Episode 8: The Great City and the Great War

Pierre Charles L'Enfant was born August 2, 1754 to Pierre L'Enfant, a painter with a good reputation in the court of King Louis XV, and Marie Lhuillier, the daughter of a minor court official. He studied at the Royal Academy in the Louvre and the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture but left France to join the colonist in the American Revolution in 1777 at 23. Despite his aristocratic upbringing, he closely identified with the United States and went by Peter after arriving in America. 

L'Enfant was commissioned a captain, was on Washington's staff during Valley Forge, was wounded at the Siege of Savannah in 1779, and recovered to became a prisoner of war when Charleston, South Carolina surrendered in May 1780. He was exchanged the following November and joined.  In May 1783, he was made a brevet major in recognition of his many contributions to the cause of colonial independence and was discharged when the Continental Army was disbanded in December 1783.

L'Enfant is closely tied with the design of Washington, DC and much of present-day DC can be seen in his 1791 design, though that was almost not the case due to the rapid expansion of the capital during the Civil War.

Much of L'Enfant's original features were resurrected in 1901 by the McMillan Plan, which saved L'Enfant from historic obscurity and ended to his remains being moved to Arlington when his tablet is able to look over the city he was not able to build.

Build just below the front stairs of the Jefferson Memorial, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Memorial Bridge, and other famous sites can be seen from the spot.

The top of L'Enfant's marker has an engraving of his plan for Washington and the words: ENGINEER - ARTIST - SOLDIER

First Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge was born February 8, 1882 and graduated second in the West Point class of 1903 (Douglas MacArthur was first). His fateful flight in 1908 was not his first time in a powered flying machine. Selfridge was enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1965.

Orville Wright was at the controls of the Wright Flyer when when propeller snapped. He cut power hoping to be able to glide the plane safely to the ground when it suddenly fell from the sky and Thomas Selfridge became the first casualty of powered flight. The inquiry from the crash can be found here.

Thank you Doctrine Man!

 I was very excited when I saw that Steve Leonard - AKA Doctrine Man - plugged the podcast on his Facebook page today. Hopefully at least a few of his 173,000+ followers will be interested enough to give it a listen.

Episode 7: Arlington Enters the 20th Century AKA Fighting Joe Wheeler - Confederate General, American General

The USS Maine was commissioned in 1895, depending on which source you read, is described as an armored cruiser or a second-class battleship. Either way, she represented a leap forward in modern warship design based on the latest ship-building techniques coming out of Europe.

The Maine in Havana Harbor before the Explosion

On February 15, 1898, at 9:40 pm, a catastrophic explosion occurred on the Maine. At the time, the Spanish were implicated in the explosion. Over the years, there have been several other investigations and while the exact cause of the explosion is still debated, it is widely believed the Spanish had nothing to do with it. Regardless of the cause, the outcome remained the same: 266 of her crew of 355 were killed and two months later the United States was at war with Spain.

The Maine sunk in Havana Harbor

The mast from the Maine was recovered in 1915 and is now the centerpiece for the Maine Memorial in Arlington's Section 24. It was being renovated when I was last there to take pictures, so the third picture is from www.arlingtoncemetery.mil

Immediately after the explosion, 61-year-old Alabama Representative and former Confederate Lieutenant General Joseph "Fighting Joe" Wheeler offered his services to President McKinley and the US Army. Though McKinley, himself a Civil War veteran, tried to avoid war, he eventually accepted Wheeler help and appointed him one of only fifteen major generals in the US Army at the time.

Wheeler as a Confederate general in the 1860s

Wheeler (front) as a US major general in Tampa, FL in 1898 just before deploying to Spain with the staff of the 1st US Volunteer Regiment "Rough Riders" including its commander Colonel Leonard Wood (center) and executive officer Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt (right) 

After hostilities ended in Cuba, Wheeler sailed to the Philippines where he commanded the First Brigade in Arthur MacArthur's Second Division during the Philippine Insurrection until  January 1900. He then returned to the United States, was mustered out of the volunteer service, and commissioned a brigadier general in the regular army, reentering the service he had resigned from 39 years earlier. He went on to command the Department of the Lakes which oversaw military posts in the midwestern United States until his retirement on September 10, 1900.

After a long illness, Wheeler died in Brooklyn, NY on January 25, 1906, at the age of 69. Because of his service later in life, is one of the only Confederate officers buried in Arlington and maybe the only one outside of the later-established Confederate Section. This diminutive officer lies under one of the tallest obelisks in the cemetery in Section 2, Grave 1089.

Thank you Mountain Up!

