among the representatives of conflicting States. No modern debate, in length and bitterness, has equalled this of the first Congress under the Constitution. Nearly all agreed that New York was not sufficiently central. There was an intense conflict concerning the relative merits of Philadelphia and Germantown; Havre de Grace and a place called Wright’s Ferry, on the Susquehanna; Baltimore on the Patapsco, and Connogocheague on the Potomac. Mr. Smith proclaimed Baltimore, and the fact that its citizens had subscribed forty thousand dollars for public buildings. The South Carolinians cried out against Philadelphia because of its majority of Quakers who, they said, were eternally dogging the Southern members with their schemes of emancipation. Many others ridiculed the project of building palaces in the woods. Mr. Gerry of Massachusetts declared that it was the hight of unreasonableness to establish the seat of government so far south that it would place nine States out of the thirteen so far north of the National Capital; while Mr. Page protested that New York was superior to any place that he knew for the orderly and decent behavior of its inhabitants, an assertion, sad to say, no longer applicable to the city of New York. September 5, 1789, a resolution passed the House of Representatives “that the permanent seat of the government of the United States ought to be at some convenient place on the banks of the Susquehanna, in the State of Pennsylvania.” The passage of this bill awoke the deepest ire in the members from the South. Mr. Madison declared that if the proceedings of that day could have been foreseen by Virginia, that State would never have _condescended to become a party to the Constitution_. Mr. Scott remarked truly: “The future tranquillity and well being of the United States depended as much on this as on any question that ever had or ever could come before Congress;” while Fisher Ames declared that every principle of pride and honor, and even of patriotism, was engaged in the debate. The bill passed the House by a vote of thirty-one to nineteen. The Senate amended it by striking out “Susquehanna,” and inserting a clause making the permanent seat of government Germantown, Pennsylvania, provided the State of Pennsylvania should give security to pay one hundred thousand dollars for the erection of public buildings. The House agreed to these amendments. Both Houses of Congress agreed upon Germantown as the Capital of the Republic, and yet the final passage of the bill was hindered by a slight amendment.