lancaster pa september for only one day york pa september to use susquehanna river as defense against british princeton nj annapolis md trenton nj new york ny philadelphia washington d c i think these are all the places that have any claim of being a capital of the united states of these new york city and philadelphia have the strongest claims of being the first capital one question to answer is what constitutes being the first capital do we start the clock at the signing of the declaration of independence the article of confederation or the constitution i think that the constitution would be the key event because before that america was really a group of independent colonies rather than a nation also i believe that new york city did not have the physical infrastructure buildings etc in place to be an actual capital for the newly formed government i think it acted more as a temporary meeting place philadelphia did have a lot of infrastructure for the federal government because it was trying to woe the government into making philly the permanent capital in my opinion philly should be considered the first capital of the u s because it had actual capital buildings that were used by the government after the signing of the constitution the fact that philly was also used as the first capital of the colonies is not relevent in my opinion however i am not a historian or an expert in early american history so i don't want to update the article myself also from my research there seems to be a lot of contention about which city is the first capital would a historian or professor of history please comment on this issue and update the page daniel barbalace see for email address