Chapter 13: On those Healthy Hills Near Panama
I am rewriting this chapter
On those Healthy Hills Near Panama
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| Fulton's Steamboat from 1811 patent |
Likely between the time Thomas Law's brother became Lord Ellenborough in 1802 and the death of Dr. Lettsom in 1815, Thornton drafted a letter for publication in which he described how he would have restored the General to life in December 1799. In his draft, Thornton noted his friend Thomas's relationship to the Lord which suggests that he wrote for a British audience. His mentor was the likely recipient of his earth shaking medical proposition. Thornton wrote that he came to Mount Vernon expecting to perform a tracheotomy. Missing the chance to do that he offered another remedy. As he later wrote, “the weather was very cold, and [the corpse] remained in a frozen state, for several days. I proposed to attempt his resurrection, in the following manner. First to thaw him in cold water, then to lay him in blankets, and by degrees and by friction to give him warmth, and to put into activity the minute blood vessels, at the same time to open a passage to the lungs by the trachea, and to inflate them with air, to produce an artificial respiration, and to transfuse blood into him from a lamb..." He recalled but did not identify to whom he proposed his plan and noted the moral objections that were raised. He thought that the General's otherwise good health dictated his remedy. But, he was "not seconded." The draft was found in the same file as his never submitted dissertation “On Sleep.”
Was he serious? In 1823, Thornton discussed his ideas about the after life with his next door neighbor, John Quincy Adams: "Dr Thornton called this morning, and gave me some of his ideas about body and soul. He is writing a pamphlet or dissertation in which he will broach some of his own strange ideas. He denies the existence of the Soul, but believes in the immortality of the body— And he has a theory of suspended animation in which he vouches certain wonderful phenomena, to support the wildest absurdities."JQA diary, June 25, 1823
However, what he wrote is not true. There were already three doctors on the scene but Dr. Thornton still made an impression. On his death bed, the General had requested that he not be entombed for two days on the odd chance that he wasn't really dead. To Tobias Lear’s suggestion that funeral services be delayed longer to permit more relatives to attend, the attending physician and Thornton objected. The inflammatory nature of the General's fatal case of croup that stopped his breathing made the corpse susceptible to decay. The funeral had to be held as soon as possible, and he was entombed four days after his death. Also, no one noted that the corpse was frozen. Judging by Jefferson's thermometer in the Virginia foothills, the afternoon temperatures at Mount Vernon, which is usually warmer than Monticello, were around 40F until the day of burial. Thornton remembered a freeze to enable a fantasy.
There is another explanation for Thornton losing interest in the Capitol. His work as Commissioner of the Patent Office consumed his time and occupied his genius. However, government clerks worked from 9 to 3 and all Thornton had to do was pass on the $30 application fee to the Treasury, fill out a patent form for the signatures of the secretary of state and president, file away the application and a description of the invention, and, if possible, retain a model. He did not have to verify that, as required by law, that the invention was both useful and novel. The applicant signed an oath that it was. If anyone challenged the validity of the patent, a federal court would decide and Thornton was not involved. Also, it was not legally incumbent on Thornton to encourage inventors, and he didn't. In December 1804, Senator John Quincy Adams checked on a patent application for a constituent. Adams wrote in his diary that Thornton explained that "he thought it not a new invention— Which indeed he says is the case of almost all the applications for Patents— And others are for things impossible."(1)
While Thornton telling Adams that the patenting process was meaningless was true enough, he still made the most of it by negotiating some consideration for inventions he had previously thought about, perhaps tinkered with, and certainly understood better than the applying inventor. He didn't really invent anything but he convinced himself that he did. How he did that mirrored how he tried to shape the narrative of how the Capitol was designed. More importantly, while he didn't sway his contemporaries, his biographers found a context of continued achievement that they can burnish to support the claim that he was the First Architect of the Capitol and also designed the Octagon.
He also became the most famous bureaucrat in the city, which was never his ambition. A bureaucrat lurks behind the scenes and Thornton wanted to be in the van. He wanted to be sent on a mission to South America to both represent the United States and support the on-going revolutions against the Spanish crown. His angling for that doesn't reflect at all on his architectural pretension except that in Secretary of State John Quincy Adams's diary, there is better documentation of Thornton's way of lying.
