Points in Time

• 1585: First attempt at settlement of a Roanoke Island colony  
• 1603: Elizabeth I dies  
• 1608: John Smith explores the Potomac  
• 1613: First tobacco shipped from Jamestown to England
• 1616: William Shakespeare dies
• 1618: Charter of Grants and Liberties establishes self-government in Virginia
• 1619: First African slaves brought to Jamestown
• 1622: Indian attacks all along the James River valley
• 1624: Virginia becomes a royal colony
• 1647: George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, begins ministry  
• 1649: King Charles I executed  
• 1653: Oliver Cromwell named “Lord Protector”  
• 1655: Readmission of Jews to England 
• 1660: Restoration of the monarchy
• 1666: Great Fire of London 
• 1667: John Milton’s  Paradise Lost  published
• 1675-76: Virginia war with Susquehannock Indians
• 1676-77: Bacon’s Rebellion 
• 1678: John Bunyan’s  Pilgrim’s Progress  published
• 1688: Glorious Revolution
• 1689-98: King William’s War
• 1690: John Locke’s Treatises on Civil Government published
• 1693: College of William and Mary founded  
• 1699: Virginia capital moved to Williamsburg
• 1703-13: Queen Anne’s War 
• 1727: George I becomes King

As a colony, Virginia's early history was inextricably tied to events in Great Britain. At such a distance on a sparsely settled continent however, its interests and development quickly diverged from those of its mother country.

Politics

Virginia grew increasingly self-governing. Complaints of restrictive rule by the Virginia Company led to the Company's 1618 approval of a Charter of Grants and Liberties, which made the colony's government subject to the popular will as expressed through a representative legislature, the House of Burgesses. It was far from universal suffrage, however, as women, African slaves and landless whites had no say in politics. As a royal colony after 1624, Virginia generally enjoyed benign neglect, except with regard to the collection of the King's revenues. Even the period of the English Civil War and the Commonwealth (1642-1660), which shook England to its foundations, left the Old Dominion relatively unscathed. In fact, most Virginians remained loyal to the monarchy during Cromwell's rule (one reason why so many latter-day Virginians would claim descent from the Cavaliers).

War and Rebellion

Except for occasional scares and the depression of trade, England's numerous wars with France, Spain and Holland did not greatly affect the sparsely populated Virginia colony. Because of its distance from Canada and Florida, however, Virginia remained relatively uninvolved even during the colonial "King William's War" (1689-1697) and "Queen Anne's War" (1702-1713), the first two of the French and Indian Wars.

Virginia faced other threats that were familiar to her neighbor colonies. The colonists' often harsh treatment of the aboriginal inhabitants – not the least of which was the expropriation of their lands--engendered a great deal of resentment. About a third of the colonists were killed in 1622 during a widespread uprising by the Powhatans and their allies directed at the new plantations and towns. The Indians repeated this successful surprise attack strategy in 1644, killing 300 whites. Retaliations by the Susquehannocks for the murder of five of their leaders in 1676 led to a war between them and the Virginians. One response of the Virginia government was the erection of a string of forts on the frontier. One earthen fort was constructed near the Potomac south of Great Hunting Creek in the vicinity of present-day Belle Haven.

The 1676 war had major repercussions for Virginia politics. Expecting no help from faraway England, the colonists looked to Governor Berkeley. Dissatisfied with Berkeley's indecisive policy, however, and having other grievances, frontiersmen under Nathaniel Bacon carried out a successful campaign against the Indians, then turned their eyes to Jamestown. Bacon, a former member of the governor's council, demanded reforms and ultimately burned the capital. His death, however, led to the collapse of the revolt and a series of executions and confiscations and a repeal of reform measures.

Economics

Many Jamestown colonists realized their dreams of wealth, but in a way unexpected by the founders of the Virginia Company. Tobacco became the backbone of the Virginia economy and its main export soon after the first crop was harvested. To the chronically coin and specie poor colonists, tobacco was literally a cash crop; it became the common medium of exchange. An intricate system of credit increasingly pushed the colonists into debt to English merchants. The source of wealth, the land upon which the "weed" was grown, was not a liquid asset; a family might have extensive holdings, but no pocket money. And planters soon discovered that tobacco quickly exhausted the soil. Rather than take the trouble to rotate crops, many simply moved west toward the Piedmont seeking new, cheap, and fertile parcels, and left the old behind.

Settlement

One of few whites to spend time along the Potomac in the decades after John Smith explored the area was Henry Fleet, a trader with the Indians, who met with some Iroquois at the falls of the Potomac in 1634. White settlement only began to occur a decade later because of the prominent Brent family. Margaret Brent became the first female barrister in America in 1640 and, as a substantial landholder, later unsuccessfully demanded the right to vote in the Maryland assembly (making her the first suffragette in the colonies and arguably the first feminist). After quarreling with Lord Baltimore, Margaret and her brother Giles, who had been an important Maryland official, decided that it would be prudent to move to Virginia. Giles settled on the south side of the Potomac near Aquia Creek, becoming the northernmost white resident of Virginia. In 1654, Margaret Brent received a grant of seven hundred acres around Great Hunting Creek, including the future site of Alexandria. While she did not move to this area, she probably "seated" the patent by having a tenant settle on the parcel.

With the chaos of the mid 1600s, conflicting patents were granted by Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, and Charles II – the latter often as a reward to royalists who had helped restore his throne. Mistress Brent's land was included in a six-thousand-acre grant to Welsh sea captain Robert Howson in 1669. Not knowing of Brent's prior claim, John Alexander, a Stafford County planter, bought out Howson the same year. In an ensuing suit, Alexander's heirs kept the land by indemnifying Brent's estate with 10,500 pounds of tobacco.

While there were probably settlers in the Alexandria area at mid-century (and a temporary fort in the 1670s), the first permanent settlement was established by Simon Pearson on Daingerfield Island (current location of the Washington Sailing Marina, north of Alexandria) in 1696. Indians still inhabited the area at the end of the century. Coarse English earthenwares dating to the last quarter of the seventeenth century, however, have been discovered by Alexandria Archaeology under lower Cameron Street.

By about 1715, much of the area had been cleared and was under tobacco cultivation. At that time, John Summers built a house at Lincolnia, just beyond Alexandria's current western boundary. The Summers family cemetery is located near the intersection of Beauregard Street and Barnum Lane. Summers, who died at the age of 104 in 1790, was a hardy and religious farmer who, with his long recollection of local events, was often later called upon to settle land disputes. In 1719 Edward Chubb, a tenant of Robert Alexander, built a grist mill on Four Mile Run, the first known industrial structure in the area and evidence of significant grain cultivation here at the time. By about 1730, at least four tenants of the Alexanders lived below Four Mile Run in what is now Alexandria.

Architecture

Buildings of the seventeenth century were essentially medieval in construction techniques, plan and massing. The British colonists of the Tidewater generally built timber frame houses on a linear, one-room-deep plan. The most common type of house, known as the "hall and parlor" plan, consisted of only two rooms usually with a loft above. Virginians began to build with brick earlier than the New England colonists, possibly because of the wide availability of suitable clay or because wood frame structures (particularly earth-fast ones) were more susceptible to rot and termite damage in the more humid climate.

Disasters

Settlers brought Old World diseases. The Indians were hit the hardest; thousands died before laying eyes on the whites. The year 1686 was a hard one for native and settler alike; a dreadful epidemic of diphtheria spread through the colony. The new land countered with periodically severe outbreaks of malaria, as in 1687. The year 1667 showed how precarious an agrarian life could be on the margins of empire. That growing season began with "a most prodigious storme of haile, many of them as bigg as turkey eggs," which destroyed most of the grain and even killed hogs and cattle," followed by an exceedingly wet summer and a devastating hurricane which tore apart hundreds of homes and much of the fall harvest of corn and tobacco.

Points in Time

• 1732: George Washington  is born
• 1732: Benjamin Franklin  begins publication of Poor Richard's Almanack  
• 1732-1733: Georgia colony chartered; Savannah founded; colonists begin fortifying frontier against Spanish Florida
• 1732-1733: Parliament passes mercantilist Hat Act  and Molasses Act 
• 1735: William Hogarth publishes series of satirical engravings, A Rake's Progress  
• 1736: Recession due to slack trade
• 1738: The future king of England, George III, born  
• 1739: England commences the "War of Jenkins' Ear" with Spain

The 1730s

The 1730s saw the transformation of the Alexandria area from river valley plantation to a nascent port. Since the late 1600s the colonial government had made several legislative attempts to centralize the inspection of tobacco at public warehouses along Virginia's numerous rivers. The Royal government hoped to standardize weights and the quality of the leaf, reduce fraud, and cut down on smuggling.

Virginia's Tobacco Inspection Act of 1730 called for the establishment of a public inspection facility on the Potomac near Great Hunting Creek. It was to be one of two stations serving Prince William County (which included what is now Alexandria and the present-day counties of Prince William, Fauquier, Fairfax, Loudon, and Arlington). The other warehouse was set up on Pohick Bay. Charles Broadwater's land south of Hunting Creek was the intended site for the upper Potomac warehouse, but it was found to be "very inconvenient." So it ended up on what came to be known as West's Point, about a mile north of the creek at the east end of a 220-acre wedge of land conveyed by Robert Alexander to his son John and to Hugh West. West's Point was convenient for shipping; it was one of the last upstream anchorages, and it had the advantage of extending beyond the muddy river flats toward the deeper channel of the Potomac. Lewis Elzey and John Awbry were appointed the first inspectors. In 1734 the designation of Pohick at the second inspection warehouse was repealed, and the inspection station was moved to a site on the Occoquan River.

Settlement

Who was here, at the future site of Alexandria, to benefit from convenient access to the tobacco warehouse and to the increased economic activity it would bring? Obviously, the tobacco inspectors, and Hugh West, proprietor of the warehouse. By 1731, Robert Alexander also had five tenants on his lands south of Four Mile Run, including miller Edward Chubb. It is interesting to note that three of the five were women--Judith Ballenger, Sarah Young, Sarah Amos – possibly widows with grown sons, but certainly redoubtable figures and veritable pioneers. More is known about the fourth tenant, James Going, who raised horses "and spent much of [his] money at the races." He and his brother, Thomas, ultimately acquired some land in what is now Arlington County. The nineteenth-century descendants of the Goings were buried behind 1407-1409 West Braddock Road.

The majority of the population was probably African or of African descent. It is likely that all of the significant landowners had slave laborers working their fields. At the time of Robert Alexander's death in 1735, his son John resided just south of Four Mile Run. He received title to the lands surrounding his home. Philip Alexander (Robert Alexander’s cousin) owned a 500-acre piece of land bounded by Hunting Creek, Hooff's Run, the Potomac and, approximately, the line of what would later be Cameron Street. Both Alexanders had extensive slave quarters on their lands.

Architecture

Early utilitarian structures showed no concern for fashion. An early tobacco warehouse was a simple forty-or-sixty foot square, probably ten feet high inside, framed with hewn timbers and sided with rough riven clapboards. One such warehouse was erected in 1731 by area property owner Simon Pearson employing two carpenters, John and Derby Bryan, who may have been slaves.

Points in Time

• 1740: Planned slave revolt uncovered in Prince George's County, Maryland
• 1740: Fire destroys half of Charleston, South Carolina
• 1740: Ferry established between Alexandria and the Maryland shore
• 1740-1748: War of the Austrian Succession  
• 1742: Prince William County is divided and Fairfax County is created
• 1745: Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland under "Bonnie Prince Charlie"  
• 1747: William Stith publishes The History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia
• 1749: Alexandria is founded

The 1740s: Alexandria is Born

In a Southern landscape dominated by plantations and farms, the mercantilist Crown, Parliament and colonial governments favored the establishment of settled places as progressive and beneficial – beneficial, that is, mainly to British merchants for encouraging the consumption of manufactured goods. The tobacco inspection system established hamlets accessible by river and road. These, in turn, encouraged new roads and ferries, as planters sought the shortest route to inspection and market. So, in the natural progression of things, many of these small settlements grew into something greater, and a marshy Potomac River tobacco depot became the chartered town of Alexandria.

The 1740s saw a great deal of change locally. The Virginia House passed an act in 1740 calling for a permanent ferry to run across the river between the "Hunting Creek" warehouses on Hugh West's land and Frazier's Point in Prince George's County, Maryland. Five years later, the ferry was permitted to land also at the landing of the Addison family at their Oxon Hill plantation. In 1742, Prince William County was divided, and Fairfax County was established with its seat at Springfield. Having split from Prince William, the new county did not have a true port of its own, so in 1748 inhabitants of Fairfax petitioned the House of Burgesses for the charter of a town at the Hunting Creek warehouse site. The organizers of the petition would have a struggle to gain the approval of their preferred site.

As with the siting of the first tobacco warehouse, there was debate over whether the town should be located near Point West or near the mouth of Great Hunting Creek. The earlier decision appears to have been merely a practical one; this time there were "lobbies" for each site. Those landowners adjacent to the Point West site naturally had plenty to gain from increased trade and land values. But their opponents, who had land bordering the creek, had similar dreams.

In the mid-1740s, John Minor and Colonel John Colville each acquired sizeable tracts of land along Great Hunting Creek from its mouth west to Telegraph Road (formerly known as the Back Road and Colchester Road). Near the Back Road ford they established a tavern (later operated by Richard Moxley). They hoped to establish an alternate point for the inspection and loading of tobacco, a site which would be more convenient and lucrative for them. Presumably to garner support for their project, they named their little settlement "Cameron" in honor of Thomas, sixth Lord Fairfax, Baron Cameron, the richest man in the Northern Neck and namesake of the county.

Because the sites were so near each other, the alternatives were mutually exclusive. The government would not permit the unnecessary expenditure of effort and money in a fruitless rivalry. So the contest was all or nothing. Hugh West opposed the granting of the license for the Cameron ordinary. The Cameron partisans, in turn, placed their competing petition for a town before the House of Burgesses while the Hunting Creek warehouse site was being considered. The Committee of Propositions and Grievances rejected both petitions on their first reading, perhaps reflecting the negative influence of both parties. On its third reading, however, the warehouse site proposal was forwarded to the entire house and passed, with amendments added by the Governor's Council. Governor William Gooch approved the bill in May 1749. Cameron may have lost because of practical considerations. By 1749, the site at West's Point had been a tobacco inspection station for 17 years, and it was not practical to establish a port town separate from where the inspection of the area's main crop was taking place. Thus was Alexandria born to be "Commodious for Trade and Navigation and tend greatly to the Ease and Advantage of the Frontier Inhabitants." Cameron remained a distinct area of settlement for many years, gaining its own boatyard, racetrack, and flour mill.

Place in Time: Cameron

Today we travel at top speeds (or crawl in traffic jams) along the Beltway between Telegraph Road and the Route 1 exits without realizing that we are driving in what was once Cameron Run. The water ran into Great Hunting Creek, which then emptied into the Potomac River at Jones Point. Drive to the Hoffman Town Center on Eisenhower Avenue and you will be near Cameron, which contained several structures, including the ordinary (tavern), the grist mill, and a bridge. Cameron was near the juncture of two important roads along the Potomac, the "Back Road" or inland road (Telegraph Road) and the River Road (Route 1). Several other major roads ran west and north from Cameron, as well as into Hugh West's landing.

The Town Plan

By the mid-eighteenth century, a number of typical patterns of town planning had been developed in Virginia. For the most part, these were straightforward grid, with streets set at right angles, usually oriented to a riverbank. Alexandria's plan is no exception. In its reliance on the right angle, the plan of Alexandria is virtually indistinguishable from many other early- to mid-eighteenth-century towns in Virginia and Maryland. In many respects it is remarkably similar to the 1721 plan for Fredericksburg.

In both original plans there are seven parallel streets leading to the river and three streets oriented on the perpendicular. In each a portion of the town is depicted as in the river, presaging the filling of the shallows and mud flats. And in each a market square and an important civic building is located in the town's center.

The prevalence of the grid in the eighteenth century was due in large part to a conviction that rational order could be imposed upon nature. This belief is evident also in the ordered system of architecture of the same period. The grid was unimaginative, perhaps, but it served well the commercial life of these seaport towns and was expandable. The same grid plan of two-acre blocks was subsequently extended several times.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about Alexandria's original plan is the hierarchical naming system of the east-west streets. One cannot walk around Old Town long without noticing that, beginning from the center of the original plan, these streets descend in order from King to Prince to Duke going south, and from Queen to Princess to Oronoco going north. This system begs two questions. First, how did Oronoco take the place of "Duchess Street?" And second, where did Cameron Street come from? We can only speculate that Oronoco reflects the early supremacy of the tobacco trade; Oronoco was a type of the leaf whose name originated from the great river in South America. As for Cameron, it was named for Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, Baron Cameron. Like the sponsors of the Cameron settlement, the Alexandria partisans apparently thought it wouldn't hurt to flatter the wealthiest and most influential man in the county. In fact, the geographic center of the original town--and its civic center--was the intersection of Cameron Street with Fairfax Street, also named for Lord Fairfax!

Naming the Town

As we have already seen, the naming of things – towns, streets, buildings – was then as now used to honor or curry favor with important individuals. No evidence has been unearthed which points directly to the rationale for naming our city "Alexandria." It is surely more than coincidence, however, that much of the land upon which the town was founded was then still in the hands of the Alexander family. It would appear that the name was chosen to gain the support of the Alexanders in the struggle for the town charter. It would also appear that the ploy failed; Philip Alexander opposed the legislation, perhaps having thrown his support to the Cameron partisans whose settlement also adjoined his tract. To the classically educated elites of the day, of course, the double meaning, i.e., the reference to Alexandria, Egypt, would certainly not be unintentional, coincidental or unappreciated. Given that city's illustrious history as a capital, a major port, and a center of learning, the naming of the new town was hopeful and ambitious, and, perhaps, a little pretentious.

"Belhaven," seems also to have been a contending alternate choice. It probably first appears as the label on the 1749 plat, "A Plan of Alexandria now Belhaven." Although it too, seems an auspicious name for a port, the appellation is said to remember John, Lord Hamilton, Baron Belhaven, an outspoken opponent of the Act of Union between England and Scotland at the beginning of the eighteenth century and a critic of the impositions placed on the Scottish by the Church of England. It was a name that would have resounded with the patriotic Scottish merchants who were then so active along the Potomac, particularly within three or four years after the failed Stuart uprising against the Hanoverian dynasty. Like Baron Belhaven, the local Scots were probably loyal to the English monarchy, but proud of their heritage and jealously protective of their rights.

Despite the fact that Belhaven did not catch on as the name of our town, it appears in several sources, including maps, as late as 1783. One might say it still exists, applied in altered form to a Fairfax County subdivision just south of town. What kept the name alive? Was it stubbornness, defiance, habit, or was flattering the Alexanders just no longer necessary? The reader may judge.

Points in Time

• 1750: Population of Fairfax County is 5,546
• 1752: The American Company performs The Merchant of Venice at Williamsburg
• 1753: Fairfax County courthouse established at Alexandria
• 1753: Philip Alexander dies
• 1754: George Washington's soldiers fired the first shots of the French and Indian War in Jumonville Glen in Pennsylvania (also known as the Seven Years' War).
• 1755: Braddock's army defeated by French in Pennsylvania
• 1755: George Washington moves to Mount Vernon  
• 1757: British army under Lord Clive defeats French at Battle of Plassey in India  
• 1758: George Mason IV builds Gunston Hall 
• 1759: British capture Québec 

The 1750s: "As agreeable a Place as could be expected"

"The town is built upon an arc of this bay; at one extremity of which is a wharf; at the other a dock for building ships, with water sufficiently deep to launch a vessel of any rate or magnitude." [Archdeacon Andrew Burnaby] "Belhaven," as the new town was often called by its residents, experienced a growth spurt in its first years, assisted by commerce and by the removal of the Fairfax County courthouse and jail from Springfield (near Tyson's Corner) to Alexandria in 1753. Still, it would be decades before construction would fill the twenty-one-block area originally chartered. Several of the lots were resold by the town's trustees in 1754, after their purchasers failed to build upon them. Travelers in the mid 1750s could have crossed a bridge over the marshy "gutt" at the north end of town (Oronoco Park today) and seen the tobacco warehouses, kiln, and other buildings at Point West (southeast of the intersection of Lee and Oronoco Streets). Continuing south on Fairfax, they would have seen at least a couple of houses on each block-face, some comfortable and others quite rude. Crossing Queen, one would have noticed a marked change: the wealthy merchants and landowners, who had purchased double lots on the central waterfront, had constructed the first masonry buildings and may have even had ornamental gardens. The finest was John Carlyle's stone mansion south of Cameron Street (now open to the public), which commanded a river view and faced the new courthouse "paled in with Posts and Rails" next to market square. Several homes clustered around King Street, including William Ramsay's (today's Visitors' Center). Several more small houses stood along the way to the town's southern boundary. There were a number of frame structures along Royal Street, the only other north-south road, but not as many as on Fairfax. Near the river, of course, one would find several warehouses, including the new public warehouse at Point Lumley (foot of Duke Street) where the first boat construction began.

Alexandria was still lacking in urbanity and amenities. Mrs. Charlotte Browne, accompanying her brother, a British officer, wrote in March 1755: "Extremely hot but as agreeable a Place as could be expected, it being inhabited but 4 years. Went...to every House in the Place to get a Lodging, and at last was obliged to take a Room but little larger than to hold my Bed, and not so much as a Chair in it ...." Moving to the first floor, her situation improved: "It consisted of a Bed Chamber and Dining Room, not over large. The Furniture was three chairs, a Case to Hold Liquor and a Tea Chest..." The trustees found it necessary to "suppress the keeping & raising of hoggs...and that those already raised be either kept up in inclosure or killed..." And having witnessed several deaths and funerals, Mrs. Browne noted that "It is the Custom of this Place to bury their Relations in their Gardens."

But things were improving. Hugh West operated an "ordinary" or tavern adjacent to his ferry from 1745. Taverns were a growth industry; eighteen ordinary licenses were issued in the 1750s, although no more than six were operating at any one time, plus one at the Cameron settlement. Perhaps the finest was the "George," at the northwest corner of Cameron and Royal. It had six guest rooms, three fireplaces, a bar, a dining room and a billiard room. With all the house and boat construction, carpenters came to town, as did tobacco, grain and dry goods merchants, the first couple of doctors, and even a wig maker. Recreation reflected the very British interest in gaming; horse races were held outside of town, and the first school was financed largely by a lottery in 1760.

The French and Indian War

The major event of the 1750s was the French and Indian War. Virginian participation in the wars between the European powers became significant only after 1739 during the "War of Jenkin's Ear" (1739) and "King George's War" (also known as the War of the Austrian Succession, 1740-1748). By the time these conflicts had ended, Pennsylvanian and Virginian traders were pushing into the Ohio River Valley--territory claimed by France. From 1749 the French took steps to secure the Ohio Valley and, in mid 1752, attacked an outlying trading post. In 1753, Governor Dinwiddie sent the 21-year-old George Washington to protest the French action and to ascertain their intentions. Washington reported that the French were planning to build forts on the Allegheny River as they moved south from Canada into the Ohio River Valley. Convinced of France's hostile intent, in 1754 the Governor sent a small force to build a fort at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers (site of present-day Pittsburgh) and ordered Washington to assemble a larger army to follow and secure the area. However, the French arrived at the river junction with a superior force as the Governor's few soldiers had just begun to build their fort. The French quickly forced the British soldiers to leave and built their own Fort Duquesne. A short time later, on his way to Fort Duquesne, Washington and his men killed and captured a small group of French soldiers camping in a narrow glen. Angered, the French retaliated, defeating Washington at his hastily constructed and badly situated Fort Necessity. Thus began a two-year undeclared colonial war which coalesced into and helped spark a European "Seven Years' War" which reached from Canada to India.

General Edward Braddock arrived in Alexandria in March 1755 to lead an army of 1400 British regulars and 450 colonials to Fort Duquesne. At John Carlyle's house he met with the governors of five colonies--Dinwiddie of Virginia, Sharpe of Maryland, Shirley of Massachusetts, Morris of Pennsylvania and DeLancey of New York – to discuss strategy, finances, and campaigns against other French strongholds. Robert Orme's journal indicates Braddock did not want to stay here long, "as the greatest care and severest punishments could not prevent the Immoderate use of spirituous liquors, and as he was likewise informed the water of that place was very unwholesome...." Part of the army set out on the route we now know as Braddock Road. A cannon, said to be one of Braddock's, can be seen today at the intersection with Russell Road. On July 9, about eight miles from Fort Duquesne, Braddock's army and a smaller force of French and Indians collided head on. In the ensuing battle, Braddock's army was routed, and Braddock himself was killed. George Washington, who served with Braddock as a volunteer aide delivering messages between the General and his officers during the battle, was unharmed, but he had two horses shot out from under him and bullets tore four holes in his coat. Washington retreated to Virginia, burying General Braddock near the site of Fort Necessity.

For the next three years, the British conducted a lackluster and disastrous campaign. However, a new prime minister, William Pitt the Elder, committed England to total war and to reinforcing the colonies. The effects were soon felt. In mid 1758, the British took the fortress at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island. Then the French were forced to burn Fort Duquesne, whose site was seized by the English and renamed Pittsburgh in honor of the vigorous prime minister. The following year was a nightmare for the French, who lost Fort Niagara, Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga), and Fort Frédéric (Crown Point) along the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. Finally, Brigadier General James Wolfe's superior army won a crushing victory over the Marquis de Montcalm's forces and captured Québec. The French surrendered Canada the next year, and thus ended the war on the American mainland.

