Georgetown to Mount Vernon Great American Railroad Journeys

I have crossed the Atlantic to ride the railroads of America

with a new travelling companion.

Published in 1879,

my Appleton's General Guide will steer me to everything that is

novel, beautiful,

memorable or curious in the United States.

Amen!

As I cross the continent, I will discover America's gilded age,

when powerful tycoons launched a railway boom that tied

the nation together and carved out its future as a superpower.

My journey continues through Washington DC, a city known

for its White House and the pale marble of its Capitol Building.

But a black president has been elected to the Oval Office

and half of DC's population is black.

It is time to consider that community's history

and its contribution to American culture,

as well as to encounter the general and president

who gave his name to the city.

I began my journey in the cradle of American independence, Philadelphia.

I continued through the American Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg,

then turned south to Maryland and the city of Baltimore.

Taking in the nation's capital, Washington DC,

I will make my way to Richmond, Virginia, and end in Jamestown,

the first permanent English settlement in North America.

On this leg, I will explore the neighbourhood of U Street

and the district of Georgetown before leaving the capital

to head south into the state of Virginia,

calling at the former slave trading port of Alexandria and finishing

my journey at the home of the first President of the United States.

Along the way, I will discover the tragic reality of the slave trade.

While you're selling produce and other goods, you are selling humans.

I will get to grips with American archaeology...

CRASH

-I'm so sorry.

-It's OK.

-It's the wretched handle.

..and get into the swing of Washington.

THEY PLAY JAZZ MUSIC

In the years before my guidebook, in the aftermath of

the American Civil War,

the population of Washington DC exploded.

Even before that war, a very large number of free black Americans

inhabited the city and in the second half of the 20th century,

black people were a pronounced majority.

At the end of the 19th century, U Street was the largest urban

African-American community in the United States.

Today, visitors are drawn to this vibrant area's bars,

clubs and restaurants, such as Ben's Chili Bowl,

which has been serving the community since the 1950s.

That was a period of racial segregation in the United States.

I found a seat next to Virginia, the widow of the founder, Ben Ali.

-Hello, Virginia.

-Hi.

-I'm Michael, very good to see you.

-A great honour to meet you, actually.

-Thank you very much.

-So, what shall I do here?

-Well, why don't you try our chilli?

-Chilli.

-We've got this great chilli con carne.

Could I get a bowl of chilli, please?

I've got it. Oh, that looks great. Thank you.

And we top it off with a little bit of cheddar cheese and onion.

That is good.

-Spicy.

-Spicy.

-Cheesy, but it's great.

We have served it for now 57 years.

So, when you opened, was your clientele all African-American?

Not all, because white people could go anywhere they wanted, right?

-Sure.

-It was just that we couldn't go downtown.

And in those days,

your clients literally couldn't go into the centre of Washington DC.

We could go in there, but we didn't go to the theatre,

we didn't go to the restaurants, no.

You were kept out.

Yes, they were not serving black people.

That's how it was back then, early '50s.

Why did President Obama choose to come to Ben's

before his inauguration?

We are a part of the history of Washington.

We are, I guess, quite significant, but traditionally U Street

and I think the chilli is wonderful.

After my pit stop in this famous eatery,

I have arranged to meet Dr Maurice Jackson

from the history department at Georgetown University

for a stroll around the neighbourhood.

Maurice, what was the U Street neighbourhood like

at the beginning of the 20th century?

A vibrant neighbourhood.

It was African-Americans who moved here, but it was also

many of the black men who worked in the railroad

who were sleeping car porters.

It was one of the best jobs you can have -

you got paid more than a college professor -

and they lived in this area.

Tens of thousands of African-American men were

employed as sleeping car porters for the Pullman Company.

The industrialist George Pullman had devised these hotels on wheels

with beds, curtains and chandeliers

and so transformed long-distance train travel.

Each car was staffed by a uniformed porter,

but while African-Americans could work on the luxurious cars,

as passengers, they travelled in very different circumstances.

The old saying goes, "To the front of the train,

"to the back of the bus," In a train you always sit in the front.

Why? Because that is where the coal was,

that is where the locomotive was and that is where the soot was,

so you are sitting there because it was hot.

Tell me about how segregation worked in the United States,

-how it worked here in Washington.

-It was very much like apartheid.

It meant that you would have separate facilities by law.

In Washington DC, we don't believe there were ever signs

that said "coloured only" and "white only" -

you just knew where you could go and where you shouldn't go.

I've noticed that there are theatres along here, quite a number of them.

Well, understand that often African-Americans

could play somewhere, but they couldn't sit there.

These theatres, the Lincoln Theatre

and the Republic Theatre down the street, became black theatres.

