Washington 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 Appletons' General Guide

will steer me to everything that's novel,

beautiful,

memorable

or curious in the United States.

-ALL:

-Amen!

As I cross the continent, I'll 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 south to Washington, DC -

the centre of political power in the world's most powerful country.

Founded on a compromise, built on a greenfield site,

torched by the British,

it rose from the ashes to become a capital of fine public architecture,

monuments and memorials

and the city where the president who divided America,

but saved the Union,

met a theatrical death.

I began this journey in Philadelphia -

the cradle of American independence -

continued to the American Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg

and turned south to Baltimore in Maryland.

Ahead of me, lie both the capital of the nation and the capital

of the state of Virginia, Richmond.

I'll finish in one of the oldest settlements in North America -

Jamestown.

On this leg, I'll explore Washington in the district of Columbia,

visit the neighbourhood of U Street

and the area 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.

HORN BLARES

'Along the way, I'll pick up some spending money...'

This bundle is 80,000.

I've never held anything like that much money in my life!

'..discover how the man credited with saving the nation

'tragically met his end...'

Booth was able to walk right behind the president

and fired a shot that hit him right behind the left ear.

'..hear about the sordid reality of the slave trade...'

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

'..and get to grips with American archaeology.'

SMASH!

-I'm so sorry...

-It's OK!

The wretched handle came off. THEY CHUCKLE

HORN BLARES

I'm approaching Washington, following a recommended

Appletons' route along what was the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad.

According to Appletons', "Washington's site is admirable.

"Consisting of an undulating plain diversified by irregular elevations,

"which furnish advantageous positions

"for the various public buildings.

"The plan of the city is unique and on a scale which shows that it

"was expected that a vast metropolis would grow up there."

The Founding Fathers foresaw the greatness of the United States

and planned a capital that would rival any European one

in terms of scale, grandeur and prestige.

'You have arrived at Washington Union Station.

'Please watch your step.'

At the beginning of the 20th century,

a new master plan was developed for Washington, DC, to make the city

even more beautiful, and as part of that, a new Union Station,

bringing together in one place, the Pennsylvania

and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroads,

in a building of suitable magnificence.

Or, you might even say, "over-the-topness".

Despite the early-20th-century facelift,

at only 100 years old, Washington was a relatively young city.

Following independence from the British,

the newly formed nation of the United States

couldn't agree on which metropolis should be the seat of government.

So, a purpose-built capital was founded in 1790.

Conspiracy theorists say that the layout of Washington

contains hidden Masonic symbols.

I can't see any, but many of the Founding Fathers were Freemasons,

including George Washington.

'To find out how this city came into being,

'I'm heading to Freedom Plaza to meet Jane Freundel Levey

'of the Historical Society of Washington.'

-Hello, Jane.

-Hello, it's so nice to see you.

Very good to see you.

And I see we've got a map of Washington laid out before us.

-We do indeed.

-Shall we stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue

-towards the White House?

-Let's do that.

In the beginning, why was Washington, DC,

chosen as the place for the capital?

Washington was chosen as a political compromise.

We had a young nation, it had no money

and we had a revolutionary war to pay off.

The South were not so willing to pay off the debts of the North,

where most of the battles took place,

unless they got something in return.

And what they got in return was the opportunity for the capital

to be in, what was considered then, the South.

That founding compromise was achieved by the man after whom

the city is named -

the first president of the United States.

George Washington saw that the nation's capital needed to be

on a river that would connect to what was going to be the nation.

In other words, a river that connected to the West

and that's what the Potomac River did.

It connected to the Ohio River which took us out to the West

and that's how he saw the new empire growing.

-And who actually planned it?

-The city plan itself,

was done by Peter L'Enfant, sometimes know as Pierre,

he was of French origin and he was an American citizen, he was an

engineer who had

grown up near Versailles and had

certainly imbibed the principles of

baroque planning from Europe.

And he applied them to this new enterprise.

L'Enfant wanted his city to be

a republican city, and not an imperial city.

So did George Washington, too, for that matter,

which meant he wanted the baroque style of open boulevards

and access to the government.

In 1791, a diamond of land, ten miles squared,

was carved out of the states of Virginia and Maryland to become

the federal capital and the seat of the national government.

We've ended our journey down Pennsylvania Avenue,

we've arrived in the White House.

Would you join me in the Blue Room?

Yes, my favourite, the Blue Room! Thank you.

