Bob Arnebeck: To Tease and Torment

It took only nine months for Pierre Charles L'Enfant to polarize the men building the nation's future capital, and a few month's later he faced a presidential ultimatum that prompted his resignation. During his tenure as president, George Washington's language rarely reached the emotional pitch of a January 1792 note about L'Enfant: "The conduct of Majr. L'Enfant and those employed under him, astonishes me beyond measure! and something more than even appears, must be meant by them!"⁽¹⁾ Washington's ire arose from L'Enfant's disobeying orders, not explicitly from his transgressing sexual boundaries. Yet when Washington wrote of a young man, one of several described as having "great awe" of L'Enfant, that he "lives with, and more than probably partakes of the sentiments of Majr. L'Enfant," one can suspect presidential discomfort on more than a policy level.⁽²⁾ Eight years later, in the fall of 1800, passing through New York City on his way to open the new capital and move into the White House, President John Adams refused to visit his dying son, Charles, who he had renounced the year before. Another Adams son wrote of the death, "let silence reign forever over his tomb."⁽³⁾ While there was no public scandal nor private innuendoes about their sexuality, the emotive language used by Washington, Adams and others to distance themselves from these problematical younger men suggests that the elite during the early years of the American Republic were not comfortable with homoeroticism.

Since prosecutions for sodomy were rare in the late 18^th century America and since literary models for the fop, beau, rake and men paired by heroic sentiments were readily available, Claire Lyons has suggested that, in Philadelphia at least, a countervailing rhetoric of equal rights in the pursuit of happiness saved those in a same sex relationship from being noticed.⁽⁴⁾ Assuming that men surrounded by whore house looking glasses did not throw stones, Richard Godbeer's depiction of heterosexual excesses in late 18th century Philadelphia supports her thesis. Other scholars have shown how the construction of manhood in the late 18th and early 19th century revolved around familiar gender poles of effeminacy and manliness. Though suspect, effeminate males could still be of service in a society where manly patriarchs competed for land, offices and wealth.⁽⁵⁾ But the dichotomy between effeminacy and manliness does not completely describe the male sexual sky at that time. A principal hero in that firmament was Frederick the Great of Prussia. This absolute monarch, and thus, in his realm the absolute patriarch, overcame the strictures of his father that "all effeminate, lascivious, feminine pursuits were highly unsuitable for a man." Frederick undermined the ideals of monarchy and patriarchy in the way he united supreme military discipline, audacity in war and statecraft, with not only admiration for but participation in cutting-edge art and culture. His devotion to his people became legendary and, in the context of the royalty of his day, revolutionary, not the least in his disregard for his own line. For the good of the state, he wanted all Prussian women to have many children, but he had none of his own. He surrounded himself with distinguished men who he tried to treat as his equals, and created a court without women. Homoeroticism was never made explicit, but was widely understood, and a homoerotic sub-culture developed in Berlin during his long reign.⁽⁶⁾

Early in their careers both L'Enfant and Charles Adams were influenced by Baron Frederich von Steuben, a disciple of Frederick's. Just before coming to America in 1777, Steuben was accused, while he was chamberlain in the small German principality of Hechingen, of "having taken familiaries with young boys which the laws forbid and punish severely." In 1796, two years after Steuben died, a German scholar writing in a magazine on American affairs, mentioned an "abominable rumor which accused Steuben of a crime the suspicion of which, at another more exalted court of the time (as formerly among the Greeks), would hardly have aroused such attention...." The other court was Frederick the Great's.⁽⁷⁾ Although his 46 year reign ended in 1786, Frederick still inspired men in the new Republic. Among the throng greeting president-elect Washington in 1789 on his arrival in New York City was "Captain Harsin's New York Grenadiers, composed, in imitation of the guard of the great Frederick, of only the tallest and finest-looking young men of the city..."⁽⁸⁾

By exaggerating his rank in Frederick's army Steuben rose to become a Major General in the American army during the Revolution. Famed as a disciplinarian and seen as "a perfect personification of Mars", Steuben won admiration among the ranks for his following the Prussian custom of demonstrating military maneuvers himself instead of leaving it to a drill sergeant. He excited many members of the officer corps with his grace, style and generosity.⁽⁹⁾ After the war he helped organize the Society of the Cincinnati, a fraternal organization of retired military officers. He moved to an estate he called the Louvre a few miles outside New York City where he entertained his comrades, especially the younger staff officers who made up his military family, and built a room expressly for his favorite aide, Col. William North.⁽¹⁰⁾ While he never wrote of the elite male's place in society, his actions demonstrated his philosophy, which true to Frederick's example sought to serve his fellow man by urging what he thought were enlightened changes in the state and fostered a homosocial family unfettered by convention. His elaborate plans for reforming the American army, including three military colleges, bringing Prussia's Prince Henry to America as a constitutional monarch, and forming a military colony in Spanish America, to be manned by his former aides and selected American settlers, never found traction. Meanwhile his favorite never moved into the Louvre and so, recognizing like Frederick the essential need of the state to increase its population, Steuben encouraged his former aides as they made conventional marriages and raised families. He applauded North for yet another child while reminding him of the day they both carved their initials in a tree. His insistence on living like a baron and his generosity to friends bankrupted him, which forced him to leave his Louvre and live off the charity of friends while he waited for more rewards from Congress for his military service. He soon realized it was loath to reward an "old Bachelor."⁽¹¹⁾

