitol Hill, a crew of Irish quarrymen, as they liked to call themselves, dug the foundation. Since 1786, most of the quarrying for the canal around the falls of the Potomac had been done by indentured servants from Ireland. Then just as they had at the President's house, masons, began laying the foundation stone for the Capitol. They were assisted by laborers and more than half of them were hired slaves.²

Fortunately for Thornton, when they gathered for their monthly meeting, the commissioners were not beguiled by the obvious signs of progress. They had to sweat through an audit of their books that made clear that despite their contract with Greenleaf, they had to economize. They hit on a sure way to control labor expenses: make as many skilled workers as possible work on a piece work basis. They thought that by knowing how much stone was needed and paying for only how much stone workers set, they would simplify and economize.

The commissioners asked Hallet to calculate how much it would cost to get the stone laid on a piece work basis. He came up with a page 92 figure that Williamson, who abhorred piece work wages, thought underestimated the amount of work done by masons paid by the day. (3)

Hallet also began telling masons what to do. To regain control over his hands, Williamson told the board that Hallet refused to show the masons the plans of the building. On June 7, the board asked Hallet to give them his drawings, but then as usual the board adjourned. They only met three days a month, paid themselves a per diem and travel expenses and returned to their homes.(5)

58. Renovation of the White House in 1949 revealed the rough-hewn foundation of the 1790's where designs gave way to the reality of shovels, mallets and chisels.

The president had hoped to be at their June 7 meeting, but congress stayed in session through May and into June. There is no evidence that he had any inkling of trouble with Hallet. He had written to the board on June 1 about procuring lots on which he planned to build his private residence. He had bought some in Square 21, and now wanted to buy the whole square which would require the help of the commissioners. When congress adjourned, he headed home to Mount Vernon via Georgetown. On June 30, a Philadelphia newspaper recounted his movements: "En route from Philadelphia to Mount Vernon, GW arrived at Georgetown on the evening of 20 June and visited the Federal City on 21 June. After traveling to the Little Falls on 22 June, he left the federal district for Mount Vernon on 23 June."(6)

There are no reports on how he spent his day in the Federal City. If he spent the 21st checking on Square 21, then he spent most of the day about two miles away from the site of the Capitol. At that time, finding the lots on squares was no easy task.

59. Square 21 and Peter's Hill

page 93There is no doubt about what he did the next day. Washington went to inspect the work on locks that would let boats pass around the Little Falls just up river from Georgetown. The Capitol did not have to be ready until 1800, but the locks around Little Falls were supposed to be inviting the commerce of the world in 1794.

The work was on the Virginia side of the river. On his way, Washington wrenched his back while trying to keep his stumbling horse from falling on rocks. He made it to Mount Vernon and his back slowly mended. On June 27, he wrote to Commissioner Johnson and regretted not seeing him in the federal city when he "passed through." Washington explained that the "wrench" in his back would keep him at Mount Vernon.(7)

The clear implication of Williamson's accusation was that Hallet had changed the plan approved by the president and concealed that from the masons who were laying the foundation. Hallet replied to the board's letter on June 23 three days before their next meeting. He told them that he would give the drawings up only after they hired him as superintendent of construction, which paid $1500 a year, almost three times what he was being paid. They also had to credit him as the only designer of the Capitol.

At their monthly meeting on June 26, 1794, the commissioners responded to Hallet. They only had to re-read the letter the president sent on July 25, 1793, to see that the president had told them to have Hoban supervise laying the foundation. Both Hoban and Hallet had told the commissioners they understood the president's instructions.

The board sent Williamson to get the plans, and Hallet refused to give them up.The board wrote to Hallet and raged that “nothing has ever gone from us by which we intended or we believe you could infer that you had the chief page 94 direction of executing the work of the Capitol or that you or anybody else were to introduce into that building any departures from Doctr Thornton’s Plan without the Presidents or commissioners approbation.”