A Place in Time

The crescent-shaped bay upon which Alexandria was founded offered proximity to the Potomac, but consisted largely of shallows and mud flats bounded by thirty-foot bluffs. The first citizens of Alexandria industriously altered the natural landscape to remove these impediments and fit their economic needs and concept of livability. The wealthiest merchants paid a premium for waterfront lots giving them the ability to construct homes between Fairfax Street and the bluff with private wharves and warehouses below. Work place and home were thus combined on the same one-acre "urban plantation" largely built and maintained by African slaves like John Carlyle's servants Jerry, Joe, Cook, Penny, Charles, Sibreia, Kate, Moses, and Nanny.

One of the best places to get a sense of this two-tiered town is the 200 block of Cameron Street and the rear of the Carlyle House. Although the terrace was not original to the house, it gives you a vantage point to appreciate the elevation shift between Fairfax Street on the bluff and Lee Street (formerly Water Street), which was originally literally covered with water midway between Oronoco Street (West's Point) and Duke Street (Point Lumley). Look at the now-exposed coarse stone foundations on the ca. 1777 Wise's Tavern (201 North Fairfax) and you will get an idea of how the bluff and Cameron Street block were cut down and graded. Grading probably first began in the 1750s, but continued in the area until around 1800. The soil was likely used to fill in the eastern part of Cameron and Water Street.

The wharf built by Carlyle and Dalton between Cameron and King Streets is one of the best archaeological sites for documenting the filling process. The Lee/Cameron intersection was just below sea level in 1750, but about eleven feet above in 1891. During the construction of the Torpedo Factory condominium project in 1982, City Archaeologists discovered Carlyle and Dalton's waterlogged, rough, yellow pine wharf logs beneath fill from the nineteenth-century Smoot's lumberyard and the World War I-era Torpedo Factory Building Number 1. Under the sidewalk of the south side of the 100 block of Cameron Street remain the timbers which formed the wharf's northern end.

Architecture and material culture

The eighteenth century was the era of the Enlightenment, a flourishing of faith in the power of human reason. Thinkers of the era "discovered" a rational order to the universe, an order which they claimed was also revealed by the use of reason. The Enlightenment held out the promise of the perfectibility of mankind, of imposing order on nature, and of dispelling superstition and tyranny. The supremacy of reason suggested the autonomy of the individual--or at least of educated and thoughtful individuals, and largely those who happened to be white, male adults with property of the "proper" religious beliefs--and thereby set the stage for the passing away of pre-industrial collectivism.

As seen from Alexandria's map of 1749, our ancestors began to reorder the world around them in a manner which was to them useful, understandable, comfortable and profitable. Georgians had a penchant for categorization, standardization, symmetry, specialization and, to the benefit of manufacturers and merchants, emulation. It is no coincidence that the period produced Samuel Johnson's English dictionary, or multiple-piece, matching sets of dinnerware. Tasteful images of symmetrical and geometric architecture were circulated among gentlemen through the publication of grand and expensive folio editions of pattern books like James Gibbs's A Book of Architecture (1720) and William Adam's Vitruvius Scoticus (1750).

Georgian architecture reached its peak in the mid eighteenth century. Originating in seventeenth-century England and later named for the British kings of the house of Hanover, it was heavily influenced by the classically informed architecture of Italian Renaissance villas and townhouses. The "ideal" Georgian house was a symmetrical, horizontally oriented and, preferably, masonry structure, two stories tall, two rooms deep, with a central entrance in an odd number of bays--preferably five. The prevailing horizontality and an ordered base, body and top were often emphasized by a projecting "water table" above the foundation, belt courses between stories and a prominent cornice. Windows and doors lined up vertically and horizontally. Central front and rear entrances encouraged a center hall plan, particularly useful in Virginia for air circulation during the summer. Masonry buildings often had articulated quoins at the corners, at the edges of projecting pavilions, or surrounding doors, adding to the perception of solidity and handsome workmanship. Windows with multiple small, squarish panes and heavy muntins are also characteristic of this period. Window and door surrounds often included decorative moldings or pediments, but true porches were rare. Practitioners of the high Georgian style also perpetuated the use of the tripartite Renaissance-period Palladian or Venetian window, usually as a central visual focus.

The first local Georgian buildings were probably the Alexander family's residences built in the 1740s at "Abingdon," the site of National Airport parking garages, and at "Preston" south of Four Mile Run on the Potomac River. The ca. 1753 stone Carlyle House  (121 North Fairfax Street), home of "merchant prince" John Carlyle, is the oldest high-style Georgian structure in Alexandria. Its design reflects the eighteenth-century taste for highly articulated and symmetrical buildings. The house is strikingly similar to William Adam's 1725 Craigiehall in West Lothian, Scotland, likely because Carlyle copied the design from Adam's recently published pattern book. Despite living in town, Carlyle built essentially a country house. Set well back from the street, unlike his neighbors' homes, it had symmetrically flanking outbuildings, not unlike many a riverside plantation. Did Carlyle simply believe that this was the proper type of home for a gentleman, or did he harbor doubts about the ultimate success of the town?

Additional Reading

• Munson, James. Col. John Carlyle, Gent.
• Miller, T. Michael. Pen Portraits.
• Preisser, Thomas. Eighteenth-Century Alexandria, Virginia Before the Revolution, 1749-1776 (dissertation).
• Grim, Ronald. The Origins and Early Development of the Virginia Fall-Line Towns. (dissertation)

Points in Time

• 1761: William Pitt the Elder resigns as Prime Minister
• 1761: Sarah Carlyle, wife of John Carlyle and daughter of William Fairfax dies  
• 1763: French and Indian (Seven Years’) War ends  
• 1765: Stamp Act passed
• 1766: George Washington becomes an Alexandria trustee
• 1767: Townshend Acts passed  
• 1768: Stamp Act repealed
• 1768: Royal Academy founded
• 1768: Captain Cook voyages to Australia and New Zealand  
• 1768: George Washington sworn as a Fairfax County judge
• 1769: John Wilkes expelled from the House of Commons and imprisoned  
• 1769: Richard Arkwright’s “water frame” (spinning machine) patented  

The young town of Alexandria entered a new decade with high expectations; Great Britain had all but won the war against France, the frontier was relatively secure, and local industry and trade was picking up. The merchants of Alexandria were buying primarily tobacco, wheat and corn in the countryside and selling to the farmers and townspeople manufactured goods from England and sugar, rum and molasses from the West Indies. Among the earliest local industries was shipbuilding, driven directly by commerce. Thomas Fleming was the most prominent shipbuilder here at the time, having established a yard at Point Lumley at the foot of Duke Street. More than once, George Washington visited Alexandria to witness the launching of new ships, including Capt. Isaac Littledale's 1200-ton Hero in 1760 and the Jenny in 1768. Perhaps the largest ship built here was the 257-ton, London-registered Recovery. At this time John and Peter Weis established the first tannery in town. John Carlyle built a mill on Four-Mile Run, and the grain and flour trade was beginning to outstrip tobacco. Of course, house joiners were occupied erecting the dozens of new homes, shops and warehouses.

With all this work going on, the demand for labor was tremendous. With a wide open frontier, free white workers could establish their own farms on the edge of the wilderness instead of work for an employer in town. Scarce white labor was supplemented by a truly captive labor force, black slaves and white convict servants. With the slave trade still unrestrained, African slaves were widely available and increasing in numbers in Virginia. By 1762 the number of blacks, all or nearly all slaves, had grown to 264 out of a total of 1,214 Alexandrians. That year the Maryland Gazette advertised the arrival here of a shipment of slaves from Gambia. By the mid eighteenth century, chattel slavery had become fully institutionalized. For employers who had not the means or desire to own slaves, they could rent their services or hire indentured servants for a fixed period of time. Many of those who submitted to indentured servitude did so only as an alternative to jail. While many slaves became superior craftsmen and while slavery and servitude possibly cost employers less on a day-to-day basis, the product of unwilling workers was often less in both quality and quantity than their masters hoped. Another drawback was the stubborn refusal of slaves and servants to blithely give up their freedom. The newspapers of the time were filled with ads seeking the return of runaway slaves and servants. George Washington offered a reward for the capture of three slaves, Jack, Neptune and Cupid who had escaped from his Dogue Run Farm. Robert Adam and Peter Wise lost four convict laborers trained in various crafts. Naturally, the various building contractors also lost laborers, including the Irish-born John Murphy, a joiner, and John Winter, an English housepainter who had worked on George Washington's Alexandria townhouse.

Development and the first annexation

Growth in trade and population invariably led to development of the waterfront. Riverside lots were at a premium, and occupants of those lots built up wharves with fill dirt and timbers. Among these were John and Thomas Kirkpatrick who were granted the right to build wharves and warehouses just north of Queen Street. The town trustees also improved the public facilities at Point Lumley and Point West.

Clearly, the trustees had great expectations for the town. They pressured the owners of the marshy lots on the north end of town to drain and improve the land. They encouraged those on the waterfront to put wharf construction before such quotidian concerns as keeping Water (Lee) Street passable. The trustees also rescinded laws which put deadlines on improvement of lots after their purchase; these laws, passed at the founding of the town, had the unintended consequences of discouraging land acquisition and encouraging makeshift structures.
At the urging of the local elites, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed in November 1762 an act permitting the enlargement of the town. This first annexation created several new streets and scores of additional lots which were auctioned in May 1763.

Alexandria's civic center at the market square was developing around the county courthouse. On the third Monday of each month, when court convened, it was the political, economic and social center of town. Tavern business, in particular, picked up as visitors from the hinterlands arrived for justice-and gossip. The Fairfax court "could try nearly all crimes committed by slaves, assault,...civil suits...for land, debts or damages. It also levied some taxes, registered most legal documents, judged cases of bastardy and public drunkenness, supervised the care of orphans by guardians and issued ordinary licenses, set tavern prices, and controlled the construction of roads and public buildings..." (Diaries of George Washington, Vol. II)

As a necessary adjunct to the courthouse, William Ramsay undertook the construction of a new, brick jail in December 1763. And the first school, paid for largely by a lottery was built in 1761. Its upper room served as a town hall and assembly room. Other institutions important to the Anglo-Americans were budding too. As early as 1753 Rev. Charles Green of Truro Parish preached here every third Sunday. In 1765 Fairfax Parish was created, and local residents sought to build their own Anglican church. An early "chapel of ease" was erected at the northwest corner of Princess and Pitt streets in the 1760s, but it would not be until 1773 that a true church would be completed.

Place in Time

Alexandria was a young settlement in 1760. While some landmarks, such as the Carlyle House, defined the cultural landscape, many of our most precious buildings still had not been constructed. But Market Square had already been developed into the civic and commercial center in the 1750s. The town trustees acted quickly to define the governmental and economic center of the town. While occupying the geographical center of Alexandria, the market block's structures drew core activities and decision-making, which led to the town's ascendancy as the regional hub. Thanks to Penny Morrill's fascinating history of Market Square in the Alexandria Chronicle (Spring 1993), we can imagine the earliest functions on the block:

Stand on Market Square with your back to North Fairfax Street. Rather than a wide open area with the town hall looming in the background, you would have seen a series of wood frame and brick buildings along the perimeter-on Cameron, Fairfax and Market Alley, which bisected the block into a northern and southern half. As John Carlyle built his own house, the public buildings took shape. The Market House was constructed first in 1750 along the center of Cameron Street. In 1752, a jail was probably built just to the west of the Market House, a "necessary" (cesspool) was placed to the east, and a fenced constructed around the square. The Fairfax County Courthouse was added across from the Carlyle House the same year, as well as a pillory and stocks closer to Royal Street. In 1761 the School House and Town Hall was constructed from brick at Cameron and Fairfax streets, as were a watch House, a firewood House, and a prison at Market Alley and Fairfax Street. The Friendship and Sun Fire companies appeared along Market Alley.

Architecture

Excluding the few substantial, brick, Georgian homes, the average abode was probably much simpler and more difficult to classify as a particular style. Mostly constructed of wood, the humblest structures were one-room cabins with a loft. Some of these even had chimneys constructed of sticks and clay (although this was actively discouraged by the town trustees). More typical, perhaps, were those which consisted of one room on the first floor with one above or two rooms over two with a side passage. Based on the most economical pattern of narrow urban lots, this latter form became the most common during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some very fine, Georgian, Federal and Greek Revival townhomes came to be constructed in this fashion. This was also the predominant pattern in Philadelphia, America's largest city of the time and the urbane model which Alexandria consciously emulated.

Much of the architecture of the era was simple and understated-easy to forget when many surviving examples in the South are veritable mansions. George Washington's 1769 townhouse on Cameron Street was more typical of townhouses. Although finely finished, it was a modest, one-and-one-half-story, frame building without a kitchen. Although it burned in 1855, a twentieth-century replica of the townhouse now stands on the site, 508 Cameron Street.

Social Life

Despite living in a bustling seaport, Alexandrians did not believe in all work and no play. Horse racing was a very popular pastime, and prominent local figures like George Washington, John Carlyle and Robert Adam helped arrange contests at the two nearby tracks. Taverns proliferated and became more respectable, but the young town, called "inconsiderable" by one French visitor, still required some polish. George Washington recounted to his diary his attendance at a ball where "Musick and Dancing was the Chief Entertainment. However in a convenient room detached for the purpose abounded great plenty of bread and Butter, some Biscuets with Tea, and Coffee which the drinkers of could not distinguish from Hot water sweetened. Be it remembered that pocket handkerchiefs served the purposes of Table cloths and Napkins and that no apologies were made for either. I shall therefore distinguish this Ball by the Stile and title of the Bread and Butter Ball."

Politics

In the aftermath of the Seven Years' War, Parliament adopted a series of tax measures to recoup the Crown's expenditures in defending and administering its colonies. The Stamp Act of 1765  required the purchase of tax stamps to be affixed to newspapers, pamphlets, documents, playing cards and licenses. Two years later, the Townshend Acts, mandating import duties on tea, glass, lead, oil and paper, were passed. Taxation was an issue upon which the cash poor colonials could make common cause. Patrick Henry  was particularly vocal in the Virginia House of Burgesses, and other colonists instituted boycotts of British products with a cry of "No taxation without representation." The boycotts had their desired effect, as did the sometimes violent protests in New England. Locally, William Ramsay rejoiced at the March 1768 revocation of the Stamp Act. "[It] was repealed at thee clamor the distress and importunity of the manufacturing towns in Great Britain-nothing cou'd have put the importance of the Colonies to their Mother Country, in so clear a light." The Townshend Act continued to be opposed by non-importation movements, but more effectively by epidemic smuggling and evasion. In 1769, Washington carried to the legislature a proposed agreement on non-importation drafted by George Mason, but the Governor dissolved the House of Burgesses before the proposal could be considered.

Locally, politics was in the hands of an elite few. While Americans could complain of inadequate representation in Parliament, only landed white men here could vote. To those who ruled, it was self-evident who should rule, namely the gentlemen: those with the most education, the best upbringing, the most to gain and the most to lose. On the fringes of empire, there was perhaps more upward mobility; successful businessmen of "the middling sort" could sometimes become pillars of the community through wise investments, advantageous marriage or connections. A law degree or aspirations to a political career were not prerequisites for holding a post as a trustee, magistrate, mayor, or representative to the colonial legislature. No, making decisions for the rest of society was the responsibility and prerogative of a fortunate few, the highborn and the very successful. It is almost no surprise that men like George Washington assumed a number of successive responsible positions at a relatively young age. It was expected. In 1761, William Ramsay, one of the affluent founders of the town was invested as "Lord Mayor" of Alexandria – a largely honorary role, but one which suggests the prevailing conservatism and hierarchical social outlook modeled on that of the mother country.

Points in Time

• 1770: Boston Massacre   
• 1773: Boston Tea Party   
• 1773: first hospital for the insane in the thirteen colonies founded at Williamsburg, Virginia
• 1774: Rhode Island enacts first slave importation ban in the American colonies
• 1775: Revolutionary War begins; Washington named chief of Continental forces; first abolition organization founded in Philadelphia
• 1776: Declaration of Independence
• 1776: Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations; Edward Gibbon publishes The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
• 1776: first Shaker community founded at Watervliet, New York  
• 1777: Articles of Confederation written  
• 1777: Battle of Saratoga; first national day of thanksgiving to celebrate the Saratoga victory  
• 1778: Franco-American alliance
• 1779: Spain enters war against Britain

The 1770s: A Revolutionary Epoch: Economic and Physical Development

At the beginning of the 1770s, Alexandria's economy was on a sound footing as its merchants were gradually switching from the export of tobacco to wheat, corn, barley and oats, much of which was raised in the Shenandoah Valley. Most of the twenty or so international mercantile large firms in town were trading wheat and flour to the West Indies and Great Britain. Improvements were undertaken at Point West and Point Lumley, but one of the former public tobacco warehouses at Point Lumley (foot of Duke Street) was rented to Andrew Wales, the town's first commercial brewer. In 1774, Philadelphian Daniel Roberdeau constructed a large distillery at the foot of Wolfe Street (where the Harborside development is today). The same year, John Alexander laid out and sold eighteen new lots, also giving to the town the land for Wilkes and St. Asaph Streets.

The 1770s was also the time when the town's religious congregations began to complete permanent homes. As the official church of the colony, naturally the Church of England was at the center of religious and political life in Alexandria and the first to build a proper church. An 1750s Anglican chapel was eventually replaced by the James Wren designed Christ Church. The edifice took more than six years to construct, but was completed in 1773 by John Carlyle. Its location at what was then the upper end of Cameron Street away from the built-up section of town caused it to be referred to as the "Church in the Woods."

A Presbyterian congregation, made up largely of the local Scots, became quite active in this era. In 1775, John Carlyle and William Ramsay advertised for a builder to undertake the construction of a Presbyterian Meeting House  on Fairfax Street between Duke and Wolfe Streets.

The Revolutionary Era

As elsewhere in the colonies, the imposition of excise taxes on items such as glass, paper and paint caused furious debate in Virginia over the rights of the colonists and the prerogatives of the king and Parliament. In June 1770, Alexandrians John Carlyle, Robert Adam and Thomas Kirkpatrick met with other members of the Virginia legislature in Williamsburg to respond to the Townshend Act. All the delegates signed a new non-importation agreement. The agreement, a boycott of British products, was not very successful; according to factor Harry Piper, "all the stores on this side [of the Potomac] have imported goods as usual, and hitherto no notice have been taken of them." The other colonies took similar steps, with similar results. Virginia was the last colony to officially abandon nonimportation in 1771.

But events served to gradually radicalize the population of the colonies. Enforcement of the British acts, the levying of military supplies and the stationing of troops in American cities caused violence to break out in New York and Boston in 1770, including the incident known as the Boston Massacre. Then, a temporary relaxation of tension was followed by a series of mob attacks on royal ships enforcing trade regulations. The colonies began to set up "Committees of Correspondence" to regularize communication on the subject of England's actions and the responses of each colony.

Alexandrians formed a local committee of correspondence in 1774 at the time the British closed Boston Harbor. On behalf of the organization, John Carlyle and John Dalton informed the Bostonians that they were "deeply interested in the fate of their city now suffering the scourge of oppression... and make no doubt that the spirit which has distinguished Virginia as the intrepid guardian of American liberty, will shine forth in all its former Lustre." On July 18, 1774, George Washington, George Mason  and many other inhabitants of the town and county met at the courthouse on Market Square to approve the Fairfax Resolves. Penned by Mason, these resolutions were an assertion of the colonists' rights under British law and called for actions including a congress of representatives from each colony to prepare a plan for the "Defence and preservation of our Common rights"; a boycott of all English goods to begin September 1. Soon after, the colony also implemented a ban on the export of American commodities to Britain. Visitor Nicholas Cresswell confided in his diary that "Everything [in Alexandria is]...in the utmost confusion. Committees are appointed to inspect into the Character and Conduct of every tradesman, to prevent them selling Tea or buying British Manufactures." When the ship Hope arrived from Belfast with a shipment of Irish linen, the cargo was seized by the Fairfax County Committee and the linen was sold at auction to benefit the poor of Boston.

Preparing for an armed conflict which now seemed likely, the local militia began drilling on Market Square in 1774. There were two companies, one of "Gentlemen" and one of "Mechanics." George Washington came often from Mount Vernon to inspect and drill the troops. A poll tax was levied on the freeholders to purchase uniforms, arms and ammunition. Residents paid reluctantly, except for Quaker William Hartshorne, who, according to George Mason, "flatly refused; his conscience would not I suppose suffer him to be concerned in paying for the instruments of death." Nicholas Cresswell witnessed the Independent Company fire at an effigy of Lord North, the British prime minister, then carry it through the town to finally burn it. Much of Americans' anger was directed at North. The moderates were still not prepared to make the break with the monarchy; the Americans repeatedly pled with the king to rectify wrongs supposedly wrought by his ministers.

In 1774, however, the first Continental Congress  met to petition the king as united colonies, more or less. Soon, the closing of the port of Boston and British efforts to seize arms and powder stores brought New England to the brink of war.

"Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death"

When hostilities commenced at Lexington, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775, Alexandrians were not long in volunteering for service. George Washington was appointed commander-in-chief of all Continental forces largely on the strength of his French and Indian War experience. He selected Alexandrians Dr. James Craik  as chief physician and surgeon to the army and Dr. William Brown as surgeon general of the Hospital Middle Department. Townsmen participated in the 1775-1776 siege of Boston and in the battles of Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine and Monmouth. And the Northern Virginia troops included not only adult white men, but also African Americans, women, and some who were virtually children.

The Alexandria Line was part of General Daniel Morgan's regiment of riflemen, conspicuous for its role in the Battle of Saratoga. The defeated British Brigadier General John Burgoyne is reputed to have told Morgan "My dear sir, you command the finest regiment in the world."

Back home in Alexandria, the residents began to fear attack as early as 1775. Washington wrote William Ramsay urging him to make efforts to obstruct the river and begin constructing shore batteries. While they never successfully blocked the river, two batteries were built, although these had no cannon until at least a year later. A small flotilla was organized from three purchased sloops and two galleys built at the shipyard. The force averted a baptism of fire when Lord Dunmore, the colonial governor, entered the Potomac with nearly ninety ships and boats, but turned back near Dumfries.

The former colonies declared their independence in 1776, making a final break with England and explicitly blaming George. There were still many in America (about one-third of the population, according to John Adams) who sympathized with England and remained loyal. From before the commencement of hostilities, they found themselves in an increasingly dangerous position. Many fled to Canada or Britain, and many joined the British forces. In 1777 a group of Loyalists were charged with trying to set Alexandria aflame. Apprehended and put under guard in the schoolhouse, they nonetheless escaped, probably with the help of friends. As a consequence, the guards were whipped and a group of six suspected Tories was rounded up and sent to Williamsburg for trial. The men were later acquitted, likely for lack of evidence.

Alexandria became the center for the inoculation hospitals of the Southern Department; hundreds of Virginia and Carolina men were given the vaccination against smallpox. The infirmaries here though were reportedly ill-equipped and poorly run. Hardee Murfree attested that one cold night "Dr. Parker said it was not worth while to give them physic when the men were so naked and lying on the cold floor... One of the sick men had no clothing but an old shirt and half an old blanket... that night [some of them] died and I believe it was for want of clothes to keep them warm."

Besides the purging of local Loyalists, the war had other consequences for local politics. The new independent state government of Virginia began to charter and re-charter towns and cities. With the passage of an Act of Incorporation in December 1779, Alexandria’s oligarchical trusteeship government was replaced with an elected mayor/council system.

Slavery

The Revolutionary era was both the first crack in the institution of slavery and perhaps the last real opportunity for its destruction before the Civil War. The slaveholding patriots were not blind to the contradiction inherent in their claims for civil rights. Admirers of Locke and Rousseau, many foresaw the day when slavery would fade away; some even took some strides toward that end. Rather than give up their own slaves, however, Virginians looked first to curtailing the international slave trade. For many years they had been afraid that the continued importation of African slaves would encourage eventual revolt or frighten away white immigrants, particularly skilled craftsmen. And the soil in the Tidewater area was already tired; slaves already in the colony were proving sufficient for agricultural labor. In 1772 the House of Burgesses directed a petition to the Throne, imploring "your majesty's paternal assistance in averting a calamity of a most alarming nature. The importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast of Africa hath long been considered as a trade of great inhumanity, and under its present encouragement we have reason to fear will endanger the very existence of your Majesty's American dominions." The 1774 Fairfax Resolves called for "an entire stop forever put to such a wicked, cruel, and unnatural trade." The first anti-slavery legislation, however, came in the less slave- dependent New England. In 1774, Rhode Island legislated the emancipation of any slaves thereafter brought into the colony. Virginia forbade the importation of slaves from abroad in 1778-following closely Delaware's example-although the domestic trade was unaffected.

Part punitive measure, part practicality, and part humanitarianism, the British made it clear that they had no reservations about freeing, confiscating or accepting slaves into service. Some went to England or other British possessions, others served with the British armies and navy. Lord Dunmore raised a regiment of "Royal Ethiopians" to help put down the rebellion in Virginia.

A Place in Time

Today when we get together with friends or colleagues, we often choose to "go out and eat" or "go get a drink." So too did Alexandrians 225 years ago. Such eating and drinking behavior complemented games and discussion of the momentous events of the period.

In the 1770s, one of the best places to look at the taverns of Alexandria was the 100 block of North Royal Street. Richard Arell's Tavern was located on what is now Market Square. William McKnight's tavern was across the street, while widow Mary Hawkins's tavern (later known as Gadsby's) was near the corner of Cameron and Royal streets. They were only three of the eleven tavern-keepers providing bed, food and drink to travelers and townspeople in predominately two- and three-story frame buildings. In 1777 a new tavern of large proportions was under construction by John Dalton at the northeast corner of Cameron and Fairfax streets, but it was not completed until after his death. We know from an advertisement that this tavern was L-shaped and contained a two-story kitchen with an eight-foot wide fireplace with boilers and oven. A 28-horse stable and carriage house also graced the lot.

