The Quartermaster
Page 27
In the legislative: Meigs, Notes on acoustics, 80; Brown, Glenn Brown’s History, 210.
The three men visited: Meigs in Annual Report, U.S. Capitol Extension Office, October 22, 1853, in Documentary History, 586–91.
he returned to Washington: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, June 12, 1853.
His masons went: Jefferson Davis, Papers of Jefferson Davis, vol. 5, 1853–1855, Lynda Lasswell Christ, ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 180; Meigs in Report of the Secretary of War, December 1, 1853, 74–75.
He worried that: Allen, United States Capitol, 222.
England had used: Edward Dobson, A Rudimentary Treatise on the Manufacture of Bricks and Tiles (London: George Woodfall and Son, 1850), 9.
Meigs began counting: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, May 21, 1853; see also Ex. Doc. 138 of the House of Representatives, 34th Congress, 1st Session.
To ensure that he had: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, July 27, 1853; Meigs in Report of the Secretary of War, December 1, 1853, 74.
CHAPTER 5: A RIVAL TO THE PARTHENON
“I doubt whether”: Meigs, Meigs in Report of the Secretary of War, December 1, 1853, 75.
Some observers: Fairman, Art & Artists, 139.
Not only did he: Receipts, Architect of the Capitol, May 14, 1853, for candles, and August 22, 1854, for sperm oil, Capital Extension 1851–1874, Record Group 43.
He committed himself: Weigley, Captain Meigs and the Artists of the Capitol, Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 1969–1970, 287.
Like Capitol builders: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, January 28, 1853; Meigs to Crawford in Fairman, Art & Artists, 143.
Over the centuries: Evan Hadingham, “Unlocking Mysteries of Parthenon,” Smithsonian, February 2008.
To be complete: Allen, United States Capitol, 245.
He said he wanted: Weigley, Captain Meigs and the Artists of the Capitol, Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 1969–1970, 289–90.
“In our history”: Fairman, Art & Artists, 143.
In contrast, Meigs: Skramstad, Architect in Washington, 268.
Called Progress of Civilization: Scott, Capital Engineers, 54.
“[A]nd thus quietly”: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, October 31, 1853.
He made a few: Ibid., vol. 5, January 14, 1858.
Charles, eight, passed: Ibid., vol. 1, September 3, 1854.
American cities “had become”: Michael R. Haines, The Urban Mortality Transition in the United States, 1800–1940, 7, presented at the Demographic Forum 1999, Oslo, Norway, August 2000.
Like other parents: Michael McEachern McDowell, American Attitudes Towards Death, 1825–1865, December 1977, a dissertation at the Center for the Study of Pop Culture, Bowling Green University.
They visited the boys’: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, December 2, 1853.
About his boys: Ibid., October 22, 1854.
To thwart him: Allen, United States Capitol, 222–23; Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, December 15, 1853.
On January 3, 1854: Congressional Globe, Senate, 33rd Congress, 1st Session, January 3, 1854.
When Meigs arrived: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, January 4, 1854.
CHAPTER 6: AMERICA’S CURSE
He argued that: Stephen Douglas, Nebraska Territory, Congressional Globe, January 30, 1854, Senate, 33rd Congress, 1st Session, 275; W. T. Sherman, Memoirs of Gen. W. T. Sherman (New York: Library of America, 1990), 245–51.
He had watched: Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, vol. 2, A House Dividing, 1852–1857 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947), 223.
This posed a: Steven E. Woodworth, This Great Struggle (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), 18–20.
The book infuriated: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 66.
Over the furious: Douglas, Nebraska Territory, Congressional Globe, January 30, 1854.
Representative Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln in Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, vol. 2: A House Dividing, 341.
Meigs clearly did not: Papers of Jefferson Davis, vol. 6, 6–7; Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, April 20, 1854; Gugliotta, Freedom’s Cap, 6–7; Scott, Capital Engineers, 60.
Now Meigs became: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, December 25, 1854.
Most of all: Ibid., June 8, 1854.
