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Washington: The Making of the American Capital
Washington, D.C., is home to the most influential power brokers in the world. But how did we come to call D.C.—a place one contemporary observer called a mere swamp "producing nothing except myriads of toads and frogs (of enormous size)," a district that was strategically indefensible, captive to the politics of slavery, and a target of unbridled land speculation—our nation's capital? In Washington , acclaimed and award-winning author Fergus M. Bordewich turns his eye to the backroom deal making and shifting alliances between our Founding Fathers and in doing so pulls back the curtain on the lives of slaves who actually built the city. The answers revealed in this eye-opening book are not only surprising and exciting but also illuminate a story of unexpected triumph over a multitude of political and financial obstacles, including fraudulent real estate speculation, overextended financiers, and management more apt for a "banana republic" than an emerging world power. In this page-turning work that reveals the hidden and somewhat unsavory side of the nation's beginnings, Bordewich, once again, brings his novelist's sensibility to a little-known chapter in American history.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published May 6, 2008
56 people are currently reading
389 people want to read
About the author
Fergus M. Bordewich
14 books104 followersFERGUS M. BORDEWICH is the author of eight non-fiction books: "Congress at War: How Republican Reformers Fought the Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, and Remade America"; "The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government" (awarded the Hardeman Prize in American History, in 2019); "America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas and the Compromise that Preserved the Union" (winner of the Los Angeles Times award for best history book, in 2013); "Washington: The Making of the American Capital" (named by the Washington Post as one f the best books of 2008); "Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America (named by the American Booksellers' Association as one of the ten best books of 2005)"; "My Mother’s Ghost," a memoir; "Killing the White Man’s Indian: Reinventing Native Americans at the End of the Twentieth Century"; and "Cathay: A Journey in Search of Old China." He has also published an illustrated children’s book, "Peach Blossom Spring" and has written the script for a PBS documentary about Thomas Jefferson, "Mr. Jefferson’s University." He also edited an photo-illustrated book of eyewitness accounts of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, "Children of the Dragon." He regularly reviews books for the Wall Street Journal. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, TIME Magazine, American Heritage, Smithsonian Magazine, the Civil War Monitor, and many other publications. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Jean Parvin Bordewich.
BORDEWICH WAS BORN in New York City in 1947, and grew up in Yonkers, New York. While growing up, he often traveled to Indian reservations around the United States with his mother, LaVerne Madigan Bordewich, the executive director of the Association on American Indian Affairs, then the only independent advocacy organization for Native Americans. This early experience helped to shape his lifelong preoccupation with American history, the settlement of the continent, and issues of race, poverty, and political power. He holds degrees from the City College of New York and Columbia University. In the late 1960s, he did voter registration for the NAACP in the still-segregated South; he also worked as a roustabout in Alaska’s Arctic oil fields, a taxi driver in New York City, and a deckhand on a Norwegian freighter.
He has been an independent writer and historian since the early 1970s. As a journalist, he traveled extensively in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, writing on politics, economic issues, culture, and history, on subjects including Islamic fundamentalism, the plight of the Kurds in northern Iraq, civil war in Burma, religious repression in China, Kenya’s population crisis, German Reunification, the peace settlement in Ireland, and other issues. He also served for brief periods as an editor and writer for the Tehran Journal in Iran, in 1972-1973, a press officer for the United Nations, and an advisor to the New China News Agency in Beijing, in 1982-1983, when that agency was embarking on its effort to move from a propaganda model toward a western-style journalistic one.
BORDEWICH WAS BORN in New York City in 1947, and grew up in Yonkers, New York. While growing up, he often traveled to Indian reservations around the United States with his mother, LaVerne Madigan Bordewich, the executive director of the Association on American Indian Affairs, then the only independent advocacy organization for Native Americans. This early experience helped to shape his lifelong preoccupation with American history, the settlement of the continent, and issues of race, poverty, and political power. He holds degrees from the City College of New York and Columbia University. In the late 1960s, he did voter registration for the NAACP in the still-segregated South; he also worked as a roustabout in Alaska’s Arctic oil fields, a taxi driver in New York City, and a deckhand on a Norwegian freighter.
He has been an independent writer and historian since the early 1970s. As a journalist, he traveled extensively in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, writing on politics, economic issues, culture, and history, on subjects including Islamic fundamentalism, the plight of the Kurds in northern Iraq, civil war in Burma, religious repression in China, Kenya’s population crisis, German Reunification, the peace settlement in Ireland, and other issues. He also served for brief periods as an editor and writer for the Tehran Journal in Iran, in 1972-1973, a press officer for the United Nations, and an advisor to the New China News Agency in Beijing, in 1982-1983, when that agency was embarking on its effort to move from a propaganda model toward a western-style journalistic one.
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July 6, 2022
Washington, D.C., was from the beginning a capital with a difference. Where older capitals had been situated in pre-existing centers of population and commerce, Washington was an idea before it was a city; it was planned, set into place, and all but willed into being. Fergus Bordewich provides in his book Washington: The Making of the American Capital an interesting and energetic setting-forth of the story of the beginnings of Washington, D.C. – even if it may not always be quite the patriotic narrative that some readers might expect.
Bordewich focuses on how the moving of the nation’s capital from prior Northern sites like Philadelphia and New York to a Potomac River location represented a triumph for Southerners, and particularly for Virginians like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, all of whom seem to have hoped and believed that a capital on the Potomac would benefit their beloved home commonwealth of Virginia. (Modern residents of Northern Virginia, dealing with the region's endemic traffic problems both within and outside the Capital Beltway, can decide for themselves regarding the nature and degree of those benefits.)
It was an unlikely triumph; U.S. Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvania was among many who believed that the permanent U.S. capital would end up in the Keystone State. But when Congress passed a Residence Act moving the capital from New York to Philadelphia for ten years, and then permanently to the Potomac afterward, Maclay knew that “The act was as much Pennsylvania’s failure as it was Virginia’s victory. [James] Madison and his allies had played a weak hand brilliantly. Pennsylvania had played a strong one abysmally” (p. 51). Yet in Bordewich’s reading, there is a grimmer significance to the placement of the capital: “The Potomac would prove a comfortable home for the kind of government the South wanted, and for slavery” (p. 52).
One meets, in the pages of Washington: The Making of the American Capital, the figures one would expect to meet, such as the brilliant and mercurial architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant, whose grand design for the city of Washington would survive his own memorable fall from grace. Yet one also meets figures who reflect the difficulties and uncertainties of Washington’s beginnings; investors like Robert Morris invested lavishly and carelessly in the future of Washington, and faced ruin as a result. Meanwhile, the city’s champions – like architect William Thornton, who designed the U.S. Capitol – looked with alarm on the slow development of the federal city, and concluded grimly that “A small delay may be fatal” (p. 199) to George Washington’s dreams of a great capital metropolis rising from the Potomac marshlands.
Washington himself tirelessly championed the federal city that today bears his name. As he once put it, “By the obstructions continually thrown in its way, by friends or enemies, this city has had to pass through a fiery trial….Yet I trust [it] will, ultimately, escape the ordeal with éclat” (p. 238). Ultimately, Bordewich concludes, “Without Washington, there would have been no Washington, D.C. Without his unflagging commitment, the city might never have been placed on the Potomac, and certainly not at its present location, which he personally selected” (p. 241).
I was glad that Bordewich told the stories of individual African Americans who were so important to Washington’s early years – not just famous luminaries like the brilliant surveyor Benjamin Banneker, but also ordinary African Americans whose names and stories one learns in this book. When Bordewich writes that “The nation would be kept much safer for slavery by a government ensconced on the Potomac” (p. 150), or tells of First Lady Abigail Adams arriving in Washington in 1800 and unhappily observing that “The effects of slavery are visible everywhere” (p. 251), the reader is likely to ask him- or herself some uncomfortable questions about the role of slavery in the founding of the United States of America.
The focus on how enslaved African Americans did so much of the hard physical work of building Washington, D.C., is certainly appropriate. Yet I would have liked to have seen more focus on what Bordewich does not really get to until the last seven pages of a 276-page book: the ways in which, throughout the antebellum period, a growing free African American community in Washington made the city different from other parts of the South. “Black schools and churches flourished. Free blacks were permitted to testify in court, own businesses and real estate, and mingle with whites at public events. Individuals who alleged that they had been illegally enslaved were also allowed to sue in court” (p. 270).
More emphasis on African American achievement and agency in early Washington would not have taken away from Bordewich’s desire to focus on the role of slavery in Washington’s beginnings. A more nuanced focus of that kind might have helped to provide a stronger link between Washington’s past and its present – a present in which “today 57 percent of the city’s inhabitants, most of the leading members of its municipal government, and a significant portion of its business establishment are African American” (p. 275).
As Washington’s viability at its beginnings was a matter of widespread doubt, it is good that this book’s fascinating epilogue calls attention to two later occasions when the capital seemed likely to move: in 1814, after the British burned the city's public buildings during the War of 1812, and then after the Civil War, when Midwesterners called for the capital of the expanding nation to be placed in a more central location like Saint Louis.
I am a native Washingtonian, born in the old Columbia Hospital in Washington’s West End (the site is now home to a condominium complex and a Trader Joe's grocery store). Therefore I read Washington: The Making of the American Capital with particular interest. The book benefits from a 16-page insert containing maps, portraits, and photographs that take one from L’Enfant’s original design map of 1791 to the completion of the Capitol Dome in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War. It is a well-written and interesting history of Washington, D.C. If some readers find Bordewich’s focus on the role of slavery in the founding of the city excessive, perhaps that emphasis a necessary corrective to the way in which African Americans were “written out” of the history of Washington, and of the United States, in times past.
