Last week I took you as far as the 1847 retrocession of one-third of DC’s original territory to Virginia. The map included in last week’s post showed the original boundaries of the diamond-shaped federal district, and today’s map shows how it looked after retrocession, with Virginia lopped off.
A couple of tangential but interesting details that I can’t resist sharing:
- At the outset of the civil war Alexandria came under military rule since the US government could not tolerate a secessionist enclave just across the Potomac, and as a result about half of the ring forts erected to protect the capital during the civil war were located in Virginia. (The sites and some ruins of the forts can still be found, maintained by the National Park Service.)
- Another interesting fact: In the early years of the 20th century, due to perceived overcrowding in the district, serious momentum developed for Virginia’s retroceded land to be returned to the federal capital, but was ultimately resisted by Virginia.
So retrocession stuck, and the shape of the District of Columbia is now as it was in 1847. Over the quarter-century following retrocession to Virginia, the status of Black residents, free and enslaved, increasingly became a central issue in the District. As part of the Compromise of 1850, trade in human beings was abolished in the federal district, and in 1862 Congress freed the 3000-plus enslaved persons remaining within its boundaries - compensating their previous owners if they were loyal to the Union - but at the same time a segregated school system was established for Black residents, who made up about one-fifth of the population at the outset of the war. In 1866 Congress established near-universal male suffrage for any men, including Black men, who had lived in the District for more than a year. [As I did last week, I’ve relied heavily on Georgetown’s DC history timeline here for the population estimates and some other facts, supplemented by information widely available on Wikipedia; other sources in this article are shown in active links.]
Between 1860 and 1870, the overall population of DC went from about 75,000 (1/5 Black) to nearly 132,000 (1/3 Black), and with the increasing proportion of Blacks in the growing population, and Black men’s recent enfranchisement, it should come as no surprise that Congress moved quickly to sweep away even the degree of local self-rule that had previously existed in the federal district. The Organic Act of 1871 unified Washington City, Georgetown and the rest of Washington County under one municipal government, and although the bill provided for a largely toothless elected local house of delegates, even that was removed three years later, in 1874.
From this point on, the residents of the District were not allowed to vote even for local officials. Instead, Congress governed the District through a three-member appointed Board of Commissioners, with a brief period in the late 1960s when the three-commissioner system was replaced by an appointed mayor and council. Despite repeated efforts to restore some form of local autonomy, nothing of the sort happened until a century had passed: in 1973, President Nixon signed the DC Home Rule Act, and the District’s residents were able to elect their mayor and council.
I moved to DC in 1978. I am one of these residents.