February 17 to 19 Sunday – In Washington, D.C., Sam wrote to the Muscatine Journal. He took a “stroll” around the capitol waiting for Congress to sit (Feb. 17) [MTL 1: 43n1]. even though the snow was “falling so thickly I could scarcely see across the street.” He described various buildings, including the unfinished Washington Monument. On Feb.19 he added description of the Smithsonian. Sam was particularly taken by the Museum of the Patent Office, where Bliss writes he spent four hours [9]. He ended with a note about seeing Edwin Forrest playing Othello at the National Theater on Feb. 17.

Sam, now eighteen, would next visit Washington in 1867, a 32-year-old man. By then the city would be greatly changed, but Washington’s Monument wouldn’t be completed until 1885, at 555 feet, the tallest structure in the world. In the Senate Chamber, Sam observed that the senators:

…dress very plainly, as they should, and all avoid display, and do not speak unless they have something to say—and that cannot be said of the Representatives. Mr. Cass is a fine looking old man; Mr. Douglass, or ‘Young America’ looks like a lawyer’s clerk, and Mr. Seward is a slim, dark, bony individual, and looks like a respectable wind would blow him out of the country [MTL 1: 41].

Notes: Lewis Cass (1782-1866) Secretary of State under Buchanan; Stephen A. Douglas (1813- 1861), Lincoln’s competitor for the presidency; William H. Seward (1801-1872) Secretary of State under Lincoln. Douglas was promoting the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would pass three months later. For a more thorough treatment of Sam’s first stop in Washington, see Donald Tiffany Bliss’ 2012 work, Mark Twain’s Tale of Today.