While he probably would have badgered inventors anyway, by 1806 he faced another financial crisis and this one lasted at least four years. In 1807 and 1808, Thornton once again did not get money from Tortola. In December 1808, he fled the city to escape being jailed. While always frustrated that he did not have enough money, he tried to act like he did. In 1803, his friend Blodget faced a court judgment to pay $21,000 to the winner of the Federal City Lottery, the unfinished "Superb Hotel." He had to sell his properties and that netted Thornton ownership of his F Street home and other real estate. However, Thornton was not a vulture picking at his friend's estate. He also secured Blodget's $10,000 bail. In 1806, Blodget broke the bounds that confined him to the city, and consequently Thornton became responsible for Blodget's debts. Thornton tried in vain to sell his thoroughbreds. The only property he could sell was in Lancaster, England. His surviving aunt moved in with Robert Foster's sister. The $20,000 from the sale soothed Thornton's bankers and Blodget's creditors.
Meanwhile, in her 1808 notebook for August 6, Mrs. Thornton jotted down: "The Hawkins won't stand to their agreement and are very angry at not getting their patent." That probably referred to Joseph Hawkins patent for producing mineral water which likely had been a lively topic at chemistry lectures at Edinburgh in 1781. Citing his 1792 letter to the King's gunsmith and a gun made according his drawings in 1810, Thornton insisted that John Hancock Hall agree to a joint patent for the breech loading rifle. The young Maine inventor was advised by others to give in and he did. Thornton insisted that Jacob Cist change his patent for making printer's ink from anthracite coal and then angled to become his sales agent. In 1809, when he applied for a patent, Stephen Hallet brought his hydraulic ram water pump to the city. After his session with Thornton, he wrote to President Madison: "Dr. Wm. Thornton examined it Very Carefully, witnessed Some trials and was So kind as to take an active part in the Experiment we have exhibited in the City. As I could not wish to meet with a better Judge of the matter I beg leave to refer your Excelency to that Gentleman’s explanations as to the merits of the machine; and to Capt Hobben as to the practicability and Utility of its aplication to the President’s House." That said, Thornton didn't angle for a share of any royalties.(3)
All those insinuations on other men's inventions were more or less opportunistic. He was fated to try to destroy Robert Fulton. On June 21, 1802, he seemed to anticipate the battles to come. A little after two weeks of contemplating the meager file of American patents, Thornton wrote to his old master Dr. Fell. A letter he wrote to him in 1797 celebrated his Capitol design but didn't mention his work with the steamboat company. The one written in June 1802 glorified his work on the steamboat which predated his Capitol design: "I engaged in constructing a steamboat capable of carrying 150 passengers and made it go eight miles an hour through dead water...." He didn't mention Fitch, who had killed himself in 1798, and blamed the company's failure on his orders not being obeyed. As he left for Tortola, he had told the company's board to make the boat bigger but not to simplify it. They did and it failed. As he put it to Fell, he had to work against "wind, tide and ignorance." He overcame the first two but "the last is an overwhelming flood."(2)
Robert Fulton was not ignorant. Pennsylvania born and embarked on an artistic career in Philadelphia, he crossed the ocean and stayed twenty years. In time, he forsook Benjamin West for James Watt. After trying to impress the British and French governments with his submarine and torpedo, Fulton came to the federal city in late 1806 to promote national defense with "Torpedo War," as he would call his book published in 1810. He also had a pamphlet on the necessity of a network of canals for defense and commerce. The Navy was skeptical. The Jefferson administration embraced him. Thornton spent New Year's Day 1807 with Fulton. In the summer of 1807, thanks to being bankrolled by the Livingston family, Fulton's steamboat made successful round trips from Manhattan to Albany 150 miles up the Hudson River with an average speed of 4 miles an hour. In the fall of 1808, he spent more time in the federal city to work on a patent application for his boat.
While Thornton had to be skeptical of Fulton's boat, he recognized that Fulton had solved the real steamboat problem. He had money backing him up. In December 1808, a few days before having tea with Fulton, Thornton's financial woes festered to a boil. Thornton sent $3500 to a city bank and Bills of Exchange for 400 Pounds Sterling from Aunt Jane to be cashed in Philadelphia. Two weeks later, Thornton fled to his farm to avoid a writ obtained by the brother of the late North Carolina worthy who sold most of the gold lands to Thornton. Mrs. Brodeau, his mother-in-law, eventually paid his bail and kept Thornton out of jail.
In a December 1808 letter to Secretary of State Madison, Thornton explained his absence, his financial problems and asked for a raise. A week earlier he had sent Madison his application for a patent for his improvements to the steamboat. In January, he received his patent the day before Fulton applied for his. In May, Thornton tried to open negotiations with Fulton and Livingston. Fitch's steamboat used a line of paddles. Fulton's had a paddle wheel. However, Thornton credited himself for Fitch's boiler and for suggesting a paddle wheel which was to be on the company's next boat. In an 1812 letter complaining to Secretary of State Monroe, Fulton traced Thornton's demands from equal thirds to one-eighth of the net profits. Fulton didn't take him seriously. Then Thornton attacked, writing letters to state legislatures where Fulton was trying to get a monopoly. His original monopoly for steamboat service on the Hudson was contingent on putting steamboats in service. He had to build and improve to get more passengers. Thornton attested that Fulton's patent described nothing new and thus any monopoly awarded would stifle genuine improvements to the steamboat. In response, Fulton got a patent in 1811 describing improvements he had since made to his steamboats.
Thornton didn't win support because he made a better steamboat, he merely flattered the bias Americans had against monopolies. However, while keen to support free competition on America's rivers, Thornton still wanted shipbuilders to pay him a royalty. Also, just as Fitch did, he looked to the government for money. On the evening of April 11, 1812, as Mrs. Thornton put it in her notebook, Thornton "had a long talk" with President Madison "respecting Fulton & c." Evidently, he asked for direct federal enforcement of his patent. After the meeting, he was bitter and wrote to a friend: "If I had never accepted any Employment under the last & present administration I should I really believe have been many thousand Dollars better in Situation than at present. Man is a very selfish Animal." He added a couplet: "I really think a Friend at Court/Is but a kind of Friend in sport."
Fulton asked that the Commissioner of Patents be barred from publicly criticizing patents and giving patents to himself. Thornton survived criticism and credited the First Amendment right of free speech. He often pointed to his continuance in office as proof that he had the confidence of the presidents who had appointed him. To a degree he did, but generally only embezzlement and drunkenness led to dismissal. On May 22, 1825, Adams called on Thornton while he was ill and noted in his diary that Thornton's clerk at the Patent Office "has done most of the business for some years and was eminently qualified.…" Likely because of his First Amendment propensity to criticize, congress never increased his salary. It did give him a clerk and answer his plea for a place to display patent models just as the French government did in Paris. Congress bought Blodget's hotel and Latrobe refashioned it to house the Post Office and Patent Office. The National Intelligencer crowed "as the apartments in this building are spacious and lofty, we may soon expect to see the numerous evidences of the ingenuity of our countrymen in this institution arranged and displayed to advantage." Thornton turned it into a notable tourist destination. In March 1811, he sent a long notice to newspapers throughout the country explaining the patent process and expressed his "astonishment" when viewing the "inventions of his countrymen,... no nation on earth surpasses them in genius."
He became an untouchable bureaucrat but not a wealthy inventor. Thornton finally turned to history to make his claim and lay foundations for his future fame. His pamphlet had a curious title: "Short Account of the Origin of Steamboats Written in 1810 and Now Committed to the Press, 1814." That he waited until 1814 to make his case public may have reflected his desire to keep open private negotiations with Fulton. Also, it wasn't until 1814 that two crucial witnesses who could challenge his claims died. He had found a prominent inventor who attested that Henry Voight, Fitch's partner, told him that Thornton suggested using a paddle wheel. Voight died in early 1814. A fellow federal bureaucrat attested that while in Paris, he was told by the American consul, Aaron Vail, who was Fitch's agent, that in 1793 he had given Fulton a complete set of Fitch's drawings and specifications. Vail died in 1813.
In his pamphlet Thornton explained that in 1787 Fitch's boat only made 4 miles an hour. Then at Thornton's suggestion, it was redesigned and made 8 miles an hour. While there remains no corroborating evidence for those claims, there are several references to the boat going 7 miles an hour. Fitch's boat provided a ferry service on the Delaware River. In June 1790, it made a trip to Burlington, New Jersey. Newspapers noted the 80 mile round trip, and gave Fitch and Voight full credit.