Bordewich focuses on how the moving of the nation’s capital from prior Northern sites like Philadelphia and New York to a Potomac River location represented a triumph for Southerners, and particularly for Virginians like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, all of whom seem to have hoped and believed that a capital on the Potomac would benefit their beloved home commonwealth of Virginia. (Modern residents of Northern Virginia, dealing with the region's endemic traffic problems both within and outside the Capital Beltway, can decide for themselves regarding the nature and degree of those benefits.)
It was an unlikely triumph; U.S. Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvania was among many who believed that the permanent U.S. capital would end up in the Keystone State. But when Congress passed a Residence Act moving the capital from New York to Philadelphia for ten years, and then permanently to the Potomac afterward, Maclay knew that “The act was as much Pennsylvania’s failure as it was Virginia’s victory. [James] Madison and his allies had played a weak hand brilliantly. Pennsylvania had played a strong one abysmally” (p. 51). Yet in Bordewich’s reading, there is a grimmer significance to the placement of the capital: “The Potomac would prove a comfortable home for the kind of government the South wanted, and for slavery” (p. 52).
One meets, in the pages of Washington: The Making of the American Capital, the figures one would expect to meet, such as the brilliant and mercurial architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant, whose grand design for the city of Washington would survive his own memorable fall from grace. Yet one also meets figures who reflect the difficulties and uncertainties of Washington’s beginnings; investors like Robert Morris invested lavishly and carelessly in the future of Washington, and faced ruin as a result. Meanwhile, the city’s champions – like architect William Thornton, who designed the U.S. Capitol – looked with alarm on the slow development of the federal city, and concluded grimly that “A small delay may be fatal” (p. 199) to George Washington’s dreams of a great capital metropolis rising from the Potomac marshlands.
Washington himself tirelessly championed the federal city that today bears his name. As he once put it, “By the obstructions continually thrown in its way, by friends or enemies, this city has had to pass through a fiery trial….Yet I trust [it] will, ultimately, escape the ordeal with éclat” (p. 238). Ultimately, Bordewich concludes, “Without Washington, there would have been no Washington, D.C. Without his unflagging commitment, the city might never have been placed on the Potomac, and certainly not at its present location, which he personally selected” (p. 241).
I was glad that Bordewich told the stories of individual African Americans who were so important to Washington’s early years – not just famous luminaries like the brilliant surveyor Benjamin Banneker, but also ordinary African Americans whose names and stories one learns in this book. When Bordewich writes that “The nation would be kept much safer for slavery by a government ensconced on the Potomac” (p. 150), or tells of First Lady Abigail Adams arriving in Washington in 1800 and unhappily observing that “The effects of slavery are visible everywhere” (p. 251), the reader is likely to ask him- or herself some uncomfortable questions about the role of slavery in the founding of the United States of America.
The focus on how enslaved African Americans did so much of the hard physical work of building Washington, D.C., is certainly appropriate. Yet I would have liked to have seen more focus on what Bordewich does not really get to until the last seven pages of a 276-page book: the ways in which, throughout the antebellum period, a growing free African American community in Washington made the city different from other parts of the South. “Black schools and churches flourished. Free blacks were permitted to testify in court, own businesses and real estate, and mingle with whites at public events. Individuals who alleged that they had been illegally enslaved were also allowed to sue in court” (p. 270).
More emphasis on African American achievement and agency in early Washington would not have taken away from Bordewich’s desire to focus on the role of slavery in Washington’s beginnings. A more nuanced focus of that kind might have helped to provide a stronger link between Washington’s past and its present – a present in which “today 57 percent of the city’s inhabitants, most of the leading members of its municipal government, and a significant portion of its business establishment are African American” (p. 275).
As Washington’s viability at its beginnings was a matter of widespread doubt, it is good that this book’s fascinating epilogue calls attention to two later occasions when the capital seemed likely to move: in 1814, after the British burned the city's public buildings during the War of 1812, and then after the Civil War, when Midwesterners called for the capital of the expanding nation to be placed in a more central location like Saint Louis.
I am a native Washingtonian, born in the old Columbia Hospital in Washington’s West End (the site is now home to a condominium complex and a Trader Joe's grocery store). Therefore I read Washington: The Making of the American Capital with particular interest. The book benefits from a 16-page insert containing maps, portraits, and photographs that take one from L’Enfant’s original design map of 1791 to the completion of the Capitol Dome in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War. It is a well-written and interesting history of Washington, D.C. If some readers find Bordewich’s focus on the role of slavery in the founding of the city excessive, perhaps that emphasis a necessary corrective to the way in which African Americans were “written out” of the history of Washington, and of the United States, in times past.