Jim Mackay, former Director of Alexandria History Museum at The Lyceum, wrote a fascinating thesis on taverns in Alexandria. He outlines their development and details their roles as cultural crossroads in eighteenth century towns. Individuals, predominately males, congregated in the taverns for social life, gaming, food and often excessive drink. People of all backgrounds and ranks would intermingle, although it is expected that gentlemen would have received some types of different treatment and greater respect. There were gentlemen's clubs in the taverns. We know from George Washington's diaries that he partook at both Arell's and Hawkins's taverns during this time.

While taverns generally had basic meals and beverages, they occasionally hosted fancy balls. In 1775, Nicholas Cresswell witnessed a ball here and reported: "Old Women, Young wives with young children in the lap, widows, maids and girls come promiscuously to these assemblies." Cresswell did not approve of the dances, judging them as "everlasting jigs." Although he left at 2 a.m., "part of the company stayed, got drunk and had a fight."

Artifacts from these taverns are quite different from those in homes. Alexandria Archaeology's tavern collections naturally have a high proportion of beverage related vessels including punchbowls, mugs, tankards, posset pots (for a hot milk-based drink), wine bottles and glasses, tumblers and firing glasses (thick bottomed vessels for toasting), and tea wares. They are made of glass and of the relatively inexpensive English cream and pearlwares, which obviously were broken in high quantities (and left for us to excavate). These artifacts held beverages like chocolate, coffee, tea (except during the Revolutionary period), apple cider, beer, wine, brandy, and rum punch.

Artifacts

Creamware, manufactured in England from the 1760s to ca. 1820, was the first "china" dinnerware which was affordable to a large percentage of Americans. Before the 1770s, it was more common to use wooden or pewter plates than to eat off costly ceramics such as white salt-glazed stoneware, delft, or Chinese porcelain. Creamware was popularized due to the marketing genius of Josiah Wedgwood, who gave a set of it to Queen Charlotte. Marketed thereafter as "Queensware," it satisfied consumer demand for something approximating the prized but expensive porcelain. Most creamware was undecorated, but some was transfer printed or hand- painted over the glaze in bright enamel colors. In the mid-1770s the Staffordshire potters began to add cobalt to the glaze and used cobalt blue Chinoiserie decoration, in imitation of porcelain designs. Once again, Wedgwood is credited with popularizing this ware, which he advertised in 1779 as Pearl White, and is known today as pearlware. When we find creamware on a site but no pearlware, we are likely to be digging a feature dating to the early 1770s.

Points in Time

• 1781: The Fourth of July is made a state holiday in Massachusetts and is celebrated with fireworks the first time in Newport, Rhode Island
• 1783: The first true daily newspaper is published in the U.S.; the Purple Heart medal is created
• 1784: The state of Franklin (western North Carolina) is denied admission to the Union
• 1785: The dollar-based system of money is adopted (the motto "E Pluribus Unum" was adopted the next year); first U.S. agricultural society founded; a company is established to build the first U.S. turnpike, the Little River Turnpike, from Alexandria to Snicker's Gap, Virginia
• 1786: The first spinning jenny for cotton is invented
• 1787: The US Constitution written
• 1787: James Fitch successfully tests a steamboat on the Delaware River
• 1788: First water powered wool yarn factory established in the U.S.; first dictionary published in the U.S.
• 1789: U.S. Constitution is adopted
• 1789: George Washington is elected first president  
• 1789: First tariff legislation in Congress

The 1780s: The Revolution ends

Alexandrians entered a new decade after five years of war. The town had prospered from sales of grain and foodstuffs to the French and to the Continental Army. Alexandria and its environs were bustling as soldiers dug fortifications, performed commissary duties, hauled sick soldiers, and guarded the Potomac River to prevent the British from plundering the countryside.

Revolutionary War pension papers document that Alexandria served as a prisoner of war camp for Hessian mercenaries hired to fight for the British. Particularly in early 1781, British presence on the Potomac and periodic raids caused the militia to make occasional sorties to Mt. Vernon to protect General Washington's home from privateers and led to the construction of a new battery by the town's citizens. One raiding party actually attempted to cut a Baltimore vessel out of Alexandria harbor, but was driven off. [Donald Shomette, Maritime Alexandria; Ethelyn Cox, “Alexandria, Virginia May 1774—Dec. 1783;" Virginia Calendar of State Papers]

Alexandria's mayor, James Hendricks, a former army officer, was instrumental in encouraging the construction of additional defenses and in cajoling the local merchants and millers to accept the credit or inflated scrip of the Continental Army in exchange for provisions. His efforts were particularly valuable as the allies prepared for what would be the decisive battle of the war.

Failing to achieve a final victory in the northeast or the middle colonies, the British concentrated more of their efforts in the South. In early 1781, a British army led by the turncoat Benedict Arnold took Richmond and Portsmouth and routed the Virginia militia under the Baron von Steuben. Lord Cornwallis arrived with another army in May and insisted that Virginia should be the main theater of war. Major General Sir Henry Clinton refused to send reinforcements to Cornwallis but ordered him to remain to establish a base. As Cornwallis's men dug in at Yorktown, the Americans and French decided to capitalize on their temporary numerical advantage and attack.

The Compte de Grasse's French West Indian fleet bottled up the vaunted British fleet, and the armies of Rochambeau and Washington forced the trapped Cornwallis to surrender his command on October 19. Although the formal peace was more than a year off, all sides recognized that the outcome of the war on the American continent had been settled.

In the spring of 1782, Rochambeau's army marched north to depart for France. On July 19 they encamped on a plain north of Alexandria. During the troops' stay it was reported that:

the most elegant and handsome young ladies of the neighborhood danced with the officers on the turf, in the middle of the camp, to the sound of military music and ... the circle was in great measure composed of soldiers who from the heat off the weather, had disengaged themselves from their clothes, retaining not an article of dress except their shirts which in general were neither extremely long nor in the best condition nor did this occasion the least embarrassment to the ladies many of whom were of highly polished manners....[T. Michael Miller, ed., Pen Portraits]

After eight years of conflict the American colonies had secured their freedom from Great Britain, and Alexandria emerged from the tortuous ordeal virtually unscathed. In September 1783, Alexandria was favored by a visit from the renowned General Nathaniel Greene, hero of the campaigns in New Jersey and the Carolinas. The Marquis de Lafayette  appeared the following year. But by the end of the revolutionary struggle, George Washington had emerged as the pre-eminent hero of the conflict. His prestige could not have been any higher than the day he trotted into Alexandria on December 31, 1783, having recently resigned his commission at Annapolis, Maryland. His arrival was announced by the discharge of thirteen cannon after which a reception was tendered by the town's leading citizens at DuVall's tavern, 305 Cameron Street. [Theodore Thayer, Nathaniel Greene, Strategist of the American Revolution; Fireside Sentinel, September 1987; Virginia Journal and Alexandria Advertiser]

Local politics and the Constitution

With the 1779 Act of Incorporation, Alexandria began its first decade of elected government. Each February, white male property holders twenty-one years of age and older who had been residents of the town for at least three months could choose by ballot, twelve "fit and able men...to serve as a mayor, recorder, aldermen and common councilmen...the persons so elected shall within one week after their election, proceed to choose out of their own body, by ballot, one mayor, one recorder, and four aldermen and the remaining six shall be common councilmen..." The mayor, recorder and four aldermen also functioned as a Court of Hustings with authority to try civil and criminal actions whose penalty did not exceed ten pounds or one thousand pounds of tobacco. In addition, they appointed constables, clerks, a town sergeant and a surveyor of the streets; issued tavern licenses; and probated wills and deeds. Robert T. Hooe, a successful merchant, became the first mayor in 1780. [T. Michael Miller, "A Brief History of the Mayoralty and City Council of Alexandria, Virginia"; James R. Caton, Legislative Chronicles of The City of Alexandria; Fireside Sentinel, April 1987]

In November 1785, former Mayor Richard Conway and 74 Alexandria merchants presented a memorial to the Virginia General Assembly containing what is still a familiar complaint:

...the present situation of the United States with regard to their commerce with Foreign nations... is carried on upon very unequal terms and under many disadvantages.... Foreigners of all Nations are freely admitted into the American Ports and to export therefrom any commodities whatsoever, subject to scarcely an other restrictions or duties…. [William & Mary Quarterly, Series II, Vol. I]

To remedy the situation, Alexandria merchants advocated that the "Confederation Government should be modified so that Congress should be vested with certain rights over foreign Trade..." Undoubtedly, this petition gave impetus to the Maryland/Virginia Conferences of 1785. On March 20, George Mason and Alexander Henderson of Virginia met in Alexandria with Daniel Jenifer, Thomas Stone and Samuel Chase of Maryland to discuss navigational and boundary disputes on the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. At the invitation of George Washington, the meeting adjourned to Mount Vernon on March 28th where a compact was signed by the two states guaranteeing free navigation of the Potomac. This conference precipitated the Annapolis Convention of 1786, which in turn led to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. It was no surprise that Alexandrians, who were Federalists to a man, supported the ratification of the Constitution. In 1789, Alexandrians gathered at Wise's Tavern to drink the first libation to the new government and to give the newly elected President Washington a proper send-off.

A political compromise had determined that a new national capital would be located in the South. Maryland and Virginia offered land bordering the Potomac River for the new federal city, and a committee of ten men from Alexandria and Georgetown, including John Fitzgerald, Robert T. Hooe and George Gilpin, published a broadside extolling the commercial advantages of the Potomac region.

Physical development

The year 1785 was an important one for local proponents of "internal improvements" in transportation. The General Assembly granted a charter for the construction of the "Little River Turnpike" west from Alexandria to Snicker's Gap. It was also in 1785 that the gentry of Virginia and Maryland met in Alexandria at Lomax's Tavern on Princess Street to organize a company to improve navigation of the Potomac. Known as the Potomac Company, it was spearheaded by George Washington who served as its first president. The enterprise was formed to construct a lateral canal around Great Falls and to improve navigation as far northwest as Cumberland, Maryland. By this time Alexandria was connected to Baltimore and Richmond by stage coach lines and packet boats. [William F. Smith & T. Michael Miller, A Seaport Saga]

The sound of the broad ax, saw and hammer were heard throughout Alexandria as many new houses, wharves and warehouses were built. In 1785 traveler Count Luigi Castiglioni described the town as "having 300 houses and a population of about 3,000 persons.... The public buildings included two churches (a Presbyterian and an Anglican), a Quaker Assembly and the municipal building. Alexandria then had various factories for the manufacture of bricks which, as the surrounding land was of soft, strong clay, could be made very cheaply." The first free school was established for orphans on the third floor of the new Alexandria Academy in 1785. [T. Michael Miller, ed., Pen Portraits]

The town again extended its boundaries in 1785 and 1786, largely because of the sales of additional tracts from the Alexander family's adjoining holdings. Unlike the streets laid out in the 1760s and early 1770s, new streets were not named for heroes of the French and Indian War — like Wolfe and Montgomery — but for heroes of the Revolution, Virginian patriots, and Englishmen sympathetic to the American cause, including Nathaniel Greene, LaFayette, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Washington, George Wythe, and John Wilkes. [Alexandria Gazette; Virginia Journal and Alexandria Advertiser; Henings Statutes at Large]

Commercial development

In response to a 1779 petition, the Virginia General Assembly made Alexandria an international port of entry with its own customs officer, Charles Lee, and customs house, 305 Cameron Street. From 1781 to 1783, a minimum of 85 vessels annually cleared and entered the harbor of Alexandria. Tobacco and flour exports rose dramatically at the end of the war. By 1783, trade patterns had largely been re-established with Europe with about half of Alexandria's export tonnage being transported there and most of the rest to the West Indies. [Joseph A. Goldenberg, "Virginia Port" in Chesapeake in the American Revolution]

Post-Revolutionary Alexandria witnessed a period of economic growth and development exhibited by the establishment of the town's first newspaper, the Virginia Journal and Alexandria Advertiser, which was primarily a business and commercial paper but carried brief items of the nation and the world.

Alexandria had truly come of age; all manner of items from anywhere in the world could be had here if the price was right. In close proximity one might find Dutch wholesalers, French dry goods dealers, sellers of Barbadian rum and Madeira wine, and exporters of flour and wheat for the European and West Indian markets.

All was not rosy, however. A postwar recession depressed trade late in the decade. The local tobacco trade had also dropped considerably because of soil exhaustion, continuing low prices, and the widespread cultivation of wheat. Some of the towns which had depended on the shipment of tobacco — towns like Colchester, Virginia and Bladensburg, Maryland — nearly disappeared. Alexandria's shipbuilding was also curtailed, possibly by a lack of suitable local timber and because of the existence of more profitable uses to which to put prime waterfront lots.

A Place in Time

Little survives of Alexandria's maritime heritage. Most eighteenth century buildings gave way to termites and industrialization. But more than one building still remains from the town's golden years as an international port. Stand at the intersection of Union and King Streets, and you will immediately notice its distinct character. Now the home of a Thai restaurant and a Starbucks, Fitzgerald's warehouse at 6 King Street is one of few surviving eighteenth-century warehouses in Old Town.

A "dashing" and "agreeable broad-shouldered Irishman," John Fitzgerald served as colonel of the Virginia militia and an aide- de-camp to Washington. He had moved to Alexandria in 1769 and returned after the war, purchasing, with Valentine Peers, the south side of the 200 block of King Street in 1788. The town council also granted him the sunken ground to the east of this lot. He proceeded to bank out 400 feet from the shoreline at King and Water (Lee) Streets, creating Fitzgerald's Wharf. On the wharf he constructed three brick warehouses. The uppermost stories of the buildings were joined to provide a 42 x 73-foot sail loft "all under one roof." [Fireside Sentinel, August 1991; Ethelyn Cox, Historic Alexandria Street by Street].

Colonel Fitzgerald served as mayor and collector of the port, but perhaps his most lasting contribution was his organization of fundraising for Alexandria's first Catholic church. He resolved to raise the necessary money on St. Patrick's Day, 1788 while at his home entertaining George Washington and others, debating the ratification of the Constitution and other matters of the day. Fitzgerald provided his home for Sunday Mass for Alexandria's Catholics until the edifice was finished. Constructed on land donated by Thornton Alexander (near the present Washington Street entrance to t. Mary's Cemetery), the church was not completed until 1795. Fitzgerald passed away at his home about four years later, twelve days before the death of his old friend, George Washington. [St. Mary's Catholic Church, St. Mary's: 200 Years for Christ].

Points in Time

• 1790: The first U.S. census taken; Alexandria's population is 2748, and nearly 22% are African Americans; Congress passes a naturalization act; first successful water-powered cotton mill erected; first patent granted
• 1790-1795: Warfare between the U.S. Army and the Indians of the old Northwest
• 1791: First Bank of the United States founded; Bill of Rights  is ratified; first internal revenue tax; Vermont becomes a state
• 1792: Construction of the White House begins; U.S. mint established at Philadelphia; Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin
• 1793: First federal fugitive slave law; Neutrality Act; Thomas Jefferson invents the moldboard plow
• 1794: Whisky Rebellion 
• 1795: First practical industrial steam engine in the U.S.
• 1797: First U.S. medical journal published
• 1798-1800: The Quasi-War with France  
• 1799: George Washington dies

At the dawn of a new decade Alexandrians were delighted to fete Ambassador Thomas Jefferson at Wise's Tavern (201 North Fairfax Street) upon his return from France in March 1790. During the ceremony Mayor William Hunter delivered these welcoming remarks: "As a commercial town, we feel ourselves particularly indebted to you for the indulgences which your enlightened representations to the Court of France have secured to our trade. You have freed commerce from its shackles..." Jefferson's reply acknowledged his guests' hospitality: "Accept my sincere thanks for yourself and the worthy citizens of Alexandria, for their kind congratulations on my return to my native country. I am happy to learn that they have felt benefit from the encouragements to our commerce which have been given by an allied nation...."

Jefferson's sentiments presaged the economic revitalization of the 1790s. This surge was fueled in part by the lucrative grain trade as thousands of wagons wended their way to the port of Alexandria from Fauquier, Loudoun, Prince William Counties to off-load their cargoes of wheat, flour, rye and corn. Enormous quantities of grain were transshipped to the Caribbean, Iberian Peninsula and Europe. The total exports from Alexandria amounted to $381,000 in 1791 and to $948,000 in 1795.

By 1790, Alexandria had become the principal port on the Potomac. In 1796, it ranked as the third largest exporter of flour and the seventh largest port in the United States. This growth is suggested by the myriad goods and services available in town. No more was the town a provincial depot. Alexandria in the 1790s was a grand cornucopia from which almost any item from ostrich feathers to pianofortes could be acquired. The town's streets and byways were dotted with silversmiths, saddlers, blacksmiths, furniture makers, bakers, whitesmiths, tanners, brewers, seamstresses and tobacconists to name a few.

The town's bustling "wharves could accommodate the storage of large quantities of materials and the erection of large structures." Ships from Spain, Britain, Portugal, the West Indies and the Caribbean unloaded their precious cargoes of imported china, rum and molasses. On April 28, 1792, Lund Washington, in a letter to George Washington wrote that the port of Alexandria "has seldom less than twenty square-rigged vessels in it and often more. The streets are crowded with wagons and the people all seem to be busy." Indeed by 1795, "Alexandria's exports placed it second behind Norfolk among Virginia's custom houses... Alexandria's share of Virginia's exports rose from 12% of the total value in 1791 to 29% in 1795." By the end of the decade nearly 1,000 vessels docked annually at the city wharves. And, by annexation, the town had been increased in size to incorporate all of the area we know today as "Old Town."

In November 1792, the General Assembly incorporated the first bank established in Virginia. Known as the Bank of Alexandria, it was first situated at 305 Cameron Street until a new structure (133 North Fairfax Street) was erected for its headquarters. It provided needed capital for investment and regional development.

Visitors were generally very positive about Alexandria's progress. According to Thomas Twinning, "What most struck me was the vast number of houses which I saw building... The hammer and the trowel were at work every where, a cheering sight." The Duc de la Rochefoucault noted: "Alexandria is beyond all comparison the handsomest town in Virginia and indeed is among the finest in the United States.

Some were more ambivalent: "[T]he situation of the town will soon make it a very important post... there are about 3,200 inhabitants; the houses are principally brick; the streets are not paved and being of clay, after rain they are slippery, it is almost impossible to walk in them." But the City Council was actively trying to remedy such problems. In 1794 Council passed an act to pave the principal streets with cobbles. But there was no pleasing everyone. A European emigrant wrote to his friend in London, rather unappreciative of Virginia culture. "Alexandria is one of the most wicked places I ever beheld in my life; cockfighting, horse racing, with every species of gambling and cheating, being apparently the principal business going forward. As a proof of this you may judge of the extent of this dissipation when I inform you, this little place contains no less than between forty and fifty billiard tables...."

In truth, many Alexandrians favored more refined pursuits. In 1799, impresario Thomas Wade West built the town's first permanent theater at 406 Cameron Street. It was a "large three-story structure decorated with handsome pediments and deep cornices, the window frames, tresses and rustic work of stone." For many years it was the scene of plays by Shakespeare, Moliere and other notable bards. To promote literary and cultural awareness, a Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge was formed in 1790. It served as a precursor to the private organization which, in 1794, established the Alexandria Subscription Library, the first private library company in Virginia.

As a seaport town Alexandria was vulnerable to epidemics including yellow fever and malaria. To contain these contagions, in 1793 Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick  was appointed health office with authority to set up a quarantine station at Jones Point for the inspection of ships. "By January 1, 1794, Dick had entered a total of 55 vessels in quarantine and the contagion did not reach Alexandria." [Shomette, Maritime Alexandria]

The year 1790 was the time of the first national census, a time when the town's demographics were changing rapidly. The population was growing very quickly in this prosperous era; between 1790 and 1798, the town's population grew by about 2000 individuals or 41%. Some of these new residents were members of the Society of Friends, who increasingly migrated here from Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the 1780s. Many Quakers became prominent businessmen and civic leaders. As early as 1796, Quakers had founded an early abolition organization in Alexandria known as the "Society for the Relief and Protection of Persons Illegally Held in Bondage."

Alexandria's African American population was also increasing, particularly in the numbers of free blacks or former slaves. These people had been manumitted by their masters or had purchased their freedom through hard work and careful savings. Many of the artisans who built Alexandria were skilled African Americans, including free blacks. Skilled laborers were in a better position to earn a little money toward the purchase of their freedom. Being more valuable to their owners, however, the price of their freedom was usually dear. One noteworthy individual who never gained his freedom was "Negro Tom," a slave of Elizabeth Cox of Fairfax County. A true prodigy, Tom was referred to in a newspaper obituary as a "human calculator" for his prodigious mathematical abilities. Illiterate from the denial of education, he nonetheless could perform amazing feats of memory and calculation. An undeniable although qualified admiration is apparent in the account despite the pervasive racism of the time.

National and international events

In 1789, Virginia and Maryland had joined in donating territory to establish a new federal capital city on the banks of the Potomac River. Expecting a bright future as part of a booming metropolis, Alexandrians rejoiced when surveyor Andrew Ellicott and his assistant, African American Benjamin Banneker, arrived in town in the spring of 1791 to lay out the new district. In a public display, Mayor Philip Marsteller, the Commonality and free masons marched to Jones Point on April 15, 1791 to lay the first cornerstone of the District.

The Federal government's internal revenue legislation of 1791 instituted an excise tax on whiskey-the only form in which grain grown west of the Allegheny Mountains could be transported and sold in the east. The western settlers, otherwise largely ignored by the Federal and state governments, irately and not unjustifiably charged the government with enforcing "taxation without representation," the rallying cry of the patriots of a generation earlier. With mob violence directed against Federal officials in western Pennsylvania, the government concluded that the insurrection was a real threat to the nation's security. President Washington took personal command of an army mustered by the states to pacify the affected area by force. Like forty years earlier, hundreds of Virginia militia marched toward the Monongahela to secure the frontier. This time, however, with the approach of the army, the "enemy" melted away into the countryside, and only a handful were arrested and tried.

Franco-American cooperation dissolved after Louis XVI was deposed. True, many Americans were still strongly pro-French, but others were just as staunchly mistrustful of the radical Jacobins and the consulate and the empire which followed. The rivalry between Britain and France continued unabated. The French were highly critical and suspicious of the Jay Treaty which was concluded between England and the U.S. in 1794. Congress passed an Act of Neutrality with respect to these great powers- over the objections of the French and a minority of Americans who considered it a violation of the Franco-American military alliance that had been signed in 1778 and which was largely responsible for winning the Revolution. Relations deteriorated rapidly with a series of high-handed French diplomatic moves. Soon the French began to intercept American shipping and, in the fall of 1798, the United States found itself in an undeclared naval war. U.S. Naval personnel were recruited at Alexandria and soon the town's shipyards were bustling as privateers were being constructed for service against the enemy. The fledgling American Navy acquitted itself well, but many commercial vessels were seized. At least twenty Alexandria registered ships were captured; the National Archives has several boxes of invoices of cargoes seized. American ground forces (including the "Alexandria Blues") and military installations (including the earth fort constructed at Jones Point by French engineer Jean de Vermonnet) saw no action. The Adams administration finally smoothed over differences with the French and signed a new commercial treaty.

The century ended on a sad note with the death of George Washington December 14, 1799. His funeral was virtually an Alexandria affair; perhaps a quarter of the townspeople participated in some fashion, and many streamed to Mount Vernon to pay homage their hero and beloved friend and neighbor. Washington's death appropriately marked the end of the Revolutionary era and the beginning of the passing of the generation which had triumphed in that struggle.

Place in Time

We walk through Jones Point Park today enjoying the pastoral scene within the city and under the shadow of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. As dogs romp and children play soccer, it is incredible to imagine how this boot of land became the starting point for America's capital, the District of Columbia. The Residence Act was passed on July 15, 1790, authorizing President Washington to locate the ten-mile-square capital on the Potomac River between the Eastern Branch (Anacostia River) and the Connogochegue, near Williamsport, Maryland. On the advice of Andrew Ellicott, the director of the D.C. survey, Washington altered his initial plan to include the thriving port of Alexandria the southeastern and southwestern sides of the District would "Begin...at Jones Point, being the upper cape of Hunting Creek."

The survey team crossed the marshy western end of Jones Point and set up camp near shore. Mathematician Benjamin Banneker maintained the high-tech astronomical and surveying instruments and did the calculations to assure proper alignment of the boundaries. The team indicated the precise spot where the first of forty stones would be put to demarcate the boundaries of the District.

The stones marking the boundary are unbelievably still extant in today's urban environment. Walk to the seawall near the lighthouse and look down into the opening to see what remains of the southern cornerstone. Although the original stone was erected with grand ceremony on April 15, 1791, it is possible that it was replaced in 1794. Other boundary markers can be viewed along the southwestern line of the District of Columbia that cuts across Alexandria: Southwest Mile Marker 1 at the southeast corner of Wilkes and Payne streets; Southwest Mile Marker 2 at the east side of Russell Road north of King Street; Southwest Mile Marker 3 at the north end of the First Baptist Church parking lot, 2900 King Street. They are protected by fences placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Southwest Mile Marker is just north of Alexandria near Fairlington Village at Wakefield and King streets, but is broken and partly covered by the pavement.

Artifacts: Piercy Pottery

In 1974, a five-foot deep privy was excavated at 406 King Street. In 1795-1796, this was the rear of Piercy and Graham's china and glass shop. The privy produced more than 80 vessels of Piercy's coarse red earthenware, including several large dishes and pans decorated yellow slip. Also found were a large assortment of English ceramics and glass, lead bale seals, a watch fob, buttons, eyeglass frames, and a folding rule.

Henry Piercy, Alexandria's best known earthenware potter, came to Alexandria from Philadelphia in 1792. His pottery was located on South Washington Street, beneath what is now Lloyd's Row. He advertised his redware pottery as "equal to any work in Philadelphia or elsewhere." It is indeed very similar to forms and styles produced in Philadelphia.