L'Enfant seems to have fed off the example of Steuben's ambition. Writing to Steuben in 1779 about his disappointments in forwarding his military career, L'Enfant pledged, "yet I am determined to stay and do not want any other reward than to be put in a position to deserve again, if I were fortunate enough to hope that you will help to realize my desire."⁽¹²⁾ Charles Adams then twenty years old probably met Steuben in 1790 when he clerked in Alexander Hamilton's law office. Hamilton was handling Steuben's problematic financial affairs. Despite his personal setbacks, Steuben made it clear to the new group of young men he surrounded himself with that male friendships were all consoling. Writing to his ambitious brother John Quincy, Charles described Steuben's reaction upon returning from lobbying Congress. The Baron "said to me upon sitting down to supper that evening 'I thank God my dear Charles that I am not a Great man and that I am once more permitted to sit down at my little round table with Mulligan [his secretary who North described as "a boy"] and yourself enjoying more satisfaction than the pomp of this world can afford."⁽¹³⁾ His "little round table" was a self-deprecating reference to the large round table of his idol at Sans Souci. Shortly before he died he codified his "family" without women in his will by adopting North and another long time associate Benjamin Walker, both twenty years his junior, as his sons, and gave his library to his secretary John Mulligan, Jr. Charles Adams was one of three witnesses to the will.⁽¹⁴⁾

Steuben was both father and mother in this family, a transubstantiation assisted by what, though anti-clerical, he called the "heavenly fire." Responding to Mulligan's anguish after he left New York City to lobby Congress in Philadelphia, Steuben wrote: "Strength of mind is enfeebled by griefs of this nature; but, my friend, one ought not to suffer it to be entirely extinguished, for it is the duty of a sensible man to cherish the heavenly fire with which we are endowed by Providence. Despite moral philosophy I weep with you, and glory in the human weakness of mingling my tears with those of a friend I so tenderly love."⁽¹⁵⁾ Charles Adams lived with Steuben and Mulligan in New York City for over a year. Just prior to Steuben's death in 1794, Adams wrote to his mother about their relationship: "I have always lamented that you have so little acquaintance with this excellent man. I never have known a more noble character and his affections for me call forth divine sentiments of gratitude which can exist in my breast." Adams hastens to add that despite the Baron's influence, "the affection to my Mother can never suffer any alteration."⁽¹⁶⁾

There is no proof that the freighted sentiments Steuben inspired in American men were ever unloaded in sexual acts, or, if they were, that anyone noticed. George Washington found both a friend and advisor in Steuben. In a list of former officers he considered for command of an army to fight the Indians in 1791, he noted that Steuben was "sensible, sober and brave."⁽¹⁷⁾ John Adams was only an acquaintance and reacted primarily to Steuben's increasing girth.⁽¹⁸⁾ Neither noticed that his combining warrior virtues, feminine sensitivity and an ambition to remake society became an attractive model to some young men in post revolutionary America. It is through L'Enfant and Charles Adams that two presidents felt the sting of Steuben's challenge to patriarchy. Charles Adams challenged the patriarchal ideal of providing for a family. L'Enfant challenged the checks and balances which in the new Republic were designed to limit the power of patriarchs competing for wealth and prestige in the public realm, precautions necessary to maintain stability essential to the preservation of patriarchy. Discerning any homoerotic component in their challenges is problematic in an age jealous of personal honor and in a young country obsessed with national honor.⁽¹⁹⁾ Given this double imperative for silence, the best that can be done is to demonstrate the comfort that both younger men found in same-sex relationships and gauge the reaction of Washington and Adams to the challenge to their power and assess if sexual issues heightened that reaction.

In October 1799, in New York City on his way from Massachusetts to his presidential office in Philadelphia, John Adams disowned his son Charles after he talked with his daughter-in-law: "A Madman possessed of the Devil can alone express or represent. I renounce him. Davids Absalom had some ambition and some Enterprize. Mine is a mere Rake, Buck, Blood and Beast." Two days later Adams wrote to his wife that "The Reprobate shall be punished."⁽²⁰⁾ Charles was clearly an alcoholic. A year later, his mother was explicit in describing his condition to her sister: "Food has not been his sustanance, yet he did not look like an intemperate man. He was bloted but not red. He was no mans Enemy but his own - He was beloved, in spight of his Errors, and all spoke with grief and sorrow for his habits." Biographers of John and Abigail Adams attribute Charles's alcoholism to his remorse over losing money that, prior to going to Prussia as the American minister, his bother John Quincy entrusted to him. In December 1798 Charles explained that he used it to cover the debts of his brother-in-law William Stephens Smith, a former aide of Steubens who was Charles's sister's husband and Charles's wife's older brother, and that while he thought John Quincy would have done the same thing, he wrote to his mother, "I have not enjoyed one moments comfort for upwards of two years on this account, my sleep has been disturbed, and my waking hours embittered." His mother's reaction to Charles's confession was to observe that he "did not have the power of resistence."⁽²¹⁾

However, alcoholism alone cannot explain his father's curse. Drunkenness was not one of Absalom's sins. The "Rake, Buck, Blood and Beast" are all sexual predators. Yet, it seems unlikely that a "beloved" young man described by his mother as lacking "the power of resistence" suddenly ran wildly after women in New York City "where self-styled libertines swaggered about the street," and where public "sexual aggressiveness" directed toward women was notorious but a la mode.⁽²²⁾ While the most indelible image of Absalom is his being persuaded to have his way with his father David's concubines in a tent on the roof of David's house "in the sight of all Israel," this handsome hero had homoerotic attractions. As the Bible explains, "when any man came nigh to him to do him obeisance, he put forth his hand, and took him, and kissed him.... So Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel." John Adams's favorite poet, John Dryden, also addressed the story in his poem "Absalom and Ahithophel," using it as a vehicle for a satire on current British politics. In Dryden's suggestive couplets celebrating "Promiscuous use of concubine and bride,"⁽²³⁾ the homoeroticism of the Biblical story is muted, but the key figure in the poem is a man, Ahithophel, who seduces Absalom into overthrowing his father.

Charles was the second and most charming of three sons and thought to be the most attractive to the opposite sex.⁽²⁴⁾ He alarmed his parents by courting his brother-in-law's sister before he had established himself as a lawyer. His parents severely reprimanded him for this prime sin against patriarchy and Charles promised not to marry until he could support himself and a family.⁽²⁵⁾ During this period Charles boarded with Steuben and Mulligan and perhaps resisted another temptation. Mulligan, also a young law student, joined Steuben at his rustic country realm north of Utica, New York, surrounded by 16,000 acres given to him by the state of New York (and closer to William North.)⁽²⁶⁾ Charles only visited shortly before Steuben's death in late 1794. In 1795 Charles opened a law office and, without telling his parents, married Sally Smith, and, as far as the documentary record shows, he was not intimate with other women outside his family. Separating from Steuben did not deny Charles intimate homosocial relationships. Elihu Hubbard Smith noted in 1795 Charles was still a member of a homosocial literary discussion group called the Friendly Club that was formed in 1794. In his diary Smith also noted that Adams did not invite members of the Friendly club to his wedding, and that marriage only caused a brief lull in his intimacy with his male friends. Seven months after marriage he resumed seeing Smith alone, as well as accompanied by Mulligan and another friend, John Wells, who Smith described as Charles's intimate friend.⁽²⁷⁾ Smith's diary principally chronicles Smith's inexhaustible effort to realize the ideal of perfectibility and share that with his sisters, and his friends of both sexes. Aimed at such a high purpose, the diary exposes little of the low life of the city. One evening Adams hosted the Friendly Club and led a discussion, which Smith characterized as sober, on David Hume's essay opposing political parties.⁽²⁸⁾ One cannot be sure of the basis of the friendship of these two young men from New England. Smith's sexuality is uncertain but there are indications that he pushed some of his relationships with men beyond conventional propriety. The intellectual Smith was in some respects not unlike the old soldier Steuben. Both were political conservatives, both projected homocentric colonies in the west though Smith called his "Utopia," both were atheists and both indefatigable in plumbing the sentimental depths of male friendship. Finally, both broadcast high purpose and a style of living that stood in stark contrast to the high purpose and patriarchal certainties constantly reiterated in the Adams's family correspondence.⁽²⁹⁾

In his diary, Smith noted the phenomena of men drinking to forget their sorrows, but he did not associate that with Charles. Smith died while treating patients during the yellow fever epidemic of 1798, but in the two years before his death, while he continued to have tea with Charles and his wife, he noted no deterioration in Charles's condition.⁽³⁰⁾ Sobriety and probity are also the hallmarks of one of the last letters Charles wrote to his father, nine months before he was castigated as a reprobate. Serving as an aide to Alexander Hamilton, then organizing an American army to respond to possible French aggression, Charles was privy to the banter as Hamilton vetted officer appointments with his staff. In letters to his father, Charles usually wrote as a man of the world. In 1793 when a not guilty verdict in a notorious New York City rape case inspired a riot that, despite the mayor rallying a guard, led to the destruction of brothels patronized by the elite, Charles wrote of his alarm at the destruction of private property and caught hell from his father for not also condemning the rape. Charles quickly apologized.⁽³¹⁾ In the 1799 Charles did not make the same mistake and took a high minded, condemnatory tone as he reported that Hamilton "even went so far to say at his own table when I was present, that he had, in his own words, 'been that day appointing a Son of the Notorious Bill Livingston's a Midshipman in our Navy.' This modest speech was addressed to Church [Hamilton's nephew] whose reply was you have then I find weaknesses not confined to the female sex: which produced a laugh and perhaps was not thought of by any person but myself afterwards." He added that he and Sally were doing well.⁽³²⁾

That Charles's proper second thoughts betrayed his own susceptibility to homoeroticism cannot be proven, but the reactions of his parents to whatever he did shortly after writing this letter suggest that he committed a transgression in their eyes that went beyond visits to whore houses, a common sin among elite males including Hamilton.⁽³³⁾ John Adams was careful to castigate his son with common sins and not stain his family's reputation by being more explicit. In May 1800, six months after John Adams's curse, when Abigail visited Sally, Charles was at his office; on his return he was "quite touched" by her visit. Even though he was working and with his family, this did not change their opinion of him. On her last visit in November 1800, she reported on his condition to her sister: "At N York I found my poor unhappy son, for so I must still call him, laid upon a bed of sickness, destitute of a home. The kindness of a friend afforded him an asylum."⁽³⁴⁾ While she did not ignore him on her way to Washington as his father did three weeks earlier, Abigail begrudged calling Charles her son. Alcoholism and loss of his brother's money could not alone inspire her bitter eulogy: "It becomes me in silence to mourn; mourn over him living, I have for a long time, and now he is gone - the tender remembrance of what he once was rises before me, and I wish to forget. I wish to draw a veil over all those propencities, which have rung my heart, with unutterable pangs." In her mind his sins were plural, and sins they surely were. She wrote to her sister, "I hope my supplications to heaven for him, that he might find mercy from his maker, may not have been in vain," and these sins predated his alcoholism. She asked her sister to "weep with me over the Grave of a poor unhappy child who cannot now add an other pang to those which have pierced my Heart for several years past..... ⁽³⁵⁾ That period of time places their origin with her son's association with Steuben, her rival for his affections.