Appletons' informs me,

"The public buildings are the chief attraction of Washington.

"The White House, as the president's official residence,

"represents the executive branch of

"the United States Federal Government.

"The legislative branch of Congress is based at the Capitol

"and the judiciary is housed in the Supreme Court Of Justice."

Around the time of my Appletons' Guide, another grand building

was being constructed - the Library Of Congress.

And I can't resist taking a look.

It was established as a resource for members of Congress.

Over the years, it has become the national library

and any book published under US copyright

has to be deposited here.

It's now the largest library in the world.

Washington is home to the federal government

and to lobbying groups and embassies.

It hosts the headquarters of many international organisations

and here, too, are the institutions that manage the economy

and issue the money.

It's always struck me as odd that all American banknotes

are the same size, whatever denomination.

But they do help you to learn American history.

On the 20, we've got Andrew Jackson.

On the 10, we've got Alexander Hamilton.

Good old Abraham Lincoln on the 5

and George Washington on the single dollar bill.

Established around the time of my guidebook,

the Bureau Of Engraving And Printing is noted in my Appletons'

as being "of much interest to visitors".

I imagine that few 19th-century tourists would have had access

to the printing presses that produce the famous greenback.

Show me the money!

The dollar must be the currency that most circulates on earth.

Some of these 20 bills will, undoubtedly,

find their way around the globe.

The dollar, economically speaking,

makes the world go round.

Paper money was first issued by the federal government

at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.

These government IOUs floated the Union side through the conflict.

'Mike Duberowski is a pressman supervisor.'

So, Mike, in this room behind me is wire fences -

I guess we're at quite a late process in the printing of the money.

Yes, um, this area here is called COPE PAK.

COPE PAK stands for Currency Overprinting Equipment and Packaging.

And what sort of quantities are you going to be running?

We have a 200,000 process.

That means we print 200,000 32-subject sheets

in a process.

200,000 times 32...

..bills. And here you deal with, what, 5s, 10s, 20s...?

Yes. This press, here, can print any denom.

How do you feel working with money like this all the time?

Um, very exciting, it's a very rewarding job...

You know that this product will go out all over the world.

As these packages come out, they have to be checked at either end

to make sure the seal is good and that the numbers match.

This bundle is 80,000.

I've never held anything like that much money in my life!

To deter counterfeiting,

some hi-tech features are incorporated into each note.

For example, microprinting, a security thread or a watermark.

'But at the heart of the process are skill and attention to detail.

'Will Fleishell has been a picture engraver here for 28 years.'

Will, excuse me.

-Ah!

-I'm Michael.

-Michael, pleasure. Will.

What are you working on there?

This is a portrait of Frederick Douglass who was the great

Civil War era abolitionist.

Are these also examples of your work?

Yes, there's Benjamin Franklin,

Mark Twain.

There's a portrait of Lincoln that's on the current 5 bill.

How do you feel about the fact that every time you pick up

a 5 bill your work is there?

It is impressive.

It's nice to think about in those quiet moments...

That your work is in a lot of wallets around the world.

So, that's quite an accomplishment for an artist.

What is it that you're doing and what is this material?

This is soft steel and I can cut into it with

what we call gravers or burins.

The design of this tool has not changed significantly in 500 years.

This is the sort of exquisite, painstaking work

that I can't understand.

I just don't have anything like the patience.

Every portrait that I work on,

I try to sort of put myself into the shoes of the subject

to try to empathise, in a sense, with the person.

What were you wanting to convey with this mouth and these eyes?

To convey a sort of faraway look of the future, he could see ahead.

I think you certainly achieved it. It's wonderful.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

A city at the heart of money and power must guard against

excess and corruption.

Keeping those in authority in check is the American press,

which was already raucously free in the late 19th century.

Appletons' tells me that,

"At the offices of leading American newspapers on Newspaper Row,

"files of newspapers are accessible to the visitor."

But as you'd expect in the land of the free and the home of the brave,

there is a free press here.

And some American presidents have discovered that, in Washington,

the press is both free and very brave.

Just as the press has moved away from Fleet Street in London,

so it has from Washington's Newspaper Row.

Five blocks north of its 19th-century location,

I visit the offices of the multi-Pulitzer-prize-winning

Washington Post.

Founded in 1877, a couple of years before my guidebook,

this newspaper was highly critical of the then president,

Rutherford B Hayes.

