Various tribes of the Algonquian-speaking Piscataway people (also known as the Conoy) inhabited the lands around the Potomac River when Europeans first visited the area in the early 17th century. One group known as the Nacotchtank (also called the Nacostines by Catholic missionaries) maintained settlements around the Anacostia River within the present-day District of Columbia. Conflicts with European colonists and neighboring tribes forced the relocation of the Piscataway people, some of whom established a new settlement in 1699 near Point of Rocks, Maryland.
In his Federalist No. 43, published January 23, 1788, James Madison argued that the new federal government would need authority over a national capital to provide for its own maintenance and safety. Five years earlier, a band of unpaid soldiers had besieged Congress while its members were meeting in Philadelphia. Known as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, the event emphasized the need for the national government not to rely on any state for its own security.
Article One, Section Eight, of the Constitution permits the establishment of a “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”. However, the Constitution does not specify a location for the capital. In what is now known as the Compromise of 1790, Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson agreed that the federal government would pay each state’s remaining Revolutionary War debts in exchange for establishing the new national capital in the Southern United States.
Foundation
On July 9, 1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which approved the creation of a national capital on the Potomac River. The exact location was to be selected by President George Washington, who signed the bill into law on July 16. Formed from land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia, the initial shape of the federal district was a square measuring 10 miles (16 km) on each side, totaling 100 square miles (259 km2).
Two pre-existing settlements were included in the territory: the port of Georgetown, Maryland, founded in 1751, and the port city of Alexandria, Virginia, founded in 1749. During 1791–92, a team under Andrew Ellicott, including Ellicott’s brothers Joseph and Benjamin and African-American astronomer Benjamin Banneker, surveyed the borders of the federal district and placed boundary stones at every mile point. Many of the stones are still standing.
A new federal city was then constructed on the north bank of the Potomac, to the east of Georgetown. On September 9, 1791, the three commissioners overseeing the capital’s construction named the city in honor of President Washington. The same day, the federal district was named Columbia (a feminine form of “Columbus”), which was a poetic name for the United States commonly in use at that time. Congress held its first session there on November 17, 1800.
Congress passed the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801 which officially organized the district and placed the entire territory under the exclusive control of the federal government. Further, the area within the district was organized into two counties: the County of Washington to the east (or north) of the Potomac and the County of Alexandria to the west (or south). After the passage of this Act, citizens living in the district were no longer considered residents of Maryland or Virginia, which therefore ended their representation in Congress.
Burning during the War of 1812
On August 24–25, 1814, in a raid known as the Burning of Washington, British forces invaded the capital during the War of 1812. The Capitol, Treasury, and White House were burned and gutted during the attack. Most government buildings were repaired quickly; however, the Capitol was largely under construction at the time and was not completed in its current form until 1868.
Retrocession and the Civil War
In the 1830s, the district’s southern territory of Alexandria went into economic decline partly due to neglect by Congress. The city of Alexandria was a major market in the American slave trade, and pro-slavery residents feared that abolitionists in Congress would end slavery in the district, further depressing the economy. Alexandria’s citizens petitioned Virginia to take back the land it had donated to form the district, through a process known as retrocession.
The Virginia General Assembly voted in February 1846 to accept the return of Alexandria. On July 9, 1846, Congress agreed to return all the territory that Virginia had ceded. Therefore, the district’s area consists only of the portion originally donated by Maryland. Confirming the fears of pro-slavery Alexandrians, the Compromise of 1850 outlawed the slave trade in the District, although not slavery itself.
The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 led to the expansion of the federal government and notable growth in the district’s population, including a large influx of freed slaves. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act in 1862, which ended slavery in the district of Columbia and freed about 3,100 enslaved persons, nine months prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1868, Congress granted the district’s African American male residents the right to vote in municipal elections.
Growth and redevelopment
By 1870, the district’s population had grown 75% from the previous census to nearly 132,000 residents. Despite the city’s growth, Washington still had dirt roads and lacked basic sanitation. Some members of Congress suggested moving the capital further west, but President Ulysses S. Grant refused to consider such a proposal.
Congress passed the Organic Act of 1871, which repealed the individual charters of the cities of Washington and Georgetown, abolished the Washington County, and created a new territorial government for the whole District of Columbia. From this point, the name “Washington”, initially only refers to “the City of Washington, DC”, became synonymous with “District of Columbia”.
After the reorganization, President Grant appointed Alexander Robey Shepherd to the position of Governor of the District of Columbia in 1873. Shepherd authorized large-scale projects that greatly modernized the City of Washington, but ultimately bankrupted the district government. In 1874, Congress replaced the territorial government with an appointed three-member Board of Commissioners.
The city’s first motorized streetcars began service in 1888. They generated growth in areas of the district beyond the City of Washington’s original boundaries. Washington’s urban plan was expanded throughout the district in the following decades. Georgetown’s street grid and other administrative details were formally merged to those of the legal City of Washington in 1895. However, the city had poor housing conditions and strained public works. The district was the first city in the nation to undergo urban renewal projects as part of the “City Beautiful movement” in the early 1900s.
Increased federal spending as a result of the New Deal in the 1930s led to the construction of new government buildings, memorials, and museums in the district, though the chairman of the House Subcommittee on District Appropriations Ross A. Collins from Mississippi justified cuts to funds for welfare and education for local residents, saying that “my constituents wouldn’t stand for spending money on niggers.”
World War II further increased government activity, adding to the number of federal employees in the capital; by 1950, the district’s population reached its peak of 802,178 residents.
Civil rights and home rule era
The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1961, granting the district three votes in the Electoral College for the election of president and vice president, but still no voting representation in Congress.
After the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4, 1968, riots broke out in the district, primarily in the U Street, 14th Street, 7th Street, and H Street corridors, centers of black residential and commercial areas. The riots raged for three days until more than 13,600 federal troops and D.C. Army National Guardsmen stopped the violence. Many stores and other buildings were burned; rebuilding was not completed until the late 1990s.
In 1973, Congress enacted the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, providing for an elected mayor and thirteen-member council for the district. In 1975, Walter Washington became the first elected and first black mayor of the district.
