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Gilbert Gude

Gilbert Gude is a writer, lecturer, and consultant in Bethesda, Maryland, and former director of the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, until 1986.

  • Article

    Presidents and the Potomac

    For the politicians, civil servants, and accompanying citizenry of the new federal government—freshly arrived in 1800 from comfortable, sophisticated Philadelphia—the young capital that sprawled along the banks of the Potomac was a disheartening scene. Dispersed among the woodlots and along the sparsely inhabited river shore, the city of Washington’s four-mile expanse was a scattering of fewer than four hundre