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impeded the auction; scarcely more than thirty lots had been sold. Washington replied angrily that while he had suspected that L’Enfant might be obstinate in defending his plan, he had not thought he would go so far as to sabotage the sale. Clearly L’Enfant would make no concessions to attract real estate speculators and considered himself answerable only to the president. His feud with the commissioners festered. At one point, when L’Enfant demolished a building erected by a commissioner because it intruded on one of his grand avenues, the clash erupted into open warfare. Washington confidentially told Jefferson that he could tolerate the French prima donna up to a point, but “he must know there is a line beyond which he will not be suffered to go.”40 Much as he hated losing L’Enfant, Washington knew that, unless he reined him in tightly, he might lose his three commissioners. He had Jefferson draft a stern reprimand to the Frenchman, to be sent out under his own signature. “Having the beauty and harmony of your plan only in view,” Washington wrote, “you pursue it as if every person and thing was obliged to yield to it, whereas the commissioners have many circumstances to attend to, some of which, perhaps, may be unknown to you.”41

L’Enfant seriously misread Washington, who wanted harmony and cooperation among those involved in planning the new capital. In January 1792 the self-important L’Enfant submitted a lengthy memorandum to Washington, which was a barefaced attempt to push aside the commissioners and take sole control of the project. After proposing a one-million-dollar expenditure and a workforce of a thousand men, L’Enfant ended by saying, “It is necessary to place under the authority of one single director all those employed in the execution.”42 Washington grew apoplectic. “The conduct of Maj[o]r L’Enfant and those employed under him astonishes me beyond measure!” he told Jefferson, who drew up an ultimatum in which he asked L’Enfant point-blank whether he intended to subordinate himself to the commissioners.43 Always eager to compromise, Washington sent Tobias Lear to patch things up with L’Enfant, but the latter blustered that he needed complete freedom from the commissioners. On February 27, 1792, bowing to the inevitable, Jefferson terminated L’Enfant’s services. Washington ended up feeling bitter toward L’Enfant for his imperious treatment of the commissioners. Nevertheless, the broad strokes of L’Enfant’s design for Washington, D.C., left their imprint on the city. As John Adams concluded years later, “Washington, Jefferson, and L’Enfant were the triumvirate who planned the city, the capitol, and the prince’s palace.”44

Philadelphia’s citizens were by no means resigned to their city being only a temporary capital and continued to throw up new government buildings, hoping to sway legislators to stay. When they tried constructing a new presidential residence, Washington saw their secret intent and insisted that his current house was perfectly satisfactory. Sensing an even split in public opinion about moving the capital to the Potomac, he divulged his fears to Jefferson: “The current in this city sets so strongly against the Federal City that I believe nothing that can be avoided will ever be accomplished in it.”45 Washington grew paranoid about the wily Philadelphians, even imagining that local printers stalled in producing engraved designs of the Potomac capital. Any delays, he feared, might doom the enterprise. He pressed for buildings in the District of Columbia that would foreshadow America’s future might and rival the great cities of Europe. “The buildings, especially the Capitol, ought to be upon a scale far superior to anything in this country,” he insisted to Jefferson. The house for the president should be both “chaste” and “capacious.”46 In time the city of Washington would come to justify the grandiose dimensions envisioned by both Washington and L’Enfant.

AS EARLY AS THE FALL OF 1789, Washington emphasized to General Arthur St. Clair, first governor of the Northwest Territory, that he preferred