By 1800 there was perhaps no family more worldly wise than the Adams. Writing on government in 1776 John Adams disdained "vanities, levities, and fopperies," and welcomed "frugality" that encouraged "great, manly, and warlike virtues."⁽³⁶⁾ When exposed to the courts of Europe, family members burnished the virtues of their provincial, middle class sensibilities, but back in America, they took pride in their dress and savoir faire, careful to place their Puritan and Revolutionary backgrounds in perspective.⁽³⁷⁾ In the wake of the yellow fever epidemics of the 1790s, religious leaders tried to recall the morality of 1776 and outlaw the theatre, "where those exotic phrases, customs, principles, habits and irregularities, are sheltered, sown, take root, flourish, are disseminated, transplanted, and spread through society...." Adams continued to enjoy the presidential box at the theatre. Abigail Adams dissected the court life of the new Republic with theatrical terms, once noting, in defense of her staid husband's being tongue-tied with the women at presidential receptions, that to do well "the gallant must have a little bit of the fop."⁽³⁸⁾

There was another skeleton in the Adams family closet and several biographers compare Charles's pathetic end to that of Abigail's brother William Smith. His sisters were loath to write about him in their letters. However, from the family's correspondence biographers are able to piece together more information about Smith's transgressions than there are about Charles's, including Smith's improvident marriage, his counterfeiting, his abandoning his family and taking up with another woman before his death.⁽³⁹⁾ Charles's parents never understood, would not tolerate, and renounced, as they regarded in silence, their son's second thoughts about his sexuality and some unforgivable act that went beyond the gallantry and foppery they tolerated. While his parent's never associated Charles with the elan and high purpose of Frederick the Great or with a brotherhood of high minded men, Charles's sexual audacity, probably homoerotic, perhaps with multiple partners, clearly shocked them.

Reactions to L'Enfant demonstrate more clearly how the audacity of men emulating Steuben and energized as a group, even when homoeroticism was not explicit, could alarm elite patriarchs. L'Enfant took great pains to distinguish himself from a fop, or a courtier, or a man dependant on undeserved favors. In one of the long petitions he sent to Congress after 1800 asking for compensation for his work designing the capital, he took pride in having never employed "the flattering courtesy of all the hunters for favors" and distinguished himself from what can "be seen on all stages where the worthless, placid carriage and babbling, over thwart the meritorious."⁽⁴⁰⁾ In a dispute over expenses with the man he lived with for several years, L'Enfant detailed his Spartan habits, e.g., he only had three shirts. Like Steuben and Frederick the Great, as he aged, L'Enfant presented himself to the world simply as an old soldier who would gladly die and be buried in his old uniform.⁽⁴¹⁾

L'Enfant's principal long term relationship was with Richard Soderstrom from 1794 to 1801. Soderstrom was a Swedish aristocrat who came to Boston in 1780 to establish commercial operations for his family's merchant house in Gothenburg, Sweden. He served as Swedish consul until his death in Philadelphia in 1815.⁽⁴²⁾ While he did have at least one son, there is no record of his wife being with him while he knew L'Enfant.⁽⁴³⁾ To the public they presented themselves as partners in land speculation who shared the same house on the outskirts of Philadelphia. In 1801 Soderstrom began billing L'Enfant and eventually sued him for not paying his share of their living expenses. In his bitter 1804 accounting of their financial relationship, L'Enfant tried to prove that Soderstrom did not fully credit him for the resources he brought to the partnership. In L'Enfant's account the outlines of their intense personal relationship are apparent. L'Enfant attested to their early mutual attraction in an odd way. "I would ask him," he wrote, "whether he did not borrow money also from me as far back as the year 1786 or 7 on the very first day, that is the very next morning of the day when I was made acquainted with him at Nyork." The same account, even as it tried to paint a picture of a cold relationship, demonstrated how close the two men were:

As much as L'Enfant adhered to the fiction that they were at best business partners or landlord-boarder, a sexual component to their relationship is evident in their mutual jealousy over the other partner's sexual relationships with women. "With respect to his charges for the wages & victuals of his servants," L'Enfant mocked, "with as much propriety I think he could have charged me with his horse food & for the expences of the number of Harlots of his Friends who he had in case to provide for." L'Enfant insisted that the team of servants in the house only served Soderstrom and that he employed one woman to do his laundry, until, in December 1796, Soderstrom paid her off, and insisted that his servants do L'Enfant's laundry. There is a family genealogy that lists L'Enfant as the father of a child named Mary, mother unknown, born in 1797.⁽⁴⁴⁾ To be sure, this is very circumstantial evidence of sexual tension in the L'Enfant-Soderstrom relationship but it does suggest that they were not asexual. However, there is no evidence that anyone had second thoughts about their partnership. Friends like the artist John Trumbull thought of the two as a pair. L'Enfant offered to submit their dispute over accounts to mutual friends before it was decided in Soderstrom's favor in court.⁽⁴⁵⁾ Indeed, it is possible that if a well known and reputable merchant like Soderstrom had been paired with L'Enfant while he worked in Washington, his tenure might have been much longer because what threatened the patriarchal arrangements there was the lack of any check on L'Enfant's influence over other men working on the project.

L'Enfant came to the project with a considerable reputation. In many respects he had led a charmed life. He left art school in Paris at the age of 22 to fight in the American Revolution, and in short order met LaFayette, Washington and Steuben who placed him on his staff and pressed Congress to give him an officer's commission. His heroics at the Siege of Savannah, a virtual suicide mission to light a forest fire to conceal an American and French advance, sealed the lifetime admiration of fellow officers. After the war, he was sent to Paris to organize the European branch of the Society of the Cincinnati which increased his fame in France and won him a pension from Louis XVI. He was decommissioned from the American army when he returned to the United States. Like Steuben he urged Congress to organize the American military on the European model, but their petitions did not move politicians worried about national and state debts. Meanwhile political organizers enlisted L'Enfant's talents as a decorator and designer for fetes and parades. He also worked as an architect in New York City, culminating in his designing and overseeing the transformation of New York's plain city hall, into the new Federal Hall in time for Washington's inauguration. His work was widely admired for its elegance. In 1791 when authorized by Congress to create a new capital on the Potomac, Washington could think of no other man to send to the city in March 1791 to create a worthy symbol of national power.⁽⁴⁶⁾