None of the commissioners had been at the July 1793 meeting in Philadelphia, nor had Williamson. Hallet had been at the meeting. He replied on June 28 that he believed the earlier conference had led to the adoption of his plan: “In the alteration I never thought of introducing in it any thing belonging to Dr Thornton’s exhibitions. So I Claim the Genuine Invention of the Plan now executing and beg leave to Lay hereafter before you and the President the proofs of my right to it...."(9) That claim raises the question: did the president or Jefferson tell Hallet that the newly adopted plan preserved “the original ideas of Doctor Thornton, and such as might upon the whole, be considered as his plan.”?

There is no evidence that the board sought the president's advice during his confinement at Mount Vernon. The board fired Hallet on the 28th and asked a lawyer to file a suit to force Hallet to give them his drawings. The board had faced insubordination before with L'Enfant and Ellicott, and this time acted decisively without bothering the president.(10)

There is no evidence that Hallet was reacting to a campaign by Thornton to regain control of the Capitol design. Hallet likely made his claims to emphasize that his position was analogous to Hoban's who had designed and was building the President's house and making $1500 a year. Hallet's claims also don't prove that he was changing the design that the president had approved in July. There is evidence that Hallet was not ignoring the president's order to make new drawings of the East Front portico before laying the foundation. In one of his plans that is still extant, Hallet moved the portico up even further than it was in Thornton's plan. In the best modern history of the Capitol, William Allen writes, "It is difficult to understand why Hallet didn't show the commissioners his new plans." However, his plans were the only leverage he had to get the salary he thought he deserved.

60. Hallet's Floor Plan

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Thornton sent off his letter offering to aid the Terror on June 12th. He attended a meeting of the Philosophical Society on June 20.(11) He did not have anything page 95 to do with the commissioners calling Hallet to account on June 7. However, twelve years later in 1806, Thornton made Hallet's dismissal a dramatic turning point in his, Thornton's, life that led to his being appointed a commissioner to restore his design of the Capitol.

Thornton wrote to James Madison in 1806: “When General Washington saw the foundation of the Capitol laid by Mr: Hallet which tended to make the middle part square, to the exclusion of the centre Dome he was so affected by the presumption of making so unauthorized an Alteration that he in a passion directed him to quit the place, and the Commissrs: discharged him."(12)

The editor of Thornton's published papers, C. M. Harris, endorses Thornton's version in so far as suggesting that sometime in late June, Washington inspected the foundation work, deduced that Hallet was taking matters into his own hands, and "then apparently pressed the commissioners to resolve matters with Hallet." Harris also implies something Thornton never suggested: that he saw Hallet's foundation before the president did, as did his friend Rivardi.

In Thornton's papers, Harris inserted "Editorial note: Thornton's Capitol Modified: The Philadelphia Conference" which discusses events pertaining to Capitol that occurred between a large gap in any letters written by or to Thornton that even mentioned the Capitol, i.e. between his July 1793 letter to Jefferson and a January 6, 1795, letter to John Trumbull in which he intimated that he intended to restore his contest winning design.

Without documents to back him up, Harris deduces Thornton's role in Hallet's dismissal. He writes that the foundation was laid according to Hallet's unapproved ideas:

It became clear, however, that after Thornton and his friend J.J. U. Rivardi had visited the site, that President Washington had not endorsed this solution, which eliminated the great vestibule and the great repository of Thornton's premiated [design]. But that it would appear that Jefferson did favor the central court arrangement (see The Eye of Jefferson, pl 435) suggesting the sharp political differences within the cabinet underlay discussions of architectural design. Jefferson submitted his resignation to the president 31 July 1793 and left office at the end of the year. When he visited Capitol Hill on his way to Mount Vernon in late June 1794, Washington expressed his disapproval of the foundation work, then apparently pressed the commissioners to resolve matters with Hallet...(13)

Harris deduces Jefferson's influence from his reading of letters Jefferson wrote to Madison, especially a June 9, 1793, letter fretting about the president's liking for the "ceremonials of the government" and his being "inveloped in the rags of royalty." There is nothing in the letter about the Capitol or the federal city.(14)