Made of wood: Allen, United States Capitol, 146–47.
Crowning the building: Allen, United States Capitol, 227.
“I have in the”: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, December 26, 1854.
Meigs loved shooting: Ibid., vol. 3, September 26, 1856.
“For I am thus”: Ibid., vol. 1, October 18, 1854.
He managed even: Papers of Jefferson Davis, vol. 5, 371.
His accounting at: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, November 2, 1854.
He examined the friezes: Ibid., October 28, 1854.
After they “burst in”: Ibid., October 25, 1854.
“[T]ime is life”: Isaac Pitman in Alfred Baker, The Life of Sir Isaac Pitman (Inventor of Phonography) (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1919), 286.
Meigs started reading: William D. Mohr, “The Shorthand Journals of Montgomery C. Meigs,” in Building of the Nation’s Capital, 123–26.
“This is written”: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, November 6, 1854.
Meigs was “seduced”: Ibid., December 25, 1854.
His normal script: Scope and Content Note, Meigs Papers, LOC, shelf 18,202, reel 1.
He took pride: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, December 31, 1854.
CHAPTER 7: THE SATURDAY CLUB
Schaeffer had worked: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 2, January 4, 1855.
In the United States: United States Patent and Trademark Office, Table of Issue Years and Patent Numbers, for Selected Document Types Issued Since 1836, www.uspto.gov.
The British engineer Isambard: Steven Brindle in The Great Builders, Kenneth Powell, ed. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2011), 90, 100–105; Margot Gayle and Carol Gayle, Cast-Iron Architecture in America: The Significance of James Bogardus (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 86–99.
The Saturday Club: Albert C. Peale in Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington, vol. 14, 1900–1904 (Washington, DC: Philosophical Society of Washington), 317; Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 2, January 4, 1855.
A. D. Bache, the friend and: Joseph Henry, Eulogy on Prof. Alexander Dallas Bache in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, Showing the Operations, Expenditures, and Condition of the Institution for the Year 1870, www.history.noaa.gov/giants/bache.html.
Another member was: Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington, vol. 14, 317.
A passionate lepidopterist: Kenneth Haltman, The Butterflies of North America: Titian Peale’s Lost Manuscript (New York: Abrams, 2015).
“The discussions were always”: McColloch, Men and Measures, 262.
As Meigs recalled it: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 2, January 6, 1855.
Along with at least: National Academy of Sciences: The First 100 Years (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1978), 106.
The artist was: Bernard Rabin and Constance S. Silver, in Constantino Brumidi, Artist of the Capitol, Barbara Wolanin, curator (Washington, DC: US GPO, 1998), 215.
When he was thirty-five: Wolanin, Artist of the Capitol, 14–16.
He recalled when: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 2, December 28, 1854.
With Meigs’s support: Weigley, Captain Meigs and the Artists, 285.
He secured permission: Allen, United States Capitol, 265.
The busts remain: United States Senate, Art & History, www.senate.gov; US Senate Catalogue of Fine Art (Washington, DC: US GPO, 2002).
Meigs eventually “dispensed”: Weigley, Captain Meigs and the Artists of the Capitol, 285.
Meigs told Dickinson: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 1, December 13, 1854.
At her father’s: Edward B. Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1974), 444; Connie Ann Kirk, Emily Dickinson: A Biography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 60–63.
As for Stanton: Congressional Globe, Senate, 33rd Congress, 2nd Session, February 21, 1855.
On March 3, 1855: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 2, March 3, 1855.
He had abandoned: Ibid., March 5, 1855.
Meigs went home: Ibid., March 4, 1855.
CHAPTER 8: THE WORKLOAD GROWS
Meigs thought that some: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 2, March 5, 1855.
“He is evidently”: Ibid., March 7, 1855.
About this time: Ways, Washington Aqueduct, 53.
In the spring of: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 2, April 27, 1855.
He asked his favorite: Ibid., April 28, 1855.
Meigs also admired: Ibid., January 10, 1855.
He described these: Meigs letter to Jefferson Davis, November 26, 1855, National Archives, microfilm.