Architecture

With the close of the Revolution and the adoption of the Constitution, Americans sought to establish their own national identity apart from their primarily British roots. As in politics, architectural taste at once reflected both English precedents and an independent streak. The "Federal period" called for a new, "Federal style" of architecture.  

Sharing many of the elements of its predecessor, the Georgian style, Federal architecture was more chaste, refined and attenuated. The two buildings of Gadsby's Tavern, 134 North Royal Street, provide a side-by-side comparison of the styles (see below). The smaller, south building, built ca. 1785 is clearly Georgian, with its center hall, horizontality, heavy cornice, prominent jack arches and water table. The large 1792 building has a much plainer (and more "planar") facade; it too has jack arches, but of rubbed, gauged brick and not Renaissance-inspired stone voussoirs. There is no stone belt course between stories. While symmetry is still very important, it is not as rigid as the Georgian; the entry has now been put off-center in a four-bay facade. The cornice and door surround are somewhat simpler and lighter. The door is flanked by fluted neoclassical columns.

Points in Time

• 1800: Presidential campaign which leads to an electoral tie --Thomas Jefferson is finally elected the next year, marking the effective end of the Federalist Party and leading to the Twelfth Amendment
• 1801-1805: War between the U.S. and the Barbary pirates  
• 1802: Martha Washington dies
• 1803: Louisiana Purchase 
• 1803: Supreme Court decision in Marbury v. Madison 
• 1803-1806: Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific  
• 1804: Alexander Hamilton mortally wounded in duel with Aaron Burr
• 1806-1812: Various U.S. efforts to embargo European goods in response to French and British abuses of American commerce
• 1807-1808: Robert Fulton and John Stevens introduce first successful steamboats  
• 1808: Federal ban on importation of slaves goes into effect

The Eighteen-Oughts: Alexandria, District of Columbia

The Alexandria of 1800 basked in the sunshine of economic prosperity as the premier port on the Potomac River. Its harbor bristled with activity as ships unloaded their cargoes of Antigua rum, Puerto Rico coffee and Lisbon wines, as well as an assortment of manufactured goods from Great Britain. The population was said to be 4,971 in 1800, but grew to 6,543 by 1808 and to 7,143 in 1810.

Included within the boundaries of the District of Columbia in 1791, Alexandria did not legally become a component of the federal district until 1801. The Fairfax County Court, which had met on Market Square since 1752, relocated to the town of Providence, now Fairfax City, in April 1800.

By June 1800, the federal government began its move from Philadelphia to the planned Washington City, where Congress convened its first session on November 17. Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott suggested in a letter that Alexandria would have been established as the seat of the government, if George Washington had not been confined to a choice on the east side of the Potomac. Washington, sensitive to charges of financial impropriety, had been reluctant to openly lobby for his hometown since he was the owner of adjacent real estate. [Stoessel, The Port of Alexandria in the Eighteenth Century]

Commerce and trade

Although Alexandria's shipping interests had been harmed by the undeclared naval war with France, trade soon rebounded. The Alexandria Advertiser editorialized in 1802, that "Not more than two years since it was a rare thing to see a square rigged vessel in our harbour; we now have our wharves lined with vessels destined for foreign ports. Our merchants have generally received their fall goods, and we sincerely hope they will reap the reward of their labors..." From 1801 to 1810, Alexandria shipped to foreign countries 613,895 barrels of flour and 233,139 bushels of wheat. The town's major markets were Portugal and Spain. The West Indies remained the best market for flour, taking nearly one- third of Alexandria's exports in addition to 35% of its corn. A large percentage of Alexandria's commerce also centered around its coastwise trade with New England. Tobacco, preserved meats, grain and forest products account for the majority of commodities exchanged. [Peterson, "The Alexandria Market Prior to the Civil War," William & Mary Quarterly (Vol. 11, Series 2)] By 1810, Alexandria also ranked third in the nation in the production of refined sugar (see Place in Time, below). Crude sugar was imported from the West Indies and New Orleans in exchange for cargoes of flour and tobacco.

But sometimes trade brought tragedy. As a seaport community Alexandria was continually exposed to plagues, epidemics and other serious diseases. The venerable Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick estimated that nearly 3,000 inhabitants left town during the yellow fever epidemic of 1803, and of those who remained, 200 or more became permanent residents of Penny Hill Cemetery. [Smith and Miller, Seaport Saga]

After 1805 Alexandria's trade was somewhat disrupted by the construction of a causeway from the Virginia shore to Mason's Island. This structure not only obstructed the river passage between Alexandria and Georgetown but it blocked the flow of commercial traffic down the Potomac Canal from the western hinterlands to the port of Alexandria. As a result, Alexandrians began to agitate for the construction of a canal paralleling the river.

At the same time there were more serious challenges to Alexandria's commerce. One of the weapons in the war between Great Britain and France were paper blockades of their enemy's ports. Should any neutrals violate the blockades, each of the combatants was more than willing to seize their ships and cargoes. The British also turned to the forced impressment of sailors from American ships to replenish the Royal Navy. The Jefferson Administration responded to the situation by passing a series of Non-importation Acts. Finally in December 1807, Jefferson declared a complete trade embargo with foreign countries. As an instrument of diplomatic policy, the embargo was ineffectual and only served to devastate American ports. Those who obeyed suffered grave damage and ships still abroad were prey to the French. Some enterprising traders nonetheless carried on a brisk smuggling trade. Faced with widespread opposition, President Jefferson signed the Non-Intercourse Act in 1809, which repealed the Embargo Acts and re-opened American shipping to other countries, excepting that of France and Great Britain.

Alexandria ended the first decade of the nineteenth century with a spectacular fire which ravaged the waterfront. "It commenced in a cooper's shop near the wharves adjoining Union Street on September 24, 1810 and consumed nearly every building from Prince to Duke Street." [Seaport Saga]

Land Transportation

By any standard, land travel in early Virginia was cumbersome and slow. Hogsheads of tobacco were rolled over mere paths while stagecoaches and carriages crept along roads filled with ruts and stones. With access to a deep water port, Alexandrians initially neglected the importance of a transportation system to the transmontane region. Alexandria's lifeblood, however, depended on the transport of wheat and flour from the hinterlands by wagon.

In 1796, Virginia granted the Fairfax and Loudoun Turnpike Company the first private charter in the state to construct a road from Alexandria to the ford of the Little River at Aldie. Unsuccessful in this venture, the company was reorganized in 1802 and renamed the Little River Turnpike Company. By 1806, with some financial aid from the state, it had laid out, paved and opened a new road to Aldie. In 1808 the Fauquier and Alexandria Turnpike Company built a new paved road between Fairfax and Warrenton and connected to the Little River Turnpike. In an era when most turnpikes failed to turn a profit, the Little River, under the direction of Alexandria Quaker Phineas Janney, paid dividends to its shareholders. [Harrison, Landmarks of Old Prince William] Alexandrians also shortened the distance to the towns of Colchester, Occoquan and Fredericksburg. The Hunting Creek Bridge Company was chartered to erect a toll bridge over Great Hunting Creek. The span was completed sometime before 1810, and the Hunting Creek Turnpike was extended to Dogue Run. At the north end of town, the Washington-Alexandria Turnpike Company began to construct a road toward the capital in 1808. The road roughly paralleled the current Route 1, then crossed Four Mile Run, and eventually led to the new Long Bridge across the Potomac. Completed at a cost of $100,000 in 1809, this 5,000-foot bridge was reputed to be the longest in the world. The route was a real boon to businessmen and local citizens since it halved the distance from Alexandria to Washington City.

Politics and law

Virginia laws remained in effect in Alexandria until the U.S. Congress passed a new charter for the town in 1804. The charter eliminated the offices of recorder and aldermen, divided the town into four wards, and provided for a sixteen-member common council to be elected annually. [Macoll, ed., Alexandria, A Towne in Transition]

From the beginning, residents debated the legal and political status of Alexandria within the new Columbian District. Some, including former U.S. Attorney General Charles Lee, forwarded a petition to Congress in 1803 which called for the retrocession of the town because "our characters differ altogether from those of the citizens of Washington and George-Town, that we are `men of industrious habits,' in possession of commerce, arts and mechanism, consequently incapable of cooperating with the vagabonds and speculators in the City." [Alexandria Expositor] The controversy would raise its ugly head later in the century.

Between 1800 and 1809, the citizens of Alexandria provided lavish entertainments for each of the three sitting U.S. presidents — Adams, Jefferson and Madison. With the new capital so close, it was natural that the commander-in-chief would occasionally visit. This "tradition" has continued to this day.

In August, 1809, City Council passed an ordinance which required that each of the approximately 750 free African Americans residing in Alexandria by 1809 had to have a white person attest to his good character in order to be allowed to remain within the city. Members of the Society of Friends protested the legislation. Whether the measures were strictly enforced remains a question for debate. [Miller, Out of Bondage: A History of the Alexandria Colonization Society; Alexandria History (Vol. VII, 1987); Alexandria Gazette] The year before, the federal government had enacted a ban on the further importation of African slaves. Although there was still frequent smuggling, the reduction in the supply of slaves pushed up their prices. Meanwhile, demand intensified with the spread of cotton cultivation in the wake of technological advances in that crop's processing. As a result, the supply-demand situation encouraged most Southern slaveholders to be less willing to manumit their slaves during the antebellum period. It also encouraged Virginia slaveholders to sell one of their greatest assets, human beings, to plantations of the Deep South.

Place in Time

For many years, the site of the first sugar refinery in Alexandria was the convenient place to park when going to the Old Town movie theater or to services at Christ Church. More recently, the half block on Cameron Street between Columbus and Alfred streets has become home to the Alexandria Red Cross and several families in new townhouses. The City archaeologists came to the parking lot in the 1980s armed with historic fire insurance maps to discover if we could find the remains of an early nineteenth-century sugar refinery. During five field seasons, archaeologists and volunteers dug the entire half block, finding the remains of the foundations, exterior vats and outbuildings, a large cistern, and the home of one of the owners. Research provided by Sara Revis assisted in recreating the bustling activities which occurred here between 1804 and ca. 1828 when the sugar house ceased operation.

Messrs. Brunner and Moore ran the following advertisement in the fall of 1804: "Sugar House—the subscribers have on hand at their Sugar House in Alexandria Loaf and Lump sugars and molasses, their own manufacturing, which they sell at the Philadelphia and Baltimore prices." They had already constructed a five-story sugar house on the lot. Moore bought out Brunner's interest three years later, including the acre of ground, buildings and "all moulds, boilers, coppers, and implements made use of in the sugar refinery...." During the same decade Jacob Hoffman constructed his own sugar house on Washington Street just south of his home (which is now known as the Lloyd House, administrative offices of the Office of Historic Alexandria). Hoffman's complex also included a factory for tobacco products.

If you stood on the corner of South Alfred and Cameron streets 190 years ago, you would have seen two sugar houses at which 800,000 pounds of sugar was produced annually. About seven enslaved men and boys toiled at each refinery at the physically strenuous and dangerous tasks of refining the raw West Indies muscovado to hard, white sugar cones for domestic use and export. Alexandria's sugar production ranked third in quantity only to the entire states of New York and Pennsylvania, even though our population was less than one-tenth that of Philadelphia or New York. [Barr, Cressey and Magid, "How Sweet It Was," in Historical Archaeology of the Chesapeake]

Architecture

The buildings are chiefly of brick, some of them very stately and elegant. The banks are kept in houses quite magnificent...." So did Captain Henry Massie describe the town of Alexandria in 1808. The most magnificent of the banks was assuredly the Bank of Alexandria, a three-story brick edifice completed in 1807 and assessed at a value of $50,000. The bank failed in the Panic of 1834, and the structure was thereafter incorporated into James Green's Mansion House Hotel complex. Now perhaps the second oldest purpose-built bank building in America, you can see the structure today restored to its Federal-period appearance. Particularly notable are its neoclassical arched doorways with their American eagle carvings on the keystones. 

Points in Time

• 1810: West Florida annexed by the U.S.
• 1811: First Bank of the United States’ charter is not renewed, bank closes; slave revolt near New Orleans
• 1812: Battle of Tippecanoe 
• 1812-1815: War of 1812 
• 1814: British attack Baltimore and Washington; U.S. government flees to Virginia: White House, Capitol burned; “Star-Spangled Banner” written; fully mechanized cotton textile mill established at Waltham, Massachusetts; U.S. launches first steam warship
• 1815: Cumberland Road begun  
• 1816: Second Bank of the United States chartered; James Monroe elected President, Federalists do not field a candidate
• 1817: New York Stock Exchange established; Erie Canal begun  
• 1817-1818: Treaties with Britain begin settlement and demilitarization of the U.S./Canada borderline; Seminole Wars, Andrew Jackson invades East Florida
• 1818: Boston establishes public elementary schools; American Colonization Society founded  
• 1819: Financial panic; Adams-Onis Treaty with Spain; Unitarian Church founded  
   

The War of 1812

Few periods of Alexandria's history have been more tumultuous than the War of 1812. During the first decade of the nineteenth century, Great Britain's interdiction of American shipping, impressment of U.S. seamen, and its support of Indian depredations against the American frontier exacerbated its poor relationship with the United States. Finally, as the crisis intensified, Congressional "War Hawks" clamored for military action and, in June 1812, President James Madison issued a Declaration of War against the British.

The U.S. was ill-prepared for the conflict. Prophetically, the Alexandria Gazette editorialized in June 1812: "What pledge have we that a naval force will not be sent to lay our rich maritime cities under enormous contributions or raze them to the ground?" By September the impact of war preparations could be felt in Alexandria as a federal tax was assessed on more than one hundred local families. The Gazette announced that "all young men whose many feelings dispose them to join the service of their country were requested to meet at the courthouse."

Fearing occupation by British forces, several townsmen met with the Secretary of War Armstrong to solicit arms and ammunition on March 21, 1812. Alexandrians also convened with President Madison and General William Winder and apprized them that unless funds were expended for Alexandria's defense, the town would be at the mercy of the British. The Common Council secured loans from three banks totaling $50,000 for the purpose of mounting defenses against the river approaches. Alexandria banks also advanced the national government $35,000 for the purpose of reinforcing Fort Washington and for buying arms. In February 1814, citizens sent the Common Council a petition requesting that five cannon be mounted along the waterfront. Still, when General Winder inspected Alexandria on July 25, 1814, he declared the town was inadequately defended.

On August 6, 1814, a British fleet consisting of nearly fifty vessels sailed into the Chesapeake. Commanded by Rear Admiral George Cockburn, the Brits planned a two pronged attack; troops would land at Benedict, Maryland on the Patuxent River, while the naval force, including 1,000 men under the command of Captain James Gordon, would continue up the Potomac to Washington. The British succeeded admirably, routing American troops at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24, 1814, and burning nearly all of Washington's public buildings-including the Capitol and the Executive Mansion-on the 25th and 26th.

Alexandrians recognized the increasing peril as the British juggernaut inched its way northward, up the Potomac. With the exception of two institutions, the commercial banks of Georgetown, Washington and Alexandria agreed to loan the Government $200,000 for the purpose of providing a defense for the district. [Alexandria Gazette] The Alexandria town and county militia were called out en masse in late August of 1814 and were ordered to cross the Potomac to take up a post between Piscataway and Fort Washington. They took with them nearly all the arms and artillery belonging to the town, leaving Alexandria defenseless. Thus, when the militia retreated to the Virginia countryside and Captain Dyson, commander of Ft. Washington, blew up the fortress, Alexandria's fate was sealed. On the morning of August 28, 1814, a committee led by Alexandria Mayor Charles Simms rowed south to meet the British Captain Gordon and request terms of surrender. Refusing to give conditions, Gordon and his fleet arrived in front of Alexandria in the evening. The next morning, the British lined up their gun boats (two frigates, the 38-gun Sea Horse and the 36-gun Euryalus; a "rocket ship"; three bomb vessels of eight guns each; and a two-gun schooner). They were "so situated that they might have laid [the town] in ashes in a few minutes." [Shomette, Maritime Alexandria)

Captain Gordon offered terms which called for the removal of naval supplies, ships and agricultural commodities from the port. At the mercy of the British squadron, the town council acceded to the enemy's demands, and for the next five days the British looted stores and warehouses of 16,000 barrels of flour, 1,000 hogsheads of tobacco, 150 bales of cotton and some $5,000 worth of wine, sugar and other items. On September 2, the British weighed anchor and, after a skirmish with American forces at White House Landing below Mount Vernon, they made their escape.

On Christmas Eve 1814, American and British peace commissioners signed the Treaty of Ghent, formally ending the War of 1812. Although Alexandria's grain trade would briefly recover, the losses occasioned by British looting coupled with the economic panic at the end of the decade sounded the death knell for Alexandria as a major seaport.

The people, their commerce and their institutions

Several detailed accounts published in the teens paint an excellent profile of Alexandria's social, commercial and maritime status during this era. The following sketch of Alexandria was gleaned from A Chorographical and Statistical Description of the District of Columbia published in Paris in 1816. It notes that the [shipping] tonnage of Alexandria in 1811, was eleven hundred and fifty-nine, of which its merchants are the sole proprietors....

During the first three months of the year 1811, the exports of Alexandria to foreign countries, consisted of goods, wares, and merchandises, estimated at 507,988 dollars, of which there were of flour 47,687 barrels, valued at nine dollars per barrel. The other articles were fish, staves, shingles, beef, port, hams, lard, corn, rye, oats, bread, candles, soap, etc....

The principle merchants of this place have failed in consequence of losses abroad, or unfortunate speculations. Those who carry on business at present employ their capitalism in a more cautious manner.

Manufacturers are yet in their infancy. Two manufacturers of cut nails have been lately established (1816) and several of woolen and other cloths.... Two newspapers are published in the town... There are 9 or 10 physicians, but there is no medical society. Any person may exercise this profession.... The obstetric art is in the hands of old women who are supposed to possess it as a gift of nature. Dr. Dangerfield informs us that surgical cases are rare... Baths have been lately established, the price of which is half a dollar.

The population of Alexandria has increased... Many foreigners have been attracted thither on account of the generous sentiments of the natives, who, convinced that the worth of man depends on his conduct and talents, feel no prejudice on account of his foreign birth...

The inhabitants are truly hospitable. The usual visit of friendship is in the evening, when tea and cakes and fruit is offered... The women, industrious by habit, prefer the joys of private life and objects of utility, to parade and luxurious repasts....

The right of suffrage for members of the Common council belongs to every free white male citizen of full age who has a freehold estate in the town, or who has resided therein for the space of a year, paid a public tax, and has been a housekeeper three months...." [Miller, ed., Pen Portraits of Alexandria, Virginia]

A census taken in the year 1817 enumerated a population of 5,513 white residents and an African American population of 2,646 consisting of 1,599 slaves and 1,047 free people. A count was also made of the buildings, businesses and institutions in Alexandria revealing 1321 houses and warehouses, 51 sheds occupied by artisans, seven houses of worship, six banks, one brewery, seven biscuit bakeries, two sugar refineries, two potteries, one brass foundry, two nail factories, one morocco leather factory, two plaster mills, two ship yards, five lumber yards, one vinegar yard, five livery stables, three tanneries and four rope walks. Among the buildings and institutions were 22 private schools, and one free, "Lancastrian" school, built with the town's funds in 1812. [Minutes of the Common Council; Alexandria Gazette 10/2/1817]

Transportation

Alexandria entered a new era of transportation in 1815 as the steamboat Washington began packet service between Georgetown, Washington, Alexandria and Aquia Creek. Other vessels soon engaged in the trade, including the Camden and the Dandy and Surprise which sailed between Alexandria and Georgetown. In August 1818 a group of entrepreneurs gathered at the Exchange Coffee House to establish a major steamboat operation which would ply the waters between Alexandria and Norfolk. [Shomette, Maritime Alexandria]

Before the construction of the Mason's Island causeway in 1808, barge and boat traffic to Alexandria could descend the river from above Georgetown. The causeway virtually blocked this transportation corridor and made more treacherous the currents of the channel. Such a state of affairs was intolerable to Alexandrians who had supported financially the construction of the Potomac Canal. Several memorials were forwarded to Congress requesting that funds be allocated to construct a lateral canal around the western terminus of the causeway to Alexandria. Congress passed an act in 1812 establishing a canal company in Alexandria. The war intervened, however, and little was accomplished.

In March 1817, the General Assembly of Virginia incorporated a second Alexandria Canal Company, charged with constructing a canal from Goose Creek near Leesburg to the waters of Hunting Creek in Fairfax County. The commissioners met at the Exchange Coffee House in Alexandria on March 25 and commenced selling stock in the Company. By November a resolution was passed by the Virginia Board of Public Works instructing an engineer to survey the route. Despite a promising beginning, this venture also languished and fell victim to the economic malaise which enveloped the country in 1819. Not until May 1830 would Congress again authorize an Alexandria Canal Company.

Although Congress authorized the construction of the Alexandria and Leesburg Turnpike (Route 7) in 1813, little was accomplished on the project until the 1820s.

A Place in Time

In 1817, Alexandria's Commonalty decided to erect a new market house on Royal Street. Designed by the famous architect Benjamin Latrobe "the building was connected to old market house on Cameron Street, was 154 feet long and 24 feet wide. It was a three-story brick structure, the cupola containing the bell and town clock. On the eastern side of the building was a two-story porch supported by brick pillars. The first floor was a market, providing a total of twenty-three butcher stalls on the square. There were also benches under the portico between the pillars for the country people. The second floor contained the Alexandria Library in the north, the office of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, the Exchange Coffee House and Reading room, and after 1827 the Town Hall for Council meetings. The third floor was rented from the city by the Alexandria Museum." [Morrill, "Alexandria Virginia's Market Square" in The Alexandria Chronicle Spring 1993]

Points in Time

• 1820: Missouri Compromise; New York is largest American city; only six percent of Americans live in cities
• 1821: Santa Fe Trail opened; American Colonization Society establishes African colony of Liberia; Saturday Evening Post founded
• 1821-1826: U.S. recognizes republican governments in Spain’s former Latin American colonies
• 1821-1827: Half of the decade’s annual best selling books are novels by James Fenimore Cooper, including three of his “Leatherstocking Tales”  
• 1822: Planned slave revolt crushed in Charleston
• 1823: Monroe Doctrine declared  
• 1824: Henry Clay defends higher tariff protection and funding for internal improvements to develop American economy; policy of Indian removal from the East begins about this time; beginning of religious revival movement known as the Great Awakening and schisms within established churches
• 1825: Erie Canal opens
• 1826: Internal combustion engine patented  
• 1828: Highest U.S. tariff duties yet: John Calhoun writes treatise on state nullification of federal laws; C & O Canal begins construction; B & O Railroad chartered; Audubon publishes first volume of Birds of America
• 1829: Andrew Jackson inaugurated as President and introduces “spoils system” on an unprecedented level

The early 1820s were a period of relative peace at home, the "Era of Good Feelings." Perhaps the greatest U.S. foreign policy initiative was the opening of relations with Spain's former American colonies and the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine, a toothless warning to Europe that the New World was to be off limits to future colonization.

Meanwhile, the seeds of future upheavals were being planted. The organization of the work place was rapidly shifting from a home/shop environment to one of "operatives" in a mechanized factory setting. Among the political and social consequences, were the formation of unions and the indirect encouragement of numerous religious revivals, sometimes known as the "Second Great Awakening." Kentucky Senator Henry Clay  advocated high tariffs to protect America's young industries, while South Carolinian John C. Calhoun decried the tariff as unfair to the agrarian South, importers of finished goods. The "Tariff of Abominations" of 1828, passed largely due to a miscalculation by Andrew Jackson supporters in Congress, was answered by a Calhoun treatise which put forward the doctrine of state nullification of federal laws and helped set the stage for the Southern secession to come.

Also foreshadowing the conflict of mid century, of course, was the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The facile trade-off admission of Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state would not be possible in the aftermath of the Mexican War  of the 1840s and would lead to virtual civil war in Kansas and a true Civil War that would rock the nation.

Even in Virginia, there were diverse opinions about slavery at this time. Opposition to slavery in the North began to make slave holders more defensive and intransigent. But segments of Alexandria society vigorously opposed slavery as a terrible blight upon society. Most, however, saw no solution but to return blacks to Africa and, in 1823, organized a local chapter of the American Colonization Society  to raise funds to resettle African Americans in Liberia. Although this seems now to have been hopelessly unrealistic, many people worked tirelessly to ruin the institution of slavery-before the experiences of the next three decades destroyed all hopes.

In 1820 Alexandria, D.C. was a town of 8,218 inhabitants of whom 5,515 were white and 2,603 were African American, including 1,168 free blacks and 1,435 slaves. Visitors’ accounts vividly describe the town.

Females amongst them uncommonly intelligent, uncommonly courteous and polite in their behaviour with each other and especially with strangers. Polite and courteous conduct of the youth of Alexandria does much credit to parents, to the teachers, to the clergy and to human nature itself. Again the inhabitants of this town are uncommonly industrious, uncommonly moral; but above all their excellencies, the disposition of benevolence stands conspicuous.... The women dress too fine and also appear too often in the streets. [Alexandria Gazette 3/6/1823]

Even as many "uncommonly moral" Alexandrians were campaigning to resettle African Americans, the firm of Franklin and Armfield  opened their slave market at 1315 Duke Street (now Freedom House Museum) for the purpose of selling surplus northern Virginia slaves in the deep South. Indeed, most observers probably saw no need even for reform. "The slaves of this place bear every mark of good treatment; they look happy and are comfortably clothed, though not half so fine or richly dressed. [Ann Royall, Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in the United States  (1826), reprinted in Pen Portraits of Alexandria, Virginia, 1739 - 1900, courtesy Sarah Revis; edited by T. Michael Miller, Heritage Books, Inc. 1987]

An English visitor was complimentary about the inhabitants, but criticized the appearance of the town:

Alexandria is built precisely on the plan of Philadelphia and is indeed frequently called Philadelphia in miniature... The houses have a mean appearance. There is ...scarcely one handsome mansion in the place. A great many of the habitations are of wood and are called frame houses from their being built in a frame on a moveable foundation: They are capable of being moved from one part of the town to another, a transition which frequently takes place; and it is no uncommon thing for a man who does not like his situation. This is done by loosening the earth from the foundation and hoisting them by means of levers upon a strong and low machine, something like our brewers' drays but square instead of oblong; in this manner they are carried to any part of the town which the owner deems more eligible.... The trade was destroyed by pirates during Mr. Adams administration along with the yellow fever which raged there very virulently a few years... ["The Confessions of a Rambler," The Repository (London, 1824), vol. III, No. VIII, p. 278.]