In a February 1793 letter, Jefferson raved about Thornton's design. Then in July 1793, he accepted many of Hallet's changes but not his court yard replacing Thornton's portico. But as Harris would have it, Jefferson had a change of heart, which he never spelled out in his letters. Harris proof is Plate 435 in a National Gallery of Art catalog exploring images collected and drawn by Jefferson. The plate in question is a "tracing" of Hallet's floor plan.(15)

Harris's contentions are absurd. The obvious reason for tracing Hallet's plan was that it showed how a trained architect solved a problem that Jefferson, in part, had presented to Hallet. Here is how Jefferson described the problem in his July 17, 1793, letter to the president:

page 96 But they [the committee] were unanimously of opinion that in removing one of the objections, that is to say, the want of light and air to the Executive and Senate chambers, a very capital beauty in the original plan, to wit, the Portico of the Eastern front, was suppressed, and ought to be restored; as the recess proposed in the middle of that front instead of the Portico projecting from it, would probably have an extreme ill effect. They supposed that by advancing the Executive chamber, with the two rooms on it’s flanks, into a line with the Eastern front, or a little projecting or receding from it, the Portico might be reestablished, and a valuable passage be gained in the center of the edifice, lighted from above, and serving as a common disengagement to the four capital apartments, and that nothing would be sacrificed by this but an unimportant proportion of light and air to the Senate and Representatives rooms, otherwise abundantly lighted and aired.(16)

Hallet solved the problem in a way that did not diminish the center of the building.

Thornton's biographers and historians of the Capitol understandably underline the importance of Thornton and the Capitol. But while famous now, Thornton was not famous in 1794. While a sacred icon now, in 1794 the design of the Capitol was very unlikely to foment a political row. No one saw the center of the building as a commentary on the relative importance of the House, Senate and President. The building represented the importance of the federal government and validated the pretensions of Virginia grandees like Washington, Jefferson and Madison. What split Washington's cabinet were differences between Hamilton and Jefferson over relations with France.

There is also no evidence that Thornton's friend Rivardi was involved in Hallet's dismissal. While he was with Thornton in Philadelphia when Thornton drew his design and accompanied him when he met the commissioners, Rivardi returned to Tortola alone shortly after that. The island provided a place for a rendez-vous. Harris noted that Thornton's April 24, 1793, letter to his step father in Tortola was "favord" by Rivardi. At that time, that was the common way to note who personally delivered a letter to the recipient. In Tortola, Rivardi met Maria von Born, a Viennese socialite who had fallen in love with Rivardi and left her husband. Rivardi found love but missed the July 1793 reckoning for Thornton's design.

In late January, 1794, the commissioners wrote to the president urging him to meet Rivardi and hire him to level the city and mark out drains. Once back in Philadelphia with his wife, Rivardi talked to Blodget and offered his services in a March 10, 1794, letter to the commissioners. The president had no objection to that, but there was a threat of another war with Britain. The War Department hired Rivardi to fortify the ports of Norfolk and Baltimore. While hurrying between them he set up a battery of guns in Alexandria. Writing from Norfolk on May 6, 1794, Rivardi advised the president about the prospects there as well as Baltimore. He doesn't mention Thornton, the Capitol or the commissioners in that letter.

It is very doubtful that he had time to look at Hallet's foundations. On July 10, the first letter the commissioners wrote to the president after Hallet's dismissal, they advised him that they had talked to James Greenleaf about the drains. There was no mention of the Capitol's foundation or Hallet or Thornton, even though Greenleaf was distressed that Hallet had been page 97 dismissed.(17)

Not having letters to prove their points, Harris, Glenn Brown and others sift through Hallet's drawings, to prove that every salient feature of the Capitol was a fruit of Thornton's genius. To boost his posthumous fame, as Bushong pointed out, Brown gave Thornton the benefit of every doubt.(18)

But the reason for Hallet's dismissal was that he didn't share his designs. That raises the question, if he didn't share the designs he had made since the July 1793 meeting, what did the president, commissioners and Thornton know about them?

