In May 1932, Walter W. Waters, a World War I veteran, led a group of his fellow veterans to Washington, DC, to demand immediate payment of bonuses which were not due to be paid to the soldiers until 1945. This group was dubbed the Bonus Expeditionary…

In this passage, Margaret Bayard Smith describes the Mall as it was when she first arrived in Washington in 1800, a plain covered in trees, shrubs, and flowers. By the time she wrote this passage in 1837, the banks of the Tiber had been transformed…

Margaret Bayard Smith was a writer and a vital figure in the early social life of Washington, DC. Her letters and diaries provide some of the best descriptions of early Washington. In 1837 she recorded what the Mall looked like when she and her…