In 1826, an extensive social description of Alexandria was published by Ann Royall, an itinerant travel writer, who penned a detailed description of its people and physical environs. She had doubts about the town's future prosperity, but commented that the Corporation maintained spacious, well-paved, well-lighted, kept clean and safe streets. She praised the handsome market house and bank buildings and the availability of good seafood and exotic fruits and vegetables. [Ann Royall, Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in the United States (1826), reprinted in Pen Portraits of Alexandria, Virginia, 1739 - 1900, courtesy Sarah Revis; edited by T. Michael Miller, Heritage Books, Inc. 1987]

Alexandria's Economy

The economic panic of 1819 severely hurt Alexandria, and a malaise hovered over the community. Numbers of Alexandrians mortgaged their houses and businesses and were forced to sell them at public auction. Bankruptcy records for the period vividly record this turbulent epoch.

By the mid 1820s, however, the economy had dramatically improved. Among the new industrial concerns was T.W. Smith and Co., an early manufacturer of steam engines. The town's recovery, however, was led by flour exports. Flour inspector James Cloud estimated that more than 200,000 barrels would have been inspected here between the October 1, 1825 and October 1, 1826-a number which was expected to "exceed the inspection of Richmond and consequently entitle Alexandria to rank as the fifth flour market in the Union." [Alexandria Gazette, 7/3/1826] Some observers pointed out that the town was making little forward progress depending on this single oar and failing to organize to effectively extend its commercial sphere to the mountains and beyond.

Even the founding of the Franklin and Armfield slave pen to buy up surplus slaves for shipment south was a tacit acknowledgment that the soil of the countryside was largely played out.

Alexandrians largely blamed their commercial condition on the District of Columbia and the government's favoritism toward Washington City. "There seems to prevail amongst the citizens of Alexandria, a deep rooted enmity against the Federal city; they sigh to be reunited to the state of Virginia. They are now engaged in an attempt to separate themselves from the District of Columbia by a petition to Congress...." [Ann Royall, Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in the United States]

And then, a disaster occurred which probably affected Alexandria more adversely than any other single event-the tragic fire of January 1827.

The fire originated, by accident in the workshop of Mr. James Green, cabinet maker, which stood in the interior of the square bounded by Fairfax, Prince, Royal, and King Streets and near the intersection of the two last.... The back buildings of several houses on Royal Street were consumed, as was also a frame dwelling fronting on the alley, and immediately south of Mr. Green's work shop. The fire soon reached Fairfax Street where it was checked on the North by the three story fire proof, occupied by Messrs. Edward Stabler and Sons as a drug store, but every other house on the West side of Fairfax Street south to Prince Street was simultaneously wrapped in flames and speedily consumed. From Fairfax and Prince Streets the fire jumped to the corner of Water [Lee] and Prince. In a few minutes, both sides of Prince-Street, between Water and Union, together with a warehouse on the east side of Water Street-four others on the West side of Union Street south of Prince, and three others on the same side of Union, north of Prince-were all in flames, and every house except two was destroyed-many of them with their whole contents.... For five hours the flames were rushing from house to house with increasing fury-furniture and goods, were scattered in every direction, women and children were flying for safety, and houses that were not burnt, were often on fire, sometimes dozens at once. [Alexandria Gazette 1/23/1827]

A town committee calculated the destruction at "53 buildings consisting of dwellings, ware and storehouses, exclusive of a number of stables and other outbuildings; all of which are valued at sixty thousand nine hundred and twenty dollars; and personal property which we have estimated at forty-six thousand, three hundred and fifty-seven dollars; making an aggregate sum of one hundred seven thousand, two hundred and seventy-seven dollars." Other damage estimates ranged as high as $150,000.

Alexandria was so prostrated by this conflagration that the U.S. Congress appropriated funds for disaster relief. Several representatives, however, questioned the constitutionality of providing such aid to a private corporation.

There was hopeful news, however. The new Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company commenced a canal along the Potomac in 1828, intended to reach the markets and the raw materials of the Ohio Valley. Alexandrians were soon itching to hitch their wagons to this star.

Social Life and Cultural Organizations

Not every aspect of Alexandria society was dominated by business and commerce. All was not work without play. Alexandrians enjoyed many amusements including the theater and musical performances. The local theater was situated on the north side of the 400 block of Cameron Street. In February 1821, among the many performances staged, the Alexandria Thespian Society presented a tragedy in 5 acts called "Broken Faith" for the benefit of the town museum. Another playwright, George Washington Parke Custis, Martha Washington's grandson, also staged a number of plays in Alexandria. In 1827, his play the "Indian Prophecy" was staged in Alexandria, and its principal character was George Washington. The next year "The Railroad and the Canal"-prescient about the success of the railroad-was presented both in Alexandria and Washington and featured the first use of a railroad locomotive in a theater production.

On the musical scene Alexandria boasted its own amateur symphony orchestra as early as 1820, led by Signor Masi from Boston. In May 1820, a Signor Muscarellis agreed to teach vocal music and piano. By 1826, David Martin informed the public of his classes for the study of sacred music which would be offered at Mrs. Muir's School at the corner of Prince and Washington Streets. These gentlemen were just a small number of the many artists who taught music, performed and sold musical instruments in Alexandria during the decade.

Undoubtedly the social event of the decade was General Lafayette's visit to Alexandria during his 1824-1825 Grand Tour of America. The General was received with great affection and stirred feelings of nostalgia for the idealized golden era of the Revolution. The Alexandria Gazette of October 19, 1824, vividly described the scene:

Between twelve and one o'clock General LaFayette entered the line from the Potomac Bridge, under a salute of artillery from Capt. Williams's company. Here he was met by General Walter Jones and suite.... LaFayette then entered a splendid barouche, drawn by four fine greys, [and escorted to Alexandria].... The procession entered the town through Columbus Street, went through a part of King into Fayette...to Washington Street. During the passage of the procession, the windows of the houses were filled with ladies, who, as they waved their handkerchiefs, told the General that he was welcome.... About three o'clock, Gen. LaFayette, accompanied by the residue of the procession, passed through the Grand Arch under a national salute of 24 guns.

After Gen. LaFayette had been conducted through the Arch, he passed the line of troops in King Street who were at presented arms. On his arrival at Royal Street, an impressive ceremony occurred which, in sublimity and moral effect, surpasses all: one hundred young girls and one hundred boys from seven to twelve years of age were arrayed in lines extending to the Reception room.... In the reception room [at Clagett's Tavern] the General was met by [Mayor Roberts] who spoke as follows: "In behalf of the Common council and my fellow citizens, I have the honor to bid you a cordial and affectionate welcome to the town of Alexandria." When the ceremony was concluded the Mayor and General Jones conducted him to the house which had been secured for his accommodations at 301 South St. Asaph Street.

Alexandria supported a private library company and several circulating libraries which catered to the literary tastes of the community. Thomas Mountford operated a town museum on the third floor of the Market House which housed many interesting relics including Revolutionary War memorabilia and mementos which belonged to George Washington, Alexandria's favorite son. This institution was unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1871, but some of the museum’s collections are now at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial [T. Michael Miller, Portrait of A town - Alexandria District of Columbia [Virginia] 1820-1830].

Points in Time

• 1827-1838: Beginning of great Irish and German immigration
• 1830: Indian Removal Act  
• 1830: Andrew Jackson reorganizes his cabinet as a result of the Eaton affair 
• 1830: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints founded
• 1830: First U.S. locomotive constructed; B & O Railroad opens;
• 1830: Godey’s Lady’s Book founded
• 1831: Nat Turner revolt; Anti-Masonic Party founded; mechanical reaper invented
• 1832-1833: Controversy over state nullification of federal laws reaches its peak, and lower tariffs adopted to assuage the feelings of Southerners
• 1833: Jackson vetoes renewal of the charter of the Second Bank of the United States; sudden withdrawal of federal funds from Bank causes a financial panic
• 1834: Whig Party arises  
• 1834: First use of federal troops to intervene in a labor dispute (among the Irish laborers constructing the C & O Canal); electric motor invented
• 1836: Texas declares its independence and fights a two-month war with Mexico; U.S. Patent Office established; Samuel Colt patents the revolver
• 1836-1844: Congress repeatedly denies hearings on anti-slavery legislation
• 1837: Financial panic brought about by reckless land speculation; Samuel Morse patents Morse Code for use with his new “telegraph”; John Deere invents one-piece steel plow
• 1837-1840: American-Canadian border tensions
• 1839: Charles Goodyear discovers vulcanized rubber
• 1839: Slave mutiny on Spanish ship L’Amistad  

The Unites States of 1830 contained 12.9 million inhabitants. Over the decade, 600,000 European immigrants entered the U.S., many of whom left Ireland and Germany for economic and political reasons. More than half of the country's urban population was concentrated in its four largest cities (in descending order): New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston. While Alexandrians had always tried to emulate Philadelphia, formerly the biggest city, they were increasingly comparing themselves – and being increasingly unfavorably compared to – Baltimore, the booming nearby commercial rival.

The rapid growth of cities and towns was due largely to immigration and the attractive force of factory employment. The down-side of these phenomena included unprecedented crowding, anti-immigrant and anti-black agitation, and an increasing physical and economic separation between the wealthier and poorer inhabitants.

Relatively tiny Alexandria, with its 8,241 residents in 1830, was described much as it had been in 1820 or 1810 or 1800.

The streets...are generally well paved. It is considered remarkably healthy, and the view from the city is very fine... The river opposite to the town is a mile in breadth, and varies from 34 to 52 feet in depth...the harbor is naturally very fine and it has been much improved by the erection of large and commodious wharves... [Joseph Martin, Gazetteer of Virginia and the District of Columbia]

Alexandria boasted three banks with an aggregate capital of $1,700,000 and three insurance companies. It also had several “baking establishments, where ships bread and crackers are made equal to any manufactured in the United States or elsewhere, two ship yards, an extensive brewery, and several tanneries, a foundry upon a large scale with a manufactory of steam engines and various machinery for cotton factories, and several manufactories of cigars.” The town carried on “an extensive trade in flour, tobacco, sumac, fish, lumber and other articles, with the Southern states, West India and Europe.” By 1831 209,294 barrels of flour were shipped from the port, with total foreign exports reaching about $600,000 to $900,000 a year in the early 1830s {Martin}. During the decade the export of fish was a major industry in Alexandria as 150 sites above and below the town produced a catch amounting to $750,000,000 herring and 22,500,000 shad in 1835.

Phoenix-like, an artificial village known as “Fishtown” would arise each spring on the strand between Princess and Oronoco Streets where hundreds of African Americans could be seen gutting, separating and packing fish in barrels of brine.

Nonetheless, the editor of the Alexandria Gazette commented on what he perceived to be an underlying weakness in the local economy and suggested that Alexandrians rely less on flour exports and concentrate on establishing large, diversified trading houses.

The town was ill-prepared for the economic vicissitudes of the 1830s. President Jackson's war against the Second National Bank - which he considered too powerful and anti-democratic - reached a crisis. In 1833 he ordered that $10 million of federal money be withdrawn from the Bank and deposited in some state banks. The Bank reacted by calling in commercial loans, which led to a panic and recession. One of the casualties was the Bank of Alexandria, Virginia's oldest financial institution, which failed in 1834.

Prosperity briefly returned in 1835, fed by the new wealth of the state banks. Cotton prices soared and so did speculation in western lands. The following year, however, both the federal government and English leaders directly or indirectly tightened credit, causing a major six-year depression as the land market collapsed. It is said that, for a time, most of the workers in New York were unemployed. The conditions ruined the country's nascent unions, as each worker was forced to fend for himself. Dependent on far-flung commerce, Alexandria was damaged as much as anywhere. Private societies were created “for furnishing employment to the industrious, indigent and several for supplying food, clothing and fuel to the poor in winter.”

Frustrated by the inability to compete with other ports even in the best of times, Alexandria gambled on a major, capital-intensive transportation initiative: canal building. Local business leaders subscribed to shares in the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, which was intended to cross the mountains and reach the Ohio Valley. It was hoped that a legion of horse-drawn barges would make available western raw materials and western markets. In addition, Alexandrians began the construction of a seven-mile-long, forty-foot-wide canal that would connect the town to the terminus of the C&O at Georgetown. This connection required an enormous aqueduct, the construction of which was one of the great engineering feats of the nineteenth century. Just as remarkable was its cost: nearly one million dollars.

On July 4, 1831, with great fanfare the construction of the canal began one mile north of Alexandria on the Washington Road. Mayor John Roberts “in due form commenced the Alexandria Canal first by breaking ground amidst the cheers and good wishes of the assembled multitude. G.W.P. Custis, (Martha Washington's grandson) ... delivered a patriotic and eloquent address, pertinent to the glorious day.” The project was soon beset by problems as Alexandria was unable to meet its annual $15,000 interest payment. In 1836, the town petitioned the U.S. Congress for relief, but assistance was not forthcoming. “Left to its own resources, Alexandria poured more and more borrowed money into the aqueduct and lateral canal. On top of an additional $50,000 investment authorized in 1835, the Common Council in 1836 agreed to the investment of $250,000 more in the project. The money was to be borrowed and interest on the loan be paid by the levy of a special add-on real estate tax.” [William B. Fraley, in A Town in Transition] Therefore, when the U.S. Congress passed a bill authorizing $300,000 for canal expenses in March 1837, Alexandrians rejoiced, marching through the streets and lighting bonfires.

Of course, today we know that the canal was a failure. Encouraged by the success of New York's Erie Canal, however, it would not have seemed unreasonable to bet on these man-made waterways. But canals were contending not only with each other, but also with a new technology, the steam locomotive. Although Alexandria would later become a rail hub, the businessmen of bustling Baltimore first seized the reins of the iron horse and constructed a rail line parallel to and competing with the C&O Canal.

Even in the 1830s, observers perceived the downward trend of Alexandria's relative economic power, a trend which had begun during the administration of Thomas Jefferson.

As her star was descending others were ascending to take the place of the fallen brightness. Georgetown and Washington prospered at her expense...with the benefit of trade once confined to the better known Alexandria... Alexandria's commerce has dwindled to less than the tithe of what it was, and the trade of a great producing country has gone with it. Many of the streets, for lack of the destroyer man to walk upon them have given a quiet resting place for the rank weed. [Alexandria Gazette 1/29/1840]

Slavery and anti-slavery

Alexandria's other major enterprise during this era had a far more unsavory quality. It centered on the slave trade and the transshipment of thousands of African Americans to the deep-South cotton states of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Headquartered at 1315 Duke Street the firm of Franklin and Armfield, slave dealers, commenced operation in 1828. Advertisements appeared constantly in the local newspaper which stipulated that “cash and highest market prices would be paid for any numbers of likely young negroes of both sexes.” By the 1830s, Alexandria had become the largest slave trading center in the United States. [William F. Smith and T. Michael Miller, A Seaport Saga]

The trade in surplus slaves represented the contrast between the exhausted soil of Northern Virginia and the expanding cotton culture in the deep South. There were many Virginians who sought the eventual emancipation of all enslaved people – as long as they could be “returned” to colonies in Africa or the Caribbean. The Society of Friends was particularly active in encouraging gradual abolition, with or without colonization. Formed in Alexandria in 1827, a Quaker-led “Benevolent Society for Ameliorating and Improving the Condition of the people of Color” assisted with manumissions and published a series of anti-slavery essays.

In 1831, an event occurred which threw the question of slavery into stark relief and encouraged Southern intransigence in the matter. In Southampton County, Virginia, near the North Carolina border, a preacher named Nat Turner led many of his fellow slaves in a revolt. Before Turner and his compatriots were captured, more than fifty whites had been killed. It was every slaveholder's nightmare. The countryside was up in arms, and the repercussions were extensive.

During the winter of 1831 and 1832, a Virginia convention discussed many aspects of the slavery "problem.'' Various emancipation proposals were narrowly defeated. The majority chose to defend the institution and tighten control over enslaved people. Harsh slave codes were implemented throughout the South to curb the blacks' freedom of movement and assembly, and to restrict education and possible manumission.

Free black men in Alexandria, fearful of reprisal and further restrictions of their freedoms, signed a petition pledging their loyalty, and condemning the actions of the slave insurrectionists. In the North reaction was immediate. Several anti-slavery societies were founded and were most influential in New England. Abolitionist figures like William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Weld, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were commonly considered dangerous radicals. Slaveholders grew increasingly defensive, however, under increasing scrutiny and the withering criticism of the abolitionist press. An abolitionist editor in Illinois was murdered in 1837. In 1836 congressmen who supported slavery or feared the conflicts which might ensue from tampering with the institution adopted a “gag rule” which forbade the introduction or discussion of anti-slavery bills. With the help of figures like Frederick Douglass, who escaped from slavery in 1838, the abolitionists gradually convinced many that slavery is intolerable. But it would take a great war to make commonplace this once-radical idea.

Pardon me, Mr. President

The same year, an assault was made on the American president, although one of the pugilistic sort. As President Andrew Jackson was being feted on board the Sydney at the Alexandria waterfront, Robert Randolph, a disgruntled naval officer, attacked him. ``At the first blow...almost a hundred arms fell upon the assailant and he was with difficulty rescued and carried on shore. We have never known more excitement nor more feeling to be manifested by all our citizens... The President was naturally highly excited and exasperated - he departed amidst the cheers and good wishes of the great crowd which had assembled.'' Randolph escaped to Richmond. Because the attack had occurred in the District of Columbia, an arrest warrant could not be served on Randolph in Virginia. President Jackson chose not to pursue the issue and, aside from a condemnation by the Alexandria City Council, Randolph was never tried nor punished for the attack. [T. Michael Miller, Murder & Mayhem]

Architecture

The “Grecian mode'' of architecture - with its colonnaded porticos, gable and hipped roofs of low pitch, and doors surrounded by narrow sidelights - flourished in Alexandria during the 1830s and 1840s. Two outstanding examples of Greek Revival, the old District Courthouse (no longer standing) and The Lyceum, were erected in 1838 and 1839, respectively.

In 1838, the noted American architect, Robert Mills, creator of the Washington Monument and Architect of Public Buildings, designed the District Courthouse for Alexandria, D.C., on the west side of the 300 block of North Columbus Street. The sixty-foot-square edifice was erected by Alexandria contractor James Dixon. It was fireproof construction and its facade had a two-story Doric portico above a high basement. A gracefully curved double stairway rose to the main floor level. In addition, it had a low-hipped roof surmounted by an octagonal cupola from which a bell rang out on court days. [Smith and Miller, Seaport Saga; Penny Morrill, Who Built Alexandria?]

Quaker educator Benjamin Hallowell was the superintendent and perhaps the designer for the construction of the Lyceum building at 201 South Washington Street. James Philips was the mason for the project, and William H. McKnight and David Price executed the carpentry. Intended for the improvement of society through education, the Lyceum was built to house a library and a lecture hall. The imposing building exhibits ``walls articulated by Greek Doric pilasters and terminated by a correct entablature of that order... The major feature of the front is a tetrastyle Doric portico, in this instance with fluted columns. The Lyceum, with its restrained and austere classical formality, is a fine example of the Greek Revival style and an important architectural ornament to the city...'' [Denys Peter Myers, “The Greek Revival Style in Alexandria” in Historic Alexandria Antiques Show Bulletin 1990]

Points in Time

• 1840: Antislavery “Liberty Party” founded; 10-hour day declared for laborers on federal public works; world’s first dental school opened in Baltimore
• 1842: American settlement of Oregon territory begins; Canadian border with Maine and upper Midwest settled; first recorded use of general anesthesia in surgery; P.T. Barnum opens museum in New York City
• 1843: Methodist Church splits over slavery; typewriter invented
• 1844: Completion of first telegraph line
• 1845: Baptist Convention splits over slavery; phrase “manifest destiny” coined; Texas annexed to U.S.
• 1846: Smithsonian Institution established; sewing machine patented
• 1846-1848: War with Mexico
• 1847: Mormons begin settle Salt Lake valley; rotary press invented; American Medical Association founded; Frederick Douglass begins publishing North Star  
• 1848: Revolutions in Europe spur emigration; Seneca Falls convention on women’s rights  
• 1848: Gold discovered in California 

As America gradually recovered from the economic woes of the 1830s, so did Alexandria. The town's economy was still heavily led by the exports of crops and foodstuffs, creating a favorable, but sometimes problematic balance of trade. "In Sept. 1841, the dullness of the market [in Alexandria] was owing in some measure to the want of vessels to take it off." [Alexandria Gazette 9/14/1841] In 1840 the value of exports was $393,028 and imports $105,605. The leading articles of export in the 1840s were flour (78,615 barrels in 1840), wheat, corn (more than 50,000 barrels a year of each), plaster, salt, rye and oats. Tobacco dropped to about 5,000 barrels shipped annually, but fishing was still a major industry. [Thomas Duffy, Decline of the Port of Alexandria, 1800-1861, M.A. thesis, Georgetown University, 1965; Alexandria Gazette 12/20/1839]

By 1847, Alexandria ranked ninth in the U.S. in overall trade following New York, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Richmond-Petersburg and Cleveland. [Duffy] Despite the apparent profit from commerce, the feeling that the town was falling behind its peers is palpable in the press' ubiquitous boosterism. The wheat and flour trade, for example, staple of the Alexandria economy, was increasingly shifting to the Midwest. Looking toward an uncertain future, the Alexandria Gazette exhorted local businessmen to establish new manufacturing ventures and support existing ones.

There are here now large thriving manufacturing establishments.... As soon as our Canal is completed we shall be abundantly supplied with water for manufacturing purposes; nor, in truth, do we see the reason, why this should not become, at once, a MANUFACTURING TOWN, having the means already of a flourishing commerce to rid us in the transportation of goods, and Ship Yards where the finest merchant vessels are yearly turned off the stocks.... Let us, then, by all means, commence early with our MANUFACTORIES.

To a great extent, industrialization was successful, with several factors contributing to development. First, completion of the Alexandria Canal connection with the C&O Canal in 1845 increased the flow of coal and raw materials to the Potomac ports. Second, retrocession of Alexandria County from the District of Columbia to Virginia in 1846 lifted Congress' restrictive banking policies. It was no accident, for instance, that the Alexandria Savings Institution was founded in 1847, and that the Bank of Potomac and the Farmers Bank merged with the Exchange Bank of Virginia the same year. Thirdly, Alexandria's association with railroads commenced in 1847, with a failed effort to construct a railway to Harper's Ferry. The next year, however, another railroad, the Orange & Alexandria, began constructing a road south via Orange and Culpeper to Gordonsville. Finally, the City Council practiced a little economic development gimmickry, passing an 1846 measure stipulating that the first factory thereafter constructed in town would be exempt from paying taxes for fifteen years; the second factory for ten years; and the third for six. These changes, "combined with the agricultural improvements of the era, gave Alexandria her final boost as an export center." [Duffy; Smith and Miller, A Seaport Saga]

By the end of the 1840s, manufacturing concerns included two shipyards, two iron foundries, a cotton factory, large cabinetmaking shops, a coach making factory, a tannery, several bakeries, a soap and candle factory, a pottery, and one of the largest breweries in the South. By 1850, the wealthiest man in town was no longer a merchant, but a manufacturer, James Green. Green operated a prosperous furniture factory on South Fairfax Street and as well as the Mansion House Hotel on North Fairfax.

As much as Alexandria progressed, it increasingly lagged behind the other major East Coast cities. Baltimore, an old rival, had grown to be the second largest city in the nation and home to the important B&O Railroad and a fleet of speedy clipper ships. Alexandria, on the other hand, attracted few newcomers. In spite of a sharp rise in immigration to America, the town's population leveled off, gaining fewer than 300 individuals during the 1840s.