William Allen, who generally was skeptical of Thornton's exaggerations, suggests that the commissioners "could see that [Hallet's] foundations did not provide for the great round vestibule, or rotunda, that was Washington’s favorite part of the design." However, in all that the commissioners and president wrote prior to and for two years after the July 1793 meeting, there was no mention of the "great round vestibule," or rotunda or dome. In a November 1795 letter to the commissioners, the president wrote that "a dome... is a most desirable thing, & what I always expected was part of the original design, until otherwise informed in my late visits to the City, ..." Nothing Hallet did or said had shaken his expectation. His late informant was likely one of the commissioners, and by then, Thornton was on the board. He became a commissioner in September 1794.

Also, for someone supposedly furious at Hallet for subverting Thornton's dome in 1794, in that November 1795 letter, the president appeared to have an open mind about what the dome should cover: it would be "over the open or circular area or lobby." That gives the impression that he understood that a dome could cover the "open" area, that is Hallet's square, or "circular area,” that is Thornton's grand rotunda.(19)

61. Thornton's floor plan

Throughout the dispute that led to his dismissal, no one suggested that Hallet was trying to defeat the president's expectations that the building would have a dome. Since he was an architect and not a genius, Hallet changed his designs in response to suggestions made by the commissioners, the president and Jefferson. In March 1793, after Thornton's dome had so pleased the president that Thornton won the prize, Hallet immediately drew his own design with what he hoped was a better and cheaper dome.


62. Hallet's March 1793 response to Thornton's design

Williamson did not specify any changes Hallet made to the plan sent down from Philadelphia. In his 1806 letter to Madison, Thornton insisted that the 1794 dispute was about the "centre dome" because in 1806 he was trying to get rid of Latrobe by falsely accusing him of laying the foundation of the South Wing so the dome could not be built. Thornton could not fathom how a circular room could possibly be built on a square foundation. Latrobe and Hallet, who were trained architects, doubted that a circular foundation could provide enough stability to support a large oval chamber topped by a dome.

In June 1794, the only issue was Hallet's insubordination. His insinuating that the design adopted in Philadelphia was solely his has nothing to do with the dome. He simply didn't agree with Washington's and Jefferson's face-saving characterization of the plan as still embodying “the original ideas of Doctor Thornton." As Pamela Scott writes in her examination of Hallet's designs: "Hallet's precomposition design shown to Jefferson in 1791, established the basic form the Capitol was eventually to take: a central dome, flanked by wings containing legislative chambers, page 98 symbolically separate yet part of a single architectural unit."(20) There is no evidence that he was particularly adverse to a dome.

Meanwhile, in his June 27, 1794, letter to Johnson, the president didn't mention the Capitol at all, and for good reason. The commissioners didn't raise the issue with him. The commissioners objected to Hallet's impertinent and insubordinate language, not to his plan. Because the plan was not at issue, they did not have to present the problem to the president. Commissioner Johnson's reaction to Hallet's dismissal was not to call for Thornton to save the day but to write to his brother Joshua who was the US consul in London and ask him to send over a competent British architect to get the Capitol built.(21)

Hallet did not present his case to the president either, nor did he leave the house he rented from the commissioners next to the Capitol. Greenleaf whose investment depended on timely completion of the Capitol prevailed upon the board to let Hallet stay and continue working on his designs. Greenleaf agreed to pay Hallet and the architect agreed not to interfere with the men working on the Capitol. Despite uncertainty about parts of the foundation, work could continue and the board had Williamson line drains with stone. Stone cutters who worked in sheds near the Capitol also continued working.(22)

In his June 27, 1794, letter to Johnson, the president was, as usual, vexed by affairs in the city, but not the Capitol. The president had to appoint two new commissioners since Johnson and Stuart announced their retirement effective September 15. The president outlined an idea that Stuart had suggested. One page 99 commissioner would live in the city and in effect be in charge of everything. To conform with the Residence Act, there would still be two other commissioners but they would only be summoned to the city when needed to rubber stamp what the resident commissioner had done. Stuart wasn't up to the job and Greenleaf had told the president that Johnson planned to move to the city. The president asked Johnson to stay on with the understanding that he was the one man in charge.

