Founding Friendship: George Washington, James Madison, and the Creation of the American Republic

Chapter 6: Founding Washington, D.C.

6 FOUNDING WASHINGTON, D.C. T    never would have moved to the Potomac River had it not been for the Washington-Madison collaboration. Running from  until the mid-s, the crusade for a Potomac capital was the longest-lasting aspect of their relationship. This mutual quest shows that the collaboration did not end in  or  but survived the advent of partisan politics. It also illustrates that Madison’s role during Washington’s presidency was to help solve difficult problems, leaving department heads to handle day-to-day affairs. D on the nature and location of the national capital posed one of the American Revolution’s most complicated issues. Along with a strong central government , continentalists like Washington and Madison wanted Congress to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over a huge federal district containing a large federal city. Localists, who believed that distant, powerful governments lead to tyranny, instead preferred a small, or even rotating, capital controlled by the host state. Choosing the capital’s site raised even more difficulties than establishing its character . Between  and  nearly fifty localities competed for a prize whose stakes included jobs, largesse, access to information, and influence over policy.1 Late in August  Washington set up headquarters near Princeton, Congress’s temporary seat. Over the next two months, he and Madison first shared their mutual dream of permanently locating the national capital on the Potomac, beginning seven years of cooperation that climaxed in the Compromise of . The collaborators favored a Potomac capital mainly out of concern for the Union. Because the Potomac evenly split the Atlantic seaboard and provided, in their opin-  ion, the best access to the West, it would bind the states better than other sites. Less central a location would produce sectional animosities, especially in the West, a region that would not support a government that ignored its interests. The collaborators believed that southern and western Antifederalists would view the resolution of this issue as a sign of whether the North would dominate the federal government. Washington and Madison justified placing the capital at the nation’s North-South division point, rather than at its demographic center, because they believed that the latter was rapidly moving southwest toward the Potomac . That waterway, they thought, provided the country’s best natural setting for the government, offering a moderate climate, fertile soil, abundant resources, and natural defenses. “Was I to commence my career of life anew,” Washington wrote, “I shd. not seek a residence . . . more than  miles from the margin of the Potomac.” He applied the same logic to locating the federal capital.2 In addition to national considerations, the collaborators favored the Potomac for regional, state, local, and personal reasons. With the government nearby, southern congressmen would attend regularly, while the northern mercantile community would not unduly color legislative proceedings. A Potomac capital would benefit Virginia in particular, a state that needed its own commercial centers to keep wealth from draining to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and other cities. Locally, a Potomac capital promised Madison’s and Washington’s northern Virginia neighborhood great prosperity. Washington personally owned , acres of Potomac land that would rise in value if the government settled nearby, while Madison’s Matildaville venture gave him a direct financial stake. But overall, they supported a Potomac capital mainly because for them, the American Revolution would not be complete without the government seated where it would cement all sections into the Union.3 In  Senator Maclay marveled at the collaborators’ eagerness to build a city in their rural idyll. But Washington accepted urbanization and large-scale commerce as inevitable. “From Trade our Citizens will not be restrained,” he wrote. “Therefore it behoves us to place it in the most convenient channels, under proper regulation—freed, as much as possible, from those vices which luxury, the consequence of wealth and power, naturally introduce.” Washington wanted to make commerce work to republicanism’s advantage by situating the capital to promote national unity. Even Madison shared Washington’s enthusiasm for a major commercial (as opposed to industrial) city in Virginia. He welcomed the national capital because he feared not capitalism and commerce per se but industrialization and the British fiscal system. Trade Madison accepted as essential to the agricultural republic; after all, industrious farmers needed to exchange  , ..  surpluses for manufactures. For Madison the Potomac promised an environment in which the government could remain virtuous and healthy because it would be surrounded by sturdy yeomen...