I have cited but a few of the tribulations through which the Capital of the nation was born. Not only was the growth of the public buildings hindered through lack of money, but also through the “jealousies and bickerings” of those who should have helped to build them. Human nature, in the aggregate, was just as inharmonious and hard to manage then as now. The Commissioners did not always agree. Artisans, imported from foreign lands, made alone an element of discord, one which Washington dreaded and deprecated. He went down with his beloved Capital into the Egypt of its building. He led with a patience and wisdom undreamed of and unappreciated in this generation, the straggling and discordant forces of the Republic from oppression to freedom, from chaos to achievement—he came in sight of the promised land of fruition and prosperity, but he did not enter it, this father and prophet of the people! George Washington died in December, 1799. The city of Washington was officially occupied in June, 1800. The only adequate impression of what the Capital was at the time of its first occupancy, we must receive from those who beheld it with living eyes. Fortunately several have left graphic pictures of the appearance which the city presented at that time. President John Adams took possession of the unfinished Executive Mansion in November, 1800. During the month Mrs. Adams wrote to her daughter, Mrs. Smith, as follows: “I arrived here on Sunday last, and without meeting with any accident worth noticing, except losing ourselves when we left Baltimore, and going eight or nine miles on the Frederic road, by which means we were obliged to go the other eight through the woods, where we wandered for two hours without finding guide or path.... But woods are all you see from Baltimore till you reach _the city_, which is only so in name. Here and there is a small cot, without a glass window, interspersed amongst the forests, through which you travel miles without seeing any human being. In the city there are buildings enough, if they were compact and finished, to accommodate Congress and those attached to it; but as they are, and scattered as they are, I see no great comfort for them.... If the twelve years in which this place has been considered as the future seat of government had been improved as they would have been in New England, very many of the present inconveniences would have been removed. It is a beautiful spot, capable of any improvement, and the more I view it the more I am delighted with it.”