As L'Enfant developed his plans, Washington conferred with him frequently. But in situations where patriarchs would vie for land and office, it was common practice for the state and national governments to protect the general interest by putting at least three commissioners in charge, and so legally L'Enfant worked under three commissioners appointed by the president, though not confirmed by the Senate.⁽⁴⁷⁾ However, it was not until October that Washington told L'Enfant to take his orders from the commissioners. As a series of irritating episodes showing L'Enfant's disdain for commissioners alarmed Washington, he reiterated that demand. In late February 1792, after drawing up elaborate work plans for the project to which the president didn't react, L'Enfant refused to submit to the commissioners and resigned at the same time that Washington dismissed him. Historians have faulted L'Enfant for several misdeeds. He failed to oversee the engraving of his plan in time for an October 1791 auction of lots. At that auction he refused to show the plan of the city. Without consulting the commissioners, he tore down a house being built by one of the original proprietors, Daniel Carroll of Duddington, on one of the planned city streets. Finally he was not at all apologetic about those actions, and when he came to Philadelphia, he made apparent his disdain of the commissioners powers by explicitly telling the workers he left behind to only follow the orders of his assistant Isaac Roberdeau.⁽⁴⁸⁾

In the context of the 20^th century any of the above transgressions seems a valid cause for dismissal. In the 18^th century terms of employment were not always clear cut. L'Enfant worked for seven months before the issue of compensation was even broached. The government paid his boarding and lodging and fed all the men he hired. When the commissioners fired the men working for L'Enfant, area landowners who supported L'Enfant paid for their work, forcing the commissioners to have Roberdeau arrested to end that practice.⁽⁴⁹⁾ At that time, accounts were commonly settled after the work ended. For public projects, legislatures had the final say over the level of compensation so that in a sense L'Enfant worked to gain the respect of public opinion. When called to explain his disobedience, L'Enfant always argued that he did it for the good of the project. While correcting L'Enfant, Washington at the same time smoothed the ruffled feathers of the commissioners by lauding L'Enfant's zeal for the project. What was more at issue in the 18th century was not a man's on the job performance, but his character.⁽⁵⁰⁾

After L'Enfant refused to show his plan at the auction of city lots, Washington tried to explain how L'Enfant's character informed the misunderstanding:

Washington did not seem especially alarmed, and advised that "the feelings of such Men are always alive, and, where there assistance is essential; that it is policy to humour them or to put on the appearance of doing it." Washington, in essence, agreed with L'Enfant that the house in the planned street could not stay, and only objected to his tearing it down without more consultation, and warned the commissioners that if "he should take miff and leave the business, I have no scruple in declaring to you (though I do not want him to know it) that I know not where another is to be found, who could supply his place."⁽⁵²⁾

By September, L'Enfant had outlined an ambitious building program that he would superintend that hinged on obtaining a large loan to finance operations and postponing major sales of lots until after construction of the city's infrastructure and public buildings would increase their value. L'Enfant confined the commissioners' role to raising money for the project. By mid-January L'Enfant sent a detailed work plan to the president. This approach did not alarm the commissioners nor the administration in Philadelphia. After L'Enfant left the project, Jefferson passed L'Enfant's ambitious work plans on to the commissioners who soon began requesting the assistance of a superintendent. Soon all agreed that a loan was needed.⁽⁵³⁾ It was not the substance of L'Enfant's approach but the style that alienated the commissioners. Since they served without pay, the commissioners could have viewed their position as honorary. But the melding of public and private interest was one of the privileges of a patriarch in the early Republic and was primarily expressed in the acquisition of offices and land. Two of the commissioners, Thomas Johnson and Daniel Carroll, both of Maryland, were adept at speculating in land and allocating their slaves to work their lands.⁽⁵⁴⁾ L'Enfant knew how to flatter the dreams of land owners. In his plan for the city, he scattered civic and governmental focal points throughout the city, which led them to expect a rapid rise in the value of the lots they owned.⁽⁵⁵⁾ But too much was at stake in the actual building of the city to rely on the condescension of patriarchs who might dedicate their sons and slaves to the city. Instead L'Enfant fostered a martial spirit in the men he hired to build the city, and inspired intense personal loyalty that left no honor for the commissioners. The project's commissary, though in debt after L'Enfant left, sent word to him that he looked forward to his returning and "leading the right flank." To the commissioners the enraging symbol of L'Enfant's rapport with the workers was his insistence on giving them "chocolate butter" for breakfast.⁽⁵⁶⁾ In a letter to Jefferson, L'Enfant observed that "pride of office" induced the commissioners "to oppose me merely to teize and torment."⁽⁵⁷⁾ L'Enfant seemed oblivious to how his rapport with some of the men working with him raised eyebrows.

From May to August 25, when they left for Philadelphia, L'Enfant was joined by a man known only as Baron de Grasse.⁽⁵⁸⁾ They boarded in the same Georgetown inn. When L'Enfant returned in October, he soon found another boon companion. Benjamin Ellicott joined his brother Andrew in the fall of 1791 to help him with his survey of the District and the city. Benjamin soon joined L'Enfant's crew, and as Andrew explained in a letter to his wife, Benjamin stopped chasing women and worked tirelessly for L'Enfant. In a footnote to his work plan for the city, L'Enfant said he wanted Benjamin, not Andrew, to head the surveying department.⁽⁵⁹⁾ L'Enfant also groomed 27 year old Isaac Roberdeau to be his principal assistant. This son of the French-born, former general and congressman who lived in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, had just returned from studying engineering in Europe and Commissioner David Stuart, of Alexandria, encouraged him to find work on the city project. The young man was probably foremost in Stuart's thoughts when he complained of L'Enfant's "nack of impressing all concerned with him, with great awe of him." When L'Enfant went to Philadelphia for the winter to be near the books he would need to complete his designs for the Capitol and President's house, he left Roberdeau in charge. He bore the brunt of the commissioners efforts to stop all operations that L'Enfant had ordered. In a public meeting with the commissioners, Roberdeau berated them with an ungentlemanly outburst. The next day he apologized to them. Shortly thereafter he went to Philadelphia to stay with L'Enfant. The fatherly regard that the president had for the son of his friend General Roberdeau fueled the president's emotional January 17 outburst. The commissioners blamed L'Enfant for leading the young man astray, and offered to rehire him, but, for the moment Roberdeau stayed with L'Enfant. When Roberdeau briefly returned to Washington on L'Enfant's behalf the salutation of the letters he sent back were no long, "dear sir," but "my dear friend." That in the end of each letter the young man passed on his affectionate regards to Miss Blair did not diminish the attachment L'Enfant felt for the young man.⁽⁶⁰⁾

