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The Road to Self-Government:
The right of self-government is a defining characteristic of any politically sophisticated society, and it has often been said that self-government is the highest form of government.
For more than two hundred years, the citizens of the District of Columbia have struggled to achieve the right to govern themselves. Washington's unique political status as a federal district notwithstanding, the desire of the residents of the nation's capital to control their own affairs has never relented.
The Wilson Building stands as a tangible reflection of the partial achievement of these goals. These exhibits chronicle the long and winding struggle to secure and exercise basic rights that all other citizens of the nation already possess.
"The fact that it is an exception to all other governments in the United States, in that it provides for taxation without representation and is autocratic in form, grieves some good people in the District who care more for sentiment than substance..."
-- Henry Brown Floyd MacFarland, President, Twentieth Board of Commissioners, November 1, 1901-October 16, 1902 |