Retrocession

Initially Alexandria had welcomed the town's inclusion into the ten-mile-square which comprised the District of Columbia...[but] Alexandrians soon became disillusioned with their status.... Provisions of the 1791 act creating the district precluded the construction of any public buildings south of the Potomac River.... Furthermore, the 1801 District Act disenfranchised the local populace. They could not vote in presidential elections and had no representation in Congress.... [W]ith the Panic of 1837 and the failure of the Congress to recharter the Bank of Alexandria in 1834, Alexandria suffered severe economic privation.... While no railroad lines serviced Alexandria, Baltimore had been allowed to siphon off the lucrative trade of the Shenandoah Valley by constructing the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad through Virginia to Winchester. Therefore, a strong impetus developed to retrocede Alexandria to Virginia. [Smith and Miller]

On July 9, 1846, the U.S. Congress voted to permit Alexandria and Alexandria County to retrocede to Virginia  upon referendum. A vote was held on September 1-2 at the Alexandria Courthouse. "A total of 985 votes were cast; of this number, 763 votes for retrocession and 222 were against.... On September 7, 1846, President James Polk issued the result of the vote and declared the retrocession in full force and effect." Virginia formally accepted the territory on March 13, 1847, and Alexandrians celebrated the occasion with a huge parade on the 19th. [Smith and Miller]

National salutes were fired at sunrise, at noon and at sunset. The flags of the shipping in port were displayed... At 10 o'clock a procession formed under the command of Dr. Wm. L. Powell, Chief Marshall...and marched through the principal streets. The military made a beautiful display. The Ringgold Cavalry and the Mt. Vernon Guards attracted much attention... About noon the procession arrived at the Public Square and an address was delivered by George Washington Parke Custis (Martha Washington's grandson)... Business was suspended through the day...and the streets were crowded... Everything passed off in the happiest manner. [Alexandria Gazette 3/23/1847]

Other politics national and local

Until retrocession, local politics was perhaps not as momentous an undertaking; the town was limited in its authority and often hamstrung by Congress. The most important legislative efforts of the early and mid 1840s included the appointment of a committee to lobby Congress for the establishment of a quarantine station at Jones Point; the commissioning of a new survey and map of the town by Alexandria Canal engineer Maskell Ewing; the passage of laws relating to the inspection of wheat, theatrical performances, weights and measures, and the city's subscription of stock in the Alexandria Canal. Council also passed an ordinance which limited the extent to which private wharves could be extended into the Potomac River. Law and order was a high priority, and Council saw fit to hire additional police officers to patrol the city. [City Council Minutes]

Council also undertook a reform of local government, lobbying Congress for a town charter amendment to allow the mayor to be directly elected by the public. On March 7, 1843, Alexandrians went to the polls and for the first time cast their ballots for mayor. Robert G. Violett took office on March 9, but served only eight days before resigning because of pressing business affairs. [Alexandria Gazette 3/9/1843]

From the mid-1830s until the Civil War, a large percentage of Alexandria's electorate supported the Whig Party. This national party had been formed to oppose President Jackson's policies. The Whigs advocated a nationalistic economic policy, the "American System," which emphasized internal improvements, protective tariffs, a conservative public land sales policy and continuation of a National Bank. These designs appealed to conservative Alexandria merchants and manufacturers whose business operations extended beyond state lines and relied heavily on coastwise trade.

Despite the fact that District residents could not vote in national elections, Alexandrians sponsored a grand jubilee and illumination in honor of the election of the Whig ticket of William Henry Harrison and John Tyler in November 1840.

They marched through the principal streets, the air resounding with shouts, the windows filled with ladies waving their handkerchiefs, and the side walks covered with a moving mass of lookers-on. The most beautiful part of the procession was the open carriages filled with the little girls representing the states and territories.... National Salutes were fired during the day, the shipping in port were decorated with streamers and flags, banners, and emblematic devices were suspended from the houses in every part of the town.... As soon as night closed in upon us, the illumination blazed forth in all its splendor.... The streets were thronged with ladies... A large bonfire blazed upon the bosom of the Potomac, casting its red light upon the shores of Maryland and another at the upper end of King Street, reflected its lustre upon the hills of Virginia.... Bands of music, playing the most enlivening airs, moved through the town...and shouts and huzzas were raised at the public places.... [I]t was the "era of good feelings." [Alexandria Gazette 11/27/1840]

In the Alexandria Archaeology collection are sherds from a Harrison "log cabin campaign" commemorative pitcher, which was sold from the King Street china store of Robert H. Miller.

In the 1844 Presidential election, Alexandrians supported Whig Henry Clay, who had promoted projects benefitting the District, against Democrat James K. Polk, who had earlier voted against aid to the victims of Alexandria's great 1827 fire. Polk also opposed the construction of the Alexandria canal. When the votes were tallied, Polk had won the nation, but voters in neighboring Fairfax County came out for the Whigs.

The Mexican-American War

Perhaps the greatest political issue of the 1840s was the war with Mexico. The Polk administration propelled the country into conflict over the annexation of Texas and a disputed boundary. Behind these proximate causes was an awakening nationalistic/imperialistic consciousness of America's "manifest destiny" to occupy as much of North America as possible.

Alexandria was as well represented among the troops as any town. One noted Alexandrian, Robert E. Lee, particularly distinguished himself in battle.

In 1846...Alexandrians heralded the call of President Polk to annex Texas and to settle the West. Company B of the First Virginia Regiment, composed of Alexandrians, was escorted to the wharf by the Mount Vernon Guards and Ringgold Cavalry as they boarded the steamer Phoenix for Aquia Creek. After arriving in Richmond by train, the troops proceeded to Norfolk where they were put on the bark Victory and sailed for Mexico. [Smith and Miller, A Seaport Saga]

Mexico gave up its claims to Texas, California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and parts of New Mexico. Alexandrians staged a victory celebration and dinner for the returning troops in August 1848.

Slavery

The opening of vast new territories exacerbated the issue of the expansion of slavery. While it may have seemed an opportunity to slave-owning agriculturalists, it actually planted the seeds for the destruction of the institution. In 1850 a compromise over slavery in the new territories followed acrimonious debate and helped polarize opinions nationally and within states and territories. The slave trade would be outlawed in the District of Columbia, and the fugitive slave laws were toughened at a time when Northerners were becoming more resistant to enforcing them. In 1840 slavery was all but dead in the North and had never been economically significant there. It was no loss then, and therefore no surprise that many Northerners were at least indifferent and sometimes radically opposed to the institution. Southerners were becoming more dogmatic in their own defense. The growing debate eventually divided even religious communities. In the 1840s both the Baptists and Methodists split, roughly North and South, into pro- and anti-slavery factions.

Meanwhile, the slaves themselves had little hope that their status would be improved by anything other than their own efforts. While African Americans resisted their bondage in myriad smaller ways every day, many created opportunities for true freedom. By 1840 the Underground Railroad was well established. Escaped slaves bravely groped their way northward, often connecting with and abetted by a courageous minority of sympathetic whites and free blacks. The Quakers are particularly notable for their assistance. A clandestine system of routes and safe-houses was developed, taking the fugitives as far as Canada.

Slave trading firms like Alexandria's Franklin and Armfield were making a tidy profit selling surplus Virginia slaves to new owners in the Mississippi Valley. There were few things that the slaves feared more than to be sold South – separated from their families, and expecting to be worked to death on cotton plantations. In 1841, the Brig Creole  sailed from Hampton Roads, Virginia carrying a cargo of slaves bound for New Orleans. Some of the African Americans managed to get free and took control of the ship, killing one of the white crew. They escaped to the Bahamas, where all but those most directly responsible for the mutiny were freed by the British government.

Place in Time

Although New England led the country in textile production, by the 1840s the Southern states had entered this manufacturing arena. A group of Alexandria businessmen established the Mount Vernon Manufacturing Company in 1847. The firm purchased property on the southeast corner of Washington and Pendleton Streets and constructed a four-story building housing "two thirty-two horsepower steam engines powering the factory's 4,000 spindles and 120 looms... The business employed 47 men and 88 women." Messrs. Stanton and Francis, executed the brick work; Messrs. Davis, McKnight and Price the carpentry. The engine, driving machinery and other iron work were manufactured at the foundry of T.W. and R.C. Smith of Alexandria. Small in comparison to Northern mills, Alexandria's cotton factory was unrivaled locally. [G. Terry Sharrer, "Commerce and Industry" in A Towne in Transition]

Points in Time

• 1850: Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act 
• 1850: First cast iron and glass buildings; Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter published; Harper's Monthly begins publication
• 1851: Isaac Singer patents improved sewing machine; Western Union founded; Herman Melville's Moby Dick  published; New York Times begins publication; Alexandrians contribute an inscribed marble block for inclusion in the Washington Monument
• 1852: Elisha Otis invents safety elevator; Uncle Tom's Cabin published
• 1853: Gadsden Purchase  of parts of Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico
• 1854: Commodore Perry opens Japan to U.S. trade; Kansas-Nebraska Act; Republican Party founded; Know-Nothing Party  successful in many local elections; Henry David Thoreau's Walden published
• 1855: Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass published
• 1857: Supreme Court Dred Scott decision;  financial Panic  
• 1858: Lincoln-Douglas debates; first telegraph message by Trans-Atlantic cable; Colorado gold rush; New York's Central Park opened
• 1859: John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry 
• 1869: First oil well drilled at Titusville, Pa; first telegraph message between the east and west coasts; Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P) founded; Darwin's Origin of the Species published

The 1850s were a period of commercial and industrial expansion as Alexandria emerged from the economic doldrums to find itself on the cusp of the industrial revolution. The town's population increased from 8,734 in 1850 to 12,652 in 1860. Statistics from the 1850 census reveal there were 6,390 whites; 1,301 free blacks and 1,061 enslaved people. In 1858, with the approval of a new charter, Alexandria officially became a city.

Commerce and Physical Changes

Between 1851 and 1854, Alexandria experienced a building boom as more than 700 houses were constructed. "The stagnation and dullness which had prevailed here before had given way to economic prosperity. Houses which erst went begging for occupants were filled to overflowing... The miserable skeletons of antiquated buildings are metamorphosed into large, neat and substantial edifices which are useful and ornamental. Many of these dwellings were commodious, 3-story Greek Revival town dwellings of pressed brick with ornate molded brick cornices. Examples of these may be seen in the 300 and 400 block of Duke, Prince and Cameron Street and in 300 block of South St. Asaph Street." [Ethelyn Cox, Historic Alexandria, Virginia Street By Street] In 1850 the assessed value of property in Alexandria was $2,850,935. By 1859 it had increased to $5,306,105, after a dip following the Panic of 1857.

The strongly Whig political and business leadership supported many publicly subsidized infrastructure improvements during the 1850s. "Among the many internal improvements which ornamented Alexandria during this era were a new gas and waterworks. The gas plant was situated on the southeast corner of Lee and Oronoco Streets and was completed around the end of 1851. Underground pipes supplied local denizens and street lamps with gas as Alexandrians were ushered into a new epoch of illumination.... Through the years Alexandria had suffered the scourge of typhoid and dysentery epidemics. To eliminate these maladies Benjamin Hallowell, a prominent Quaker teacher, proposed that a public reservoir be built atop Shuter's Hill. A water company was established, and Hallowell was named its first president. The work of laying pipes and constructing a reservoir was finished by 1852 and water let into town on June 15th of that year." [William F. Smith and T. Michael Miller, A Seaport Saga: A Portrait of Old Alexandria, Virginia]

It was also during the 1850s that Alexandria was transformed into a major railroad hub. The Orange & Alexandria Railroad  was organized in 1848. "Its charter stipulated that the company's track would be laid from Gordonsville to Alexandria via Orange Courthouse and Culpeper. On May 6, 1851, the first locomotive belched smoke and cinders and the shrill sound of its whistle could be heard as it chugged down Union Street to the Wilkes Street tunnel." [Smith and Miller] In the middle of the decade, the Orange & Alexandria constructed a tunnel on Wilkes Street, to carry the trains through the bluff at Lee Street and down to the waterfront, and a stone bridge over Hooff's Run.

Alexandria was also serviced by three other railroads. Incorporated in 1854, the Alexandria, Loudoun & Hampshire operated between Alexandria and Leesburg and the coal mining region in what is now West Virginia. The Manassas Gap Railroad, chartered in 1850, was primarily controlled by agricultural interests in Fauquier County. By the terms of a lease agreement, freight and passenger service was extended to Alexandria via the Orange & Alexandria. Friction soon developed between the two companies, and the Manassas line complained bitterly about the exorbitant freight rates it was charged. Thus, in 1852, the rail company received permission from the state of Virginia to construct a parallel line beside the Orange & Alexandria branch all the way to Alexandria. With the outbreak of the Civil War, this line, which was supposed to terminate at Jones Point, was never completed. "...Another major antebellum railroad was the Alexandria & Washington. Owned and operated by the dynamic James Strange French, this short line ran from its turntable at Princess and North St. Asaph Streets northwesterly to the east side of the Alexandria and Washington Turnpike until it reached the Fourteenth Street Bridge. From there the passengers alighted and took a horse drawn vehicle to Washington proper." [Smith and Miller]

Recognizing the importance of transportation, Council purchased stock in several of the railroad companies, considered extending the Alexandria Canal into the heart of the city, and made great strides in improving wharves and in grading, paving and draining streets (such as finally creating the 700 block of Cameron Street, cutting it through and around the north side of the Christ Church yard). [T. Michael Miller, Two Centuries of Leadership: Alexandria's Mayoralty, 1780 to 1998]

The railroads had a major economic, industrial and commercial impact on Alexandria. "Wheat and flour deliveries to Alexandria increased rapidly in the 1850s; during the year 1859 alone the city received 91,000 bushels of wheat destined for shipment to other ports, making it the second largest wheat exporting center in the state." [Hurst] In 1852, the Alexandria Steam Flour company erected one of the largest flour mills in the United States at the foot of Duke Street along the Potomac River. Known as Pioneer Mill, it was six-stories high, had twelve millstones and a 250-horsepower engine capable of turning out 800 barrels of flour per day and consuming four thousand bushels of wheat. [Smith and Miller] "At the same time freight trains laden with guano fertilizer from South American moved inland from the port carrying an item which was indispensable to the agricultural renaissance in northern Virginia..." [Harold Hurst, Alexandria on the Potomac: A Portrait of an Antebellum Town]

Alexandria became known as a national coal depot during the antebellum era as "old warehouses were turned into storage bins; vacant lots suddenly became coal yards; and crumbling docks were fitted up as new wharves to receive the produce of countless coal barges returning the Appalachian area." The Maryland Mining Company, Allegheny and Frostburg Mining Company, Cumberland Iron and Coal Company, and American Coal Company maintained extensive shipping facilities on the Alexandria waterfront. By the late 1850s, the coal trade had become so brisk that a shortage of transport vessels left between twenty and thirty thousands of the black gold on the docks. [Hurst]

"Beside [its] railroad facilities, Alexandria was home to the Smith and Perkins Locomotive Works. Located on the south side of Wolfe at Union Street, the manufactory covered 51,500 feet of ground fronting on the Potomac River. The company manufactured engines for the Manassas Gap Railroad, Baltimore & Ohio, and Hudson Valley Railroads. Indeed, all the cars utilized on the Manassas Gap Railroad and the Orange & Alexandria Railroad were constructed at this establishment. Smith and Perkins employed between 160 and 200 men..." [Smith and Miller]

Alexandria was also home to other industries such as machine shops and foundries. Isaac Entwistle and William S. Moore were the proprietors of a large manufactory on Union Street where they produced boilers, mill gearing, steam engines, iron fencing and other railroad equipment. Thomas Jamieson's plant which was advertised as "...fitted up with every facility and convenience for working in metals..." produced railroad cars as did John Summers, the proprietor of a factory on the 100 block of South Pitt Street. [Hurst] Alexandria's wealthiest and most successful entrepreneur in the pre-Civil War era was James Green, proprietor of the Green Steam furniture factory where he manufactured sofas, tables, chairs on the southeast corner of Prince and Fairfax Streets. Some examples of his furniture can be seen at The Lyceum: Alexandria's History Museum.

Alexandria's retail and wholesale businesses also blossomed during the decade:

Alexandria cannot with truth be called any longer a one-horse town. How much soever evil-disposed people may talk about its slow progress, all must admit that the old City is at this time in the march of steady improvement.... What man can say now that Alexandria is a small concern when she can boast of some of the first merchants in Virginia; men who are sustained by any amount of capital and who import their goods from the distant shores of Europe.... [Alexandria Gazette 8/11/1857, quoted from the Warrenton Whig]

As most towns were, Alexandria was plagued by fires throughout its history. Following the destruction of the town's tobacco warehouse in 1853 and other incidents, the Common Council passed a very early zoning law on November 14, 1854, which prohibited the construction of wooden buildings in certain areas of town. And after Friendship Fire Company's old station house at 107 South Alfred Street burned, a new engine house was subsequently constructed on the site in 1855 with financial assistance from the town. In spite of these efforts, a serious fire erupted at 213-217 King Street in November 1855. Seven firemen were killed when the burning building collapsed on them. [Miller]

Social Life

Alexandrians enjoyed a wide variety of entertainment during the 1850s. They attended theater performances at Serepta Hall on the 400 block of King Street or frequented lectures at the Lyceum where renowned orators such as George Washington Parke Custis, John Quincy Adams, and Caleb Cushing lectured. Other speakers mesmerized audiences at American and Liberty Halls [north side of the 400 block of Cameron Street] as they debated political issues of the day. During hot sultry summers, Alexandrians promenaded to Jones Point where they visited the newly constructed federal lighthouse (1855).

Not all entertainment was so high-minded or genteel. In 1854 Council saw fit to "protect the public morality" and enacted blue laws which outlawed the sale of liquor on Sunday. Municipal authorities believed "that the sale of spirituous liquors on the Sabbath day like many other trades while it is an infraction of divine law, it exerts a most prejudicial and baneful influence upon the morals of the community." Therefore be it enacted "that all bar rooms connected with hotels, taverns or other houses shall be kept closed on Sunday... That any person violating this Act shall forfeit and pay the sum not less that $200..." [Miller]

On June 26, 1850, the Common Council passed a resolution whereby it agreed to take charge of and make all necessary provisions for the support and care of the poor within the city. No longer would citizens be levied against to support the poor of Alexandria County. [Miller]

African Americans

About ten percent of Alexandria's 12,600 residents were free African Americans in 1860. They made their living in a number of ways, but most were laborers, domestics and laundresses. Poor free blacks could be hired out as laborers by the City if they could not pay their head taxes. Among the more affluent was carpenter and builder George Seaton, already prominent and respected in the community. [Alexandria Gazette 2/12/1858; Miller] Slavery was a declining institution in antebellum Alexandria. Whereas in 1790, slaves constituted approximately one-fifth of the city's population by the 1850s, they accounted for a little more than one-tenth of the total number, because of in-migration of whites and the stagnation of local agriculture.

"Many slaves also worked along the waterfront at Fishtown cleaning and gutting thousands of tons of shad and herring. One account describes a female fish cleaner as covered from head to toe in scales as they performed their tasks with wonderful alacrity and skill." [Hurst] Because fish were inexpensive, they formed an essential component of African American's diets.

For the most part there were few racial disturbances in Alexandria during this period with the exception of a riot which occurred between whites and "persons of color" in December 1853. "Stones were thrown, pistols fired, and services at the African Methodist Church were disrupted." [Hurst]

The decade was a violent one elsewhere, however. The polarization over slavery was reaching a crisis. The Compromise of 1850 struck blows at the institution by outlawing the slave trade in the District of Columbia and by admitting California as a free state. On the other hand, it also tightened enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Acts, which infuriated abolitionists. In addition, the western territories were permitted to choose whether to permit or prohibit slavery, in violation of the agreement made in 1820. In Kansas, the issue erupted into a bloody Civil War in 1856.

The decade ended on an ominous note when one of the veterans of "Bleeding Kansas," abolitionist John Brown, led a raid on the arsenal at Harpers' Ferry on October 16, 1859. Although his efforts to provoke and arm a slave uprising failed, Brown's attack "was a fire bell in the night," that caused consternation among the Southern States. Alexandria's militia units, under orders from Virginia Governor Wise, repaired to Harpers Ferry to quell the disturbance. Brown was later hanged, but the incident served as a prelude to the catastrophic Civil War which enveloped the country during the 1860s, but led to the final destruction of American slavery.

Moments in Time: The Alexandria Custom House

The Alexandria Custom House and Post Office, was built in 1858, having been designed by Ammi Young, architect for federal public buildings, who produced many public structures between 1849 and 1860. Located on the southwest corner of Prince and St. Asaph Streets, it was a completely fireproof structure, made of granite with cast iron doors, window frames and stairways. The Post Office was on the first floor, the customs rooms on the second, and a courtroom on the third. As originally constructed, it consisted of three bays on each street facade, but it was later enlarged to five bays on the St. Asaph Street side. [Smith and Miller]

Points in Time

• 1860: Lincoln elected president; South Carolina secedes from the Union
• 1861: Civil War begins at Fort Sumter, South Carolina; Lincoln calls troops from states; secession of Southern states and formation of the Confederacy; 50 counties of western Virginia secede from state; Alexandria occupied by Union troops; first Battle of Bull Run (Manassas); U.S. Navy establishes “paper” blockade of the South
• 1862: Peninsula Campaign; Union occupation of New Orleans; “Battle of the Ironclads”; second Battle of Bull Run; Battles of Shiloh, Antietam and Fredericksburg
• 1862: Homestead Act 
• 1863: Emancipation Proclamation 
• 1863: Conscription Act and New York draft riots
• 1863: Battles of Chancellorsville, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga and Chattanooga
• 1864: Battles for the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg and Nashville; Sherman’s March to the Sea; Lincoln defeats McClellan and “peace Democrats” in presidential election
• 1865: Sherman’s army drives through the Carolinas; Confederates abandon Petersburg and Richmond; Lee surrenders at Appomattox Courthouse; Lincoln Assassinated; 13th Amendment ratified
• 1868: President Johnson impeached  
• 1868: 14th Amendment ratified
• 1869: Jay Gould attempts to corner the gold market  

No other decade had such a profound effect on Alexandria's social, political, and economic fabric than the 1860s. In 1860, however, the city's inhabitants could not have foretold the death and destruction that would follow and, there would be few who would not lose husbands, brothers or sons in the coming conflict.

In 1860, Alexandria was a vibrant southern city boasting a population of 12,652 and 96 firms which produced everything from bark to tin-ware. During the U.S. Presidential campaign in the fall of 1860, business-minded Alexandrians were decidedly pro-Union and cast a majority of their ballots for John Bell, the Constitutional Unionist candidate who opposed secession. The Alexandria Gazette of September 28, 1860, remarked that

the Union men of Alexandria made the most imposing demonstration...last night, which had ever taken place in this city. If there has ever been a doubt of the intense enthusiasm which the Union cause and its candidates have erected in their good old town, that doubt must have been dissipated by the outpouring of popular sentiment last night.

In an effort to see that Virginia remained in the Union, Alexandrians elected George Brent, an opponent of secession, as a delegate to the February 1861 meeting in Richmond. When South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and President Lincoln subsequently called for 75,000 troops to crush the rebellion, the mood of Alexandrians shifted dramatically from accommodation to war. To celebrate Virginia's vote for secession, James Jackson, the local proprietor of the Marshall House Hotel, raised a Confederate flag to the cheers of a local crowd.

War fever swept the city, and militia units composed of the town's youth drilled at the old Catalpa Lot on the west side of the 600 and 700 blocks of North Washington Street. On May 23, 1861, townsmen went to the polls and voiced their approval of the articles of secession by an overwhelming vote of 958 in favor and 106 against.

Because of Alexandria's strategic importance as a railroad center and port, federal troops under the command of General Charles Sanford of the New York State militia lost no time in invading the town by land and sea on the morning of May 24, 1861. This same day, a regiment of New York Fire Zouaves, led by Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, landed at the foot of Cameron Street. With a few recruits, Ellsworth proceeded up King Street where he glimpsed James Jackson's Confederate flag fluttering in the breeze over the Marshall House. The colonel and his retinue entered the hotel, climbed to the roof and seized the banner. Descending the staircase, Ellsworth was shot in the chest by Jackson. In return, the hotel proprietor was shot and bayoneted by Union Corporal Brownell. Both Jackson and Ellsworth were mortally wounded and each quickly became a martyr to his respective cause.

As Federal forces occupied Alexandria, elements of Virginia's 6th Battalion gathered in front of The Lyceum, then marched out Duke Street and boarded a train bound for Manassas Junction. On July 10, 1861, these troops were activated into the 17th Virginia Regiment, commanded by local hero Col. Montgomery Corse. They fought with the Army of Northern Virginia from the Battle of First Manassas in 1861 through the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865 and suffered tremendous losses over the years of hard fighting.

The invasion of Alexandria forever changed the social, cultural and economic fabric of the old seaport town. For four years Alexandria was occupied by Union forces; indeed, the city endured the longest military occupation by Union troops of any town during the conflict. Although there was little fighting near Alexandria, the influx of so many soldiers meant that life changed considerably for the town’s residents. Upon taking office as Military Governor of Virginia in 1862, General Slough instituted a curfew and a ban on sales of alcohol to soldiers, noting that there had been for days previous, a reign of terror in Alexandria. The streets were crowded with intoxicated soldiery; murder was of almost hourly occurrence and disturbances, robbery and riot were constant. The sidewalks and docks were covered with drunken men, women and children and quiet citizens were afraid to venture into the streets and life and property were at the mercy of the maddened throng-a condition of things perhaps never in the history of this country to be found in any other city.

Even after some level of order was restored, Alexandrians walked their streets as strangers. Most had earlier fled South, and those that remained were not permitted to go out at night. Their mail was intercepted, and passes were required to travel to Washington and outlying environs. Those who failed to swear obedience to the United States Government were suspected of treason and arrested on the slightest pretext.

During the war Alexandria was transformed into a huge logistical supply center for Federal armies fighting in Virginia. Private houses, churches, and local public buildings were commandeered for military barracks, hospitals and prisons. A string of forts surrounded the capital area, including Alexandria. The U.S. Quartermaster Department constructed substantial warehouses along the bustling waterfront and bakeries, sawmills, trains sheds, stables and all other manner of support facilities throughout the city. Stockades were erected across the major east-west streets to thwart threatened Confederate cavalry sorties against the huge U.S. Military Railroad headquarters and train yard complex on upper Duke Street and other transportation and supply facilities. A source of the day wrote

This ancient city has now come a center of commercial importance, being the great warehouses as it might be termed, for supplies of the Army of Potomac. Miniature mountains of hay and pyramids of oat bags, high up in the air, meet the gaze as one approaches the city from the river. Spacious and antiquated storehouses along the wharves are filled to repletion with all kinds of stores for the use of our brave army, hordes of contrabands [former slaves who escaped into Union lines] are busily at work unloading vessels... Alexandria for the past two years can boast of more shipping at its wharves than any other city of its size in the Union... The old residents of Alexandria have mostly departed. Not one third of the original inhabitants now remain and the places of absent ones are filled by traffickers and dealers in military goods.

