by Fergus M. Bordewich.

Amistad. 367 pages. $27.95.

By Luther Spoehr
Special to The Journal

If your American history textbook was typical (I’ll pause here while you check your notes), it dealt only briefly with the building of Washington, D.C. It probably mentioned that locating the capital on the Potomac was part of a North-South compromise that helped put Hamilton’s financial plan into place; made passing reference to Pierre L’Enfant’s grand, even grandiose, urban design; and added a dash of color to the end of John Adams’ presidency by noting Abigail Adams hanging laundry in the East Room.

Fergus Bordewich’s wonderfully readable book makes clear that there is much more to the story. Washington, D.C., he says, “was born from one of the most intense political struggles in American history, one shaped by power politics, big money, the imperatives of slavery, ferocious sectional rivalry, and backroom dealing — as well as by idealism and single-minded determination.” If this sounds a little overheated to you, be assured that Bordewich backs it up.

At first, Philadelphia (the new nation’s largest city, with 45,000 people) seemed the most likely site for the permanent capital. But Southerners found its Quakerism and antislavery atmosphere inhospitable, so Congress carved out a district between Maryland and Virginia and put President George Washington in charge. But there was a catch: the new capital had to be ready to receive the government by 1800, or all bets were off.

A second catch: Congress didn’t want to put up any money for the project. So private developers, including Robert Morris (“the banker of the Revolution”) were called in, and a decade-long flurry of wild real estate speculation ensued. Bordewich is particularly good at narrating the machinations of Morris and other would-be moguls who finagled desperately to build a city and their own fortunes at the same time.

If Bordewich’s first theme is money-making, his second is slavery’s role in building the capital. “Skilled masons, carpenters, and quarrymen were difficult to attract at the wages that the commissioners were willing to pay,” he says. But “a solution to the commissioners’ labor anxieties [was] readily to hand: slaves — slaves in abundance.” By 1795 the slaves working in the District — “half of them for the commissioners, and the rest for private contractors and suppliers” — outnumbered the whites by two-to-one. Yet, despite the cheap labor, until the very last moment it seemed entirely possible that the capital wouldn’t be finished in time.

Bordewich navigates the twists and turns of his narrative with verve and insight. His intriguing cast of characters — Washington and the speculators, architects James Hoban and William Thornton, the black scientist Benjamin Banneker and the “slaves and free white workers whose sweat [went] into the stonework, brickwork, and planking of the President’s House and the Capitol” — is brought vividly to life, but never caricatured. He makes them, in their opportunism and idealism, their posturing and suffering, part of an important, continuing American story. WASHINGTON: The Making of the American Capital,

Luther_Spoehr@Brown.edu