In his pamphlet, Thornton implied that he deserved credit for the company's success. After all, the company failed after he left to see his mother. He also implied that he could build a boat better than Fulton's. He claimed that he agreed "at once" to Fulton's offer of $150,000 if he could make a faster boat, but since Fulton "declined to write the terms," he could do nothing. Actually, in January 1811, Fulton challenged Thornton to come up with a better design for a boat that would go 6 miles an hour in still water with a 100 ton load. If Thornton made such a boat that "proved his principles in practice," Fulton promised to assume all its costs and pay Thornton $150,000. Or, if Thornton convinced Fulton "with drawings and demonstration I will join you in the expenses and profit." Given his often repeated claims, presumably, Thornton already had the drawings and expertise. He didn't have the money. Why didn't he propose the terms?
A Washington newspaper almost filled two pages with Thornton’s pamphlet, but the editor credited Fitch for inventing the steamboat and only thanked Thornton for bringing that to the world’s attention. Fulton died from a lung disease in February 1815. Thornton told Benjamin Ogle Tayloe that his pamphlet killed him. Thornton continued sharing damning inconsistencies and plagiarisms in Fulton's patents, that might have encouraged Fulton's rivals but no one celebrated Thornton for inventing the steamboat. There were 17 Fulton steamboats plying the nation's rivers. Nonetheless, he left his widow enormous debts, and she petitioned congress for relief and an extension of her husband’s patents. Ferdinando Fairfax tried to get congress to do the same for Thornton's patents, but his patents gained no respect. In Ogden v. Gibbon, the 1824 Supreme Court case ending the Fulton company's monopoly, Thornton's pamphlet and patents had no bearing on the arguments or decision, nor did Fulton’s. Apparently, Thornton and Fulton never sued to protect their patents.
Thornton found another venue where he could establish his claim as the inventor of the steamboat. He was granted a steamboat monopoly in Columbia. Any steamboat plying the Magdalena River had to pay him royalties. In 1819, he tried to enlist the aid of the American consul for a monopoly in Bahia, Brazil. He explained that Fitch was "a poor ignorant and illiterate man," and his boat was too slow. Thornton "engaged to make it go at the rate of eight miles an hour within 18 months.... In one year I succeeded." He made plans for a better boat, but he had to visit his mother. When he came back two years later, he found that the company failed and sold everything it owned. Still, Thornton's plans lived on. When Fitch's patent expired, "Mr. Fulton came to America from Europe and began a steam boat with the late Chancellor Livingston. But Mr. Fulton had seen my papers describing the steam boat in the hands of one of Fitch's partners in France to whom I had sent them to take out a patent there.... [Fulton] of course succeeded but without having invented a single improvement. Success however give him not only all the profits but the eclat of the Invention, with those who are not acquainted with the circumstances."
Actually, Fitch was a prolific writer and his papers remain in several libraries from New York City to Washington. In a 1794 letter to Thornton, Fitch referred him to "my manuscripts" that he wanted Thornton to revise. He used Thornton and other directors only to improve his prose. However, in a 1791 letter, as Fitch prepared to go to France, a fellow director described to Thornton how he wrote the contract for the agent in France and couldn't resist taunting Thornton: "You still condemn the French scheme." Thornton' did not write the papers for the French patent.
Thornton never wrote a memoir, but did reflect on his career in letters. In an 1821 letter to Jefferson, he referred to his current position at the Patent Office as "the trivial office I still hold, which does not give support to my Family." In 1822, in a rare letter to John Adams, while thanking the former president for his kind attentions, he rued that "when the great Washington died, I lost a Friend, that would not have permitted me to remain so long in the back ground...."(VV)
In that 1821 letter to Jefferson, Thornton bragged for help so that he could emerge from "the back ground," and be sent on an important mission to support the revolution in Gran Columbia which embraced most of northern South America. Not surprisingly, he explained that this was not a sudden enthusiasm: "while I was a Student at the University of Edinburgh, also in London & Paris, I was anxious to see the commencement of the Revolution of the South Americans, for I thought them under the most miserable & despotic Government." There is no evidence that he was even interested in the American revolution at that time. As late as 1802, his focus on Latin America was tied to his mission to free the slaves. He half wrote an essay urging the purchase of Puerto Rico so it could be the new home for freed American slaves. On the witness stand in 1807 at the treason trial of Aaron Burr, an American general testified that Thornton asked him to raise an army for Francisco Miranda who aimed to capture Caracas. But the catalyst for his complete change of focus was likely the heady moment in late August 1814 when he thought he controlled the capital and even gave orders to British sergeants.