October 17, 2008
The idea of this book is terrific, and about 70% of the follow through works very well. I've always been somewhat fascinated by city planning and living in DC for the past 14 years, I really looked forward to hearing the straight dope on how DC came to be. The facts surrounding the political wrangling on choosing the site of the capital was very interesting, as was what little there was of the actual laying out and constructing of the city itself. But Bordewich really didn't go deeply enough into the actual building of the city. He spends so much time on Philadelphia that there were times I questioned the title of the book. And while he shines a much needed light on the part that slaves and African-Americans played in DC's birth, he might have put more focus on it than the book really warranted. Still, it's amazing to think of the accomplishment of carving this great city out of the swampy backwaters of the Potomac valley, and Bordewich is to be commended for bringing much of that struggle to life.
September 14, 2009
The title should have been "Washington: A book filled with tangents and goes out of the way to tell you the founding fathers were forced to use slave labor to build the city, which almost didn't get built, but we're going to spend a lot of time telling you that they used slaves to build the city and not so much time about the nitty-gritty politics that went on behind the scenes of getting the city built, because they used slaves; if you want more substance behind how Washington, D.C. was built, read John Adams by David McCullough--he goes into more detail."
Maybe two stars is a little too brutal, but I found that Bordewich went in way too many directions in this book. (All though I found the bit on yellow fever in Philadelphia interesting; however, that belongs in a book on Philadelphia, not Washington, D.C.)
Maybe two stars is a little too brutal, but I found that Bordewich went in way too many directions in this book. (All though I found the bit on yellow fever in Philadelphia interesting; however, that belongs in a book on Philadelphia, not Washington, D.C.)
August 19, 2025
Definitely the best book about the founding of DC that I have ever read. The constant thread of slavery as a driving force in early American politics and the contribution of enslaved persons to the building of our capital are hard to read and will make you uncomfortable, but deservedly so.
August 4, 2015
Few capital cities are designed. Most grow up haphazardly and without any kind of design or plan. Government tends to locate in the biggest cities, or the most convenient, or those at the centre of trade. Sometimes one city embodies all of these. Sometimes capitals are relocated entirely; sometimes major buildings are refurbished, spruced up or replaced. But it's rare that a new nation creates an entirely new capital city as a reflection of its own ambitions and future hopes.
That doesn't mean its existence or survival was a foregone conclusion. Reading this book, to be honest, it is a wonder Washington is the city it is today, a city of wide stately thoroughfares and fine public buildings. For a great part of its history it was no such thing at all. However, unlike London, Paris, Berlin or innumerable other old and established capital cities, Washington was always intended and envisaged as something more than just the seat of government, and the story of its founding reflects that. The arguments over whether a capital city was necessary at all, the debates about its shape, form and location, the controversy of its funding, the trials and errors of its design, its construction, its future, all reflect the fact that Washington was never just a city. It was a symbol, as Bordewich writes, 'that would embody the spirit of a nation that barely yet existed', a symbol of democracy, republican government, freedom.
The great irony, of course, is that Washington was a city built on the backs of slaves and by the institution of slavery. If it wasn't for the imbalance of power in the early Congress caused by the counting of slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of representation, the capital city would never have been located on the Potomac, and who knows how different a country the United States might have been then? Without a capital city so amenable to slavery, perhaps located in abolitionist New York or Philadelphia? Without a seat of government located to all intents and purposes in the South, without a city built and run by slaves, without the majority of its early Presidents all being slave-holders, without a social life and society influenced by the Southern gentry?
I never could have thought a book about the building of a city would be of interest to me, but the story of the building of Washington sheds real light on the early history of America, and Bordewich tells it well. The tortuous tangles of the speculations and financial scandals were occasionally confusing, and I wished for a little bit more about the actual building, the slaves and the workers who built the roads and buildings, but I suppose much of this is probably lost to history. Maybe when the British burned the Library of Congress in 1814. Oops.
That doesn't mean its existence or survival was a foregone conclusion. Reading this book, to be honest, it is a wonder Washington is the city it is today, a city of wide stately thoroughfares and fine public buildings. For a great part of its history it was no such thing at all. However, unlike London, Paris, Berlin or innumerable other old and established capital cities, Washington was always intended and envisaged as something more than just the seat of government, and the story of its founding reflects that. The arguments over whether a capital city was necessary at all, the debates about its shape, form and location, the controversy of its funding, the trials and errors of its design, its construction, its future, all reflect the fact that Washington was never just a city. It was a symbol, as Bordewich writes, 'that would embody the spirit of a nation that barely yet existed', a symbol of democracy, republican government, freedom.