Nearly 90 years later, another president, Richard Nixon,

would find himself at the centre of a Washington Post story

that would prove his undoing.

I'm meeting columnist John Kelly.

What does it mean to you to be a journalist on the Post

in today's Washington, DC?

I've worked here 26 years and I still get a little thrill

when I come up that elevator.

Phil Graham, when he was publisher, said that,

"A newspaper is the first rough draft of history."

The work we do is pulling together information from

all sorts of places, it's holding powerful people accountable.

And in 1972, that's exactly what Washington Post reporters

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did when they began to investigate

a break-in at the Watergate office complex,

designed to tap the phones of

the Democratic Party's National Committee.

Following the money that financed the crime,

the reporters uncovered a trail which led them

to the re-election campaign of President Nixon.

I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know

whether or not their president's a crook.

Well, I'm not a crook.

For over two years, Woodward and Bernstein persisted with the story,

which eventually forced the Senate to establish a committee

to investigate the scandal.

It went from this break-in all the way to the White House

and to Richard Nixon's attempts to basically smear his opponents,

to break the law, to subvert the Constitution

and ended up with his resignation.

Ever since, all manner of scandals have been dubbed with the suffix -

gate.

I mean, it really was an extraordinary journalistic coup, wasn't it?

It just shows you that you never know where any story is going to go.

This was a story about a break-in.

No-one knew where it led and I think what inspires us is knowing

that every day when we come to work...

What's the phone going to bring?

What's a little shoe leather going to bring?

What's an e-mail going to bring?

What are we going to find that's going to be our big story?

As a formerly powerful person, you've got me trembling.

That's as it should be.

And I gather that at The Washington Post, the truth marches on.

MICHAEL CHUCKLES

-John, that is quite a desk.

-Well, you'll be glad to know

-I cleaned it up for you.

-I've not seen a desk

like that since I left my own, back in London.

This is the photo-file for John Philip Sousa,

"the March King", who was the head of the Marine Corps band

and famous for writing incredible pieces of music.

And in 1889, the new owners of the Post approached him

to write a piece of music commemorating

the Amateur Authors Association.

This was a way

to get young people and their parents to read the paper,

they invited kids to enter an essay contest.

And they ran into John Philip Sousa on the street.

And they said, "Write us something that we can play

"when we give out the awards."

And what he wrote was called The Washington Post.

MUSIC PLAYS: The Washington Post by John Philip Sousa

To this day, hardly a ceremonial or sporting occasion

in America is complete without Sousa's march.

It caught the craze for the two-step, a style of

dance that was just coming into being at the time.

And it has a jaunty 6/8 rhythm

and soon almost any two-step

came to be known as a Washington Post,

because the music was so associated with the newspaper and

with the dance.

Time to take refuge at a hotel for the evening.

My Appletons' recommends that one of the best is Willard's.

It had already been a favourite haunt of politicos for 20 years

by the time of my guidebook.

Amongst its many famous guests were President Abraham Lincoln,

author Mark Twain

and civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

This morning, I'm continuing my tour of the nation's capital.

Whilst the location for the young republic's capital

was a matter of compromise,

the choice of its first president in 1789 was not.

George Washington was the only candidate for the job.

Written in 1879, Appletons' says that,

"The Washington Monument, in its present unfinished state,

"is rather a blemish than an ornament to the city.

"After 230,000 had been expended in building it

"to a height of 174 feet, funds gave out and the work was suspended."

Well, luckily, that budget crisis was resolved

and it was completed to a height of 555 feet.

And ever since then, all the other buildings in Washington

are severely restricted in height as a sort of symbolic deference

to the first president and, for many Americans, the favourite.

Directly opposite this memorial to the founding president is

a structure to honour the president who kept

the United States as one nation - Abraham Lincoln.

Erected less than 40 years apart,

the monuments to the most revered presidents of the United States

stand just over a mile from each other.

Appletons' says that, "A statue of Abraham Lincoln

"stands in Lincoln Park, erected by contributions

"of coloured people."

Appletons' uses the language of the day.

But that is not the monument behind me, which was finished only in 1922,

by which time it was realised that the president who had

fought for the Union, who saved the Union,

who died for the Union,

merited a national memorial.

'It's been a popular spot with both domestic and foreign tourists

'since the 1920s.

'I want to know what they think of Abraham Lincoln.'

-Good afternoon.

