The
history of Washington, DC is tied intrinsically to its role as the
constitutionally mandated
capital of the
United States.
Founding
The Piscataway Indians, a branch of the
Algonquin, settled in the region in the early
17th century.
European settlers began arriving in the decades thereafter, pushing the natives West as the
Virginia Colony expanded from the south and the
Province of Maryland from the east. The town of Georgetown, generally coterminous with the modern neighborhood of that name, was first settled in 1696, and continuously settled after 1751. The city of
Alexandria, Virginia was established in 1749.
After the conclusion of the
American Revolutionary War in 1783, the new federal government of the United States met in
New York City and Philadelphia. Rivalry among the
states to be home to the new capital led the 1787
Constitutional Convention to empower Congress in Article I, Section 8 of the new constitution
:To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States...
that is, to establish a new federal district governed by Congress which was not part of any state.
German map of Washington, D.C.]]
A Southern site for the capital was agreed at a sit-down dinner between
Thomas Jefferson and
Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson agreed to support Hamilton's banking and federal bond plans in exchange for the choice of a Southern locale for the capital. It was initially 100
mi² (260 km²). The actual site of the District of Columbia on the Potomac River was chosen by
President Washington. Washington may have chosen the site for its natural scenery, its location near the center of the new country, in the belief that the Potomac had the potential to be a great navigable waterway, or even in the hope of increasing the value of his land holdings in the area.
The signing of the
Residence Bill on
July 16, 1790 established a site along the
Potomac River as the District of Columbia (seat of government) of the United States. Land for the district was given to the federal government by the states of
Virginia and
Maryland. The preexisting towns of Georgetown and Alexandria were absorbed into the new District, with the remainder of the territory subdivided into Washington City and Washington County on the Maryland side of the Potomac (named after George Washington) and Alexandria County on the Virginia side.
Early years
Washington appointed
Pierre Charles L'Enfant to devise a plan for the new city. L'Enfant devised the city's layout, a grid centered on the
United States Capitol building, crossed by diagonal avenues named after the states of the union. The intersections of these avenues with the north-south and east-west streets were carved into grand
circles which would honor notable Americans. While surveying and construction were underway, both Congress and Presidents Washington and
John Adams governed from other cities. In 1800 the seat of government was finally moved to the new city, and on
February 27, 1801, the district was formally placed under the jurisdiction of Congress.
During the
War of 1812, President
James Madison was forced to flee to Virginia and American morale was reduced to an all-time low. The expedition was carried out between
August 19 and
August 29, 1814, and was well organized and vigorously executed. On the 24th, the American militia, who had collected at
Bladensburg, Maryland, to protect the capital, fled almost before they were attacked.
On
August 24, 1814, British forces
burnt the capital during the most notable destructive raid of the war. British forces burned public buildings including the Capitol, the Arsenal, the Navy Yard, Treasury building, War office, and the bridge across the Potomac. The Presidential Mansion was also gutted, and the white paint subsequently used to disguise the blackened exterior walls led it to become known as the
White House.
Retrocession
Almost immediately after the "Federal City" was laid out across the Potomac River, the residents on the south side of it began petitioning to be returned to Virginia's jurisdiction. By an act of Congress
July 9, 1846, and with the approval of the
Virginia General Assembly, the area south of the
Potomac (39
mi² or about 100 km²) was returned, or "retroceded," to Virginia effective in 1847 and now is incorporated into
Arlington County and a part of the City of Alexandria. In 1871, Georgetown, Washington City and
Washington County were unified into Washington, DC. A motivation for the retrocession for many in Congress may have been to preserve the active slave trade in Alexandria in the face of increasing
abolitionist sentiment among Northern congressmen.
Civil War era
Washington remained a small city of a few thousand residents, virtually deserted during the torrid summertime, until the outbreak of the U.S.
Civil War in 1861. President
Abraham Lincoln created the
Army of the Potomac to defend the federal capital, and thousands of soldiers came to the area. The significant expansion of the federal government to administer the war—and its legacies, such as veterans' pensions—led to notable growth in the city's population.
Slavery was abolished throughout the District in 1862.
On
April 14, 1865, just days after the end of the war, Lincoln was assassinated in Ford's Theater by
John Wilkes Booth during the play
Our American Cousin. The morning afterwards, at 7:22 AM, President Lincoln died in the house across the street. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton said, "Now he belongs to the ages."
Newspaper Row, Washington, D.C., 1874.
In the
1870s, Washington was governed by Alexander Shepherd. A notorious boss, Shepherd gained a reputation for extravagance, resulting in Congress abolishing his office in favor of direct rule. Congressional governance of the District would continue for a century.
20th century
The
Washington Monument, after four decades of construction, finally opened in 1888. Plans were laid to further develop the monumental aspects of the city, with work contributed by such noted figures as
Frederick Law Olmsted and
Daniel Burnham. However, development of the
Lincoln Memorial and other structuers on the
National Mall did not get underway until the early 20th century.