In disabusing the president of his admiration for L'Enfant the commissioners faced a difficult task, since L'Enfant's disobeying their orders only prompted the president to find a way to accommodate him. As they echoed the president's belief in L'Enfant's talents, they tried to nudge the President's character assessment. In October the president noted the "perverseness" of L'Enfant's conduct. By late February one commissioner referred to L'Enfant's "natural perversity." He was a man with whom no self respecting gentleman could work.⁽⁶¹⁾ With Commissioner Johnson expected in Philadelphia for the February term of the Supreme Court, Washington hoped that his meeting with L'Enfant would end the crisis. However the commissioners had secretly agreed that if L'Enfant remained on any terms, they would resign, and they hoped that when the president saw the extract of account books showing L'Enfant's "loose and extravagant manner," that Johnson would bring to Philadelphia, then he would finally realize that L'Enfant had to go. When illness prevented Johnson from coming to Philadelphia, Commissioner Stuart wrote that he almost came himself, but left it to Johnson to supply the accounts, adding, "you will find that chocolate molasses and sugar, are the cheapest articles, with which labourers can be furnished for breakfast - As our own characters must compell us to interfere much more in future, you may expect to hear multiplied complaints against us." Johnson did send a letter which is lost.⁽⁶²⁾

There is only circumstantial evidence that L'Enfant's sexuality was an issue in the crisis. Baron de Grasse's bill for boarding is one of the items on a January 7, 1792, account in the commissioners' records.⁽⁶³⁾ If paying for a L'Enfant favorite was one of the accounts flagged and sent to Philadelphia, it was clearly one of many extravagances, but rarely does one find such emotion over the breakfast given to laborers, and something left unsaid may have fueled it. After Johnson's letter, suggestive language entered the letters of the president and Jefferson. Washington wrote to the commissioners that he wanted to retain L'Enfant "provided it could be done on a proper footing." Jefferson wrote to them of L'Enfant's refusal to be subordinate to a degree that was "lawful and proper." In a letter to Stuart, the president described L'Enfant's behavior as a "dereliction." And this time when he tried to see the matter through L'Enfant's eyes, he wrote that L'Enfant refused to work under the commissioners because he feared that would mean the project would be carried on in "a pimping scale." His last character sketch of the man he had expected so much from has a curious emphasis: "...in proportion to the yieldings of the Commissioners his claims would extend. Such upon a nearer view, appears to be the nature of the Man!"⁽⁶⁴⁾ The emphasis cast doubts on L'Enfant's sexuality in the only way Washington properly could. L'Enfant's behavior was clearly not that of a fop or beau, and those convenient tales often attached to suspect men, were not serviceable in his case.

A few years later the same cast of supervisors dealt with surveyor Andrew Ellicott's rebellion. He refused to meet with them, nor share his surveys, and argued vehemently that they and their pet surveyor, James Dermott, a "drunken" Irishman," were undermining his work and reputation. In their letters to the president about the crisis, the commissioners were disdainful of the surveyor's talents and "temper" but never emotional, cooly telling the president that "the Major [Ellicott] would be far from gaining by placing his moral Character in one scale and Dermotts in the other." In one phase of the conflict, a newspaper war, Ellicott's sexual probity was impugned. A married man, he was accused of inviting a whore into his tent. But in this dispute, unlike that with L'Enfant, all character flaws could be discussed. There were no hints of sodomy. In his replies the president was laconic and then, despite his often reiterated policy, in one phase of the long crisis, after a personal interview, Washington overruled the commissioners and supported Ellicott.⁽⁶⁵⁾

In The Philadelphiad, a satire published in 1784, not only do whore houses abound, but the author also finds fops on every street corner. Along the docks two tars give one, Jack Tinsel, who seems freshly minted from a London mollie house, a lesson. They strip him of his finery but do not thrash him as they originally intended. This literary production provides the best indication of existence of sodomy in the early Republic, and tolerance of it, though Tinsel gets lectured on the attributes of manliness. In 1793 there was an account in a New York newspaper about a citizens' patrol finding a Frenchman along the wharves who "appeared to have been much abused, being in a state of insensibility, and having a large cut in his forehead, the blood issuing from his nose, mouth and ears. The patrol suspecting the boatmen, sent for some assistance, and took a number of them together with the unfortunate Frenchman, to the watch-house." In this case the tars may not have been kind to Tinsel. Of course there is no proof that this account has anything to do with sexuality and the supposed late 18th century tolerance for sodomy can remain unchallenged by it.⁽⁶⁶⁾

