So much about the new United States was new—a democracy in a world full of monarchies, an elected president instead of a king, a people who had claimed the rights and responsibilities of citizens, to name just a few—that it should be no surprise that the location of a capital city would be addressed by the Framers of the U.
Petersburg, and that city came into existence at the command of Czar Peter I as one of his ongoing efforts to Westernize Russia. All other capitals were the seats of royal power and home to the monarch. The Framers realized that whatever capital was settled on needed to be a Federal City , not one controlled by a state government. No state should have an advantage over the other states, and the federal government needed to be in charge of its own house.
This piece of legislation was a compromise on two major concerns before Congress. One was a proposal that the federal government would assume the unpaid debts that the states had incurred during the Revolution. Alexander Hamilton believed that such action was necessary to establish the good faith and credit of the federal government so that the United States could take its place among the nations of the world on a sound financial footing.
The other concern was the location of the national capital. Northern states wanted the capital in their part of the country, preferably somewhere in Pennsylvania or New York. In the end southern members of Congress supported the assumption of state debts and northern members supported legislation that would allow President George Washington to select the location of the capital somewhere along an mile stretch of the Potomac River.
But for the moment a compromise was reached. Show Me More. By the time of the passage of the Residence Act, three states—Delaware, Virginia, and Georgia—had already moved their capitals to more central locations.