In April 1815, while Americans were trying to convince themselves that they had won the war, Thornton published "Outlines of a Constitution for United North and South Columbia." He divided the Western Hemisphere into 13 commonwealths and in a manner that would force the United States to give up the Louisiana Purchase. He had the hemisphere's capital, called the City of America, "on those healthy hills, that intersect the Isthmus at, or near Panama, where a canal may be made from sea to sea, by locks." About town that was raised to a hemispheric congress “sitting on the top of Mount Chimborazo, twenty thousand feet above the level of the Sea.” Of course, the premise of his idea was that Spanish colonies would declare their independence from the Spanish crown. Why his constitution would embolden revolutionaries is puzzling. All he advised in that regard was "if the South Columbians will their freedom they are free!"
Suffice it to say, Thornton was out of touch with the foreign policy of the country, but quite full of himself. On April 11, President Madison appointed three other men to be the commissioners overseeing restoration of the Capitol. On April 13, Mr. Pinto, from Argentina, dined with the Thorntons. In late August, he took Don Pedro Gual to the house of Attorney General Richard Rush. Thornton knew the pressure points and the ways of the city. In 1805, Rush had met and admired General Miranda. Gual had served him in Caracas and then after his fall continued to forward the revolutionary cause in Columbia. Gual came with diplomatic credentials and a request for a naval escort for an American merchant ship that would carry weapons. Thornton knew that, as usual, President Madison and Secretary of State Monroe were at their Virginia seats leaving Rush "the only member of the government at this moment here." Thornton knew he might be tempted to do more than merely send reports to Virginia.
The administration might have tolerated and even taken advantage of Thornton's serving the rebels. As he put it to Jefferson in 1821, he "rendered them, as a friend, every Service in my power, & all the great revolutionary Characters of South America have considered my House, as a place of friendly Consultation." But he also began writing a series of articles first under the name South Columbian and then just Columbian. In June 1817, a freebooter named MacGregor enjoyed Thornton's hospitality and unveiled his plan to take Amelia Island off the coast of Florida with a force of 1500 men. Then from that base, he planned to take all of Florida. He would then sell it to the US government for $1.5 million. The Monroe administration was negotiating with Spain to buy it for $2 million. Thornton introduced MacGregor to Rush and also sent him to see Bagot, the British minister. In a January 7 letter in the National Intelligencer, "A Columbian" revealed MacGregor's plan, his meeting with Bagot, and that a member of Monroe's cabinet supported MacGregor. The purpose of the article was to ridicule the Monroe administration for not closing a deal to buy Florida.
Monroe and Bagot were incensed. Bagot told Secretary of State Adams about his chilly reception of MacGregor and his amazement that Thornton sent him. Then Adams got Thornton to reveal former Attorney General Richard Rush as the cabinet member, and he asked Thornton for "the substance of his Conversations with M’Gregor, and with Mr Rush." That the latter succumbed to MacGregor's wiles was unbelievable. Adams challenged Thornton's recollection of his conversation with Rush. Thornton replied that "he was sure his statement was perfectly correct; for after drawing it up, he had shewn it to his Clerk Elliot, and asked him, if it was not exactly conformable to what he had told Elliott at the time; of what Mr Rush had said— That Elliott fully confirmed it; and if necessary was ready to attest to it upon Oath." As for Bagot's version of events, Thornton called him a liar because “he did not advise M’Gregor to go and see Bagot to talk with him about Florida, but as a Scotchman, because his family estates had lately been restored to him— And he had a great distrust of M’Gregor, as soon as he had heard he had talked with Bagot about the Florida project."
Of course, it was Thornton promotion of MacGregor months after he met him that stunned the administration. As for Rush's supporting the scheme, Thornton ever relied on his clerks to be ready to attest. He had used that ploy against Latrobe and would again in 1819 when the National Intelligencer announced that an Army board approved the breech loading rifle of John Hancock Hall. The next day, the editor announced that the rifle was actually invented by Dr. Thornton. Hall retorted that while he had drawings and a working gun, Thornton had lost his drawings and relied on his clerks to attest that they had once seen them.
