Beschreibung:

ADAMS, JOHN, President . Autograph letter signed ("John Adams") as President, to the Commissioners of the City of Washington; Philadelphia, 16 January 1798. One page, 4to, left margin slightly shaved, affecting address at bottom and a few letters text, a few careful repairs . PRESIDENT ADAMS AND THE SEARCH FOR FUNDS TO BUILD WASHINGTON D.C. "I have received your Letter and congratulate you on your success, in obtaining a Loan from the State of Maryland of one hundred thousand Dollars. I have considered the other Representations in your Letter, and upon the whole agree with you in opinion, but it will be most prudent for your Board to prepare a full and candid Statement of the whole in a Memorial to Congress to be signed by you, and presented or at least attended by one of you at Philadelphia. Your responsibity as well as mine will be the less formidable if we communicate the whole of our Proceedings to Congress from time to time." In order to avoid any future repetition of the embarassments suffered during the Revolutionary War by the Continental Congress, whose sessions were held in nine different cities, the Constitution gave to Congress the authority to create a new permanent seat of national government, over which it would have sole jurisdiction. After much deliberation and political maneouvring by the various states, the site on the Potomac was chosen, Maryland and Virginia ceding a total of ten square miles of their territory. President Washington was authorized to name three unsalaried commmissioners, who were to be responsible for surveying the area and planning construction, and in 1791 appointed Governÿor Thomas Johnso of Maryland, Dr. David Stuart, and Daniel Carroll, both Maryland landowners. The gifted young engineer and architect Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant designed the city plan, once Washington had chosen the sites for the actual Capitol and White House, on a grandiose, Versailles-like scale, and with a certain disregard for the financial limitations of the young country. L'Enfant soon quarreled with the Commissioners, who replaced him with the Pennsylvania Quaker Andrew Ellicott while retaining the Frenchman's original plan. The Commissioners spent the next few years scrambling for adequate funding, through the sale of district lots, initially successful but dropping off by the mid-90s, attempted appropriations by Congress, and generally fruitless efforts to attract loans from Europe and elsewhere. The loan granted by Maryland on which Adams congratulates the commissioners in the present letter, was one of the commissioners' few successes -- for which they had to pledge their own personal security. A syndicate formed by James Greenleaf of Massachusetts and by Robert Morris the richest man in Philadelphia, had been authorized to purchase 3000 lots at a reduced price, to be paid in installments until the public buildings were completed, but the project ended in bankruptcy in 1797, leaving behind numerous unfinished dwellings and, worse, a reputation that Washington was a bad investment. The government moved reluctantly from Philadelphia to its new and still unfinished quarters in Washington in May 1801, but President and Mrs. Adams did not install themselves in the only partly furnished White House until a month before the end of his term, leaving the final furnishings to his successor Thomas Jefferson