University of Virginia Library

TO GEORGE WASHINGTON.

I have been duly favored with yours of the 3d. instant.

The length of the interval since my last has
proceeded from a daily expectation of being able to
communicate the final arrangement for introducing
the new Government. The place of meeting has
undergone much discussion as you conjectured and
still remains to be fixed. Philada was first named, &
negatived by a voice from Delaware. N. York came
forward next. Lancaster was opposed to it & failed.
Baltimore was next tried and to the surprise of every
one had seven votes. It was easy to see that that
ground had it been free from objection was not
maintainable, accordingly the next day N. York was
inserted in the place of it with the aid of the vote of
Rhode Island. Rhode Island has refused to give a
final vote in the business and has actually retired
from Congress. The question will now be resumed
between N. York & Philada. It was much to be

wished that a fit place for a respectable outset to the
Govt. could be found more central than either. The
former is inadmissible if any regard is to be had to
the Southern or Western Country. It is so with me
for another reason, that it tends to stop the final &
permanent seat short of the Potowmac certainly, and
probably in the State of N. Jersey. I know this to be
one of the views of the Advocates for N. York. The
only chance the Potowmac has is to get things in
such a train that a coalition may take place between
the Southern & Eastern States on the subject and
still more than the final seat may be undecided for
two or three years, within which period the Western
& S Western population will enter more into the estimate.
Wherever Congress may be, the choice if
speedily made will not be sufficiently by that consideration.
In this point of view I am of opinion
Baltimore would have been unfriendly to the true
object. It would have retained Congress but a moment,
so many states being North of it, and dissatisfied
with it, and would have produced a coalition
among those States & a precipitate election of the
permanent seat & an intermediate removal to a more
northern position.

You will have seen the circular letter from the
Convention of this State. It has a most pestilent
tendency. If an early General Convention cannot
be parried, it is seriously to be feared that the system
which has resisted so many direct attacks may be at
last successfully undermined by its enemies. It is
now perhaps to be wished that Rho. Island may not

accede till this new crisis of danger be over.[80] Some
think it would have been better if even N. York had
held out till the operation of the Government could
have dissipated the fears which artifice had created
and the attempts resulting from those fears & artifices.
We hear nothing yet from N. Carolina more
than comes by way of Petersburg.

With highest respect & attachment