Johnson turned his old friend down, being a commissioner was that enraging: "I do not know of any Event which would induce me to stand the Mark of Calumny and gross Abuse as I have done for near three Years past." Instead, Johnson wanted to buy lots in the city.(25)

Meanwhile, Thornton came to Georgetown. Since that was where the men most interested in the city gossiped about who would be the new commissioners, he probably did not come by accident. Johnson and Stuart had not hidden their plans to retire. Since inking the contract with Greenleaf in December 1793 assured financing for the public buildings, Johnson and Stuart announced they would leave once they cleaned up the mess Blodget made of the lottery. (26)

Blodget's star had been falling. Managing a national lottery kept him out of the city. He had to go where people had money to gamble. The process to draw winning ticket numbers stretched over several weeks allowing tickets not drawn to be resold at a profit. Blodget slowed the process even more which cast doubts on whether there was enough money for pay all the cash prizes. He thought his running a second "Federal City Lottery" would erase all doubts. Hoban did get workers to begin building the first lottery's ultimate prize, "one Superb Hotel." It was easy to fire Blodget but took a half year to make sense of what he had done. Any number of people could have alerted Thornton about the vacancies on the board. Blodget is the most likely suspect.(26A)

It is not certain when Thornton arrived in Georgetown, but by July 6, he had met Ferdinando Fairfax there. He was the president's godson. The Fairfax family was the closest to royalty that Virginia had, and was highly respected by George Washington. Lord Fairfax had given him one of his first surveying jobs. The luster of the family did not entirely shine on young Ferdinando, then 28 years old. He was too loose with money as he backed various schemes that failed. But like Thornton, he was high minded in his pursuits. In 1790, Fairfax had written a magazine article urging that freed slaves be sent to Africa.

63. Ferdinando Fairfax

On July 6, 1794, when they were both in Georgetown, Fairfax wrote a letter to his godfather, describing Thornton as a man who "even with the sacrifice of considerable pecuniary interest, being desirous of fixing himself in the neighborhood of the city of Washington, wou’d willingly accept of some appointment in w’ch his talents might contribute to the Public Advantage by advancing the growth or Prosperity of the City.”

Although he did not practice medicine, Thornton calculated as a loss anything, such as going to Africa, that precluded him from having a practice. He had not thrown away the value of his medical education lightly. Except for possibly his mother-in-law's property, he had no real pecuniary interest in Philadelphia. Thornton's desire, expressed through Fairfax, to fix himself near the city was likely genuine. Since 1792, he had toyed with the idea of speculating in District of Columbia real estate. That, rather than a Maryland farm situated to harvest shad for shipment to Tortola, might better leverage money secured by his half share of the Tortola plantation.

While Thornton did not write the letter, he obviously coached Fairfax on what to write: "From a pretty good acquaintance with him, as well as from general repute, I believe him to possess uncommon page 100 Talents, and to have cultivated particularly those Branches of Science which are most useful in this business—and, what is of equal or perhaps more consequence, to have a large share of Public Spirit, and great integrity. He has a Plan of a National University, which appears to deserve attention, and w’ch, at some convenient time, he is desirous of submitting to your Consideration."(27)

Fairfax didn't mention the Capitol, and the "branches of science" would be better employed leveling the city rather than building the Capitol. Thornton undoubtedly knew that the commissioners wanted his friend Rivardi to do that. As for the task Fairfax specified, there is also no evidence that at that time Thornton had a plan for a National University. Before losing his job in the city, Blodget had renewed Washington's interest in such a project. Thornton likely got wind of the idea from Blodget. They had too much in common, each a "projecting genius" in his own way, not to become good friends.

The president rarely responded to letters about appointments, not even from his godson. He offered appointment to the board to at least three other men before he began to vet Thornton almost two months later. Thornton stayed in Georgetown until he got a fever in the first week of August. That sent him back to Philadelphia.

