Take such a simple matter as the national capital.
Suddenly transferred to the woods on the banks of the Potomac, the
National Government found no such accommodations as the two cities in
which it had previously been lodged had afforded. One completed and
one incomplete wing of the Capitol building, an empty and bare
President's mansion, one tavern, and a few houses, with streets
indicated only by felled trees, formed the Athens of America, pronounced
by Robert Morris the very best city in the world for a "future"
residence. Members of Congress who traversed the three miles of mud
road to Georgetown, where the only comfortable lodgings were to be
obtained, would willingly have reduced the scale upon which the capital
was laid out. Very early it became the "City of Magnificent Distances."
However crude the city might be, the soil on which it rested belonged
exclusively to the United States. It was the only spot of any magnitude
which could be so claimed. It was due to the generosity of two
neighouring States, Virginia and Maryland. To the same charity was
owed the money which had partly built the two wings of the Capitol and
the President's mansion.
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