Epilogue: John Quincy Adams' Diary
“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..." But, he was "not seconded." What Thornton wrote sometime after 1802 is not true. The General’s corpse was not frozen and Thornton urged its burial to keep it from stinking.
The most complete description of the death and immediate aftermath was written by Tobias Lear as soon as he had time to do so. Thornton got to Mount Vernon with the Laws a day late. 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 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.
Then what possessed Thornton to fabricate a brief memoir crafted as a medical letter but evidently never sent, and put 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."(BB)
Did he crave a startling frame for the tragedy of his life? In an 1822 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.…" In an 1821 letter to former president Jefferson, he bemoaned having a “trivial job that cannot support my family” Indeed, beginning in June 1802, his mind did have lobes of time to fill.
Government clerks worked from 9 to 3 and as the sole clerk processing patent applications, 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. 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 it never gave him a raise, congress eventually gave him a clerk. On May 22, 1825, his boss, Secretary of State 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.…"
Or was Thornton simply a practiced liar? Formally, his situation at the Patent Office was analogous to his situation as a commissioner for the public buildings although a little less demanding. In both, he did not have to do what he claimed he did. He was not made a commissioner of public buildings in order to restore his Capitol design. He was not made commissioner of patents in order to claim his prior invention of those few new ideas that crossed his desk that he had previously thought about, perhaps tinkered with, and certainly thought he understood better than the applying inventor. He didn't really invent anything in the sense that he pursued an idea to the point that he made something novel and useful. But he convinced himself that he did. After all, a self confident man riding a chariot of rhetoric can easily tweak I came, I saw, to a resounding I conquered. How he did that at the Patent Office mirrored how he tried to shape the narrative of how the Capitol was designed. 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 embellish that with a claim he never made, that he also designed the Octagon. He did become the most famous bureaucrat in the city. Of course, that was never his ambition. A bureaucrat lurks behind the scenes and Thornton wanted to be in the van. In the final act of his quest for fame, 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, one finds the best documentation of Thornton's way of lying.
There were mitigating circumstances. He lost his personal fortune. In an 1808 letter to a friend, Latrobe pitied Thornton: "the worst that can be said of him is that he is a Madman from vanity, incorrect impecuniary conduct, and official intrigue from Poverty." Adding to the problem, while 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. Then in 1807 and 1808, he did not get money from Tortola. In December 1808, he briefly fled the city to escape being jailed. After he died, Mrs. Thornton resumed now and then keeping a diary. After finding a letter he wrote begging for money from Tortola, she lamented: "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."
Thornton got his revenge by trying to make life miserable for select inventors who had the bad luck to invent something that Thornton thought he knew more about than they did. In her 1808 notebook for August 6, Mrs. Thornton didn't describe his grift but did register the pain it caused: "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, or it could have referred to Hawkins’ piano. Ever since Hawkins had tuned Mrs. Thornton’s piano in 1800, Thornton’s mind had been full of ideas. In 1814, he would describe them in a letter to Jefferson: “I have had a Person, for several months, employed in making a musical Instrument that I invented abt 12 or 14 yrs ago—It will be the size of a large chamber organ—played by an endless band, on 68 Strings which by Keys in the manner of the piano Forte...” 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.(3)
After all, Thornton knew he was a great inventor. He had invented the greatest modern invention. 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.
Thornton recognized that Fulton had solved the real steamboat problem. He had money backing him up. 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.
In the meantime, Thornton made himself and the Patent Office famous. Congress never gave him a raise, but 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."
Fulton tried to get Thornton fired for giving himself patents and attacking inventors and their inventions. But his museum made Thornton an untouchable bureaucrat. Plus, he struck the right chords when he defended himself. Because of low pay, he he had to give himself patents. He exercised his first amendment right of free speech to battle monopolies to save the American people money. He also generally knew what he was talking about. 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."
Fulton hit on a way to underscore Thornton's inability to apply any of his ideas. 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." Evidently, Thornton didn't react because Fulton set out to have his lawyers depose Thornton before a judge and force him to admit that Fulton's patents did describe improvements to the steamboat. But in July, Thornton was prostrated by rheumatic fever and didn't recover until September.
Then he resumed his fight against Fulton. To better belittle his patents he published a pamphlet with 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. 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?
To claim victory in his dispute with Latrobe, Thornton cited the jury's only awarding him 1 cent in damages. Benjamin Ogle Tayloe recalled that Thornton claimed that his pamphlet killed Fulton who died after a short illness in February 1815. Meanwhile, his pamphlet did not satisfy Thornton. It gave too much credit to Fitch. A Washington newspaper filled two pages with it and then thanked Thornton for bringing Fitch's achievement to light. Thornton rectified that. In 1819, he tried to enlist the aid of the American consul for a steamboat 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." As for Fulton, he "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, that he once offered to Secretary of State Jefferson, 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 looked for monopoly right in South America because he had expanded his horizons. 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.
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. as had Thornton. 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. Gual had served him in Caracas and then after his fall continued to forward the revolutionary cause in Colombia. 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, which, of course, was all that he did.
Not a few American’s of the post-Revolutionary War generation looked for other revolutions to fight. John Quincy Adams’s bother-in-law William Stephens Smith was arrested in New York for aiding Miranda and his nephew William Steuben Smith barely escaped the revolution in Venezuela with his life. Thornton rarely ventured beyond F Street in his revolutionary activities. In 1821, he would inform Jefferson that “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. That would give the impression that Britain was also bargaining for Florida. 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 John Quincy 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.
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."
But enraging President Monroe in 1818 didn't prevent Thornton from pestering the secretary of state to recommend him for a diplomatic mission to South America whenever the opportunity arose in any country. 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." Adams thought Thornton was "the most indefatigable, and irrepulsable candidate that I ever knew." 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, to sing Thornton's praises. In his letter to former President John 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."
When he became president in 1825, John Quincy Adams gave Thornton a chance to design one of the finishing touches to the Capitol. 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.
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 week after he died, the National Intelligencer printed a remembrance. "C." hailed Thornton as a founder who had been "a commissioner for laying out this Metropolis" and Commissioner of the Patent Office "during four successive administrations." C also noted that Thornton published arguments that formed popular opinion in support of the Greek and Latin American revolutions. In closing, C exalted the man, not his works: "His temperament was highly sensitive and, of course, his character was not exempt from those alloys that are blended with genius.... He was constant and warm in his friendship open and decided in his enmities. His love of knowledge was great; his love of liberty greater; but his greatest love was that of truth. Truth he incessantly sought in every avenue of science or literature, and fearlessly pursued through the whole course of his career with unabated ardor...."
When his wife wrote a brief memoir of his attainments, she also didn't mention architecture, but did understand what he incessantly sought. It wasn't truth. She regretted his embracing "a greater variety of sciences" because it prevented him from attaining the fame 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."
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 was 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. Thornton's 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.
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.
CC. WT to Jefferson 27 June 1814
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
Comments
Post a Comment