On July 25, 1794, the president asked two Maryland politicians, the governor and a sitting senator to fill the vacancies on the board. Senator Richard Potts, like Commissioner Johnson, was a lawyer. The president also set out to retool the Board. He wanted commissioners to live in the city, be ever ready to negotiate with contractors and sell lots, and keep tabs on all the work in the city. Blodget did not work out and was properly fired. The commissioners would fill the role outlined for the superintendent, and would be paid a salary instead of merely a per diem and travel expenses.

The letter offering the job to Gov. Thomas Sim Lee is extant. The president wrote "Experience has evinced the propriety -- indeed the indispensible necessity -- that the Commissioners of the Federal District should reside within the City, or so near to it, as by a daily attendance to see that everything moves with regularity, economy and dispatch...." A paragraph later the president reiterated what he wanted: "Candor, however, requires I should add, that the inducement of giving Salaries to the Commissioners, is, that they should live in the City, or borders of it; and, by doing so, and an arrangement among themselves, the necessity, and of course the expense of employing a general superintendant of the business, may be avoided."

The president described the evils that arose from monthly meetings that kept the commissioners from answering "all the purposes of their appointment." Then, once again he described what the new Board should do "...seeing their own regulations, and orders, executed in the timely manner, and spirit they were conceived, another, hardly second to the first, is that by being always on the spot, they are at hand to embrace offers, and to avail themselves of opportunities that frequently present, but will not wait, not only to purchase materials and to engage artisans, but to interest foreigners and strangers who may view the city, in the purchase of lots, but who, otherwise know not where to apply...."(28)

The president made all that rather clear. He also added that "the nonresidence of the commissioners has, I am persuaded, been attended with many disadvantages, and has been the source of those unpleasant disputes between them and the proprietors, the Superintendants, their Workmen, & c. & c." He didn't mention disputes with their architect.

Both Lee and Potts declined the appointment. The president asked his Georgetown contacts about Gustavus Scott, who had held state offices in Maryland and had been an page 101 active supporter of the Potomac Company’s projects. He accepted the appointment in August.

The president knew Commissioner Stuart did not want to attend the September meeting of the board. In late August, he offered the other vacancy to his former secretary Tobias Lear who was just back from London and setting up a new merchant house a few blocks down from where Rock Creek entered the Potomac river. Accustomed to men declining the appointment, he also asked Lear about Thornton who he knew had been in Georgetown in July.

64. Gustavus Scott

In his letter, the president described the man he appointed to replace Johnson: "Mr. Scott (at present of Baltimore) a gentleman eminent in his profession of the Law, a man of character and fortune, and one who has the welfare of the city much at heart...." Then he shared what he knew about Thornton: “The Doctr is sensible, and indefatigable I am told, in the execution of whatever he engages; To which may be added his taste for architecture; but being little known, doubts arise on that head.”(29)

What the president was told was on the mark. Cadmus was a significant achievement in the eyes of contemporaries. His enthusiasm for the steamboat was well known. His entry in the Capitol design contest saved the day. In Philadelphia, few knew his African ambitions. However, the president knew his Capitol design best of all and he distinguished it in a way that his future biographers would not. They would celebrate Thornton's genius for architecture. The president granted only that Thornton had a "taste" for it.

A century later, Glenn Brown wrote that Hallet’s subverting the winning design "was probably one of the reasons why President Washington appointed Thornton one of the commissioners. The commissioners had full power over the Federal buildings, and as Thornton held this position until 1802, he was able to prevent further tampering with his design for that length of time.... When Thornton was appointed commissioner, Washington requested him to see that everything was rectified so that the building would conform to the original plan."(29A)

However, the letter Washington wrote in 1794 did not imply that he wanted a man with a taste for architecture to undo the changes an architect made to the design approved in the summer of 1793.

Lear declined the appointment and shared what he could learn about Thornton. He was page 102 "much esteemed by those of the proprietors and others hereabouts from whom I have been in the way of drawing an opinion; they consider him as a very sensible, genteel and well informed Man, ardent in his pursuits; but liable to strong prejudices, and such I understand is his prejudice against Hoben that I conceive it would hardly be possible for them to agree on any points where each might consider himself as a judge—Weight of Character, from not being known, seems also to be wanting."(30)

What "strong prejudices" did Thornton exhibit in Georgetown? It was probably his zealous support for the French Revolution. Lear probably thought he had ended Thornton's chances by bringing up his feuding with Hoban whose work had given the president and the commissioners few problems. So Lear mentioned three others that Washington might pick, after they were vetted.