The Union army confiscated numerous large building hospitals throughout the town, for use as hospitals. Churches, homes, the city’s largest hotel, and other buildings were taken over as medical facilities. A Quaker Meetinghouse, a girls’ seminary, a home belonging to the family of Robert E. Lee – all accommodated wounded and diseased patients. Elsewhere, hospital complexes extending over city blocks were built based on plans drawn up by the Quartermaster-General in Washington. 

With the expansion of Union occupied territory, African-American refugees, most of them former slaves, streamed into Alexandria and Washington, contributing mightily to the Union labor force but putting major stress on the area's ability to house and feed the multitudes. By 1864 Alexandria had changed from a quaint old town as its outskirts and vacant lots were filled up with shanties and its vacant homes were filled with new arrivals.

These houses, huddled together with no conveniences for drainage, swarmed with a mass of men, women and children. Little neighborhoods called Petersburg, Contraband Valley, Pump Town and twenty other locales existed within the midst of the city.

The killing and suffering of the War did not come to an end until after April 9, 1865, when General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysees Grant at Appomattox Court House. For most native Alexandrians, it was a day of despair and gloom. Union soldiers and sympathizers, however, celebrated wildly in the streets as a victory parade formed at the end of North Washington Street and wended its way through the city. [William Francis Smith and T. Michael Miller, A Seaport Saga: Portrait of Old Alexandria, Virginia]

Following the end of the Civil War, Alexandria found itself in a state of physical, mental and economic depression. With the withdrawal of most of the troops, little commerce remained. Hundreds of returning Confederate soldiers, many missing limbs, faced the daunting prospect of beginning life anew after their homes and businesses had been confiscated, and their former way of life swept away by the conflict. The town was filled with refugees, white and black, and the City was forced to set up charity soup kitchens each winter to stave off starvation.

The surrounding landscape was totally denuded of trees, the harbor lay in ruins with its wharves rotting in the sun, and hundreds of buildings were in desperate need of repair. Beginning in the summer of 1865 the outlying forts, blockhouses, and army camps were dismantled and surplus materials sold at public auctions.

Reconstruction and racial relations

While pro-Confederate whites began to return to Alexandria, the massive influx of freed blacks nonetheless significantly changed the racial composition of the city. Immediately after the war, the population was nearly fifty percent black, a situation which introduced additional racial tensions. A riot between African-Americans and former Confederate soldiers on Christmas Day, 1865, persuaded some Unionists to call for the introduction of more Federal troops into Alexandria.

The political landscape of Virginia and the South was further altered in the spring of 1867 when the U.S. Congress passed a series of radical Reconstruction Acts which transformed Virginia into one of several districts to be ruled by the military. If vacancies occurred in Alexandria's municipal government, military officers exercised the legal authority to choose substitute candidates from a list of "loyal" citizens supplied by the Republican Party.

On March 30, 1868, General Schofield issued General Order No. 33 which addressed the removal of municipal officials. Hugh Latham, the relatively conservative mayor of Alexandria, was removed from office. Because of the orders, no municipal elections were held in Alexandria in March of 1868 or 1869; this was the first time in the city's history that elections had been canceled. Former Confederate soldiers and citizens who had voted for the Ordinance of Secession were disqualified from holding office. Indeed, candidates who aspired to public office were required to take an oath swearing allegiance to the United States and its Constitution.

Military rule in Virginia remained until 1869, and the state not fully re-admitted to the Union until 1870. For a few years after the war, an army garrison was responsible for maintaining order in Alexandria. Troops often consisted of African Americans, adding to the complexities of race relations in the troubled city.

The stated purpose of Reconstruction was to reintegrate and rebuild the Southern states, yet the program was taken over by the dominant Radical Republican  faction in Congress which wished to punish the South and keep those whom they viewed as traitors from having any influence in government. Due to motives ranging from sincere belief in racial equality to a desire to humble white Southerners, the Radical Republicans also sought to give blacks the right to vote and to assume positions of authority in the governments of the former Confederate states.

Due to military protection and a ruling coalition of native Unionists and "carpetbagger" Republicans, African Americans did experience unprecedented freedom and autonomy, including the passage of Constitutional amendments which abolished slavery and recognized their full rights as citizens.

In 1865, Alexandria hosted a statewide convention of blacks to discuss their future and their role in politics and society. On March 2, 1867, two to three hundred black men met at The Lyceum with a number of Unionists to demand the right to vote as full citizens in the municipal elections. By Election Day, the question had still not been resolved. Mayor Latham and Judge Moore travelled to Washington and consulted with President Andrew Johnson and the Attorney General. It was agreed that African Americans could cast ballots but that their votes would not be counted in the final tally. To keep the peace, two companies of U.S. troops and a battalion of cavalry were sent to Alexandria as about 1,000 African Americans voted for the Union ticket. It was not until 1870 that the Fifteenth Amendment  was passed, granting voting rights to black citizens. The following year, the first African-American members of the Common Council and the Board of Aldermen were elected.

What initially looked like a promising future for local blacks, however, proved illusory. The Freedmen's Bureau, established by the Federal government to assist refugees and freed slaves, was forced to curtail most of its activities at the end of 1868 due to the hostility or indifference of many in Congress. White Southerners generally favored a new system of social relations to replace slavery-racial segregation. Under a series of discriminatory "Jim Crow" laws, blacks began to be systematically denied access to public and private accommodations, denied the right to vote, and denied equal justice. As early as 1868, for instance, blacks on the Washington & Alexandria Railroad were being forced to occupy segregated seating areas. Also in the late 1860s, Ku Klux Klan-type groups arose in Northern Virginia, but were most active in Fauquier County. Long before Reconstruction officially ended in 1877, more conservative forces had re-established their power in all of the Southern states.

Points in Time

• 1870: U.S. population about 38,558,000 and immigration is 387,203
• 1870: Fifteenth Amendment ratified  
• 1870: First U.S. elevated railway opens; first asphalt road
• 1871: The Civil Rights Act of 1871, known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, is passed to protect African Americans in South
• 1872: Great Chicago Fire; Amnesty Act for former Confederates; Crédit Mobilier scandal; Apaches are moved to reservation; Victoria Woodhull first woman presidential candidate, (running mate Frederick Douglass); Civil Service reform; first mail-order company, Montgomery Ward, established
• 1873: Financial panic and five-year depression begun with the failure of Jay Cooke’s bank; U.S. put on gold standard; first U.S. public kindergarten
• 1874: Chatauqua movement begins  
• 1875: Civil Rights Act
• 1875: Whisky Ring scandal 
• 1875: Black Hills Gold Rush
• 1875-81: First successful dynamos for outdoor electric lighting
• 1876: Bell patents telephone; Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer published; Secretary of War Belknap impeached  
• 1876-1877: Samuel Tilden wins popular (but disputed) vote for president—electoral commission declares Republican Rutherford B. Hayes victor
• 1876-1881: War with Sioux and allied tribes 
• 1877: Reconstruction ends with withdrawal of troops from South
• 1877: Greenback Labor Party founded; Black Beauty published
• 1878: American Bar Association established; Edison patents phonograph
• 1879: California bans employment of Chinese; first gasoline-powered vehicle patented; Edison invents practical incandescent light bulb ; Church of Christ (Scientist) founded; first Woolworth “five and dime” store

Alexandria only slowly recovered from the trauma of thehttps://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Greenback_Labor_Party Civil War. By the 1870s, the town saw signs of resurgence, but judged relative to progress elsewhere, it seemed to be slipping further behind. The local paper was filled with boosterish optimism: "everything now has an animated and business aspect. There are more people on the streets; the stores and places of business present a 'live' appearance, all indicating growing prosperity. Dwelling houses for small families...are in demand. The prospect at present is brighter for the future of Alexandria than at any time within the past ten years..." [Alexandria Gazette 4/3/1871] "With railroad connections, North, East, South and West, with water connections to the principal cities North and South, and a daily increasing business by the developing of the varied industries of our State, what is to prevent our old city from taking the lead among the cities of the South?" [Alexandria Gazette 4/28/1873]

Others saw things less favorably. A reporter from the Amherst Enterprise, for instance, described the city as doing very well but criticized its dilapidated housing stock: "...we saw very old, rusty, half worn, dilapidated buildings, small and mean that would greatly improve the city if they were burned..." A correspondent from the St. Louis Republican was less flattering: "One feels inclined to take off his hat at every house on account of its age, and salute the crumbling brick and mortar as relics of vanished generations. In fact, the only thing which appears to thrive in Alexandria is the English Ivy... Rip Van Winkle took the trouble to go into the Katskill mountain for his twenty-year nap – he ought to have come to Alexandria where he might have been sleeping yet.... But strange to say, this American Pompeii has resisted every phase of modern progress thus far..." [Alexandria Gazette 12/4/1872]

Although Alexandria was frequently the butt of such jokes, improvement was the foremost topic, and promoters made much of the city's rail links and its cheap rents and low commodity prices. Efforts were made, both public and private, to lure European immigrants to settle on the area's extensive underused (and not especially rich) lands. An obviously unsuccessful overture was made for the relocation of the U.S. Naval Academy to this bank of the Potomac River [Alexandria Gazette 11/13/1872].

Transportation improvements were already underway. During June, 1873, hundreds of laborers worked to install a double railroad track which would accommodate Alexandria first passenger railroad. Horse-drawn street cars operated from the foot of King Street, west to the Virginia House Hotel (southwest corner of King and Payne Streets), thence up Peyton Street to the stone bridge on Duke Street. For all practical purposes this was Alexandria's first attempt to implement a local transit system. The horse trolley was finished by July 1873 and all the cars running by the 21st. Unfortunately, the trolley was not well patronized, and ceased operation by September 1874 [Alexandria Gazette 6/4/1873 and 7/21/1873]. Road improvements were an important issue in local campaigns, and the government did undertake extensive repairs. The municipality was limited, however, in the kinds of investments it could make. In 1875 the City held $1,116,326 of unrecoverable debt, mainly involving non-performing pre-war investments in railroads and canals.

The Panic of 1873 and the ensuing depression further injured Alexandria's economy and caused high unemployment. Since the war ended, the City had opened a charity soup kitchen each winter, but as the depression-year winter of 1874-1875 was particularly frigid; the mayor received unprecedented numbers of requests for food and fuel. For many of the poor there was not a stick of wood or a pint of meal [Alexandria Gazette 2/11/1875].

By the fall of 1877, a large number of vagrants had assembled in Alexandria. Mayor Kosciusko Kemper ordered the police to "rid the city of tramps..." And, "if found inside the city after having been thus sent out, they will be put on the chain gang and required to clean the streets."

Economic activity increased during the second half of the decade. Re-opened after the Civil War, the Alexandria Canal was carrying record tonnages of coal from the mines around Cumberland, Maryland to the port of Alexandria, and thence to San Francisco or the Caribbean. The various coal yards employed several hundred laborers. The town also boasted the steam wheat mill of George Y. Worthington, the sash door and blind factories of Rishiell and Hooge and Jamieson, Uhler and Co., the brickyards of W.D. Corse and Co. and J.T. Lucas, the plaster mills of C.F. Lee, Jr. and Suttle and Stuart, the Mount Vernon Cotton Factory, the steam bakery of George R. Hill and Co., the Vienna brewery of R. Portner, the spoke factory of A. Rosenthall, the sumac mills of J.E. McGraw and A. Rosenthall, the Cameron distillery of Peter Fagan, the Alexandria distillery of Conrad, Mason and Co., the Alexandria street passenger railway, and the Agricultural and Industrial Association and other important interests such as the coal trade and our fishtown interests. [Alexandria Gazette 4/28/1873]

Demographics

In 1870, Alexandria's population numbered about 13,570 inhabitants. The African American population had risen in number to nearly half of the total of Alexandria City/Alexandria County because of the arrival of thousands of former slaves during and after the war. Increasing in number, finally able to vote, and in cooperation with a still active group of local Republicans, African Americans made unprecedented political gains-which, unfortunately, were largely rolled back during the dark ages of Jim Crow. The leaders of the black community were mainly from that group of Alexandria natives who were already free before the war. In December 1873 an African American military company was organized, suggesting both the emergence of this black leadership class and a perceived need for protection. There was also a significant immigrant population, most notably including a very active and entrepreneurial German-American community.

In addition to the large industrial concerns, the city was home to 24 saloons, seven barbers, fourteen lawyers, seven doctors, eleven hotels and boarding houses, ten commission merchants, three photographers, three auctioneers, four insurance agents, two bankers, four land agents, seventeen liquor dealers, two distillers, four dentists and two express agents [Alexandria Gazette 6/15/1870].

Fire and flood

On December 31, 1872, an extensive fire destroyed Daingerfield's and Cazenove's block of five large warehouses in the commercial heart of the waterfront along the east side of the 100 block of N. Union Street. These grain and fertilizer warehouses sustained over $100,000 worth of damage and were among the most valuable buildings in the city. During the Civil War they had served as the chief storage facility for the commissary stores of the Federal army.

On August 17, 1873, after one of the heaviest deluges of rain in thirty years, many cellars in Alexandria filled with water. Houses were undermined, lives were endangered, city streets flooded, livestock drowned, and bridges and culverts were washed away.

On May 19, 1871, Alexandria's City Hall and the Market House caught fire and burned. The Alexandria Gazette remarked: "In this disaster Alexandria has lost one of its chief grand monuments around which has clung the revered memories of the past." [Gazette 5/1/1871] In a special address to City Council, Mayor Latham lamented the loss of the venerable City Hall building and suggested arrangements to house the Council and the various departments of the City government. Until City Hall was reconstructed, Council met in the Fairfax Street hall of the Harmonie Association, a German musical and social club [Alexandria Gazette 5/20/1871].

Council reviewed designs for a new City Hall submitted by architects Adolph Cluss, B.F. Price and John Lambdin. Council ultimately selected Cluss -- a Communist and friend of Karl Marx and architect of the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building and the Sumner and Franklin Schools in Washington-to supervise the reconstruction of the market house, City Hall, and the Cameron Street Masons lodge. E.H. Delahay acted as general contractor, and Joseph Hopkins supervised the interior work. The new facility was completed by January 1873 [Penny Morrill, Who Built Alexandria?].

Politics

Politics were in such a muddle in Alexandria in the spring of 1876 that the correspondent of the Baltimore Sun wrote that "Alexandria seemed to be rivaling Chicago in the number of its municipal imbroglios." The conflicts likely reflected the waning of the influence of the local Republican Party and arguments over the proper means of compensating the mayor.

Virginia was "readmitted" to the Union with the adoption of a new state constitution in 1869. On January 26, 1870, Federal military rule came to an end in Alexandria and civilian control was re-established. By the terms of the constitution, Alexandria and every political entity within the Commonwealth with a population of 10,000 or over became an independent city. It also established a public school system-racially segregated, of course. The City took over the two former Freedmen's Bureau schools for use as grammar schools for black boys and girls.

The first municipal election held under the new constitution occurred on May 25, 1870. Former mayor Hugh Latham was the standard bearer for the Conservative Party, while William Berkley, who had been a staunch unionist, was picked by the Republican party as their nominee. The election was described as "one of the quietest ever held in this city." Latham received 1,472 votes to Berkley's 1405. [Gazette 5/25/1870 and 6/22/1870] Rev. George Parker, the African American pastor of the Third Baptist Church, became the first black man to be elected to Alexandria's City Council. T.B. Pinn, another African American, was elected magistrate during the contest.

In 1871, the Conservative party again emerged victorious and retained control of the city despite efforts by African Americans and white Republicans to create a permanent bloc in opposition. [Alexandria Gazette 5/9/1871 and 5/11/1871].

Latham was defeated by arch rival William Berkeley by 87 votes in 1872, despite Latham's central role in quelling a riot by visiting Washingtonians that year. The Conservative Party, however, maintained control of the Common Council and the Board of Aldermen. And Berkley would turn out to be the last Republican to hold the office of mayor. Again, the election was notable because prominent builder John A. Seaton won a seat on the Board of Aldermen, thus becoming Alexandria's first black member of that political body.

The Social Scene

Post-bellum white Alexandrians honored their past by honoring the towering figures of their history. In October 1870, Alexandrians grieved over the death of Robert E. Lee. Never, since General Washington died, has any death produced, in this city, such manifestations of universal regret as that of General Lee. All the Corporation offices, the Gazette office, the telegraph offices, Adam's express office, nearly all the stores on King Street, and many residences are draped in mourning, the flags of the steamers and shipping in port are flying at half mast and the bells of the city are tolled at interval. [Alexandria Gazette 10/14/1870]

And, speaking of George Washington, the city reinstituted celebration of the first president's birth in 1873 – an event which had not been commemorated since the beginning of the war. The mayor issued a proclamation requesting that all businesses close in recognition of the day.

Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederacy, made a sojourn to Alexandria on October 4, 1872. Lodged at the Mansion House Hotel, he received many callers, friends and admirers.

A Place in Time

Perhaps, the most handsome edifice erected in Alexandria during the post Civil War era was the Corn Exchange Building at 100 King Street. This beautiful Italianate structure was designed by Benjamin Franklin Price in 1871. Finished by January 1872, the first floor was leased to a grocer. The second-story hall, "used by the Alexandria Exchange was 25 feet high with a gallery and an arched ceiling, beautifully ornamented. The brickwork contributes to the character of the building and monumental attached columns suggested in brick, support a paneled and bracketed cornice." [Penny Morrill, Who Built Alexandria?]

Points in Time

• 1880: Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus and Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur  are among the national best sellers
• 1880: Organization of the Salvation Army in the U.S.  
• 1881: Assassination of President Garfield  
• 1881: Supreme Court upholds constitutionality of a federal income tax
• 1882: Chinese Exclusion Act
• 1882: John D. Rockefeller establishes Standard Oil Trust; electric iron invented
• 1883: Supreme Court finds most of 1875 Civil Rights Act unconstitutional; Pendleton Act establishes merit-based Civil Service system
• 1883: Brooklyn Bridge completed; four time zones established in U.S. and Canada; U.S. begins construction of a “steel Naval fleet”
• 1884: Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn published; first skyscraper built in Chicago
• 1885: AT&T formed; death of President Ulysses S. Grant; end of the great Western cattle boom
• 1886: Haymarket Riot; Statue of Liberty dedicated
• 1887: Interstate Commerce Act
• 1888: National Geographic Society founded  
• 1888: First Kodak portable camera  
• 1889: North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington become states; Jane Addams opens Hull-House
• 1889: National Farmers’ Alliance founded; first electric elevators and sewing machines

In the years following the great Centennial Exposition, Americans took a renewed interest in all things "Colonial" or "Early American." Unfortunately for the ever-hopeful and oft-disappointed boosters within Alexandria's business community, the city had now come to be seen as such a quaint antique. An essay in the February 1881 Scribner's Monthly Magazine characterized the way many outsiders perceived the city.

Seen from the river, [it] presents an appearance at once striking...plank roofs, gabled, hipped, and gambreled, their shingles, which were laid before the century was born, now warped and moss grown, are pierced by innumerable [chimneys].... With its iron-stained, dark red brick walls, the place looks dim and rusty. The town, stretching up and back from the river shore which is bordered by a fringe of rotting wharves, makes, with its queer gables and chimneys showing themselves among the sycamores and lindens, exceedingly picturesque and artistic sky-lines. The low lap, lap of the water among the stones and timbers with the sun of the high noon shining strongly over all, suggests that the place has fallen asleep and will now not awaken, but will die as it sleeps-peacefully. Alexandria, though dead commercially, harbors a genial life, which retains much warm cordiality and quiet, unostentatious, hereditary refinement.... (T. Michael Miller, ed., Pen Portraits of Alexandria, Virginia, 1739-1900)

There is no doubt that it was picturesque. "[H]istoric old town Alexandria is just now a picture of springtime beauty. Washington Street is a veritable bower of beauty. Nearly two miles long and quite 100 feet wide, with pretty, clean brick residences, many of them of colonial type, on either side, yards of the greenest grass and rows of maple, elm and sycamore up and down their branches almost meeting in the middle arch like, it reminds one of some great cathedral." (from the Washington Republican, reprinted in the Alexandria Gazette 5/3/1888)

The city did progress, but the changes were almost imperceptible when contrasted with the muscle of the big cities in the flower of the Industrial Revolution. One measure of Alexandria's situation is population. Numbering only 13,570 residents in 1870, the city's population grew only by only 89 individuals by 1880 and by 680-to 14,339-between 1880 and 1890. Greener pastures, both literally and figuratively, led many residents West and discouraged the arrival of the numbers of immigrants which flooded many East Coast cities. Alexandria was further overshadowed by its neighbors, Baltimore and Washington-although Washingtonians were also realizing that the capital would never become an important industrial center.

Alexandria's economy was sleepy, but not dead. "During the 1880s Alexandria began to acquire modern conveniences with the introduction of the telephone in 1881, rural free mail delivery in 1887 and electricity by 1889." (Smith and Miller, Seaport Saga) With the advent of mail delivery, the street numbering system was changed to the present method of assigning a sequence of hundreds to each block in Old Town beginning with 100 for the first block (from the river or from King Street), 200 for the second, etc. In 1886 the City Council passed a bill which would exact fines on the owners of cows which roamed at large (and several members favored a similar measure aimed at domesticated geese!). (Alexandria Gazette 2/10/1886) During the same year, sanitation throughout the city was improved as workmen began installing new sewers built of heavy oak timber. In 1880, three years after the end of a major national depression, Councilman Isaac Eichberg commented that "[Alexandria] was in a better condition than it had been for the past 12 or 15 years." (Alexandria Gazette 5/26/1880) The largest employers were foundries, shipyards, a brewery, a cracker factory, a shoe factory, brick manufacturers, and lumber and coal dealers.

Success was in the air on July 21, 1883, when the J.P. Agnew and Company shipyard launched the four-masted schooner William T. Hart, the largest ship ever constructed in Alexandria. It was a gala day as hundreds flocked to Windmill Hill (500 block of South Lee Street) to see such "a huge specimen of marine architecture consigned to the water." Not long thereafter, however, the Maine men who owned most of the shipyard came to the realization that ship construction here was not economically feasible, since most of the fittings had to be manufactured elsewhere and shipped to Alexandria. So they returned home, bringing the era of wooden shipbuilding in Alexandria to an end. (Smith and Miller, Seaport Saga)

Smaller-scale marine transport also hit the rocks. In 1887, the Alexandria Canal failed after a long history of financial troubles. "[R]eopened [after the war, it] never achieved anticipated profitability, and the town, which had invested heavily in the canal's construction, was saddled with an enormous debt which cast a pall over its economic recovery. The use of the canal was abandoned in 1887." (Smith and Miller, Seaport Saga) Alexandria's port also suffered considerable damage when a massive 1889 flood inundated its wharves and waterfront. "All along the Strand from the lower shipyard [at Franklin Street] to the American Coal wharves [at First Street] several feet of water were on the first floors of every building, while Union Street from Prince to the cove above Fishtown was an unbroken canal, suggestive of a scene in Venice, lacking only the gondola to enable one to imagine himself in the city of the Adriatic.... The scene attracted nearly everybody in town to the river front..." (Alexandria Gazette 6/3/1889)

Social and Cultural Life

The decade opened with a celebration. On March 9, 1880, Alexandria's City Council sponsored a special gala to celebrate the centennial of the town's incorporation. Newspaper journalist William F. Carne, Alexandria's Herodotus, orated on the occasion, chronicling the events of the century past. There were many other social gatherings and happenings, of course. In January 1880, Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show made quite an impression as the troupe performed equestrian maneuvers and depicted an "Old" West which was already vanishing. (Alexandria Gazette 1/22/1880)

At the height of the Victorian era, vices and values were at the heart of Alexandria politics. In May 1886, City Council considered a petition of the city's ministerial association protesting gambling in town. Possible temperance or Prohibition legislation was a dominant issue of the 1881 local elections. The temperance society argued that if bars were outlawed, an influx of families would migrate to Alexandria to escape the deleterious consequences of alcohol. A.C. Harmon, a Quaker merchant who operated a store on the northeast corner of Prince and Royal Streets, was the candidate of the "Temperance Ticket." (Alexandria Gazette 5/7/1881) He was opposed by Board of Aldermen James T. Beckham, the standard bearer of the regular Democratic Party. The Democrats swept the elections in a landslide. "[E]very nominee of the regular Democratic ticket, from mayor to constable, was elected by a flattering majority. As soon as the polls closed...bon fires were lighted all over the city and there was great rejoicing over the victory. Men on the streets declared that Alexandria had rid herself of another ism...." (Alexandria Gazette 5/27/1881)

In response to concerns expressed about local saloons, however, City Council passed "Blue laws" in May 1881, calling for the better observance of the Christian Sabbath – specifying that the sale of all intoxicating liquors, tobacco, cigars, or other articles of merchandise be prohibited on Sundays. (Alexandria Gazette 5/11/1881) As a result, "The Egyptians of Alexandria are now compelled to go to Washington to get their beer of a Sunday..." (Alexandria Gazette 5/17/1881)

But the resounding rejection of a near-Prohibition showed that the city still had enough "gaming men." Certain residents bemoaned the loss of an "Old Landmark" located on the north side of Duke between Fairfax and Royal St. in June 1886. "Fifty years ago a respected Black man named John West kept a house of private entertainment in the neighborhood which was patronized by the most prominent citizens." (Alexandria Gazette 6/2/1886)

Politics

As in 1881, the election of 1883 was a Democratic landslide. The Democrats were firmly in control of the city government, as they would remain for many years. The election of 1885 was notable, however, because of the scare the Democrats received from the narrowness of their victory. John B. Smoot, a prominent Alexandria tanner, was the party's choice for mayor, and it was expected that there would be little opposition in the general election. "That Mr. Smoot will be elected by a good majority there seems little doubt, though Mr. Lucas is making an active personal canvas, and an effort on foot to make this contest one of labor against capital – Mr. Lucas posing as a friend of labor. This silly notion notice may scratch a few foolish voters, but the majority of the men now are too sensible to be caught by such a threadbare argument..." (Alexandria Gazette 5/7/1885) Apparently, Mr. Lucas tapped into underlying discontent among the electorate for he did "scratch more than a few voters" and came within 25 votes of winning the election.