He wrote that Walter’s: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 3, Clippings appendix.
Meigs described how: Meigs letter to Jefferson Davis, November 26, 1855.
It worked well: Ibid., vol. 2, December 10, 1855.
CHAPTER 9: ROWDY LOOKING
But while admirers marveled: Simon Brown letter in New England Farmer, June 25, 1856.
Stories in the New-York Daily Tribune: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 3, March 29, 1856.
Meigs sought a: Ibid., April 4, 1856.
(“Had God granted”): George Templeton Strong in Robert C. Williams, Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom (New York: New York University Press, 2006), xvii.
Meigs was not: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 3, April 4, 1856.
The Potomac is: Ibid., April 11–12, 1856.
The country was losing: Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, vol. 2, A House Dividing, 544.
The tensions were reflected: Ibid., 427–28.
The book, A Journey: W. P. Trent in Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), xxvii.
As if to demonstrate: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 152–53.
The antislavery town: Walter Stahr, Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2012), 162–63.
In Washington, congressmen: Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, vol. 2, A House Dividing, 427.
On May 8: “The Herbert Trial,” New York Times, July 14, 1856.
Meigs was appalled: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 3, May 8, 1856.
Then violence seeped into: Charles Sumner, Congressional Globe, 34th Congress, 1st Session, June 2, 1856, 1349–50; The Crime Against Kansas Speech, reprinted by New-York Daily Tribune, https://books.google.com.
Sumner was a handsome: Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, vol. 2, A House Dividing, 438.
“Mr. Sumner, I have”: Congressional Globe, 34th Congress, 1st Session, June 2, 1856, 1349–50.
Brooks chose the cane: David Herbert Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2009).
A flamboyant proslavery: Stephen W. Berry II, All That Makes a Man (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 58.
Northerners saw it: George Templeton Strong, Diary of the Civil War, 1860–1865 (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 67.
In the South: Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, vol. 2, A House Dividing, 446.
“If the northern men”: Laurence Keitt letter to Susan Sparks, May 29, 1856, in Stephen Berry, Laurence Massillon Keitt: Politics as Epic Poem, www2.uncp.edu.
He took on no debt: Meigs report in 34th Congress, 1st Session, House of Representatives Ex. Doc. No. 139, 2.
He named each vendor: Meigs, 34th Congress, 1st Session, House of Representatives Ex. Doc. No. 139, 12–17, 56.
Democrats selected James Buchanan: Nevins, Ordeal of the Union, vol. 2, A House Dividing, 466–88.
Nativist lawmakers: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 3, April 29–May 1, 1856.
“This ends the long agony”: Ibid., October 16, 1856.
CHAPTER 10: ENERGETIC, OBLIGING, FIRM
With change coming in: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 4, February 7, 1857.
Davis was stepping: Papers of Jefferson Davis, vol. 6, 167.
In one letter: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 4, September 9, 1857.
Another influential man: Stahr, Seward, 158.
Seward liked Davis: Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, vol. 1: Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos 1857–1859 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950), 22.
One day not: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 3, August 15, 1856.
It was a classic: Stahr, Seward, 86, 363.
Seward directed the group’s: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 4, February 10, 1857.
He told Seward: Ibid.
On March 4: James Buchanan, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1857, www.presidency.ucsb.edu.
The House had: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 4, March 4, 1857.
Across from his perch: Ibid.
Photography was a: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 3, August 22–23, 1856.
In Massachusetts alone: Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1982), 30–32.
About the time he: Meigs letter to Jefferson Davis, January 28, 1856, Architect of the Capitol office, photography operation; Wayne Firth, A Chronology of Photography at the United States Capitol, 1856–2005 (Draft 11-22-2005), Architect of the Capitol, photography operations.
Cheering him on: Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington, vol. 14, 1848, 324–25.
Meigs’s new boss: Weigley, Quartermaster General, 79.
To the degree: Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, vol. 1, 71–72.
It dawned on him: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 4, March 4, 1857.
