hushing the ghost of Victor Smith

Whatever happened to the great rivalries between cities? Nowadays we have races to the bottom for corporate tax breaks, battles over sports teams and stadiums, water rights conflicts, and suburbs reaching for autonomy. These differences, though, even when bitter, even when racked by fraud, are settled without violence.

Ah, for the good old days.

In his Moon Handbooks: Washington, Don Pitcher describes how in 1861 Victor Smith, a "duplicitous customs inspector," worked with Treasury secretary Salmon P. Chase to steal the Custom House and Port of Entry from Port Townsend and bring it to Port Angeles.

[I]t was only when Smith sailed into the harbor aboard a warship and pointed the guns at the city that the citizens relented. He later added insult to injury by returning to force the hospital patients and staff out of Port Townsend and onto his ship, which became a floating hospital till a new one could be completed in Port Angeles.

Kathy Weiser tells what happened next:

Incensed, Port Townsend citizens soon traveled to Olympia to protest Smith’s actions to the governor. Though a federal grand jury indicted Smith with 13 counts of embezzlement and misuse of public funds, the Treasury Department quashed the indictment after their investigation.

In the meantime, Smith was constructing a large building in Port Angeles which served as both his family home and the Customs House. But, the Port Townsend citizens were not done fighting and began to build a case denouncing Smith and the transfer of the Port of Entry to Port Angeles.... In 1866, the Customs Port of entry was returned to Port Townsend, among great rejoicing by the citizens.

As Pitcher notes, before Chase's disgraced resignation and Smith's ouster by Lincoln in 1864, the unflappable wheeler-dealer got the president to designate Port Angeles the "'second National City,' in case Washington, D.C. fell to the Confederate Army, even though the town's population at the time was only 10."

Today, Smith's bravado would be unthinkable--imagine Christine Gregoire calling out the National Guard to keep the Sonics in Seattle. Unsurprisingly, Port Angeles's website makes no mention of Smith's antics. Port Townsend's site also whitewashes the incident. I think I know why: the two port cities coexist peacefully only in the bliss of historical ignorance.