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The Founding of Washington, D.C.
In the summer of 1783, unpaid Revolutionary War soldiers surrounded Independence Hall and held the Continental Congress hostage at gunpoint. The crisis made one thing clear: the new nation needed a capital that no single state could control. What followed was seven years of intense regional rivalry, visionary arguments about the country’s future, and a dramatic political compromise that finally placed the federal city on the banks of the Potomac. This is the story of how Washington, D.C. was born.
Washington, D.C. exists because leaders recognized a structural problem, argued hard for regional interests, looked decades ahead, and ultimately chose pragmatic compromise over pure victory. The result was an enduring national capital built on deliberate design rather than accident or dominance.