Signs of trouble: Meigs letter to Floyd, April 14, 1857, Architect of the Capitol; Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 4, April 14, 1857.
He fired off: Meigs letter to Floyd, April 6, 1857, Architect of the Capitol.
Totten was flabbergasted: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 4, March 4, 1857.
Officers in uniform: Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, vol. 1, 121–23.
“Our progress in”: Abraham Lincoln letter to Joshua Speed, August 24, 1855, Abraham Lincoln Online, www.abrahamlincolnonline.org.
They would also use: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 4, June 11–13, 1857.
“I fear no investigation”: Meigs letter to Buchanan, July 3, 1857, in East, Banishment of Captain Meigs, 118.
Floyd’s games and machinations: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 4, July 22, 1857.
Floyd then added: Ibid., November 16, 1857.
The idea was repulsive: Ibid., October 13, 1857.
He realized his: Papers of Jefferson Davis, vol. 6, 1856–1860, 547.
He resolved to “strive”: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 4, October 13, 1857.
He asked Davis if: Ibid., December 9, 1857.
One unsigned piece: Pennsylvania Inquirer, December 17, 1857, in Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 4, appendix.
Still others lambasted: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 5, May 18, 1858; Andrew Johnson, Documentary History, 688.
The Washington Evening Star provided: Evening Star (Washington, DC), “The New House Hall,” December 17, 1857.
CHAPTER 11: AN INSCRIPTION FOR ALL TIME
He focused on: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 5, February 16, 1858.
Meigs carried a pedometer: Ibid., December 14, 1858.
He had come to: Ibid., January 14, 1858.
Without seeking approval: National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form, Cabin John Aqueduct M: 35–37.
When the captain: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 5, April 3, 1858.
He even wrote a: Ibid., August 2, 1858.
“If these are opened”: Ibid., vol. 3, August 27, 1856.
New disputes in Kansas: Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, vol. 1, 229–43.
Aware of the game: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 5, Septem
ber 25, 1858.
In June 1858: Documentary History, February 22, 1860, 744–49.
Meigs was disgusted: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 5, June 17, 1858.
He was riding: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 5, August 5, 1858.
Meigs seems to: Ways, Washington Aqueduct, 44.
One night, he turned: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 5, December 21, 1858.
Then, on January 3: Washington Aqueduct annual report for fiscal 1859; Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 6, January 3–4, 1859; Evening Star (Washington, DC), January 3–4, 1859.
Two months earlier: Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, vol. 1, 402–3.
With hundreds of lawmakers: Evening Star (Washington, DC), January 4, 1859.
The Kentuckian described: John C. Breckinridge, Congressional Globe, 35th Congress, 2nd Session, January 4, 1859.
Meigs was deeply: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 6, January 4, 1859.
Skylight illuminated the scene: Ibid.
The room was well: Baltimore Sun article in Wolff, Capitol Builder (probably January 5, 1859).
But after workers: Evening Star (Washington, DC), January 5, 1859.
“I wish you could”: Weigley, Quartermaster General, 88.
Three months later: Ways, “Washington Aqueduct,” 30–31.
The Meigs household: Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 6, July 21 and August 1, 1859.
Louisa once beat: Mary A. Giunta, ed., A Civil War Soldier of Christ and Country (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 1–2.
He wanted to attend: Weigley, Quartermaster General, 91.
John had submitted: Giunta, Civil War Soldier, 2.
“I trust that while”: Copy of Meigs letter to Floyd in Meigs, Shorthand Journals, vol. 6, June 25, 1859.
On the afternoon of September 5 Meigs: Ibid., September 5, 1859.
“I trust that you”: Weigley, Quartermaster General, 94.
CHAPTER 12: “EVERYTHING INTO CONFUSION”
For readers in: Evening Star (Washington, DC), October 17, 1859.
In August, it: John Brown in Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, electronic edition (Chapel Hill: Academic Affairs Library, University of North Carolina, 1999), 324–25, http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglasslife/douglass.html.
The reports from Harpers Ferry: Evening Star (Washington, DC), October 19, 1859.