The great irony, of course, is that Washington was a city built on the backs of slaves and by the institution of slavery. If it wasn't for the imbalance of power in the early Congress caused by the counting of slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of representation, the capital city would never have been located on the Potomac, and who knows how different a country the United States might have been then? Without a capital city so amenable to slavery, perhaps located in abolitionist New York or Philadelphia? Without a seat of government located to all intents and purposes in the South, without a city built and run by slaves, without the majority of its early Presidents all being slave-holders, without a social life and society influenced by the Southern gentry?
I never could have thought a book about the building of a city would be of interest to me, but the story of the building of Washington sheds real light on the early history of America, and Bordewich tells it well. The tortuous tangles of the speculations and financial scandals were occasionally confusing, and I wished for a little bit more about the actual building, the slaves and the workers who built the roads and buildings, but I suppose much of this is probably lost to history. Maybe when the British burned the Library of Congress in 1814. Oops.
January 26, 2009
From the title, this book sounds like something someone would have to be dragged into reading. Surprisingly, it is absorbing and even leaves you wanting to know even more (which is one of my standards about how good is a non fiction book). After reading Bordewich's account of how Washington ever became the nation's capital, one wonders that it happened at all. A swamp, a place strategically indefensible, and facing seemingly insurmountable political, financial, and social obstacles, it is simply amazing that George Washington was able to succeed in making it happen.
in many ways the books is more about a part of American history that is not well-known (at least it wasn't to me) than a detailed description of the actually building process. There are heroes and scoundrels galore; there is much about land speculation and unsavory financial deals; there is much about slavery (without the use of slaves the city would never have been built); and there is much to admire and learn about George Washington, not all of it pretty.
The book reads a bit like a novel.
in many ways the books is more about a part of American history that is not well-known (at least it wasn't to me) than a detailed description of the actually building process. There are heroes and scoundrels galore; there is much about land speculation and unsavory financial deals; there is much about slavery (without the use of slaves the city would never have been built); and there is much to admire and learn about George Washington, not all of it pretty.
The book reads a bit like a novel.
January 17, 2009
Those who do not know history are bound to repeat it. What is amazing to me is that there are tons of people in Washington who DO know history and still repeat it anyway. The facts of how own revered capital came to be seem lost to the sands of time, but not with this book. Political back room deals, wrangling of votes, shady real estate deals, bad investments, slave labor, tacky political souvenirs. It all seems very similar to all the crap that goes on today, and in some cases even worse. I am not sure of it is comforting to know that nothing changes or not. But it is fascinating to know how it really worked and to be able to see through all the seemily fake sentimental patriotic stuff that has become our reality to the real story.
May 24, 2010
This is the history of how Washington, DC came to be Washington, DC and it's fascinating. The author does a good job of removing the capital letters from Founding Fathers and showing them for their strengths and weaknesses.
The book is more than about Washington, the city. To cover it's subject, it heads into politics, finance, land speculation and slavery. It shows early America under a lens that the student in Social Studies class never sees.
The book is more than about Washington, the city. To cover it's subject, it heads into politics, finance, land speculation and slavery. It shows early America under a lens that the student in Social Studies class never sees.
Read
November 22, 2008An interesting if somewhat disjointed telling of the making of the American captial. A little too mush emphasis on finance (and crooked financial doings) for me. The author tends to get distracted and go off on threads - thank goodness! The parts about slavery and the plague of 1793 in Philadelphia were the best thing in the book.
July 3, 2017
I kind of lost steam with this. Actually, I got distracted with Renaissance France and now I can't get back into this. I think I'll look to a more general history of this time period because this is very detailed and slanted toward how much slaves contributed to the building of the capital which is all well and good but I want more on the politics of how D.C. was chosen for the site.
Read
July 31, 2009Not exactly what I thought it would be--all about slavery, North/South relations instead of the making of the buildings. But I learned a lot. Started reading it when I started City of Glory since they are about similar things and time in the US history.
April 1, 2018
Charles Dickens called it the City of Magnificent Intentions.
A seed can be defined a couple of ways: a flowering plant's unit of reproduction, capable of developing into another such plant.
Or...
the cause or latent beginning of a feeling, process, or condition.
Through the determination of our first President, the symbolic seeds of our democracy may not have had a field for which to prosper. A city he too foresaw with magnificent intentions but unfortunately passed before seeing the fruits of his labor.
Fergus M. Bordewich’s 2008 book, Washington: The Making of The American Capital, examines these seeds.
In this instance, Bordewich explores how the seeds of hypocrisy, self interest, over time over budget- financial malfeasance were all sewn into this nations political landscape from the start, all centered around the construction our our nations capital.
The location of our Capital( Capital is a city. Capitol is a building) may very well have been in Philadelphia if it weren’t for the Yellow Fever of 1794, for there were serious doubts of locating the capital in the “south”.
Washington DC, built as a symbol of freedom yet done so by the hands of slave labor. But given the period was the hypocrisy that apparent. Slave owner George Washington at times struggled with the conundrum.