What was happening in these theatres in those days?

At night they became jazz clubs.

Fletcher Henderson, Louis Armstrong,

the great big bands would have played there.

At night, it's just jumping.

One of the originators of big band jazz

was brought up on these streets.

Duke Ellington is from Washington. He had a group -

Duke Ellington and The Washingtonians.

They played Bar Mitzvahs, they played weddings,

they played anything necessary to make a living.

Ellington became one of the most influential jazz musicians

of the age and pleasingly, his signature tune is

Take The A Train.

MUSIC: Take The A Train

Today, U Street is a gentrified neighbourhood.

But you can still find live jazz and disciples of Duke Ellington

and his fellow greats.

THEY PLAY JAZZ MUSIC

APPLAUSE

The street has changed.

The audience, too.

But the beat goes on.

My journey continues.

I am making tracks north-west to a settlement which dates back

to before the creation of Washington DC.

Appleton's tells me that Georgetown "is an old

"and picturesque town two miles from the capital,

"with which it is connected by two bridges and two lines of horse cars.

"The town is beautifully situated with views

"unsurpassed in the Potomac Valley."

It is so old that it wasn't named after George Washington,

but maybe after George II.

So, king and president coexist.

Over the decades,

the city of Washington expanded to meet Georgetown.

It is home to the main campus of the prestigious Georgetown University.

Some of its students have gone on to be prominent public figures,

like former president Bill Clinton.

I am here to visit one of the oldest scientific agencies in the country.

"The US Naval Observatory," says Appleton's,

"occupies a commanding site on the banks of the Potomac.

"Founded in 1842, it is now one of the foremost institutions

"of its kind in the world, possesses many fine instruments

"and a good library."

Well, its new position is in an area known as Georgetown Heights.

I think a visit there could be timely.

My guidebook says visitors are admitted at all hours.

But security is a little tighter these days,

because since 1974, the site has been the official home

of the Vice President of the United States.

I am meeting astronomer Geoff Chester.

Hello, Geoff.

Michael, welcome to the US Naval Observatory.

Appleton's led me to believe that the US Naval Observatory

was on the banks of the Potomac, which clearly it isn't any more.

That's correct.

We were located in Foggy Bottom on the banks of the Potomac

from 1844 until 1893,

when we moved up to occupy this site.

Part of the reason that we were located at Foggy Bottom was that

we had to be in an area that was visible from all

the inhabited parts of the city,

because we had to give a signal every day

so that mariners could adjust the corrections for their chronometers.

So we erected a time ball on top of our old main building and that

was the one location in the city

where all those sightlines could be met.

Every day, precisely at noon, the ball would drop

and everyone knew exactly what time it was supposed to be.

In Britain I came across this issue, which was crystallised

by the railways, of time being different as you

move from east to west, and that was resolved by standard railway time.

You must have had this problem in spades in the United States

-because of the breadth of the country.

-Absolutely.

In the United States, railway time was determined

by individual railway companies,

and typically what they would do is they would choose whatever

the local mean solar time was at one of their terminal stations,

or at a station somewhere in between.

So, if you were a traveller in those days,

you needed to have a way of figuring out exactly what time

it was where you were going to make your connection for your next train.

So, you would spend 50 cents and buy one of these books over here.

So this is called Orton's Adjustable Scale for Longitude and Time

and if you wanted to, say,

take a train from New York to Chicago,

you would be able to place this little tape in the proper place

and adjust for the hour and the minute offset

between each of those individual cities.

So, if you were a traveller in those days and you didn't have

one of these, you stood a very good chance of missing your train.

-Such a very complex system simply could not survive.

-No.

The railroads in the United States and Canada

adopted the concept of standard time.

Essentially what they did was they carved the country up

into four standard time zones that differed by one integral hour,

and by 1883, this was such a universal concept that it was

adopted by everyone in the United States,

except the American Congress.

They did not codify standard time

into United States law until 1918.

Which is extraordinary, isn't it?

Um, not necessarily,

if you know our Congress!

It is testament to the power of the railroads that

in 19th-century America they created the four standard time zones

still used today.

The United States Naval Observatory has long been

a timepiece for the nation.

And today its role is global.

It provides travellers all over the world with

vital information about their location.

So, here we find ourselves surrounded by electronic boxes

and cylinders and things that look nothing like a clock to me.

Time is involved intricately with positioning.

Most of us today, whether we know it or not,

have a global positioning device, either a little hand-held unit

or something that is built into your smartphone.

The way that your GPS figures out where you are on the surface

of the Earth is to take a very precise timescale

and measure the difference in time signals

that are transmitted from satellites 12,000 miles overhead -

triangulating, essentially,

the different time ticks from different satellites

and then comparing that with our master clock timescale.

