The imperial season : America's capital in the time of the first ambassadors, 1893-1918

337 Pages·2013·3.97 MB·English

by  Seale

Text © 2013 by William Seale All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Seale, William.
The imperial season : America’s capital in the time of the first ambassadors, 1893–
1918 / William Seale.
pages cm
Summary: “America’s Capital in the Time of the First Ambassadors, 1893–1918”—Provided
by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-1-58834392-5
1. Washington (D.C.)—History—19th century. 2. Washington (D.C.)—History—20th century.
3. Diplomats—Washington (D.C.) I. Title.
F199.S396 2013
975.3′04—dc23
2013023611
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v3.1
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PREFACE
PROLOGUE
ONE • The Capital of the Sleeping Giant
TWO • Men of Distinction
THREE • The Pivotal Year 1898
FOUR • World Capital
FIVE • Diplomats
SIX • Progress in Marble
SEVEN • Business and Friendship
EIGHT • Massachusetts Avenue
NINE • Players
TEN • Commitment
ELEVEN • The World at Last
CONCLUSION • Ember Days
APPENDIX
ENDNOTES
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
To Maria Downs
PREFACE
This book begins in the capital of the United States in 1893 and ends
there in 1918. During that quarter century the nation claimed a position
of equality among the great powers for the first time in its history.
World power, if yet untested, presented a wholly new context for the
United States. Reverberation from the sudden rise shook Washington
long before it had much influence over the rest of the country. The
character of official life and diplomacy transformed, and work started
toward replacing Washington’s provinciality and symbolic shortcomings.
Change came not with a single stroke but by many innovations that
altered situations from what they had been. The old American capital
seemed suddenly a new place.
Those who lived through the change, and even helped create it, were a
varied lot. Some were merely powerful, some were merely talented, and
some were merely rich, but all were overwhelmingly self-confident, and
all considered themselves visionary. None lacked objectives. Most were
builders on one level or another, the most ambitious broadcasting the
nation’s new glory through public architecture and fine houses—inspired
by Paris and Rome, London and Vienna, Berlin and Budapest, and the
other capitals across Europe—that through the nineteenth century had
been remodeled and extended to neoclassical magnificence. What they
built still defines the heart of Washington today: the monuments and
great civic buildings on the Mall as well as the mansions on the avenues
that were designed as private houses but today serve as embassies.
The capital’s age-old appeal of politics joined the city’s social delights.
Ambassadors from the ancient kingdoms of Europe crowned the
diplomatic core in America’s century-old New World democracy. The
State Department, which shared its headquarters with the Navy and War
Departments next door to the White House, was the hub of an ever-
growing wheel of American diplomats, with spokes reaching over the
world. Both business and pleasure attracted a busy winter community of
people devoted to goals too numerous to categorize. Even some
reformers appeared. Like all the rest, they saw the capital as a place to
get what they wanted. Altogether, the era saw a sweep of diverse winds,
borrowed traditions, and ideas that reshaped capital life.
This book, I hope, revives the era and its spirit, visiting the various
human forces that gave life to what I call the “Imperial Season.” The
word imperial in the book title comes from America’s overseas
expansionist impulse of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
that paralleled movements of longer duration in Europe. Season in the
title is borrowed from the social period known as “the season,” which
occurred in many cities of that time. Long ago the season was simply a
loosely defined period of good times in winter after the crops were in,
business was done, and it was good to relax and play. Washington knew
it as the few months between December and spring, when Congress was
in session and hospitality was notable. I recycle the word to stand for the
whole quarter century, as an episode in American history, thus the
Imperial Season.
Some of the characters you are likely to know well already, such as
Presidents Cleveland, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson.
Others you may remember a little about, for instance, Secretary of State
John Hay; John Sherman, politician and brother of the more famous