 I want to thank Mountain Up Cap Company for allowing me to share about the show on their Facebook page - letting 33,000 new potential listeners know about the show! If you would like to see the clothing they offer, check out www.mountainupcaps.com. Thank you, Ryan Hunt and the entire Mountain Up team!

Yours truly rocking the Gen IV Mountain Up 10th Mountain Trucker Cap, which I purchased long before this podcast began

Episode 6: Montgomery C. Meigs, Part 2 - Master Builder of the Union Army

Originally met with mixed reviews, Meigs' Pension Building, later home to the US General Accounting Office, and today the National Building Museum, this project broke ground on July 1, 1881, and was completed seven years later. The exterior was modeled closely on the monumentally scaled Palazzo Farnese, in Rome, completed to Michelangelo's specifications in 1589. The building's interior, with open, arcaded galleries surrounding a central hall, mirrored the early 16th century Palazzo della Cancelleria. Though still under construction, the first major event held in the building was Grover Cleveland's 1885 Inaugural Ball.

The above four pictures are from various stages of the building's construction in the 1880s

A view of the Grand Gallery in 1918

Clerks working in the Grand Gallery in the 1930s

Officers in the Grand Gallery circa 1960, when the building was considered for demolition

The Grand Gallery at a 2010 Award Ceremony

The Grand Gallery as it appears today

It remains one of the better locations for large events and rallies in Washington, DC

A modern exterior view of "Meigs's Big Red Barn" with the Capitol Dome, another Meigs project, in the background

Closeups of the 26-panel frieze, a monument to Civil War veterans, around the building's exterior

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, opened in 1991, is located behind the museum today

Another of Meigs's major post-Civil War projects included the second building in the Smithsonian Institution complex. It opened in 1881 as the first US National Museum and is today called the Arts and Industry Building.

Meigs's Civil War headquarters is now the Renwick Art Gallery, part of the Smithsonian's Museum of American Art and, according to Google Maps, is less than a quarter of a mile from the White House

Montgomery and Luisa Meigs were laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery, Section 1, Grave 1-EH

Episode 5: Montgomery C. Meigs, Part 2 - Father of Arlington National Cemetery

The above two images of General Montgomery Meigs, taken at the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 and the end of the war in 1865, show how much his important and stressful position aged him.

1793 - An amateur architect from the British West Indies, Dr. William Thornton was awarded $500 and a city lot for his design of the Capitol. George Washington presided over the cornerstone ceremony in September of the same year. Today, Dr. Thornton is honored as the first architect of the Capitol.

Though still under construction, Congress began meeting in the Capitol in 1800.

The original Capitol Building in Washington, DC was put to the torch by the British on August 24, 1814. Thanks to the use of fire-proof building materials, such as sheet iron, marble, sandstone, zinc, and copper, (and heavy rains that fell that evening) the exterior structure survived and many of the interior spaces remained intact. 

British Burn the Capitol, 1814 by Allyn Cox (1974) is located in the House Wing corridor on the Capitol's first floor

This 1814 painting shows some exterior fire damage but most of the exterior of the Capitol still standing

1815-1819 - the so-called Brick Capitol served as a temporary meeting place while the Capitol Building was repaired

In 1824, the first capital dome was designed

In 1846, the earliest known photograph of the Capitol and its original dome was taken

In 1854, after an expansion project increased the size of the Capitol without increasing the size of the dome, and a new dome concept was imagined

1857 - More than a year into the construction of the new dome

1861 - Lincoln was inaugurated in front of the partially completed dome. Construction on the dome continued throughout the Civil War, though with a greatly reduced workforce.

1863 - The 19 ½ foot tall, 15,000-pound Statue of Freedom was installed on top of the dome in 1863

1866 - The Apotheosis of Washington fresco was finished on the dome's interior

In 2016, the Architect of the Capitol completed the most complete restoration of the dome in its 150-year history. 

In addition to overseeing much of the mid-19th century Capitol dome project, General Meigs built the Washington Aqueduct, which brought clean water into Washington, DC. Part of the system included the Cabin John Bridge, now called the Union Arch Bridge. Construction of the bridge lasted from 1857-1864, and at 220 feet, it was the longest single-arch bridge in the world until 1903.

The Union Arch Bridge under construction (top left - 1859, top right - 1861, bottom left - 1863, bottom right - 1869

I have not personally seen or found online pictures of the copper plaques Meigs installed below the waterline of the aqueduct, but there are visible bridge markers still in place today and read: Washington Aqueduct, Chief Engineer, Capt. Montgomery Meigs, US Corps of Engineers..."