Over time and over budget, if it weren’t for continued money being thrown at it, our Capital may not have come to pass, but then again self interests in landownership may have had something to do with it including GW’s. That’s George Washington not George Walker Bush.
Culled from numerous sources, including articles and pamphlets dating back to the early 1800’s, papers of Washington and William Thornton and others and modern day historians David McCullough and Joseph Ellis, Washington is the perfect book for those wishing to better understand how our symbol of democracy has grown from a mere seed into a forest of Freedom.
A seed can be defined a couple of ways: a flowering plant's unit of reproduction, capable of developing into another such plant.
Or...
the cause or latent beginning of a feeling, process, or condition.
Through the determination of our first President, the symbolic seeds of our democracy may not have had a field for which to prosper. A city he too foresaw with magnificent intentions but unfortunately passed before seeing the fruits of his labor.
Fergus M. Bordewich’s 2008 book, Washington: The Making of The American Capital, examines these seeds.
In this instance, Bordewich explores how the seeds of hypocrisy, self interest, over time over budget- financial malfeasance were all sewn into this nations political landscape from the start, all centered around the construction our our nations capital.
The location of our Capital( Capital is a city. Capitol is a building) may very well have been in Philadelphia if it weren’t for the Yellow Fever of 1794, for there were serious doubts of locating the capital in the “south”.
Washington DC, built as a symbol of freedom yet done so by the hands of slave labor. But given the period was the hypocrisy that apparent. Slave owner George Washington at times struggled with the conundrum.
Over time and over budget, if it weren’t for continued money being thrown at it, our Capital may not have come to pass, but then again self interests in landownership may have had something to do with it including GW’s. That’s George Washington not George Walker Bush.
Culled from numerous sources, including articles and pamphlets dating back to the early 1800’s, papers of Washington and William Thornton and others and modern day historians David McCullough and Joseph Ellis, Washington is the perfect book for those wishing to better understand how our symbol of democracy has grown from a mere seed into a forest of Freedom.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 3, 2020
I rate books like ubers it got me there.
it is so interesting to think about all the cool intrigue about hwo Washington was built. I thought it was going to be like Washington, Potomac, L'enfant, 1812 DC hardcore.
but it was all about the finagling and vested interests. it is super interesting and fun. it makes history real instead of a thing that isn't cool. i mean i like history but i was never into american history because i thought it was so repetitive whereas world history was always like guess what Mohenjo Daro existed how about that? ???? Also Ancient Phoenicia!!!!!! But american history was like washington jerrferson madison hamilton. Snoooorrrrrreeeeee. no jp jp jp
but i loved this book. no one is innocent and everyone is trying to do what's best. thank you so much great book
no mention of Minor Threat but i like it
it is so interesting to think about all the cool intrigue about hwo Washington was built. I thought it was going to be like Washington, Potomac, L'enfant, 1812 DC hardcore.
but it was all about the finagling and vested interests. it is super interesting and fun. it makes history real instead of a thing that isn't cool. i mean i like history but i was never into american history because i thought it was so repetitive whereas world history was always like guess what Mohenjo Daro existed how about that? ???? Also Ancient Phoenicia!!!!!! But american history was like washington jerrferson madison hamilton. Snoooorrrrrreeeeee. no jp jp jp
but i loved this book. no one is innocent and everyone is trying to do what's best. thank you so much great book
no mention of Minor Threat but i like it
November 5, 2020
A fascinating but frustratingly meandering narrative Spurs this account of how Washington, D.C. was planned and created. Bordewich pens a compelling picture of the United States of the 1790s, when debate over where to locate the national capital raged. But he goes off on tangents about Philadelphia (where the gov’t sat before DC) and the relative (for its time) racial harmony in place there. Bordewich is all over the place in this book; consequently, this weakens the book’s energy.
May 11, 2024
I picked up this book prior to visiting D.C for the first time. I found some of the information intriguing but the book felt very scattered and went on many tangents. I also found the title to be a little misleading. While it does talk about the making of the capital it focuses more on how slavery was used to create it. While an important aspect of the story, I would have enjoyed greater detail in the politics that went on to create it as well as more detail about the construction of the city.
December 20, 2025
I have read quite a few books by Bordewich and I have liked almost all of them.
However, I wasn't able to enjoy this book because I had just finished reading another Bordewich book, "The First Congress" in which a segment of that book had covered the entire issue about Washington being made into the nation's capital.
For me, the entire subject of "Washington: The Making of the American Capital" was repetitive.
However, I wasn't able to enjoy this book because I had just finished reading another Bordewich book, "The First Congress" in which a segment of that book had covered the entire issue about Washington being made into the nation's capital.
For me, the entire subject of "Washington: The Making of the American Capital" was repetitive.