-Good afternoon.

How would you rate Abraham Lincoln amongst

presidents of the United States?

One or two.

Who's his competitor, then?

-Washington.

-Uh-huh, uh-huh.

-Hi.

-Hi, Michael.

Oh, it's very nice to see you. Hello.

We hadn't picked you out as Brits.

How do you rate Abraham Lincoln amongst American presidents?

By the size of that, he's got to have been pretty great, hasn't he?

Hello, may I join you a second?

-Yeah, sure, no problem.

-Of course.

How do you rate Abraham Lincoln?

As far as the presidents of the United States go,

I think he's probably number one.

You know, he was president during a time of crisis,

he's made such an impact on American history.

And I don't think anyone can dispute his greatness.

Inside, the statue of the man sits nearly 20 feet high.

Even in life, this political giant stood six feet, four inches tall.

I want to understand how Lincoln came to be so honoured.

Terry Alford is an author and historian.

What kind of a man was Abraham Lincoln?

Abraham Lincoln was a real original child of America, I would say.

His family had been here for about two centuries

by the time he came along.

Born on the frontier, limited education, rural, rustic roots -

an American original.

He did follow a legal career, didn't he?

Yes, that's how Lincoln made his name and his fame

and, in fact, what fortune he had.

He was a lawyer and he was really, really good.

Lincoln was admitted to the Bar in 1836.

And it was during his legal career

that he earned the nickname "Honest Abe".

As a young litigator, he needed cases, and he found them

in the burgeoning railroad industry.

It was one of the great things that developed

during his lifetime, right?

I mean, it just revolutionised travel.

He was profoundly interested in all things like this.

Lincoln was committed to bringing about a transcontinental railroad

and he made it part of his manifesto for the presidential election

of 1860.

In return, railway tycoons enthusiastically supported

his candidacy and with their financial help,

Lincoln won the presidency.

He enjoyed near total support from the Northern states,

but the opposite was true of the slave states of the South.

What did he feel about slavery?

He had always felt, I think, at a gut level,

there was something wrong with it.

He's not an abolitionist per se.

He wasn't one of those people,

"That's the only issue, there is no other issue."

Lincoln did not intend to end slavery in the South,

but his pledge to ban expansion of the practice

into the new Western territories was seen by the South as a threat.

As the president-elect made his way by train to his inauguration

in Washington, the Southern states began to break away from the Union.

They formed the Confederate States of America

and proclaimed their own government.

Lincoln felt that the America he had grown up in was

the best country in the world in terms of democratic values,

accessibility and openness, opportunities...

And he just couldn't believe that the losers of an election -

the South, of course, had lost to him -

that they were going to be able to break that up, right?

That an orderly society depends upon the majority ruling.

And that what the South was doing was absolutely incendiary.

It was essentially a giant riot.

A giant riot that requires an enormous military response,

which leads to the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.

Lincoln felt a real sense of responsibility, you know,

for what happened on these battlefields

and he was awfully attentive throughout his whole presidency

to the suffering the war caused.

And I think it wore on him.

You can look at these photographs of him, right, from '61 to '65.

He looks like he's aged 20 or 30 years.

As the American Civil War dragged on into its third year,

Lincoln made a bold attempt to destabilise the Confederacy.

He issued a presidential proclamation to free all slaves

in the rebellious Southern states from 1st January 1863.

Slaves in areas captured by the Union troops could now join

the army, boosting the ranks by 186,000.

Those who remained with their masters, worked to weaken

the Southern economy.

When General Robert E Lee surrendered his Confederate Army

on April 9th 1865, Lincoln's proclamation would lead to

the emancipation of all slaves.

I think Lincoln felt enormous relief that the slaughter was over.

Just a great sense of relief, like a weight had been lifted off him.

The war was over.

The Union was saved and slavery was officially ended.

However, racial equality across the nation remained a dream,

even a century later.

On the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation,

a vast crowd at the Lincoln Memorial heard an extraordinary speech

from Dr Martin Luther King.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up,

live out the true meaning of its creed -

we hold these truths to be self-evident,

that all men are created equal.

But for Lincoln, the peace brought by the end of the Civil War

would be short-lived.

Just days later, the president went to see a performance

of the English farce Our American Cousin

at Ford's Theatre.

Here, in this auditorium, Lincoln's tragic end was played out.

Terry, I've never been here before.

I'm very moved to be in the theatre

where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

Was he a keen theatregoer?