A reinterpretation of L'Enfant's and Charles Adams's lives to reflect their sexuality as threats that elicited sharp reactions from two president's of the United States does not necessarily challenge the supposition of sexual tolerance. During John Adams's campaign for re-election, his sanity was challenged in a pamphlet by Alexander Hamilton, but there was no mention of his son whether he be a mere drunk, rake or sodomite.⁽⁶⁷⁾ Family privacy was respected. L'Enfant continued his career both as a city planner, architect and builder, even on other federal projects, though the deepening world financial crisis enforced a "pimping scale" on most building which defeated his ambitions, just as it kept the federal city project in financial crisis until rescued by hired slaves and federally guaranteed loans.⁽⁶⁸⁾ The many other men who idolized Steuben lived successful lives with no known aspersions to their sexuality. To protect personal and national honor, contemporaries made no effort to put pieces togther, especially not to impugn Steuben, himself a national hero.⁽⁶⁹⁾ One can blink and a Tinsel left bleeding on the docks can remain unseen. But only by looking harder to probe the silences can we test the current take on the history of sexuality. His family's sense of proper filial ambitions defeated Charles Adams's pursuit of happiness. The checks and balances serving patriarchial aggrandizement and control defeated L'Enfant who mistook George Washington for Frederick the Great, the other hero of the age.

I began the process that led to this paper in 1999 by chronicling my progress with a "working paper" on L'Enfant's sexuality making it a link on my webpage on the history of Washington, D.C. Several people e-mailed me expressing disappointment in my efforts; others were more encouraging and I also got an e-mail from a woman claiming to be a descendant of L'Enfant. One student doing her junior thesis on Charles Adams shared her thoughts with me. To place L'Enfant's and Charles Adams's sexuality in context, I also wrote about sex in the 1790s and some of those short essays, especially about Baron von Steuben and William Dunlap's quest to reform American theatre, seemed to attract some interest.

In the fall of 2004 a respected scholar e-mailed me and asked if I would contribute a chapter about L'Enfant's sexuality in a book about same sex relationships in early America that he would edit. I jumped at the chance and a short summary of my chapter was included in the proposal that was accepted by New York University Press and I signed a contract promising to send the editor my chapter by September 1, 2005. I made the deadline and shortly thereafter my chapter was rejected by the editor who solicited it because of "the lack of evidence; not just lack of evidence of same-sex sexual relationships, but evidence of same-sex intense emotional relationships. Although the book will have some broad popular appeal, it is fairly conventional and academic. Unless you are holding back significant passages that reveal more instances of same-sex intimacy, attraction, sexual behavior, etc. there isn't enough here to support your claims." He thought my essay might do, if revamped, for Vanity Fair or the Advocate, but not for a scholarly audience. I found that amusing. The scholarly press only prints the hardcore while the popular press is open to the interpretation of texts!

While I don't agree with his hasty judgment, and realize that many readers of my essay will concur in it, I worry that the editor's stance unfairly protects the now popular thesis that there was tolerance for same sex relationships in the Early Republic and ante-bellum period. The evidence for that is largely negative, e.g. the lack of prosecutions and public scandals. And it is ridiculous to defend that thesis by raising the bar for any evidence that might challenge it. Let us hope the book, when it comes out, will not endorse the pernicious idea that the rhetoric of liberty in the early Republic actually influenced the way people treated each other.

1. Chase, Philander D., The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, University Press of Virginia, 2000, vol. 9, p. 469 (Washington to Jefferson, 18 Jan 1792)

2. Chase vol. 9, p. 597 (Stuart to Washington, 26 Feb. 1792; ) Chase, 2002, vol. 10, p 65 (Washington to Stuart, 8 March, 1792)

3. McCullough, David, John Adams, New York, 2001, p. 548; Thomas B. Adams to John Quincy Adams, 6 Dec 1800, Adams Family Papers (AFP)

4. Lyons, Clare A., "Mapping an Atlantic Sexual Culture: Homoeroticism in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia," William and Mary Quarterly

5. Godbeer, Richard, Sexual Revolution in Early America. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2002, pp. 299-334; Kann, Mark E., A Republic of Men: The American Founders, Gendered Language, and Patriarchal Politics, New York, 1998.

6. Schieder, Theodor, Frederick the Great, New York, 2000, pp. 19, 29, 34 (Schieder thought Frederick was impotent from an operation to treat venereal disease, pp. 40-1); Steakley, James D. "Sodomy in Enlightenment Prussia: From Execution to Suicide," in Pursuit of Sodomy, Gerard and Hekma, eds., pp 165ff.

7. Palmer, John M. General Von Steuben. Port Washington, NY, 1937, pp. 92-3. The German scholar Ebeling corresponded with men in New York City during the 1790s.

8. Griswold, Rufus Wilmot. The Republican Court, or American Society in the Days of Washington. New York, 1971 reprint of 1855 edition, p. 139. Actually the regiment of giants was created by Frederick's father.

10. on room for North see Von Zemenszky, Edith, The Papers of General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben 1777-1794, Millwood NY, 1982, Account with -------, reel 6, frame .

12. L'Enfant to Steuben, 24 Dec. 1779 in Caemmerer, H. Paul, The Life of Pierre Charles L'Enfant. Washington 1950, p. 421.

14. Kapp, Friedrich. The Life of Frederick William von Steuben, New York 1859, p. 702.

19. Freeman, Joanne B., Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic, New Haven, 2001, p. xvi.

21. Smith, Page, John Adams, New York, 1962, p. 988; Abigail Adams to John Q. Adams, 2 Dec. 1798, AFP.

22. Stansell, Christine, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York 1789-1860, New York, 1986, p. 23.

23. II Samuel 15; On Adams's love of Dryden see, John Adams to Abigail, 27 Feb 1783, AFP.

25. McCullough, pp. 263, 411, 457-8; Charles Adams to John Adams, 12 March 1794, AFP.

27. Cronin, James E., The Diary of Elihu Hubbard Smith, Philadelphia, 1973, pp. 15, 72, 124, 138, 54.

29. On his taking intimacy too far see Smith to Mason Cogswell, 9 Nov. 1792, Yale U., Beinecke Library; in his diary Smith describes being assaulted twice on the street, and blamed the elegance of his attire for one assault, and after the novelist Charles Brockden Brown, in lieu of Smith's long time roommate, spent the night with Smith, he was evicted from his flat, see Cronin pp. 296-300; on their atheism see Steuben to North, 15 Nov. 1786, & Cronin p. 9;.Gelles, Edith B., Portia: The World of Abigail Adams, Bloomington, 1992, pp. 136ff.