Aerial photo of Washington, DC (looking WSW, roughly along the National Mall)
President
Herbert Hoover ordered the
United States Army on
July 28, 1932 to forcibly evict the "
Bonus Army" of
World War I veterans that gathered in Washington, DC to secure promised veteran's benefits early. U.S. troops dispersed the last of the "Bonus Army" the next day.
A
shooting at the U.S. Capitol occurred in 1954 when four
Puerto Rican nationalists fired into the floor of the
House of Representatives. Five representatives were wounded, one severely.
Until the
1950s, District of Columbia public schools had always been
racially segregated. When the city's Board of Education began building the John Phillip Sousa Junior High, a group of parents from the
Anacostia neighborhood petitioned to have the school admit both black and white students, but when it was constructed the Board declared that only whites would be allowed there. The parents sued in a case that was decided in the landmark
Supreme Court case
Bolling v. Sharpe. Partly due to the District's unique status under the Constitution, the court decided unanimously that all of D.C.'s public schools had to be integrated. In the wake of this and the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case
Brown v. Board of Education, the
Eisenhower administration decided make D.C. schools the first to integrate as an example to the rest of the nation.
The
Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on
March 29, 1961 allowing residents of Washington, DC to vote for president and have their votes count in the
Electoral College the same as the least populous state, which currently has three electoral votes.
Following the assassination of
Martin Luther King, Jr., Washington was devastated by the
1968 riots. The civil unrest drove not only whites, but middle-class blacks out of the city core, and caused many businesses to leave the downtown and inner city areas. Marks of riots scarred some neighborhoods into the late
1990s.
The first 4.6 miles (7.4 kilometers) of the
Washington Metro subway system opened on
March 27, 1976, following years of acrimonious battles with Congress over funding and highway construction.
On
January 13, 1982,
Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the
14th Street Bridge shortly after takeoff from
Washington National Airport in nearby Arlington, Virginia, killing 78 and destroying a portion of the bridge. The rebuilt portion was named the
Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge in honor of a heroic victim of the disaster.
Walter Washington became the first elected mayor of the District in 1974, but was defeated in the Democratic primaries in 1978 by
Marion Barry. During his third term, Barry was arrested for
drug use in an FBI sting on
January 18, 1990. He was acquitted of felony charges, but convicted on one misdemeanor count of
cocaine possession for which he served a six-month jail term. On
January 2, 1991 Sharon Pratt Kelly (elected as Sharon Pratt Dixon but married later that year) was sworn in as mayor, becoming the first black woman to lead a city of that size and importance in the United States.
Marion Barry defeated her in the 1994 primary and was once again elected mayor for his fourth term, during which the city nearly became insolvent and was forced to give up some home rule to a Congressionally appointed financial control board. The current mayor,
Anthony Williams, a
Yale University-educated lawyer, served as chief financial officer on the control board. He was elected mayor in 1998 and despite a technicality which left him off the official ballot, won reelection in 2002 as a
write-in candidate.
See List of mayors of Washington, D.C.
Recent history
Security camera image of the moment that [[American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon]]
The Washington area was the target of at least one of the four hijacked planes in the
September 11, 2001 attacks. One plane struck
the Pentagon in Arlington County, killing 125 people in addition to the 64 aboard the plane, while another that was downed in a field in
Pennsylvania is believed by many to have been intended to hit either the
White House or the U.S. Capitol.
Shortly after September 11, Washington was once more subject to fear from an anthrax attack, when what may have been a domestic terrorist sent anthrax-contaminated mail to numerous members of Congress. Thirty-one staff members were infected, and two U.S. Postal Service employees at a contaminated mail sorting facility at
Brentwood, Washington, DC, later died of pulmonary anthrax.
During three weeks of October 2002,
John Allen Muhammad and
Lee Boyd Malvo killed ten people and wounded three others in the Washington region with a high-powered rifle in what became known as the Beltway Sniper attacks. The apparently random selection of victims (crossing racial, gender, and socioeconomic categories) caused a general panic in the Washington area and led schools to cancel all outdoor activities. Muhammad and Malvo were arrested on
October 24 at a highway rest stop. In
March 2004, Muhammad was sentenced to death and Malvo to life imprisonment for the attacks.
In November 2003, the toxin
ricin was found in the mailroom of the White House, and in February 2004, in the mailroom of U.S. Senate Majority Leader
Bill Frist. As with the earlier anthrax attacks, no arrests have been made.
Partly in response to these events from the past few years, the Washington area has taken many steps to increase security. Screening devices for biological agents,
metal detectors, and vehicle barriers are now much more commonplace at office buildings as well as government buildings. After the 2004 Madrid train bombings, local authorities have decided to test explosives detectors on the vulnerable
Washington Metro subway system. False alarms due to suspicious chemical or powder substances or suspected explosives have led to fairly frequent evacuations of buildings, Metro stations, and local
post offices. Vehicle inspections at several roadblocks set up around the U.S. Capitol building were introduced in
July 2004, but were removed in
November 2004.