July 17, 2020
Bordewich provides an engaging, objective and well-researched accounting of the formation of the nation’s capital. In addition, he provides a compelling history of the political, economic and moral issues faced by America’s founders in the first decade of its creation. I was thoroughly engaged and would definitely recommend to anyone yearning for more knowledge on early American history.
February 12, 2019
Interesting history of our capital.
The details show the deceit and manipulation that brought about the building of the capital on the Potomac I got bogged down in the details, just more than I cared to know.
The details show the deceit and manipulation that brought about the building of the capital on the Potomac I got bogged down in the details, just more than I cared to know.
July 18, 2017
This is one of the most fascinating books I've ever read.
July 7, 2025
Lots of interesting facts that change how I view the Founding Fathers and DC, but the pacing was just ok.
December 22, 2025
Yup. Drain the swamp indeed.
August 26, 2009
Bordewich’s narrative about the “making” of Washington DC is quite an engaging read. Evidencing a strong critical demeanor – occasionally bordering on angst – the author covers the agendas and foibles of such figures as L’Enfant, the commissioners, the speculators, and the Founding Fathers as the Potomac deal developed. Also significant is the laudable focus on the central role of African Americans – free and enslaved – in the building of the city. There’s such an emphasis, in fact, that I’m surprised this doesn’t at least inform the book's subtitle. The inclusion of a Benjamin Banneker portrait – Mt Rushmore-like – alongside three of the white dudes that show up on our currency is the only tell-tale sign of Bordewich’s serious presentation of the issues around slavery, Philadelphia’s abolitionist milieu, and the impossibility of DC’s realization without such forced labor.
To balance his focus on this oft-ignored contribution (which, unfortunately must cope with an obvious dearth of archival documentation), Bordewich openly portrays the bumbling incompetence, graft, and/or self-interest that tended to undermine the supposed noble intentions granted to many of the original movers, shakers, and (literally) Big Wigs involved. It’s very entertaining - I could easily imagine our contemporary political elite repeating this near-fiasco today (if only they could figure out how to collect taxes from billionaires).
My only disappointment (as is typical, through not reading the book jacket description) is that – after recently reading a biography about L’Enfant – I had hoped that this book would cover a longer period of Washington’s development. I somehow thought that Bordewich would conclude with Marion Barry’s pipe or something. But alas, the timeline is exactly the same; tons of attention to the first ten ill-fated years with a quick segue to Grant’s decision to finally fund this damn thing once and for all. Nonetheless, this is certainly a terrific story of our Capital’s origins.
To balance his focus on this oft-ignored contribution (which, unfortunately must cope with an obvious dearth of archival documentation), Bordewich openly portrays the bumbling incompetence, graft, and/or self-interest that tended to undermine the supposed noble intentions granted to many of the original movers, shakers, and (literally) Big Wigs involved. It’s very entertaining - I could easily imagine our contemporary political elite repeating this near-fiasco today (if only they could figure out how to collect taxes from billionaires).
My only disappointment (as is typical, through not reading the book jacket description) is that – after recently reading a biography about L’Enfant – I had hoped that this book would cover a longer period of Washington’s development. I somehow thought that Bordewich would conclude with Marion Barry’s pipe or something. But alas, the timeline is exactly the same; tons of attention to the first ten ill-fated years with a quick segue to Grant’s decision to finally fund this damn thing once and for all. Nonetheless, this is certainly a terrific story of our Capital’s origins.
August 16, 2010
I was hoping for more of a urban planning/design/construction history of the city where this was more of a political/financial history of the city. I'll try to set aside this initial disappointment and review it from that perspective. It seemed a counter-arguement to Grand Avenues by Berg. Berg was much more pro-L'Enfant, the Frenchman who designed the city. Bordewich was much harder on L'Enfant, although he admitted that L'Enfant's plan to finance the capital would've worked better as he foresaw the failure of the speculators, and, without describing it at all, he glorified L'Enfant's plan. Berg, although when L'Enfant was off the project he basically was as well, dealt with a longer timeline as well. He went into detail about the conference of architects and landscape architects in the 1900's. Bordewich mentioned the British burning the Capital and White House in 1814 (Dolly Madison left in such a hurry she left a half-cooked dinner which the British soldiers enjoyed) but the book was basically over with the election of 1800.
Bordewich had issues at times with staying on topic. He devoted an entire chapter to the yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia that I failed to see the necessity to devoting more than a few paragraphs too. Also, at times he seemed to want to write a book about slavery and the african-american condition at the time. The parts about how slavery affected the decision-making of the capital were interesting. The rest weren't as necessary. When he did stay on topic, it was enlightening. All the back room dealing and quid pro quo agreements that eventually landed the capital on the Potomac show that politics really hasn't changed all that much over the following 200+ years.
Lastly, he described someone as "a sort of Donald Trump of the 1790s", explaining he got things done then spent a chapter writing about how he didn't actually get anything done. Also, I have a personal thing against nonfiction writers using exclamation points outside of quotations. I just feel like history writers shouldn't get that excited.
Bordewich had issues at times with staying on topic. He devoted an entire chapter to the yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia that I failed to see the necessity to devoting more than a few paragraphs too. Also, at times he seemed to want to write a book about slavery and the african-american condition at the time. The parts about how slavery affected the decision-making of the capital were interesting. The rest weren't as necessary. When he did stay on topic, it was enlightening. All the back room dealing and quid pro quo agreements that eventually landed the capital on the Potomac show that politics really hasn't changed all that much over the following 200+ years.
Lastly, he described someone as "a sort of Donald Trump of the 1790s", explaining he got things done then spent a chapter writing about how he didn't actually get anything done. Also, I have a personal thing against nonfiction writers using exclamation points outside of quotations. I just feel like history writers shouldn't get that excited.
April 17, 2011
"The collapse of the speculative bubble brought land sales and construction almost to a halt. Thousands of the best lots were encumbered by liens and tied up in litigation." Phoenix in 2008? How about Washington, DC, in the mid-1790s? I don't know why I was so surprised by this unexpected storyline of Bordewich's book, especially since I believe one of the fundamental lessons of history is that human nature doesn't really change much over time. The parallels to the America of 2011 are uncanny, even down to the fact that the location of the capital--which is now seen as the embodiment of partisanship and the locus of out-of-control spending--was born of a compromise in an intensely partisan battle over the nation's massive founding debt. I was a little disappointed that the book focused so much on political and real estate battles at the expense of design and planning issues, though nearly everything in it was new (and most of it fascinating) to me. And I think the criticism made by some readers that the book inappropriately foregrounds the role of slaves and slavery in the building of Washington is unfounded, considering that the institution was central to the politics of site selection and development.
October 21, 2009
First off this was a good book, but in saying that it could have probably been better if it stuck to the title and didn't go on tangents. This was supposed to be about how the American Capital came about, all the troubles, etc. The background he did leading up to the decision of Congress to pick Washington DC is top notch. But the author tended to go on tangents about Washington, Jefferson and a bunch of other people on their relationships with slaves, which really didn't have anything to do with the main story. I didn't know that some slaves were used in building the early buildings and houses in DC, which was good to use in the book. But when he started writing about how a slave ran away from Washington in Philly I thought this is not reallly on "The Makinug of the American Capital," but more on Washington the man. But overall a good book and there were a lot of new and interesting facts on our US history.
August 28, 2014
Interesting look at the creation of Washington, DC. The author tended to go on tangents, some of which were interesting (the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia--which was pertinent but probably not deserving of the number of pages it received). He focused a LOT on the involvement of slavery in both the politics and actually building of DC, and while I definitely agree that slavery was crucial to this story, he seemed to focus on it while neglecting other parts of the story. The ending--that is, the actual construction of the city--was glossed over. I did enjoy the portrayal of George Washington in it.
Overall, a pretty good book. I'd have recommended some developmental editing, though.
Overall, a pretty good book. I'd have recommended some developmental editing, though.
August 31, 2016
Bordewich turns a tale, the making of the American capital, from a seemingly inconsequential footnote of early American history into a very enjoyable account of early American politics, economics, and culture. Coming into this book, I did not imagine the major role that the location of the capital on the Potomac banks had on the course of American history. Major themes that Bordewich intertwined within the capital's history and that of a nascent United States are those of the politics of slavery, financial corruption, and probably the most salient, an effervescent hope in American resiliency and progress.
March 25, 2014
Compelling account of the planning and initial founding of the city of Washington, DC. Many of the world's great cities have developed organically, built around a trading outpost, a river junction, etc. Washington, DC is one of the very few major cities whose site was carefully selected (in this case by George Washington himself) and plotted by a designer/architect. This book also gives considerable treatment to the role of slave labor in building the US capital city, and to the uneasy relationship with slavery on the part of several of the nation's Founding Fathers.
August 29, 2014
Being a newcomer to D.C., I want to know all I can about my new city. This book enlightens in so many ways. While other reviewers may quibble about the many seeming tangents the author covers, I disagree. Bordewich does a stellar job of explaining the complex society out of which our Capitol was born. Understanding the nature of Philadelphia, the mindset of our slave-owning founding fathers, the roots of Northern-Southern hostility, financial speculation, and many other facets is the best way to understand the origins of our country.
July 27, 2010
a nice read, but spent too much space discussing biographical details of those involved than the main driving forces for the creation of a federal capital and its consequences on American politics. Compared to Americans that have read American history I know a lot less about the general driving forces of American history, so I sometimes feel like I am missing the big picture and get only the details.
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