30. E.g. Cronin p. 405; Abigail Adams, who visited in May 1797, found them living "prettily but frugally." Mitchell, Stewart, New Letters of Abigail Adams, 1788-1801, Boston, 1947, p. 89

36. Adams, John "Thoughts on Government," in Adams, Charles F., The Works of John Adams, Boston, 1851, vol. iv, p 199.

38. Brown, Thaddeus, Address in Christian Love to the Inhabitants of Philadelphia on the Awful Dispensation of the Yellow Fever in 1798, Philadelphia, 1798, p. 32; Abigail Adams to William Shaw, 2 Feb. 1799, Adams Family Papers.

39. On Abigail's brother William Smith see Levin, Phyllis Lee, Abigail Adams, New York 1987, p. 212

41. Account dated 1804 in Digges-L'Enfant-Morgan Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division; on L'Enfant's military coat see Bowling, Kenneth R., Peter Charles L'Enfant: Vision, Honor, and Male Friendship in the Early American Republic, p. 63; on Frederick and Steuben see Steuben to North, 15 Nov 1786, and Palmer p. 403.

43. Robert Morris to L'Enfant, 3 Oct. 1793, Gratz Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

44. Account; on his daughter I received a personal communication from a supposed L'Enfant descendent who wished to remain anonymous & see Bowling, p. 51, who also discussed the claim with the correspondent.

45. John Trumbull to L'Enfant, 9 Mar 1795, Trumbull Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

48. Green, Constance McLaughlin, Washington: A History of the Capital. Princeton, 1962, p. 19. For a more sympathetic view of L'Enfant's work on the project see Arnebeck, Bob, Through a Fiery Trial: Building Washington 1790-1800, Lanham, 1991, pp. 62-102. I did not address the issue of L'Enfant's sexuality in my book.

50. White, Leonard D., The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History, New York, 1948, pp. 258-9, 284-6.

53. Ibid. pp. 439-47, (L'Enfant to Washington, 19 Aug 1791; Boyd, Julian, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Princeton, 1990, vol. 23, pp. 194-5, Agenda for Commissioners of the Federal District 5 Mar 1792.

54. Johnson profited from his position by selling his own land up river for a good price to a speculator who was allowed to buy city lots at a very low price. Arnebeck, Bob, "Tracking the Speculators," Washington History 3 no. 2, 1991, pp. 112-125.

58. Other than a brief mention of him in the Maryland Journal of 5 July 1791 (see Bryan, A History of the National Capital, p. 147)and his name in ledgers of the commissioners, there is no other evidence of Baron de Grasse's (or de Graff's)existence save perhaps in postscript to a letter that L'Enfant wrote to Alexander Hamilton: asking to be remembered to "the baron" and hoping he would not "stand upon Etiquette" and would write. The editors of the Hamilton papers identified the baron as Steuben. (Syrett, Harold, The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, New York, 1965, vol.. 8, p 256.) However it is clear from Steuben's papers that he was in New York City that spring, and as close friends there was no formal etiquette with L'Enfant. Most likely, this was the Baron de Grasse who soon joined L'Enfant.

59. Andrew Ellicott to his wife, 11 Nov 1791, Ellicott Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division; Chase vol. 9 p 468 n. 3; Soon after Benjamin Ellicott assisted his brother in preparing the city plan for the engravers, participating in making changes to the plan that L'Enfant never forgave.

60. Chase, vol. IX, pp. 390-1; see the L'Enfant Papers in the Library of Congress for Roberdeau's many letters to him. In a letter to Alexander Hamilton, L'Enfant wrote of Roberdeau: "I need not mention to you my attachment to him and the consideration which lead me to retain him near me." Syrett,1967, vol. 12, p. 263. L'Enfant was unable to keep him as an assistant in his next project, Hamilton's Society for Useful Manufactures, and by the end of the year Roberdeau married and worked for the State of Pennsylvania.

64. Chase, vol. X, pp. 26, 62, (Washington to Commisioners, 6 Mar. 1792 and Washington to Stuart, 8 Mar. 1792.) His emphasis on the word "Man" is found the in Letters Received by the Commissioners, RG 42, National Archives.

65. Boyd, vol. 25, p. 152, (Commissioners to Jefferson, 7 Feb 1793): Commissioners to president, 23 Mar. 1794, RG 42, National Archives; Boyd, vol. 25, p. 426, (Jefferson to Ellicott, 22 Mar. 1793); Arnebeck, pp 150-152; Georgetown Ledger, 16 Feb. 1793; Washington to Commissioners, 3 Apr 1793, Records of the Columbia Historical Society, vol. 17, Washington, 1914, p. 79. .

66. The Philadelphiad, or, New Pictures of the City, Philadelphia 1784, 2: pp. 37-8; Lyons, p XXX; New York Diary, 4 Oct.1793

68. These setback slowly broke L'Enfant who wasted much of the last 25 years of his life vainly petitioning Congress for $95,500 in compensation for his work on the capital. However, an informal network of friends in Congress and passing administrations, including old friends of Steuben like William Stephens Smith, and congressional bachelors like John "Beau" Dawson continued to try to help L'Enfant. He lived the last decade of his life on the Prince Georges County estate of the eccentric bachelor Thomas Digges, see Bowling, pp. 55-64.