Contumacy, satire, hatred, envy and unreason struggled with wisdom and patriotism for nearly a decade. It was conceded by all that the American capital should be fixed as near as possible to what would remain the centre of population, but as to the location destined to enjoy the distinction there was the greatest possible conflict of conjecture. Goodhue declared that it would remain in the North for countless ages, and that when it did shift it would travel toward the manufacturing districts of New England. Stone of Maryland argued that as the tides of humanity followed the lines of least resistance, they would flow into the warm and fertile South. The vast domain to the westward was not taken into the calculations of statesmen predicting the course of empire. The profoundest philosophers of the latter part of the eighteenth century were unable to grasp the transformations soon to be wrought by the application of steam. They could not dream that subsequent generations would establish a teeming civilization in the distant and unmeasured solitudes. A century later, when the eleventh census was taken, the centre of population was five hundred and twenty miles westward of the spot Congress had fixed upon as the unchanging focus of our growth. Madison alone caught a glimpse of continental possibilities, and believed that America might “speedily behold an astonishing mass of people on the western waters;” and although for that reason it might be impossible to select a site for the capital that would remain central as regards population, it was of the utmost importance to choose a point whence the knowledge of new enactments could be the most quickly disseminated throughout the land. If it were possible, he contended, to promulgate the proceedings of Congress by some simultaneous operation, it would be of less consequence where the seat of government might be established. A site along the Potomac began to be favored, as the then projected canal, now paralleling the Potomac from Georgetown to Cumberland, would afford the most convenient and rapid means of conveying to waiting citizens beyond the Alleghanies the documentary decrees of the Congress of the United States. Could Washington and his colleagues have imagined that in a later age the tidings of the deliberations of Congress, instead of depending for transmission upon canal-boats, would be flashed instantly, by the clicking of mysterious keys, to the distant shores of the continent, and even to possessions beyond the seas, the Potomac to-day would probably not be graced by the beautiful city of Washington. Nearly all the members agreed that the capital should be located on some waterway communicating with the Atlantic and connected with the territory of the West. The Delaware, the Susquehanna, the Potomac, and even Codorus Creek, were urged.