On the eve of congress debating the Amelia Island affair, President Monroe wrote to Madison about Thornton and Rush. On the bright side, Thornton's free-lancing wasn't as absurd as what happened when the three leaders of the government returned to the city in August 1814. They rode to the Navy Yard to see if forces there could respond to an expected British incursion on ships then in Alexandria. Thornton followed them. In a letter he wrote to his son-in-law on September 7, Monroe recalled: "...we were followed by Dr. Thornton who stated to the president that the people of the city were disposed to capitulate. The President forbade it. He pressed the idea as a right in the people, notwithstanding the presence of the govt. I turnd to him, and declard, that, having the military command, if I saw any of them, proceeding to the enemy, I would bayonet them. This put an end to the project. The doctor retird, and afterwards changd his tone." Thornton took Monroe's threat very seriously. In her diary, Mrs. Thornton wrote that to defend the city, her husband "distressed us more than ever by taking his sword and going out to call the people...." Alexandria capitulated, the British ships resupplied and then sailed back down the Potomac.(HH)
In his 1818 letter to Madison, Monroe recalled Thornton's involvement with Miranda but not his attempted coup d'etat. Rush had just left to be the American minister in London and Monroe worried that would give Thornton a clear field to claim that Rush supported MacGregor: "Of the absurdity of such a statment, and the impossibility, that Mr Rush, should have warranted it, by any thing on his part, both his character & that of Dr Thornton seem to afford full proof." (MM)
In his diary, John Quincy Adams acknowledged that Thornton was "a Man of learning, ingenuity, wit and humour; well meaning, good-natured, and mainly honest," but then added that he was "without judgment or discretion." However, the federal city was ever be an arena where one could shape one's reputation by the number of one's failed attempts to gain office. Thornton exaggerate his attainments to congressmen who would then press Monroe to send him to South America. That in turn forced Monroe, if he wanted to maintain good relations with those congressmen, sing Thornton's praises. In his letter to former President Adams, Thornton claimed that Monroe "admitted every flattering Observation in my behalf, & wrote to me a letter, testifying to my perfect integrity, attention to my Duties, Learning & Ability,..." but "there were objections to me that could not be removed. I was represented as identified with the South Americans, & as having been deeply engaged in the Revolution." He had the pleasure of letting Jefferson and Madison know that if he had joined the Columbian Patriots: "I was offered the immediate rank of Colonel of horse; & a high office in their Civil Service; with land enough whereon to settle a Colony." During their administrations, Thornton never rose above the rank of Captain in the horse militia.
In 1825, Thornton had a chance to design one of the finishing touches to the Capitol. Thanks to the Residence Act of 1790, President John Quincy Adams had the final say on its design. Disappointed by the design for the frieze on the pediment to be raised over the portico of the East front, Adams suggested that Thornton and two others be asked for a design. Thornton did not respond and Adams made the design himself.
Thanks to their becoming next door neighbors in 1820, Thornton had an extraordinary relationship with Adams. It was mostly pleasant, e.g. "we spent the Evening at Dr Thornton’s where we were entertained with Music— Mrs Thornton performed on the Piano, and sung Handels’ Anthem of 'Comfort ye my People' —much to my satisfaction." And then there was that evening when "Thornton gave us after dinner a perfect surfeit of buffoonery."
President Adams was at Thornton's funeral, and he noted that it attracted 50 carriages, a very good turn out. In his diary, his brief reflection on Thornton's life did not mention the Capitol. When he met Thornton in 1802, "he was then in middle age, with high Spirits, great wit and humour, and recently appointed by his friend Madison to the Superintendency of the Patent Office—." He was his boss for eight years and found that he "was a man of learning, of genius, of elegant accomplishments and of very eccentric humours— His last years were of straitened circumstances and afflicted with disease." A remembrance of Thornton published in the National Intelligencer did not mention the Capitol. It celebrated him for being a commissioner and thus a founder to city; also that he "ably fulfilled" his duties at the Patent Office; and led public opinion in regards to South American independence. A passage celebrating his love of truth was already quoted in the introduction to this book.
