Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-11-22
THE FEDERAL CITY
Considerations Which Led to the Lo-
cation at This Point.
GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSSEENl|D'S ADDRESS
A Comparison in Favor Of Higher
Potomac Site.
ADVANTAG E S

George Alfred Townsend, the veteran cor
respondent, delivered an address last night
before the Sons of tine American Revolution
of this District on the subject OF the site OF
the national capital, of special interest In
view of the approaching celebration of the
centenary Of the removal Of the seat or
government to Washington. Mr.. Townsend
said:
Gentlemen of the Society: The subject
presented to me for your curiosity came in
this form:
"A paper relating to the question Of
locating the national capital either here
Washington or in the vicinity OF Hagers-
town, Nd"
AS 1 have lived fifteen and half years
in the upper limits of the capitoline bounds
permitted to General Washington, or be-
tween Point of Rocks and Williamsport,
my inquest into that region, by drives and
peeps, has led me to some reflections and
opinions not wholly secondhand.
The act to locate the capital upon the
Potomac passed July 10, 1890, in the First
Congress, held in the Federal Hall, Wall
street, New York, General Washington,
President. The Secretary of the Treasury
was New Yorker. and his own great city
of the future he let go, to reside Con-
gress for ten years in Philadelphia and
finally at some place not exceeding ten
miles square on the eastern side of the Po-
tomac river between the Eastern branch
and the Conococheague creek These
points are sixty-siX miles apart in a straight
line and by the river winnings nearly a
hundred.
Three commissioners were to be appoint
ed by the President, two Of whom were to
be effective and the President to supply
vacancies, and all they had to do was to
be under the Presidents sole direction
Jefferson, the Secretary of State, who was
only few months back from five years
and a half in Eur pc, wrote the Official
opinion: THE commissioners will be sub
eel 10 the Presiuent 5 decision in every
point when the President shall have
made up his mind as to the spot for the
town"
Madison the Potomac Champion.
In his posthumous ''Anas' Jefferson lays
upon Secretary Hamilton the removal to
the Potomac as sop for Virginia to have
her debts assumed by the government, but
it is probable that Madison, the leader of
Congress, and then under Washington's.
not Jererson's, tutelage, accomplished this
location. for he wrO,e to kdmund Ran
delphi, the Attorney General, year before:
We endeavoring to keep the preten-
sions of the Potomac in view and to give
10 all the circumstances that occur turn
favorable to it. If any arrangement should
be made that will answer our wishes, II
will be the effect of coincidence of causes
as fortuitous as 1t will be propitious.
The schemers, therefore, were not the
Secretary of the Treasury, who had the
large sense to know that the village of the
officials would not swell the destinies of
Manhattan bay, but the Virginians, who
with President Washington, constituted
three out Of the five men at cabinet meet
ing. and with them was Madison. the con-
gressional leader who had assisted Hamil-
ton and jag to write the Federalist, and
who, to carry his point for the Potomac,
declared that Virginia would not have rati-
fled the Constitution had she foreseen the
contrary result. Virginia cast solid vote
to get the capital here; Pennsylvania sol
id vote to get 1t ten years, and have her
bankers meet the defauting states obliga-
tons; all the east opposed the Potomac.
with much Of Maryland and most of South
Carolina. North Carolina. barely admitted
to vote, settled the question with her five
congressman; otherwise the vote would
have been 20 no and q aye.
The House of Representatives had, year
previously, by 81 to II, voted for a site
upon the Susquehanna. The Senate took
vote upon extending the Potomac limits
from Cumberland to no further east than
the South mountain or Blue Ridge. 1t
was Madison, with an amendment to the
House bill, who threw the subject over the
recess. In the interval the legislatures of
Maryland and Virginia offered, respectively
$4,000 and $4,000, with ten miles square
for the capital site, and Virginia recited the
advantage Of location on the Potomac
above tidewater. But the executive, with
its every cabinet man, was the potent intlu-
ence. as the disappointed Harrisburger
Senator Maclay. wrote IN his diary:
1T is in fact, the interest of the Presi-
dent of the United States that pushes the
Potomac. He Washington. by means of
jefferson, Madison, Carroll and Others urged
the business. and if we had not closed with
these terms bargain would have been
made for the temporary residence Uhree
years. in New York. = They would
have succeeded if 1t had not been for Penn
sylvania's threats of stopping all business"
Points for the Upper Potomac
Pennsylvania member. Scott, introduced
the original resolution in terms, to decide
upon a permanent residence for the gen.
eral government" "a convenient place
las near the center Of wealth, population
and territory as may be consistent with the
convenience to the navigation Of the At
lantic ocean and having due regard to the
particular situation of the western coun-
try
Washington city is not, and was not, con-
Vencnt 20 the Atlantic ocean But where
Mr.. Thomas Scott indicated, in the Cumber-
land valley, was almost the final settlement
toward the west in that day, and also the
center Ct wealth, population and almost of
territory. As the republic was then bound
ed on the west by the Mississippi river and
had less than four million people, its ter
rltoriai center was not far from the Cum
berland valley, in the direction Of the New
England settlement Of Ohio, at Marietta
then swo years old. And probably for this
reason of our extension to the west the
movers the prop sition kept in the limits
of Washington's choice of a site the river
creek of COnOcOcheigue the third ctra, n,
west of the Susquehanna which flows south
ward into the Potomac at WIlliamsport
founded after the revolution by Washing
tons collector Of the port OF Baltimore
Cen Otho Williams. 1t is the region which
made by nature for the base of an at
tack upon the armed slave states the vicin-
ity selected by John Brown in 1859 and by
the war authorities in 1861 when Winches-