The president had to crush a rebellion in Western Pennsylvania, Stuart had given him fair warning, Thornton was in Philadelphia and could be quickly notified. On September 12, the new Secretary of State Edmund Randolph called on Thornton and offered him the job.

Following the lead of Glenn Brown, modern biographers rate Thornton as the leading commissioner during the board's eleven year existence during which eight commissioners served. C. M. Harris, the editor of Thornton's papers, concluded that his "appointment as a commissioner was a good one, and he was clearly the most influential member to serve....." Brown assumed that because he was an architect, apart from restoring his design, Thornton had to have been "the prime mover" when the board promulgated building regulations in the summer of 1795. However, those regulations only amended what the old board published in 1791.

Not realizing that the lawyer Gustavus Scott took office a few weeks before Thornton, Brown was able to jump to a pleasing conclusion: "After Thornton became a member of the board of commissioners, a decided improvement is evident in their written proceedings and in the business forms and contracts which were introduced in connection with the streets, bridges and buildings that were in their charge. As they appear in the records after his appointment, Thornton should have the credit for the improvement."(31)

Orlando Ridout V, whose 1989 Building the Octagon celebrates Thornton, virtually quotes Brown: "Thornton took the lead in bringing order and authoritative regulation to city projects." However, Scott was the only commissioner that a contemporary credited for bringing order to city projects. William Deakins, who served as treasurer for both the old and new board, was impressed by Scott because he "is well Calculated for making Contracts & seems to have a perfect Knowledge of the Value of Work & Materials."(32) Deakins was a Georgetown merchant and as the board's treasurer took a 1% commission on the board's transactions. He knew the ins and outs of every contract the board made.

However, that years later Thornton would get credit for what Scott did should not cloud the joy with which contemporaries greeted the appointment of Thornton and Scott. Many thought the old commissioners had kept the city from growing. Everyone associated with the federal city project was pleased, many overjoyed, with the appointment of the two new commissioners. Their euphoria did not last long.

Chapter Seven

2. The commissioners began hiring slave laborers in the summer of 1792. They principally assisted the surveyors. Irish gangs digging the foundation likely didn't use slaves. In January 1793 the commissioners wrote to Blodget that there were "none better for tending masons." That was a reference to slaves working at the President's house. Arnebeck, Slave Labor in Capital, pp. 58, 60-1, 86 Commrs. to Blodget, 5 January 1793.

3. on audit see Commrs. to GW, 3 November 1793; on piecework, Carroll to Williamson 7 May 1794, Commrs. to Williamson 17 & 19 May 1794, Commrs. to Hallet, 25 June 1794, RG42 NA, see also Williamson to GW, 11 July 1796.

5. Arnebeck, pp. 219-20; Williamson to Commrs. 5 June 1794, Commrs. to Hallet 7 June 1794 RG 42 NA. Correspondence between Commrs and Hallet also described in Commrs to GW, 4 February 1795 footnote 7:

6. GW to commr. 1 June 1794 footnote cites Dunlap and Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser [Philadelphia], 30 June, 1794.

7. GW to Johnson, 27 June 1794

8. Jefferson to Carroll, 13 October 1792; Mary Hallet to GW, 27 April 1795; Hallet to Commrs. 21 January 1795,

9. Commrs. to Hallet, 26 June 1794, RG 42 NA; correspondence between Commrs and Hallet described in Commrs to GW, 4 February 1795 footnote 7:

10. Arnebeck, Fiery Trial, p. 220

11. Allen, William, History of the United States Capitol: A Chronicle of Design, Construction, and Politics, Chapter One: Grandeur on the Potomac; Amer. Phil. Soc. Minutes

12. WT to Madison. 6 August 1806,

13. Harris, p. 257