FULLER’S CITY HOTEL (WILLARD’S HOTEL) IN WASHINGTON DC

And yet — in fact you need only draw a single threadat any point you choose out of the fabric of lifeand the run will make a pathway across the whole,and down that wider pathway each of the other threadswill become successively visible, one by one.

— Heimito von Doderer, DIE DÂIMONEN

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Fuller’s City Hotel

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The North Portico of The White House was completed.

During the early years of this decade, Fuller’s City Hotel was being erected at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th Street in Washington DC (where the restored shell of the 1901 Willard’s Hotel now stands as a National Historical Landmark).

During the decade of the 1830s, also, a wooden hotel structure with a two-story portico was being created at Washington and Market streets in the Brighton district outside Boston, on the square used on market days for the Brighton Cattle Market:

1830

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Fuller’s City Hotel of Washington DC was purchased by Henry A. Willard, who had once been a steamboat steward, and his brothers, who would rebuild it as Willard’s Hotel:

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

1850

Fuller’s City Hotel “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

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March 3, Tuesday evening On the night before his inauguration in Washington DC, president-elect Franklin Pierce slept at the luxurious Willard’s Hotel which would in the 1860s be the haunt of Nathaniel Hawthorne.1

1853

1. Hawthorne would consider the lobby and bar of Willard’s Hotel to be “the center of Washington and the nation,” more so than “either the Capitol or the White House or the State Department.” He very much liked the thought that one’s common “identity is lost” there among the “illustrious men.”

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Here is the campaign poster:

Senator Underwood wanted to amend the appropriations bill for the US Navy:

A bill making appropriations for the naval service for the yearending June 30, 1854. Mr. Underwood offered the followingamendment: — “For executing the provisions of the act approved 3d of March,1819, entitled ‘An act in addition to the acts prohibiting theslave trade,’ $20,000.” Amendment agreed to, and bill passed.It appears, however, to have been subsequently amended in theHouse, and the appropriation does not stand in the final act.CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE, 32nd Congress, 2d session, page 1072; STATUTESAT LARGE, X. 214.

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NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Fuller’s City Hotel

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March 3, Sunday, evening On the night before his inauguration in Washington DC, president-elect Abraham Lincoln slept at Willard’s Hotel, guarded by Allan Pinkerton.

In Russia, the serfs were emancipated.

Edward Payson Weston had hoofed it for 10 days to get from Boston MA to Washington DC to attend the inauguration, and in so doing had won a take-a-hike campaign bet. The new chief executive would appoint the author of his campaign biography, William Dean Howells, as United States Consul to Venice — Howells had also, you see, –despite his not having taken a hike– won something of a campaign bet.

Henry Thoreau commented in his journal on the events of the day:

March 3. Sunday. Hear that there was a flock of geese in the river last night. See and hear songsparrows to-day; probably here for several days.It is an exceedingly warm and pleasant day. The snow is suddenly all gone except heels, and –what is moreremarkable– the frost is generally out of the ground, e.g. in our garden, for the reason that it has not been in it.The snow came December 4th, before the ground was frozen to any depth, has been unusually deep, and theground has not been again exposed till now. Hence, though we have had a little very cold weather and a gooddeal of steady cold, the ground generally has not been frozen.

1861

EMANCIPATION

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November: The Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson was granted authority to recruit and command a regiment of Massachusetts white men.

Julia Ward Howe had gone to Washington DC with a group including the Reverend James Freeman Clarke to

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bring supplies to Massachusetts volunteers, and was staying in Willard’s Hotel.

One morning she drowsed awake with a poem in her head, “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” that could be set to the tune of the currently popular “John Brown’s Body,” and scribbled it with an “old stump of a pen” onto the back of a piece of Sanitary Commission stationery “without looking at the paper.”

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword,His truth is marching on!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps;2

They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps.I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;His day is marching on!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel;“As ye deal with my condemners, so with you my grace shall deal.”

2. The “hundred circling camps” were just that — the ring of forts around Washington DC.

As I lay waiting for dawn, the long lines of thedesired poem began to twine themselves in my mind.

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Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel,Since god is marching on!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgement seat.O be swift, my soul, to answer him, be jubilant my feet!Our god is marching on!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me.As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men freeWhile god is marching on!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave;He is wisdom to the mighty, he is courage to the brave.So the world shall be his foot stool and the soul of wrong his slave,As god is marching on!3

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

Samuel Langhorn Clemens, steamboat pilot, had been stranded in New Orleans because the Civil War had interdicted traffic on the Mississippi River and had enlisted in the Confederacy. However, his brother Orion Clemens had been active in the presidential campaign of Abraham Lincoln and in reward had been appointed secretary to the Nevada Territory. –So he accompanied his brother on a 21-day stagecoach journey to the west, arriving finally in Nevada.

Frederick Douglass renewed his linkages with the Garrisonians.

3. This rarely-published sixth verse is presented as it appears in BEST LOVED POEMS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

There is one thing which I can’t stand and won’t stand,from many people. That is sham sentimentality..., therot that deals in the “happy days of yore,” the “sweetyet melancholy past,” with its “blighted hopes” and its“vanished dreams.”

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A new Willard’s Hotel was erected at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th Street in Washington DC.4

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

1901

4. It is the shell of this building which now stands as a National Historical Landmark.

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>.

Prepared: April 22, 2015

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested thatwe pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of theshoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What thesechronological lists are: they are research reports compiled byARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term theKouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such arequest for information we merely push a button.

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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obviousdeficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored inthe contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then weneed to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of thisoriginating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whateverhas been needed in the creation of this facility, the entireoperation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminishedneed to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expectto achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring roboticresearch librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh.