Havre de Grace. -- There seems to be some difference of opinion about whether Maryland should take the District of Columbia back.
Former Governor Schaefer wanted to do so, perhaps in the hope that he could name it after himself. His successor Parris Glendening, perhaps daunted by the District's $722 million budgetary deficit, is negative. Most Marylanders seem to be with Mr. Glendening, but if they are they might be missing a bet. Opportunities to turn back history don't come along too often.
We in Havre de Grace have a special perspective on matters pertaining to the national capital. The District of Columbia might easily have been located right here on the Susquehanna, in which case when I looked out my office window it might be Al Gore or Strom Thurmond I'd be seeing stroll by, instead of Kal Riegelhaupt on his way uptown from his scrapyard.
In the spring of 1789, more than a year before 69 square miles of Maryland and 31 square miles of Virginia were set aside as the new federal capital district, the Continental Congress, like the boll weevil in the song, was already looking for a home. The banks of the Susquehanna offered some especially promising sites.
Wright's Ferry, in York County, Pennsylvania, was suggested, but a motion to designate it the future capital failed, 25 to 26. Then Havre de Grace was proposed. On a tie vote of 27 to 27, that motion failed to win a majority. So debate droned on until the Potomac River site was approved the following July, and both real-estate values and crime rates around here remained low for many years.
While it might not have been entirely healthy for Havre de Grace to have had the nation's capital located here, it would have been healthier for the District of Columbia. This is a far more salubrious location than the humid sinkhole along the Potomac where the District ended up, and maybe
if it had been put here originally it wouldn't be in such trouble today.
A lot of people across the United States make fun of Washington the city. They note its unusual mayor, Marion Barry; its homicide rate; its pathetic public schools, and its occasional aspirations to statehood. They view it as a sort of third-world place that can't pay its bills, plow snow from the streets, or control political corruption.
Most of that is perfectly accurate, but history suggests that these things can be straightened out, given a little discipline. Mayor Barry's financial quagmire isn't really much worse than Alexander ("Boss") Shepherd's back in the Grant administration. fact, there are many similarities.
Boss Shepherd was a political powerhouse in the national capital. Local elites despised him, but at a time when the federal government seemed especially seamy, he had a lot of friends in high places, including the president. He controlled the District's appointed governor, and briefly served as governor himself.
The Washington of those days was a national embarrassment, too. In 1869 Horace Greeley suggested moving the national capital to St. Louis. Talk of holding the 1871 World's Fair in Washington drew hoots. "Let us have a city before we invite anyone to see it," one senator said caustically.
Enemies of Mr. Shepherd, of whom there were many, prevailed on Congress to investigate him. An investigation in 1873 determined that the city was $30 million in debt, although it had an authorized debt ceiling of only $10 million. Congress decided the only way out of the mess was to change the structure of the District's government. It threw out Shepherd and installed three appointed commissioners.
That system endured, quite satisfactorily on the whole, until 1967, when the plaintive cries for "home rule" became deafening, and "Free D.C., the Last Colony" stickers appeared on the bumper of every accredited liberal's Volvo. That year Lyndon Johnson appointed a mayor, and in 1974 the city's voters elected one. It's been downhill ever since.
Maryland could turn that around. If Mayor Barry and the Congress are truly desperate, Governor Glendening and the General Assembly should seriously consider retrocession -- the process by which Virginia got its portion of the District of Columbia returned in 1846.
As the original "federal city" section, covering just over 10 square miles of Washington's downtown, presumably wouldn't be included, retrocession would mean that Maryland would get just about 60 square miles. That would be enough to make a nice little county -- "Schaefer County" would have a certain ring to it -- and a new congressional district. Mr. Barry could stay on as county executive.
Once we had the District back in the Maryland family, there's no doubt we could clean it up and restore both its self-esteem and its reputation. One day it might even rival Havre de Grace or Port Deposit.
Peter A. Jay is a writer and farmer.