Since then the United States has acquired something over 2 square miles of this territory for use as a military post, a national cemetery, a Signal Corps station, and the Department of Agriculture Experiment Farm. The constitutionality of the retrocession has often been questioned. But Congress had expressed itself clearly on the subject, and the majority of the voters had their way in the matter. In a test case before the Supreme Court of the United States in 1875 (Phillips v. Payne), the court, while not directly ruling on the question, held that an individual is estopped from raising the question. According to an opinion rendered by an attorney general about 1900, it would now take the consent of the State of Virginia to reinclude the Virginia portion as part of the District of Columbia. In the development of the National Capital the portion in Virginia is properly included in the metropolitan area of Washington. The National Capital Park and Planning Commission is, by authority of Congress, cooperating with similar commissions of the States of Maryland and Virginia. The great object is to secure for the remote regions of the National Capital area the same harmonious development as there is in the heart of the city. Both the States of Maryland and Virginia are cooperating to the fullest extent in this matter. On December 16, 1852, the first issue of the Washington Evening Star, which has grown into one of the great national dailies, appeared. [Illustration: DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY BUILDING, 1855] CHAPTER X WASHINGTON 1860-1870 Washington in 1860 was still a comparatively small and undeveloped city, with a population of 61,122. But the people were soon aroused to intense excitement because of the strife between the States. When the Civil War began, the eyes of the Nation were turned on Washington. The city increased in population to over 100,000 in a few months time and was the center of great war-time activities. On April 18, 1861, 500 Pennsylvania troops, the first to answer President Lincoln’s call for volunteers, entered the city, and the day following they were joined by the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment. Soon thousands of additional men were here from all the States in the North. Washington became an armed camp. Schools, churches, and public halls were turned into hospitals to care for the sick and wounded. A chain of forts and batteries was erected about the city to protect it, and by October 1862 there were 252,000 soldiers encamped around Washington on both sides of the river. There were 70 hospitals, caring for 30,000 sick and wounded men. [Illustration: OLD CAPITOL PRISON] [Illustration: THE CAPITOL, SHOWING UNCOMPLETED DOME, 1860] [Illustration: WASHINGTON, FROM ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, 1865] [Illustration: SECOND INAUGURAL OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN, 1865]