It would be interesting to determine if the populace exercised their franchise according to class interests. It is apparent, however, that Mr. Lucas received the support of Republicans, African Americans and disaffected Democrats. The Alexandria Gazette, the voice of the status quo, charged "that disaffected followers of democratic primary candidates who lost their caucus secretly worked for the defeat of Mr. Smoot."

The assiduity displayed by the so-called independent movement yesterday was stubborn. Every inducement that could be offered the wavering and vacillating was resorted to in order to weaken the democratic ranks and that the would-be Mayor was but the figure head of some more or interested element was a fact patent to all reflecting people. Money, not only during yesterday, but throughout the canvass, was disbursed lavishly, and every species of hypocrisy and fraud used to deceive the ignorant, careless or unwary. A notable instance of the practice of base deception was the distribution of facsimiles of democratic tickets. The tickets in question were gotten up to resemble in every respect those issued by the democrats with but a single exception – Mr. Lucas's name taking the place of Mr. Smoot's.... (Alexandria Gazette 5/29/1885)

Mr. Smoot was sworn into office as Alexandria's forty-ninth mayor on July 1, 1885. During Mayor Smoot's term General U.S. Grant, former President of the U.S. and commander of the Union Armies during the Civil War died in July 1885. Although most Alexandrians had seen Grant as an enemy both martial and political, he had also offered honorable terms to General Lee at Appomattox Courthouse in April 1865 and had subsequently favored provisions in the 1869 Virginia state constitution which permitted former Confederate soldiers to vote. Alexandrians expressed a degree of sympathy for the Union general. Mayor Smoot called a public meeting at Lannon's Opera House to mark Grant's death. He issued a proclamation which read:

Believing that it is right, and that you are desirous of giving some public expression of your sympathies of the Nation's loss in the death of General Grant, I call upon you to assemble...and there by resolutions or otherwise, to express our feelings of regret at the death of him, who defended the officers and men of the army of Virginia after the surrender, and who permitted separate vote to be taken on certain sections of the State Constitution, thereby securing to us privileges that would have been denied us by others. For these reasons if for no others, it is right that we as Virginians, should give public expressions of our regret at his death.

Evidenced by his vetoes of legislation of certain improvements in the public right-of-ways, Smoot jealously guarded the city's prerogatives vis-a-vis the railroads and individuals. He was comfortably re-elected in 1887. (Alexandria Gazette 12/11/1885 and 4/20/1886) Smoot held many positions of public trust. He was president of the Citizens National Bank, president of the Mount Vernon Avenue Association and a past master of Washington Lodge of Masons. He was described as very sober and conservative in both public and private life. Tragically, while hosting a Christmas party at his 804 Prince Street home on December 25, 1887, Mayor Smoot suffered a heart attack and died. (Alexandria Gazette 11/30/1887 and 1/2/1887).

Following Smoot's sudden death, the Board of Aldermen met on December 30, 1887, to pick an interim chief executive. After six ballots, E.E. Downham – a former distillery owner, board member of the German Co-Operative Building Association, councilman for sixteen years, alderman for a decade, and occupant of what is now known as the Lee-Fendall House – was appointed mayor. (Alexandria Gazette 1/2/1887) He remained in office after 1889, when he was elected by the city's voters.

Architecture

The Mushbach House at 418 North Washington Street was constructed by William F. Vincent in 1886, apparently copying Stanford White-Design's Casino at Short Hills, New Jersey. The owner, George A. Mushbach, was a prominent attorney who served in the Virginia General Assembly and the State Senate. Unfortunately, this distinctive and eccentric "Queen Anne" edifice with its tower and triangular gabled roof was razed in the early 1980s. Its destruction led to changes in local preservation laws. Since then, all demolitions in the historic districts have required prior clearance from the Boards of Architectural Review. (Penny Morrill, Who Built Alexandria)

A Place in Time

To commemorate the sacrifices made by Alexandrians in support of the Confederacy, in 1885, Edgar Warfield, a former private of the 17th Virginia Regiment, proposed to the Robert E. Lee Camp of the United Confederate Veterans that a monument be erected honoring the town's Confederate dead. When the well-known Southern artist John A. Elder of Fredericksburg, Virginia heard of the proposed memorial, he submitted a clay model of the figure in his painting “Appomattox," which was promptly accepted as the design. Elder's painting depicted a Confederate soldier viewing the forlorn battlefields of the South after the surrender at Appomattox. In 1888, the R.E. Lee Camp received approval from City Council to place the statue at the intersection of Washington and Prince Streets, the point from which the Alexandria troops had mustered and departed the city on the morning of May 24, 1861. On May 24, 1889, Virginia Governor Fitzhugh Lee, formerly a major general of cavalry in the Army of Northern Virginia and a nephew of General Robert E. Lee, spoke to a huge crowd at the dedication ceremony. (Alexandria Gazette 5/25/1889) Since its unveiling, the Confederate monument, whose base is inscribed with the names of Alexandria's war dead, has perpetuated the memory of those one hundred Alexandrians who fought and perished for "The Lost Cause." Facing South, with head bowed, the figure suggests no bitterness or defiance, but only profound grief. For many years the statue served as the focal point for Confederate Memorial Day services.

The statue was removed by the Daughters of the Confederacy in June 2020, during nationwide Black Lives Matters demonstrations and ahead of the new state law allowing localities to remove, relocate or contextualize Confederate monuments within their communities. 

Points in Time

• 1890: American voters in the South; Oklahoma Territory  established, leading to dispossession of tribal lands; Indian Ghost Dance  movement and massacre at Wounded Knee; Sherman Silver Purchase Act
• 1892: Homestead Massacre at Carnegie Steel Plant; People's (Populist) Party founded; X-ray discovered
• 1893: Beginning of four-year depression; World Columbian Exposition  in Chicago; Edison invents Kinetoscope, forerunner to the motion picture projector, and improvements by others follow
• 1894: March of Coxey's Army;  Pullman Strike  
• 1894-1899: First federal budget deficits since the Civil War
• 1895: Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage published
• 1896: Plessy v. Ferguson decision upholds racial segregation as non-discriminatory; Klondike Gold Rush  
• 1898: Spanish-American War  

A small southern town of 14,300 inhabitants in 1890, Alexandria exuded an air of optimism as it entered the last decade of the nineteenth century. Although it was still characterized mainly by its "old fashioned buildings, old fashioned streets and old fashioned pumps," new businesses were astir, and homes were under construction in new suburbs.

The Alexandria Gazette editorialized in February 1890 that

Alexandria has always been known for her conservative policy, rather than for what some term goaheadativeness. [Yet], Alexandria holds her own. Her people may seek their fortunes elsewhere and find them, and records have it that in some time or other drift back. No gigantic enterprises have struck Alexandria lately. Recent industries completed here are the large tannery of Mssrs. C. Smoot and Son which gave employment to upwards of 100 men. It was destroyed by fire last year...but has been improved considerably lately, all the vats being now in use and new machinery is being put up as fast as their needs demand it... Sixty odd men are now employed by this concern...

Some months ago a Board of Trade was formed with a membership of 150... The freight traffic of the Midland road so increased last year as to require the removal of the freight yards... The shipyard has had more work during the month past than for some time... It [is] time for Alexandria to take rank with progressive cities."

Early 1890s industrial construction also included Frederick Paff's Potomac Shoe Company in 1890; the Virginia Glass Company plant on Duke Street in 1893; and a large new brewhouse for the Robert Portner Brewing Company in 1894 – temporarily making it the Southern brewery with the greatest production capacity. Home construction was booming in the new northeast suburbs of Del Ray, Braddock Heights and St. Elmo.

Building in Alexandria and the suburbs since last fall has been steady, and during the year there have been more tenement houses erected for speculative purposes than in any other like period since the Civil War. Rents here are cheaper than in Washington and the cost of living is said to be less. Commutative rates between Alexandria and Washington by train are ten cents each way... Boats run hourly during the day, and there are twenty-four passenger trains on week days.... [Alexandria Gazette]

Some suburban lots which sold for $100 in the spring of 1889 now commanded as much as $300 in February 1890. Business slowed generally as a consequence of the depression which began in 1893.

Politics

During the early 1890s, Henry Strauss led the city as mayor. In retrospect, he is perhaps most notable as Alexandria's first Jewish mayor. Many of his efforts were directed toward the improvement of the city's infrastructure, appearance and safety, including the paving of streets, the construction of sewers, and the removal of derelict buildings. He also recommended the hiring of more police.

Mr. Strauss's circle of acquaintances was probably larger than that of any other person in Alexandria, and his open, jovial good nature won him many friends. Neither fortune nor position changed his demeanor, and throughout life he was the same good natured, sympathizing friend to those he deemed worthy of his esteem, and clung to them through evil and good report while his intimates were not the opulent or prominent in this word. There was nothing of the unstable in him... While of Jewish birth and holding to the faith of his fathers, he was peculiarly conservative in his religious views.... [H]e never failed to open his purse for the benefit of any denomination when an appeal was made to them nor did any one needing help apply to him in vain. [Alexandria Gazette 10/10/1908]

Immensely popular and heading the nearly unbeatable Democratic ticket, Strauss was unopposed in his 1893 re-election bid. The conservative and Democratic Alexandria Gazette recorded that the contest was one of the quietest hereabouts for many years-in fact, it is safe to say that some people didn't know it was in progress. It was a model election and should those to follow be on the same order they would prove very satisfactory to all sober minded people [a remarkable statement for an ostensibly representative democracy!].... The Democratic ticket with but a single exception was elected.... Paul R. Evans, Independent, defeating Capt. R.F. Knox for the Common Council in the Fourth ward.... Evans is a Republican but not of the radical class and he has many personal friends in both parties. [Alexandria Gazette 5/26/1893]

With the Democratic lock on the city's political leadership, most of the wrangling and most of the attention belonged to the Democratic primaries. Some were quite hotly contested. Yet each election, the Republicans and Independents, if they put forth candidates at all, were soundly defeated. Dissatisfied with the weakness, factionalism and self-interest of the local Republican Party machinery, Alexandria's African American community called a conference of leading black politicians at Mount Olivet Church in 1893. At this meeting a "series of resolutions were adopted denouncing...the present Republican city organization as inimical to the interest of the colored voters; also that those present were averse to taking any part with the populists in the coming mayoral election." [Alexandria Gazette 10/2/1893]

Among the concerns of African Americans was undoubtedly the horrifying frequency of lynchings in Virginia and around the country. In Alexandria, there is documentation of the lynching of two individuals Joseph McCoy (April 23, 1897) and Benjamin Thomas (August 8, 1899). Between 1882 and 1968, 100 Virginians, including at least 11 in Northern Virginia, were lynched. The lynchings were among 4,743 reported nationwide during the same period. Lynching was never a federal offense. 

African American activism led, in 1897, to the announcement of Alexandria's first African American mayoral candidate. The Alexandria Gazette of April 9, 1897 announced that "William Coleman, colored had filed a notice with the clerk of the court that he will be a candidate for Mayor..."

The incumbent, Luther H. Thompson, was opposed by both Coleman and former policeman, Gilbert Simpson. Simpson was bitter over supposed political machinations which had led to his being put off the force. Still, he claimed, "This city never had a better and more conscientious servant than I proved to be. I would rather be elected Mayor of Alexandria this time than to be President of the United States for the next ten years." [Alexandria Gazette 5/19/1897] Gilbert Simpson's candidacy was marred by an King Street altercation with former mayor, J.T. Beckham. Beckham was "roughly handled," and the police arrested Simpson. "The affair caused much comment and when the Police Court was called to order a crowd assembled to witness the trial." The charges were later dropped and the disturbance amicably adjusted. [Alexandria Gazette 4/12/1897]

The general election was another complete sweep for the Democratic ticket. George L. Simpson received 1,633 votes; Gilbert Simpson polled 162 votes, and William C. Coleman garnered only 22 votes. [Alexandria Gazette 5/28/1897]

The Spanish-American War

U.S.-Spanish relations deteriorated during the ongoing struggle by Cubans for independence. Fueled by often sensationalistic newspaper reports of Spanish atrocities in Cuba, the old cries for the southward expansion of American territory were again heard, this time promoted mainly by the Republican Party. These issues came to a head in February 1898 when the U.S. accused Spain of sinking the battleship U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor. John Bell, an African American former resident of Alexandria, was one of the 252 sailors killed in the terrible explosion. [Alexandria Gazette 2/18/1898]

The career of John Bell deserves more than a mention. He probably served as a servant to a naval officer during the Civil War. He officially joined the Navy in 1871. Two of the ships he served upon were the U.S.S. St. Louis and the U.S.S. Lancaster. It appears that he served as the captain's steward in each instance, including aboard the Maine. Anecdotes suggest that Bell wielded considerable influence with his captains, and often interceded on the behalf of sailors. He also eased the harshness of life at sea by supplementing the poor diet of the men with leftovers from the officers' mess. Overseas, Bell made frequent visits to the graves of American sailors. [Patrick McSherry, "John R. Bell, Steward, Battleship Maine, The Spanish-American War Centennial Website]

Once, Steward Bell had commented "I shall never die ashore. I'll be buried deep in the sea I love, in clean water" .... In 1912, when the Maine's wreckage was dewatered, and the vessel's stern refloated, amidst the carnage of the wreck was found a watch. It was inscribed "John R. Bell" ... John Bell's prediction had come true.... After the battleship Maine was lost in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, requests poured in from all quarters for information about [men] who served on the ill-fated ship.... [The Maine's chaplain John] Chidwick noted that of all of the crewmen on the Maine, more requests concerning the welfare of John Bell came to him than concerning any other crewman.... What caused so many people to inquire about Bell was simple. It was his kindness to everyone who strode the same deck as he. [Patrick McSherry, "John R. Bell, Steward, Battleship Maine, The Spanish-American War Centennial Website]

Under intense pressure to liberate Cuba and avenge the destruction of the Maine, President McKinley requested a declaration of war which Congress passed on April 21, 1898. McKinley then called for 125,000 volunteers. The federal government requested that the State of Virginia raise three regiments of infantry to serve in the volunteer army, and Virginia Governor J. Hoge Tyler notified all volunteer military organizations in the state to be prepared for active duty.

On May 14, 1898, a large crowd gathered in Alexandria to pay their farewells to the Alexandria Light Infantry (formed in 1878) as it heeded the call to arms, marched up King Street from Armory Hall and boarded a train headed for training camps in Richmond. "Mothers amid sobs bade a last farewell to their sons and men with choked emotions shook hands with them and wished them God's speed." One hundred four men strong, the Light Infantry and a field band entered service as Company F of the Third U.S. Infantry Regiment. "No man can point the finger of scorn at us and call us cowards. Rather a thousand times would we die than go back home until the war is over. We are Virginians before anything else. No one shall say we Virginians did not do our duty." [Alexandria Gazette 5/21/1898]

Most white Alexandrians were sent to train at Camp Alger, near Falls Church, or to Camp Lee, adjacent to Petersburg. The raw recruits complained about the monotony, poor food and hardships of camp life. A soldier at Camp Lee wrote: "The food is horrible. We were almost starved. The bill of fare on Saturday was sardines, cheese, pickles, bad bread and coffee.... Duties will commence in real earnest in a few days. We elected officers this morning and will probably be examined tomorrow. We sleep on benches in the Fair building. Reveille sounded at 6 o'clock, lights are out at 9 o’clock... The cream of Virginia is represented here as well as some of the worst... I would like to see the old town once more before going to Cuba. I see the boys have not forgotten their promises to their mothers, wives and sisters, as they read their Bibles before breakfast and then write home. On June 21, 1898, 3,000 troops from Camp Alger were conveyed to the Alexandria harbor and transported down the Potomac to Old Point Comfort and Hampton Roads. The majority of Alexandrians in the 3rd Virginia regiment remained at Camp Alger because they had not been armed or equipped and yet had no battalion or regimental drills. They were later moved to a site at Dunn Loring, nearer to a railroad line and adequate supplies of water. Because of the swift U.S. victory, they were released from duty on August 29 and formally mustered out October 10. [Alexandria Gazette 5/19/1898, 5/21/1898, 6/22/1898 and 10/10/1898]

A greater proportion of Alexandria's African American community served in the war and got somewhat closer to the fighting. An 80-man company of black soldiers left the city for basic training in Georgia on July 7, 1898. "A brass band at the head of the company as it passed through the streets to the depot drew immensely." Crowds of African American residents gathered along the track and saluted the company as the train pulled out. At least one of the volunteers, Joseph Tibbs, is buried in Alexandria National Cemetery. [Alexandria Gazette 7/7/1898]

Many other troops passed through the city during those days. Some, ill fed, were even taken into the homes of citizens. In July 1898, arrangements were made in Alexandria to open a soldier's rest camp at the old Armory Hall building on the 200 block of South Royal Street. Here soldiers were served lunch through the efforts the Ladies Relief Association [Alexandria Gazette 7/25/1898]

By the time a formal peace treaty had been signed between Spain and the United States at Paris France on December 11, 1898, few Alexandrians had actually seen any combat. General Fitzhugh Lee – born at Clermont Plantation in 1835, formerly a commander of Confederate Cavalry, married at the Lyceum, and later one of Virginia's most popular Governors (1886-1890)-served as U.S. consul to Cuba prior to the conflict. As such, Lee was intimately involved in the diplomatic machinations between Spain and U.S. When war erupted in the spring of 1898, Lee enlisted in the army and was made a Major General of U.S. Volunteers. After the war, he commanded an army of occupation at Havana.

The 150th Birthday Celebration

Alexandrians ended the decade celebrating the city's sesquicentennial on October 12, 1899. Practically the entire city plus thousands of visitors enjoyed a lavish parade. 

Architecture

Perhaps Alexandria's finest example of Queen Anne/Free Classic Revival residential is the French-Lawler House at 517 South Washington Street. Constructed about 1890, the masonry structure exhibits a melding of medieval massing with neoclassical detail which was quite fashionable at the time. Now occupied by a business, the structure still stands and has recently been nicely restored.

The fascination with all things colonial was at a peak. The interior of the venerable Christ Church, completed in 1773, was remodeled ca. 1893 to more nearly match its original appearance. Among other changes, the color scheme was altered, and Victorian gasoliers were removed. The architect was Glenn Brown, later Secretary of the American Institute of Architects. Brown, a former assistant of Henry Hobson Richardson, also designed the Richardsonian Romanesque Muir House at 228 North Columbus Street and made detailed drawings of the interior of Gadsby's Tavern.

Points in Time

• 1900: U.S. population 75.9 million; U.S. currency officially put on gold standard; Boxer Rebellion in China; hurricane and tidal wave destroy Galveston; U.S. Steel formed
• 1901: President McKinley assassinated; Queen Victoria died; "Five Civilized Tribes" admitted to U.S. citizenship; Pentecostal movement born
• 1902: U.S. withdraws from Cuba; Rayon patented
• 1903: Revolt in Panama ends in independence and a treaty for the U.S. to commence an isthmian canal; Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk; cancer first treated with radiation; bestsellers include Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Call of the Wild by Jack London; movie The Great Train Robbery produced; Enrico Caruso's American debut; Sweet Adeline is top musical hit; National Wildlife Refuge system legislation
• 1904: President Roosevelt proclaims interventionist corollary to Monroe Doctrine; New York subway opens; Ida Tarbell publishes History of the Standard Oil Company, and Lincoln Steffens writes series The Shame of the Cities; Louisiana Puchase Exposition  in St. Louis; Cy Young pitches the first major league perfect game
• 1904-1905: Russo-Japanese War  
• 1905: Industrial Workers of the World founded; National Audubon Society founded
• 1906: Pure Food and Drug Act; Great San Francisco Earthquake and fire; American Antiquities Act of 1906; Upton Sinclair's The Jungle published
• 1907: Knickerbocker financial panic; First Ziegfeld Follies
• 1908: Ford Motor Company introduces Model T; FBI established; the "Ashcan School" of painting formed; African American boxer Jack Johnson is world heavyweight champion; Frank Lloyd Wright completes the Robie House; Washington's Union Station completed; Take Me Out to the Ballgame is top musical hit
• 1909: NAACP  founded; President Taft's "Dollar Diplomacy" reaffirms U.S. interest in maintaining an "Open Door" abroad for U.S. firms; Thomas Hunt Morgan begins work on gene theory; Copyright Act

Commerce and Industry

Alexandria experienced astonishing growth as a manufacturing center from 1899 to 1915, leading every city in Virginia except Lynchburg in the increased production of goods. The value of the city's products nearly tripled between 1899 and 1909. The most important industries produced glass, fertilizer, beer and leather. There were 54 manufacturing establishments which employed 1,713 persons. In 1899 salaries paid to all persons employed in these industries amounted to $374,000, and the figure increased to $919,000 in 1909 [Alexandria Gazette 6/4/1912].

Central to this phenomenal growth were Alexandria's glass factories. Major production of glass began in the early 1890s by the Virginia Glass Company, located on the south side of the 1800 block of Duke Street in West End. A large percentage of the firm's business was the manufacture of bottles for the Portner brewery on St. Asaph Street. On February 18, 1905 tragedy befell the company when its plant was entirely destroyed by fire. In January 1901 German-American entrepreneurs and local glassblowers announced they would soon erect a new glass works on the river front along the old Alexandria canal locks on the 800 and 900 blocks of North Fairfax Street near Montgomery Street. Known as the Old Dominion Glass Company, it had scarcely been in operation a year when it too was ravaged by fire. Soon reconstructed, however, the plant manufactured an assortment of beer and soda bottles, flasks, and medicine and food bottles for the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, McCormick and Company and others. The Belle Pre Bottle Company, situated on the west side of Henry Street between Madison and Montgomery Streets, was organized in 1902 by a group of Washington businessmen. It owned a patent on a type of milk bottle and was one of the largest producers of such bottles in the U.S. Beset by financial setbacks in 1912, Belle Pre declared bankruptcy and subsequently auctioned off its equipment. Finally, the Alexandria Glass Company, begun about 1900, was located on the northwest corner of Henry and Montgomery Streets. Purchased by the Old Dominion Glass Company in 1916, fire completely devastated the glass works despite the vigorous efforts of the firemen. As a result of this blaze, 175 men and boys lost their jobs, and company officials estimated the damage at $75,000 [Alexandria Gazette 2/8/1917].

Railroads had been a mainstay of Alexandria's economy since the mid-nineteenth century, when the Orange & Alexandria, the Alexandria & Washington, and the Alexandria Loudoun & Hampshire formed a transportation hub in town. Along with the Manassas Gap Railroad, these lines employed hundreds of laborers who worked tirelessly laying track, constructing depots, and toiling in the freight yards. "An extensive new facility known as Potomac Yard was opened on August 1, 1906, between the then-northern city limits of Alexandria and the Long Bridge. The original installation included roughly 450 acres, with 52 miles of track and a capacity for over 3,000 cars..." This facility would become the largest railroad classification yard on the east coast of the U.S. by World War II. New iron bridges were constructed over Braddock Road, King Street and Commonwealth Avenue in 1903-4. A new Union Station and a new freight station were opened at the head of King Street in 1905, uniting the passenger and freight facilities formerly dispersed among independent stations in town [Al Cox, "The Alexandria Union Station" in Historic Alexandria Quarterly, Winter 1996].

There had been electric trolley service in Alexandria since 1892, and by 1906 the Washington, Alexandria and Mt. Vernon electric railroad had transported 1,743,734 passengers along their route with 92 daily trains daily. Travelers could also catch steamers to Norfolk and Baltimore while daily ferry service was available to Washington, D.C. These transportation developments reflected and encouraged a north and westward shift in population, as suburbanites found they could commute from Rosemont (platted 1906), Del Ray, Braddock Heights, and St. Elmo to Washington or the center of Alexandria, and as workmen settled in Del Ray near jobs in the train yards.

Politics and Government

From the mid 1870s until the present day, Alexandria's city government has been dominated by the Democratic party. The first decade of the twentieth century was certainly no exception. "The election [of George Simpson as mayor,] while it proceeded quietly has caused more interest than was generally the case... There is virtually no opposition to the head of the ticket and none whatever to the other candidates for city office. Simpson won by a landslide ..." Similarly, in 1904 the only action was in the Democratic primary. Simpson was defeated by German-American shoe manufacturer Frederick Paff, and the general election was again "devoid of animation and those conducting it had to kill time during the greater portion of the day.... The gentlemen nominated for Aldermen and Councilmen at the recent democratic primary election had no competition."

Architecture

One of Alexandria's stand-out structures of the first decade of the twentieth century is the 1909 Elks' Club at 318 Prince Street. It is a pretty standard brick example of the Beaux Arts style then popular for institutional buildings-with its clear tripartite organization of articulated base, columned "body," and prominent cornice. In addition to its classical flourishes, there are two elements which attract the eye. The second-story arch above the entry contains a full-size, half-ton bronze elk statue, with its head and antlers projecting just beyond the plane of the wall. It is a symbol, of course, of the fraternal organization once quartered here, the Alexandria lodge of the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks. Above it, on the parapet of the building, is a clock which eternally reads 11:00. "Many citizens have assumed it to be in disrepair... Upon close inspection, the clock shows no evidence of working parts." It appears to be symbolic of a traditional Elks 11 p.m. toast to "all brothers everywhere, land or sea, and a remembrance of absent brothers at that hour." [Marilyn Burke, "The Elks Club at 318 Prince Street" in the Alexandria Chronicle, Summer 1993]