The Capitol Dome

In late November Abigail Adams decried the inefficiency of the Southerners. "In the city there are buildings enough, if they were compact and finished, to accommodate Con- gress and those attached to it; but as they are, and scattered as they are, I see no great comfort for them." These bleak views were partially countered by Connecticut Rep. John Cotton Smith, who recounted his experiences as a member during the second session of the Sixth Congress, the first to convene in Washington in the autumn of 1800. He and several compa- triots occupied separate beds and were fed a varied and sub- stantial diet by "active and faithful servants" in Law's elegant former home. 3 Another of the embryonic city's astute observers from the north was Massachusetts Rep. Manasseh Cutler (1742-1823, fig. 2). One of his era's polymaths, the Connecticut-born and Yale-educated man (Class of 1765) turned his hand to a variety of professions and avocations beginning with teaching school before trying the whaling business. Cutler was a peren- nial student; he studied law, then theology (ordained in the Congregational Society in 1771), and served as a chaplain in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. In 1778 he began to study both medicine and navigation. This range of skills, in addition to his wide knowledge of astronomy and botany, equipped Cutler to be not just a typical American frontiersman, but one of its leaders. In 1786 Cutler was one of four New England projectors of the Ohio Company of Associ- ates, their belief in the country's westward expansion born of their collective experiences during the Revolution. Cutler's correspondence and journal entries written while in Washington during the Seventh and Eighth Congresses (December 1801 to March 1805) reveal his Federalist point of view on the political turmoil during Thomas Jefferson's first term. The president, a Republican, sought more parity in the appointment of federal officials in both the executive (predominately Federalist department heads and clerks) and judicial branches (all Federalists) when he took off ice. (Jefferson quipped about them that few died and none resigned.) Cutler also cited the role of congressional actions on the local population. Local proper ty values brief ly plummeted after passage of the Judiciary Bill on 4 March 1802, which repealed the Judiciary Act of 13 Feb- ruary 1801 that had expanded the system of federal circuit courts with judges, all Federalists, appointed by President John Adams near the end of his administration. Cutler and other Federalists maintained passage of the 1802 Judiciary Bill by the majority Republican Congress subverted the Constitution and would lead to the dissolution of the government. 4 Cutler also noted problems associated with meeting in the Capitol while it was still under construction. He attributed the illness of many of his colleagues, and the death of Narsworthy Hunter, a delegate from the Mississippi Territory, to the mal- functioning of the ventilation system in the House chamber. On 20 February 1802 Cutler first noted the ventilation system on the roof of the House's temporary chamber, the "Oven," needed to be repaired (fig. 3). Partisan politics intervened over celebrating Washington's Birthday as a holiday; workmen did not repair the ventilation system on 22 February as planned. Members were forcibly confined to their seats for as many as fourteen hours a day during the Judiciary Bill's debates because the lobby, visitors' gallery, and even the House f loor were so overcrowded with spectators. As the cham- ber's insalubrious air worsened daily several congressmen fell seriously ill from "bilious fever;" some were confined in their lodgings when the vote came up (including some of Cutler's messmates) while others fled Washington before the session ended. Fig. 2. Manasseh Cutler by Nathaniel Lakeman, c.1787 25 THE CAPITOL DOME PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM "Mr. Read and myself have, I think, the pleasantest room in the house or in the whole city. It is on the third story, commanding a delightful prospect of the Capitol, of the President's house, Georgetown, all the houses in the city and a long extent of river and the city of Alexandria." – Manasseh Cutler, in a letter to his daughter

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