The result is well known. The great statesman to whom the task was confided assumed it with the boldness and ease of conscious power, and when Congress reassembled it listened to the first report on the public credit. In that great state paper all the confusions disappeared, and in terse sentences an entire scheme for funding the debt, disposing of the worthless currency, and raising the necessary revenue came out clear and distinct, so that all men could comprehend it. The provision for the foreign debt passed without resistance. That for the domestic debt excited much debate, and also passed. Last came the assumption of the state debts, and over that there sprang up a fierce struggle. It was carried by a narrow majority, and then defeated by the votes of the North Carolina members, who had just taken their seats. Washington strongly favored this hotly contested measure. He defended it in a letter to David Stuart, and again to Jefferson, at a later time, when that statesman was trying to undermine Hamilton by wailing about a "corrupt squadron" in Congress. To Washington, assumption seemed as obviously just as it does to posterity. All the debts had been incurred in a common cause, he said, why should they not be cared for by the common government? He had no patience with the sectional argument that assumption was unfair, because some States got more out of it than others. Some States had suffered more than others, but all shared in the freedom that had been won.[1] He saw in it, moreover, as Hamilton had seen, something far more important than a mere provision for the debts and for the payment of money to this community or to that. Assumption was essentially a union measure. The other debts were incurred by the central government directly, but the state debts were incurred by the States for a common cause. If the United States assumed them, it showed to the people and to the world that there were no state lines when the interests of the whole country were involved. It was therefore a national measure, a breeder of national sentiment, a new bond to fasten the States to each other and to the Union. This was enough to assure Washington's hearty approval; but the measure was saved and carried finally by the famous arrangement between Hamilton and Jefferson, which took the capital to the Potomac and made the war debts of the States a part of the national debt. Washington was more than satisfied with this solution, for both sides of the agreement pleased him, and there was nothing in the compromise which meant sacrifice on his part. He rejoiced in the successful adoption of the great financial policy of his administration, and he was much pleased to have the capital, in which he was intensely interested, placed near to his own Mount Vernon, in the very region he would have selected if he had had the power of fixing it. [Footnote 1: Sparks, _Writings of Washington_, x. 98.]