most suitable location. Mr. Madison thought if the proceeding of that day had been foreseen by Virginia, that State might not have become a party to the Constitution. The place where the Seat of Government should be fixed, was allowed by every member to be a matter of great importance. "The future tranquillity and wellbeing of the United States," said Mr. Scott, "depended as much on this as on any question that ever had or could come before Congress." Mr. Fisher Ames remarked that "every principle of pride, and honor, and even of patriotism, was engaged.

The bill was passed by the House by a vote of ayes thirty-one, noes nineteen. It was amended in the Senate by striking out all that part respecting the Susquehanna, and inserting a clause fixing the permanent Seat of Government at Germantown, Pennsylvania, and also providing that the law should not be carried into effect until the State of Pennsylvania, or individual citizens of the same, should give security to pay one hundred thousand dollars to be employed in erecting the public buildings. These amendments were agreed to by the House, with a proviso that the laws of Pennsylvania should continue in force in said district until Congress should otherwise direct. The bill was then returned to the Senate, and the consideration of

the amendment of the House was postponed until the next session. Germantown, therefore, was actually agreed upon by both Houses; but the bill failed on account of a slight amendment.

On the 28th of June, a bill, which had long been under consideration, was amended by inserting "on the river Potomac, at some place between the mouths of the eastern branch and the Connogocheague." A motion to insert Baltimore instead of the Potomac was negatived by a vote of 37 to 23. The act was finally passed on the 16th of July, 1790. It is entitled, "An Act establishing the temporary and permanent Seat of Government of the United States," the word "temporary" referring to Philadelphia, where the Congress were to hold their sessions until 1800, when, as Mr. Wolcott expressed it, "they were to go to the Indian place with the long name, on the Potomac."

By an amendatory act, passed March 3, 1791, so much of the act as requires the whole district to be located above the mouth of the Eastern Branch is repealed, and the President is authorized to make any part of the territory below the said limit, and above the mouth of Hunting Creek, a part of said district, so as to include a convenient part of the Eastern Branch, and of the lands lying on the lower side there

of, and also the town of Alexandria, provided that no public buildings be erected otherwise than on the Maryland side of the Potomac.

VII.

LOG ROLLING.

THE passage of the act seems to have been brought about by a species of log rolling, some of the Southern members having been, by this act, induced to vote for assumption. Mr. Jefferson, in one of his letters,* gives an interesting account of it. It will be observed that secession was talked of at that day.

"The great and trying question (the assumption of the State debts) was lost in the House of Representatives. So high were the feuds excited by this subject, that on its rejection, business was suspended. Congress met and adjourned from day to day without doing anything, the parties being too much out of temper to do business together. The eastern members particularly, who, with Smith from South Carolina, were the principal gamblers in these scenes, threatened secession and dissolution.-Hamilton was in despair. As I was

* Memoirs and Correspondence of Jefferson, vol. iv. pp. 448, 449.

going to the President's one day, I met him in the street. He walked me backward and forward before the President's door for half an hour. He painted pathetically the temper into which the legislature had been wrought; the disgust of those who were called the creditor States; the danger of the secession of their members, and the separation of the States. He observed that the members of the administration ought to act in concert; that, though this question was not of my department, yet a common duty should make it a common concern ; that the President was the centre on which all administrative questions ultimately rested, and that all of us should rally around him, and support, with joint efforts, measures approved by him; and that the question having been lost by a small majority only, it was probable that an appeal from me to the judgment and discretion of some of my friends might effect a change in the vote, and the machine of government now suspended might be again set in motion. I told him that I was really a stranger to the whole subject, and, not having yet informed myself of the system of finance adopted, I knew not how far this was a necessary sequence; that undoubtedly, if its rejection endangered a dissolution of our Union at this incipient stage, I should deem that the most unfortunate of all

consequences, to avert which, all partial and temporary evils should be yielded.

"I proposed to him, however, to dine with me the next day, and I would invite another friend or two, bring them into conference together, and I thought it impossible that reasonable men, consulting together coolly, could fail, by some mutual sacrifices of opinion, to form a compromise which was to save the Union. The discussion took place. I could take no part in it but an exhortatory one, because I was a stranger to the circumstances which should govern it. But it was finally agreed to, that whatever importance had been attached to the rejection of this proposition, the preservation of the Union and of concord among the States was more important, and that therefore it would be better that the vote of rejection should be rescinded, to effect which, some members should change their votes. But it was observed that this pill would be peculiarly bitter to the southern States, and that some concomitant measure should be adopted to sweeten it a little to them. There had before been a proposition to fix the Seat of Government either at Philadelphia or at Georgetown on the Potomac; and it was thought that by giving it to Philadelphia for ten years, and to Georgetown permanently afterward, this might, as an anodyne, calm in