From Howard S. Abramson's National Geographic: Behind America's Lens on the World:
In the 1880s, Washington, DC was still a dusty, backwater town, even judged by nineteenth century American standards. Although its population had climbed to nearly 180,000, the capital was really just America's newest tourist attraction of the rich and powerful. Washington offered itself as the cradle of a federal government that was growing rapidly in size and importance as it consolidated the powers formerly excised by the states. Indsutrialization was changing the face of the nation, and the founders' planned confederation of nation-states no longer suited the country.
The North's victory in the Civil War sealed the demise of that confederation and marked the start of an era of swift federalization. "What transpired in Richmond, Columbia, or Baton Rouge, indeed in Albany, Topeka, or Sacramento, now mattered far less than what politicians decided on Capitol Hill; Americans must go to Washington to be in the swim," wrote histroian Constance Green. Thus, Washington's winter social season quickly became the most important one in the nation, one that was not to be missed. and society and government soon became the city's only primary products, for while commerce and industry thrived in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, it faltered in Washington....
In addition to its failure to industrialize, the city proved incapable even of managing its own treasury. After its terrirtorial government went bankrupt in 1874, following several years of teetering on the brink of insolvency, the federal government took over Washington's affairs. Being run by the US promiesed residents a solvent government, but it also stripped DC of all their self-governing powers. But becoming a federal city helped inspire the only real economic boom the town was to have: real estate....
Washington in those days seemed mostly populated with bankers, generals, scientists, and schollars-- in addition of course to politicians.Wrote one late-nineteenth century visitor from England: "Compared with New York or Chicago, Washington, although it is full of commotion and energy, is a city of rest and peace. The inhabitants do not rush onward as though they were late for the train or the post, or as though the dinner hour being past they were anxious to appease an irritable wife." Wrote another, "It looks a sort of place nobody has to work for his living, or, at any rate, not hard."
And we trusted our entire nation to these nonindustrious, spendthrift people?
