GEORGE WASHINGTON'S FINAL BATTLE

The first president’s role in creating his eponymous city.

Historian Watson reminds readers that the Constitution granted Congress the power to create a national capital. However, from the first meeting in 1789, controversy over the location was fierce. Washington, writes the author, “grumbled” that it was causing “ ‘more bitterness, more sectional divisiveness and more commentary by participants’ than any other issue, including slavery.” Watson joins fellow historians in praising the “Compromise of 1790,” which broke the logjam. With Washington’s approval, Alexander Hamilton sought a federal government that could assume the states’ war debts and establish a national bank. Thomas Jefferson and the anti-Federalists hated the ideas. In exchange for dropping their opposition, Hamilton agreed to use his influence for a Potomac capital. The author ably describes the tumultuous process that followed, a tale that will be familiar to readers well versed in other grand projects like the Panama Canal or Transcontinental Railroad. Historians extol the design of Washington’s chosen architect, Pierre L’Enfant, but he was so obnoxious that everyone approved his dismissal after a year. The Founding Fathers, brilliant in so many ways, agreed that taxes were unnecessary and that selling lots in the new city would pay for everything. The result was two decades of pleas for loans, unpaid bills, and construction delays. Working conditions were brutal, and America possessed few skilled craftsmen, so builders imported workers from Europe and eventually used a great deal of slave labor (“cruelly inevitable”). By the time John Adams took up residence in November 1800, the White House roof was partially completed. Furthermore, “only a third of the nearby Capitol was nearing completion, temporary shanty homes dotted the landscape, and construction equipment littered the grounds of the unfinished buildings.” Matters improved, but it took another decade. Washington’s final battle turned out to be unexpectedly difficult, and Watson makes a strong argument that only his astute leadership assured victory.

An expert addition to the boundless literature surrounding Washington and the founding era.