When his wife wrote a brief memoir of his attainments, she also didn't mention the Capitol. Instead, she regretted his embracing "a greater variety of sciences" because it prevented him from attaining what he truly wanted. She credited him for genius in many fields - "philosophy, politics, Finance, astronomy, medicine, Botany, Poetry, painting, religion, agriculture, in short all subjects by turns occupied his active and indefatigable mind." She concluded that "had his genius been confined to fewer subjects, had he concentrated his study in some particular science, he would have attained Celebrity."
After he died, she resumed periodically keeping a diary. After finding a letter he wrote begging for money from Tortola, she cast more aspersions on the man she loved: "Oh my god how unfortunate he was - always involved in losses and disappointments, by the failure and dishonesty of others, he became plunged from one difficulty to another - and his mind accustomed to lawsuits, debt and all its dreadful consequences. His heart was good, his feelings good, his principles good, and yet circumstances which in many cases he could not control, (tho' I acknowledge in some he was imprudent and led away by the plausible representations and smooth faced deception of others) made it appear that he was indifferent in his pecuniary transactions to those principles of honor and strict propriety which ought always be adhered to by a man of honesty and correct education."
While his design of the Capitol was not mentioned in his obituary, it was in his wife's. She died in 1865, 91 years old. For just over a decade before her death, the city had been focused on the completion of the New Capitol which dwarfed the Old. Thornton was remembered as the architect of the "original Capitol." That was garbled in her obituary as "the original architect of the Capitol." Then he managed to take over her obituary, written 37 years after his own death, with the improbable claim that "...Mrs. Thornton was the daughter of the unfortunate Dr. Dodd, of London, who was executed for forgery in 1777." According to the obituary, her mother "emigrated to Philadelphia, under the name of Brodeau, soon after the death of her husband, bringing her daughter with her." She actually came to the city by December 1775 when she advertised the opening of her boarding school. The obituary cited a source for the revelation that Dodd was her father: "It is not believed that she was aware that she was the daughter of Dr. Dodd, although her husband was, and mentioned it to his friend, the late Col. Bomford." At least her mother could keep a secret. She moved in with the Thorntons in 1795 and died in the F Street house in 1835.
Thornton certainly knew of Dodd. He was 18 when Dodd stretched and likely read the lurid coverage of the eccentric profligate known as the "Macaroni Parson" because of his dress. He was famous for his sermons to the fallen women at London's Magdalen Hospital. Perhaps he missed coverage of Dodd's wife of 22 years who was taken to the insane asylum after the hanging. Thornton also told this story: "when a lad at school he handed his uncle two 5 Pound notes and asked him to select the one better engraved. The uncle selected the counterfeit just made by young Thornton." In an essay published in 1819 that argued for paper currency, Thornton claimed that he had "invented" a test to detect forgeries. All to say, he seemed to have a fascination with forgery, and fancied himself much better at it than his supposed father-in-law. Just before Dodd was arrested in 1777 for an easily detected forged signature of the Earl of Chesterfield on a bond, he wrote to Benjamin Franklin asking about a woman who had moved to Philadelphia. For American historians, that verifies Thornton's claim that the then 3 year old Anna Maria Brodeau was Dodd's daughter.
The author of her obituary may have told the tale about Dodd to deflect conversation from Mrs. Thornton’s own brush with history. In 1835, Arthur Bowen, who was the son of Mrs. Thornton's favorite slave Maria, entered the bedroom of the two women. He was drunk and holding an ax. Rioters blamed abolitionist pamphlets and attacked free blacks. After Mrs. Thornton begged him to, President Jackson saved Bowen from the hangman. He was sold and sent to Florida where he served as a steward on a Navy steamboat.
After her husband's death, Mrs. Thornton was soon rid of the Tortola slaves. In 1829, 131 slaves, 73 females and 58 males, were sold and the proceeds divided by her and Thornton's step-brother's heirs. His will freed his American slave after the death of his wife, if they were educated. They would have a choice between a plot of land or Liberia. But she could sell them "if any of them behaved so improperly as to require it." In Liberia, the American Society for the Colonization of Free Negroes would take care of them. Even though it somewhat stole the idea that brought him to America, Thornton was not a founder but was one of its directors. The Society mourned Thornton’s death as a loss that "must be severely felt by Africa and mankind." Other than Bowen, his other notable slave was Joe Key. Thornton sold him to a North Carolina congressman in 1808. He escaped in Alexandria. In 1812, he was found on the farm next to Thornton's and sold again. Belonging to one who considered himself a philanthropist and emancipator didn't help Key.
