Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/56382
One hundred drummers were drilling on the grounds below Walter's officewindow. The Senate chamber was contaminated with lice, and "every street, lane and alley is filledwith soldiers,"Walter told Amanda onMay 8. The Army asked him for a plan of the grounds so breastworks could be set up on the Capitol's beautifully landscaped western terraces overlooking theMall. When work was officially suspended a week later, Walter almostwelcomed the news. "I am so tired of war and so disgusted with this place, and so vexed at the defilement ofmy works that I don't think I will make any further resist- ance," he told Amanda.OnMay 30, he left for Philadelphia. He fidgeted for a month, then returned Figure 3.Union troops drill on the grounds of the unfinishedCapitol in 1861. Grounds had extracted a promise from Secretary ofWar Simon Cameron to order the work resumed. It did not happen immediately, but to Washington July 1, a changed man. He was no longer either a southern apologist or a complainer. He had talked with his building contractors and his political contacts and was determined to wrest control of the Capitol from the Army and finish what he started. The catalytic event in his conversion may have been the decision by his son Thomas, a businessman living in Virginia, to repudiate his debts in theNorth and join the Confederacy. This was "outrageous," Walter told a close friend. "He is now a traitor to his country and to his family." Despite his initial enthusiasm, his cause did not appear to prosper during his July trip. Washington was in an uproar—the population would grow from 60,000 in 1860 to more than 200,000 three years later—and there was nothing he could do but introduce himself to the congressional leadership and attempt to make his case. Somewhat disappointed, he left town on July 11. Yet the seeds apparently had been planted. In earlyAugustWalter told a friend that the chairmen of the Senate and House Committees on Public Buildings and WINTER 2012 Congresswas increasingly infuriated by the continued presence of the basement bakery, which by June was operating around the clock with a 170-member staff producing 58,000 loaves of bread from20 ovens. Efforts to get the Army out of the building would prove fruitless for several months until Sen. Solomon Foot, chair of the Senate committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, in December introduced a resolution demanding that the army's CommissaryGeneral explainwhy the ovens were still in the basement. The Commissary acknowledged that he had no specific permission to build the bakeries but asserted that the authority "belonged to the officers commanding the troops who were placed in the building." He did not know what he would need to move the bakeries, but he had no plans to do so because it would be expensive and "inconvenient." Knee-jerk military obfuscation may be a commonplace in wartime, but arrogance by unelected bureaucrats, even in uniform, never plays well in Congress. And besides his committee chairmanship, Footwas also president pro Tempore of the Senate—not a good person to ignore. The bakeries were gonewithinweeks, andWalterwas back in Washington almost immediately.Hewould stay for the next three years. And when he left the new Capitol would be all but finished.✯ Guy Gugliotta, former national reporter for TheWashington Post and a U.S. Capitol Historical Society fellow, is the author of Freedom's Cap: The United States Capitol and the Coming of the CivilWar, to be published by Farrar Straus and Giroux inMarch, 2012. Sources Bassett, Isaac, "The Isaac Bassett Papers," U.S. Senate. Green, ConstanceMcLaughlin, "Washington, Village and Capital, 1800-1878," Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962. Leech,Margaret, "Reveille inWashington, 1861-1865." New York: Harper&Bros., 1941. U.S. Congress, "Documentary History of the Construction and Development of the United States Capitol Buildings and Grounds,"Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1904 (Serial 4585).Walter, Thomas U., "Thomas UstickWalter Collection," Archives of American Art, the Athenaeum, Philadelphia. First appeared in New York Times, July 10, 2011. Reprinted with permission. THE CAPITOL DOME 21 COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS