Page:Republican Court by Rufus Griswold.djvu/273

REMOVAL OF THE GOVERNMENT.

I.

There was no subject before the first Congress which produced a deeper feeling or more warm debate than that of the permanent establishment of the seat of government. On the twenty-first of October, 1783, the old Congress, insulted at Philadelphia by a band of mutineers whom the state authorities were unable to put down, adjourned to Princeton, where it occupied the halls of the college, and finally to New York, where it assembled in the beginning of 1785. The question continued in debate, not only in Congress, but in the public journals and private correspondence of all parts of the country, and was brought before the convention for forming the Constitution, at Philadelphia, but by that body referred to the federal legislature. It was justly considered that extraordinary advantages would accrue to any city which might become the capital of the nation, and it is not surprising, therefore, that a sectional controversy arose which for a time threatened the most disastrous consequences. The eastern states would have been satisfied with the retention of the public business in New York, but Pennsylvania wished it to be conducted on the banks of the Delaware, and Maryland and Virginia, supported very generally by the more southern states, were not less anxious that the legislative centre of the republic should be on the Potomac.