general William T. Sherman; and the powerful volunteer leader of the
Red Cross, Mabel Boardman. More, however, you probably do not know
at all, such as the hostess Mary Scott Townsend, the diplomat Alvey
Adee, and the glamorous feminist Inez Milholland. A few individuals you
may have forgotten for a moment, such as the bombastic congressman
Joe Cannon, the seafaring philosopher Captain Mahan, and the dreamer
and builder of great fairs and city gates Daniel P. Burnham.
I have crafted this history as I saw fit. Some figures you may expect to
find have been omitted. Usually these people were excluded because
they did not serve my descriptive purpose, or, for all they might have
promised, when weighed in the context of the whole story, their
presence was merely repetitious of others who do appear. Personal
letters and diaries have provided the main sources, in combination with
public records of the Department of State and to a lesser extent those of
the Departments of the Interior and the Army. Especially rich sources are
the published memoirs, which, for the most part, I dug out of the great
anonymity of used books for a few dollars each. Nearly all of them were
written after World War I by people looking back on the Imperial Season
as a time already remote and glowing in their minds as having been
special. Countess Cassini’s, the last written, was published in 1962 and
provides a charming account of a young girl’s life in diplomatic
Washington at the season’s peak. You will find reference to all of these
in the notes and bibliography.
I wish to thank friends and colleagues for help and advice over the
decade and more of research and writing: Charles M. Harris, James M.
Goode, Joel Treese, Bonnie M. Hart, Will Seale, Marcia M. Anderson,
Frederick J. Lindstrom, Anna J. Cook, Stephen Plotkin, Fiona Griffin, Liz
Argentieri, Nenette Arroyo, Bruce R. Kirby, Annita Andrick, Karen Mark,
James E. Holland, Lydia Barker Tederick, Carol Johnson, Molly Kudner,
Mildred Elmore, James B. Renberg, Jeff Bridgers, Antoinette J. Lee,
Jennifer Brathoved, Shane Hunt, Gary S. Scott, William Bushong, Ruth
Lincoln Kaye, Amy Verone, Barbara M. Kirkconnell, Ellen McCallister
Clark, Susan Raposa, Maria Downs, Valerie Sallis, C. Ford Peatross,
Susan G. Everitt, of the Charles B. Everitt Book Agency, and, by no
means least, Lucinda S. Seale.
At Smithsonian Books I thank Carolyn Gleason, director, Christina
Wiginton, Matt Litts, Kathleen Stanley, and Jane Gardner. Thanks to
Robin Whitaker for her thoughtful and comprehensive editing. I also
wish to remember Caroline Newman gratefully for her early interest in
the manuscript.
William Seale
PROLOGUE
The First Ambassador
Great Britain’s ambassador-designate could easily have walked across
the lawn from the State Department to the White House next door, but
on one particular important day—and few in his life had been this
important—Sir Julian Pauncefote agreed to travel in a carriage. He knew
as well as anyone else that ceremony for most Americans was confined
to courthouse and church. Nonetheless, they loved foreign show. Even if
a crowd of spectators had gathered to see this procession, it would have
provided only glimpses of sunshine sparkling a bit on the golden
trimmings of the candidate’s uniform, discerned through the windows of
the regulation State Department coach that carried Sir Julian and two
other officials with him up the gravel driveway from Pennsylvania
Avenue.
Beneath the shelter of the famous columned portico, neither
Pauncefote nor his two companions moved to alight right away,
although a uniformed White House footman stood by to open the
carriage door. Exact punctuality was mandatory for diplomats. The
hundred or so guests and officials admitted inside to witness the
ceremony also waited for the hour of eleven.
It was April 11, 1893. Sir Julian already had served Britain in the
Washington diplomatic community for nearly four years as the queen’s
minister plenipotentiary and extraordinary. His elevation to ambassador
might have come nearly a year earlier, but Britain waited for the U.S.
Congress to approve an American ambassador to St. James’s before the
Foreign Office in London felt free to send such a high official of its own
to Washington. All the ins and outs that had come together two weeks
before awaited only the morning’s presidential approval to be finalized.
When the ceremony was over, Pauncefote would become the first foreign
ambassador stationed in the United States of America. Excitement
among the people invited that morning was clear enough, but the guests