So any time you look at the display on your smartphone,

you are basically looking at time that points back here,

to the US Naval Observatory.

It has been quite a long journey, hasn't it,

since the days when men peered with telescopes to see a ball drop

to set their chronometers?

It is a big job, but somebody has got to do it.

From the antique to the cutting edge,

this magnificent repository of scientific instruments,

charts and knowledge rounds off my exploration of the nation's capital.

This morning I'm leaving Washington, heading south,

crossing into the state of Virginia.

Alexandria is my next stop and Appleton's tells me that it

is situated on the south side of the Potomac,

seven miles below Washington.

Although Appleton's was written after the American Civil War,

whose principal cause was slavery,

the African-American community is almost not mentioned in the book -

an omission which I think I'll find particularly striking

in Alexandria, which played an important part in the sale

and traffic of human chattels.

My guidebook says that Alexandria is a quaint old town

dating from 1748.

Back then, the cash crop here was tobacco

and it was extremely labour-intensive to produce.

The crop was worked by slaves.

1315 Duke Street was, during the 1830s, the headquarters of one

of the largest slave trading companies in the United States.

It had extensive pens for the slaves and access to wharves

and docks, and it traded up to 1,000 slaves a year.

This modest property has been the scene of untold human misery.

In 1808, the act prohibiting the importation of slaves

came into effect.

However, a robust internal slave trade

continued at places like this,

Alexandria's Market Square,

where I am meeting the director

of the city's Black History Museum, Audrey Davis.

-Audrey, hello.

-Hi, how are you?

-Good to see you.

-Good to see you, yes.

So, here we are in the market at Alexandria

and this was the scene of slave sales.

The dealers would come in from Duke Street,

bringing in their slaves, and they would sell them

here at the market, men and women and children, and while you

are also selling produce and other goods, you are selling humans.

They don't know where they are going,

they don't know if they are going to be kept with their families,

they hope that they might see their children again.

It is, to me, just a horrible, horrible experience.

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861,

Northern forces occupied parts of Virginia.

A judgment made by a general in Union-held territory

would forever change the lives of enslaved people here.

In 1861 at Fortress Monroe,

General Benjamin Franklin Butler makes a very fateful decision

when three sleeves come to him, seeking asylum.

And he thought, "Well, why should I send them back to their masters?"

Even though by law, he should have, he decided to keep them

and use their labour for the Union cause.

Officially, slaves were considered not people, but property.

So, using the same logic, General Butler, a trained lawyer,

decided that they could be kept by the North as contraband.

Escaping slaves know that if they can get in the area that is

protected by the Union, they have a chance at freedom.

They weren't exactly completely free,

but they knew if the Union won the war, they would be.

But they had a chance to work for a wage and they had some protection

and they had at least some autonomy in how they lived their lives.

Alexandria fell to Northern, Union forces

and thousands of enslaved people risked their lives to reach it.

In the space of just 16 months,

its population more than doubled as 10,000 escaped slaves,

who came to be known as contrabands, made it to the city.

Many arrived malnourished and exhausted and succumbed to disease.

The Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery became the final

resting place for about 1,700 African-Americans.

On the walls are the names etched in bronze of the men,

women and children who are buried here.

Has the cemetery survived in quite good condition,

then, over the years?

We know that the community of course obviously knew that it was

a cemetery during the time -

there were wooden markers for the graves, there was a wooden

picket fence that went around the cemetery.

But over the years, and with the weather, the fence fell down,

the headboards disintegrated and so you really have a grassy mound.

But people were aware that it was a cemetery.

In the 1950s, a petrol station was built on the site.

We don't know why that happened

when we know as late as 1948 the cemetery shows up on city maps,

so it is one of the unanswered questions that we have.

For ten years, community activists fought to restore the site

and in 2007 the City of Alexandria purchased and cleared the land.

It was rededicated and this memorial was erected in 2014.

So, these people, who did not have any dignity

in life or any respect in life,

we think, in this memorial, retain that dignity

and retain the honour that they deserved for what

they did to help our country move forward from slavery.

I am continuing my journey south with an excursion

recommended by Appleton's to a place so hallowed that even

when the Civil War raged all around, it remained neutral ground.

Back in 1879, tourists would have travelled here

in the spirit of pilgrims, for this is the home of the man

who represented the highest ideals of the American nation -

its first President, George Washington.

"Mount Vernon," says Appleton's,

"on the Virginia side of the Potomac, was bequeathed by

"Augustine Washington, who died in 1743, to Lawrence Washington.

"George Washington inherited the estate in 1752.