In his will, Thornton placed no restrictions on the sale of his horses. Henry Clay, who was at that time, secretary of state and Thornton’s last boss, almost bought Thornton's then most famous horse, Rattler. He had been Thornton’s last hope for ever lasting fame among sportsmen. According to the 1827 US Supreme Court decision in Thornton v. Wynn, the horse was touted by the seller as "capable of beating any horse in the United States" and capable of a match with Eclipse. In 1821, Eclipse's victory in New York over a Virginia horse made him the most talked about horse in the nation's history. If Rattler won the featured Washington Jockey Club race, a match race with Eclipse would have been in order. Rattler pulled a tendon and lost. Then while a court adjudicated if Thornton still had to pay for a horse that he claimed was damaged when he bought it, he offered him as a stud. In an 1822 broadside, Thornton proved that Rattler was a better stud than Sir Archy who was the non pareil stud. Rattler gotten by Sir Archy but Rattler's dam Robin Red-Breast traced her pedigree back to old Highflyer just as Sir Archy did. Ergo, Rattler's pedigree was better than Sir Archy's because of a "double-cross...Rattler is doubly descended from old Highflyer." The supreme court returned the case to the lower court because the judge had told the jury not to consider the condition of the horse. Thornton scored a victory for consumers. His estate sold the horse to two other gentlemen in Kentucky. They soon raised questions in a national magazine for sportsmen about the string of victories Thornton claimed that Rattler had won. No one in the turfing fraternity reacted. Colonel Wynn’s estate reached an out of court settlement with Mrs. Thornton.
The General and Jefferson weighed Thornton's false pretenses, and managed them to their advantage. Madison seemed to enjoy Thornton's perturbations until he almost turned the most problematic period of the nation's history into a disaster. Monroe had no use for Thornton. Measuring Thornton through the eyes of presidents makes sense because he was essentially a courtier and he knew it. John Quincy Adams pitied Thornton and the disorder of his latter days, but always smiled at his flames of nonsense and brilliance. On a May 1825 visit, he found him "exceedingly reduced both by his disease and his remedies— He can scarcely speak, but retains his facetious humour, and his South-American ardour— He was very fearful that the British would cut a canal for Line of Battle and India Ships, and obtain an exclusive right of navigating for forty years."
Thornton's contributions to the architecture of the Capitol and city are overblown. The design he brought to Philadelphia would not do and he was coached on how to make one that would. It embodied the ideas of Jefferson, L'Enfant and Hallet. The Capitol would more or less have looked the same in 1829 even if Thornton had not pretended that he was an architect. The solution to the problem of fitting a house next to an angled intersection was not solved by Thornton. He did embrace it, but his February 1800 design for Lot 17 was never built.
In conclusion, if this examination of Dr. T- does not change the current take on the amateur architect and abiding genius of the nation's capital, the author asks one indulgence. Let future historians be more sympathetic to what Hallet, Hadfield, Hoban, and Latrobe faced at the Capitol thanks to Thornton's vain scorn. As for the Octagon, remember the "ingenious A" who offered specimens of designs suitable for angles acute or obtuse.
1. Dobyns History of the Patent Office, Chapter 7 and Preston, Daniel, "Administration of Patent Office...." Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Autumn, 1985), pp. 331-353; John Quincy Adams diary 5 March 1804,
2. WT to Fell 21 June 1802, Harris pp. 573-4
3. AMT notebook, volume 3, image 47; Dobyns, p. 47; Demerrit, Dwight D., "John H. Hall and the Origin of the Breechloader." American Society of Arms Collector Bulletin, 42; 24-29; National Intelligencer, 25 March 1819, 1 April 1819; Hallet to Madison 9 September 1809.
4.
AA. Jefferson to WT 9 May 1817; WT to Jefferson 27 May 1817.
VV. WT to John Adams, 3 August 1822
MM. Rush to Madison 2 September 1815; Monroe to Madison 13 February 1818
HH. Journal of Columbia Historical Society, 1916, "Mrs. Thornton's Diary: Capture of Washington" pp. 177-8, 181; Monroe to Hay, 7 September 1814, Papers of James Monroe, University of Mary Washington.
JJ. Jefferson to WT 29 January 1821
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