He was. Lincoln loved the theatre.

Gave him a way to get out of the White House,

a place to go to decompress from politics.

He came to this theatre a good dozen times.

In fact, once, he saw John Wilkes Booth,

who would become his murderer, at this very theatre.

-Playing onstage.

-Playing onstage in November '63,

so some 15, 16 months before Booth shot him.

What was the motive of John Wilkes Booth?

John Wilkes Booth was a fanatical Southern supporter.

He believed that the war was a giant attack upon the Southern states

and, unfortunately, he did not go into the Confederate Army.

I say unfortunately because that would have given him

an outlet for his passions.

By staying out, by acting, Booth realised, you know,

"I play a hero onstage, but I'm not one.

"I'm really a coward."

And I think it ate into him and made him dangerous.

So, on the night of the event, I assume the president and Mrs Lincoln

would be sitting in the box opposite us.

Tell us what happened.

The play started at 8.15 that night.

About ten o'clock, Booth came into the theatre

while the play was underway and he walked around the seats behind us

to the door leading to the State Box and because he was well-known,

there was no suspicion attached to his presence.

In fact, Booth was known and liked by the Ford family

who owned this place.

And so he had access to all parts of the theatre

and could simply walk right up to the Lincolns.

Mr and Mrs Lincoln were watching the play, of course.

Nobody was looking over their shoulder, why should they?

Booth was able to walk right behind the president

and from just a few inches, fired a shot that hit him

right behind the left ear.

Did the president die here in the theatre?

No, the president was gravely wounded.

Everyone realised that he was at imminent risk of death.

But they didn't want him to die in a theatre.

They didn't know if he could survive a trip back to the White House,

as close as that is.

So, they took him across the street to a boarding house

and he died there at 7.22 the next morning.

As his body was transported by funeral train

from Washington to his home in Springfield, Illinois,

Americans lined the route to pay their respects to the great leader.

It was a tragic loss to the country.

And I've often thought that there are things you could learn...

You know, you can learn facts and strategies and tactics,

but you can't learn humanity, right?

You can't learn humility.

And the country was very fortunate to have Lincoln when it did.

A beautiful thought.

Abraham Lincoln, for all his humanity,

led the North in a crushing victory over the Confederacy.

And many in the defeated South must have hated him, as did his assassin.

But I hope that most Americans today,

would reflect that he saved the Union

and liberated the United States from slavery.

Tomorrow, I hope to discover more about the people

that he freed.

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's 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'm heading to Washington's U Street neighbourhood,

and the area of Georgetown. Then I'll leave the capital

to head south into Virginia.

I'll call at the port of Alexandria and finish

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

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 order 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.

-Cheese with 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, what's left of what was traditionally U Street

and I think the chilli is wonderful.

THEY CHUCKLE

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 were 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

APPLAUSE

The street has changed.

The audience, too.

But the beat goes on.

My journey continues.

I am making tracks northwest to a settlement which dates back

to before the creation of Washington, DC.

Appletons' 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's 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'm here to visit one of the oldest scientific agencies in the country.

"The US Naval Observatory," says Appletons',

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

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

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

"and a good library."

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

And 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'm meeting astronomer Geoff Chester.

Hello, Geoff.

Michael, welcome to the US Naval Observatory.

Appletons' 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's 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's 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's a big job, but somebody's 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 Appletons' tells me that it

is situated on the south side of the Potomac,

seven miles below Washington.

Although Appletons' 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, 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's, 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 slaves 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 to any 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's 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's 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'm continuing my journey south with an excursion

recommended by Appletons', 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 Appletons',

"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 of 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'm meeting the head of this historic site, Curt Viebranz.

-Michael, pleased to meet you.

-And a lovely spot in which to meet.

From my guidebook, I get an impression of George Washington

that I had not had before, of a rather houseproud man

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

Yes, the home itself was added onto twice.

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 here 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've 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's 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.

SMASH!

-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's 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 bottle the classic Southern tipple, bourbon...'

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

Apparently!

'..I get into colonial character on Williamsburg's plantations...'

Push away from me a little bit more.

Perfect. That's... that's a good-looking furrow.

'..discover the truth about the first settlers...'

This is ground zero, this is the centre of the beginning

of the New World.

'..and my spirits are raised by the First Baptist Gospel Choir.'

# The Lord is my shepherd

# And I shall not want... #