"The central part of the mansion, which is all wood,

"was built by Lawrence and the wings by George Washington."

It may seem extraordinary that a man who fought a revolutionary war

and was the first President of the United States had time to

involve himself in home improvements.

But you know what they say -

if you want something done, ask a busy man.

George Washington was born into the colonial gentry of Virginia.

When he inherited Mount Vernon, he and his wife Martha

transformed it into this grand Palladian mansion.

In the garden, designed by Washington himself,

I am meeting the head of this historic site, Curt Viebranz.

-Michael, pleased to meet you.

-And a lovely spot in which to meet.

From my guide book, I get an impression of George Washington

that I had not had before, of a rather house-proud man

who has time to take care of this estate. Is that right?

Yes, the home itself was added onto twice,

and it was very important to him that he be seen as

not just a backward Virginian,

but really somebody who was in line with the latest fashion.

So much of what you see here in terms of the architecture,

as well as all of the gardens, was really his handiwork.

The great contradiction that we find in George Washington was that

while he was forging a nation of men created equal,

his 8,000-acre plantation was worked by 200 slaves.

He was not a signatory of the Declaration of Independence

because he was of course leading the army,

but I think he saw that there was a huge conflict between those ideals

espoused in the Declaration and the fact that we had a significant...

Around the 1790 census, we had 600,000 slaves in the United States.

But again, ever the pragmatist, I think he realised that

there was no possibility that there would be

a Union if they had to really wrestle with that.

But over time, his views evolved.

In July of 1799 - not knowing, of course,

he was going to be dead within five months -

he wrote a second will and that will called for his slaves to be freed

at the time of Martha's death.

George Washington was the only founding father

to free his slaves, which came into effect on 1st January 1801.

As the home of the first President, and of the first First Lady,

Mount Vernon is a landmark in the history of the United States.

A team of archaeologists is excavating to find out

what life he was like.

-Hello, Eleanor, I'm Michael.

-Hello, good to have you.

-May I join you in your pit?

-Yeah, sure, come on in.

-In fact, may I give you a hand?

-I would love that.

-All right, thank you.

-Pick up the trowel and get to work.

So, what is it you are digging here? What is the archaeology?

Well, we are excavating in this area that Washington called his grove.

This was the pleasure grove, meant for strolling and admiring

the landscape on the part of the many visitors

that came to Mount Vernon.

And why would that be rich in archaeology?

Well, this landscape in particular actually changes

over time pretty vastly.

Early on it is a big midden or trash pile, so we can learn a lot about

the operations of the plantation and the daily lives of the Washingtons

and the enslaved people, just by digging in this one space.

What is this stone-like thing that I have struck here?

Well, you have actually found an oyster shell.

Oyster shells, of course, were the detritus of eating oysters.

They were also pulverised to make the lime that made the mortar

that held the bricks together here on the plantation,

so that is a great find.

Well, a veritable treasure trove of things.

A treasure trove of trash.

-What are we looking at here, then?

-This is a drinking pot.

It's actually a kind of ceramic

that was made in Staffordshire, England,

and would have been used probably in the kitchen here at Mount Vernon.

CRASH

-I'm so sorry.

-That's OK.

-The wretched handle came off.

'Better not touch anything else!'

And then, what, a piece of tinfoil?

-This is actually a piece of silver.

-Ah.

We very rarely find silver and gold

in the archaeological record, obviously because it was valuable,

but this piece somehow managed to survive.

Any idea what it is?

We actually believe that it has been torn or ripped away

from the scabbard of a sword, so the leather holder

of a sword would have been decorated with lots of silver mountings.

And this one, we think,

actually bears the monogram of George Washington,

so that's the bottom of the G there

and the bottom of the curly W there.

So what you are touching there may once have been touched

-by George Washington.

-Certainly.

The view of the Potomac that George Washington enjoyed.

He is revered by Americans as the general who defeated

the British and as a wise and humble first President.

And many will be relieved that at the end of his life,

he chose to free himself of slaves.

But he and the other founding fathers failed to resolve

the slavery issue.

It is the United States' founding fatal flaw,

its original sin,

and it took a long time

and another war to deal with it.

And another great president -

Abraham Lincoln.

Next time, I discover how crucial railroads were

during the Civil War...

Actually, it was the first time the troops arrived by rail during

the history of railroad use and military use in the United States.

..I bottle the classic Southern tipple, bourbon...

Oh, you missed one. There's a little more skill to it.

Apparently!

Michael Portillo. How do you do?

..and learn how to behave at Virginia's oldest cotillion ball.

-Help me, help me!

-It's easy.

Four, two, three, turn,

five, six, seven, eight.

Out, in...