Effects of New York City as the US Capital?

The city itself would be built differently.

Kenneth T Jackson mused that if New York remained the capital, it would be built focusing on political glory - a task easier to do after the fire of 1776 and the TLC of British occupation. Without that, it was free to focus on capitalism and evolve into the city we have today. So, New York would probably still be an alpha city, but it would likely be a very different one.

Modern London is both the political and economic capital of Britain; it remains the economic capital of Europe (for the next 2 years at least :p) and at one point was the political capital of a good quarter of the population.

Can anyone articulate well the ways in which being the political center of the Empire impeded rampant capitalism in London?
 
One thing to note: if the capital stays in New York, it's going to affect the abolition movement in that state quite a bit. OTL, one problem with Philadelphia is that slaves who stayed longer than 6 months would be free (as per Pennsylvania law); this caused Washington and other slave owners to have to rotate their personal slaves while they were in the capital. New York still had slavery until 1827 (although the emancipation process had been set in motion earlier), so this would be a live issue during the period, at least if NYC remained under New York law (and if it doesn't, New York is going to be very reluctant to give up it's best harbor and largest city to the federal government).
 
The Capital moving was part of the Compromise of 1790 where the Democratic Republicans "got" the capital in Mayland/Virgina, and in exchange they gave the Federalist party the Assumption Act where the federal government assumed states debt. Without the compromise the capital stays in New York but makes the federal government and the union weaker. Any of the inevitable crisis might have splintered the union sooner, tariffs for example would be harder to argue as a federal responsibility when the federal level didn't even control the debt. It would likely make Virginia a stronger state as it held little debt compared to other states and that would have kept it's prominence for longer.

Yeah this is actually huge. OTl the Southern had either already paid off their debts or were on their way to doing that while the Northern states were still heavily indebted. If the Federal government doesn't assume the debt than the northern states are going to be put behind for a bit as they struggle to overcome their debt, which has significant effects later down the line.
 
IIRC New York City only started seeing its explosive growth and overtook the other major coastal cities such as Boston and Philadelphia in terms of population and trade after the opening of the Erie Canal made it the entry and exit point for the northern interior states. If the compromise of 1790 doesn't happen then will the state of New York have the spare cash to back the project when the first privately financed company collapses?
 
"Most US state capitals are located near the centers of their states."

...

With smaller states, the match between the capitol and the center of population works very well, though Wisconsin which is mentioned in the previous comment is one of the exceptions, Madison is much too far to the southwest and the center of population is somewhere between Portage and Appleton. Btw, Madison was NOT selected because it was in the center of the state, for one thing it definitely is not in the center of the state. Washington is the other significant exception, the population center is somewhere around Snoqualmie (sp?) Falls

There was substantial mining in the western part of the state; Madison was meant to be a compromise between that and the eastern cities.

IIRC New York City only started seeing its explosive growth and overtook the other major coastal cities such as Boston and Philadelphia in terms of population and trade after the opening of the Erie Canal made it the entry and exit point for the northern interior states. If the compromise of 1790 doesn't happen then will the state of New York have the spare cash to back the project when the first privately financed company collapses?

No, actually New York's demographically strongest decade was the 1790s, and it was gaining on Philly already. Both cities were already larger than Boston by the Revolution.
 
with new york being the capitol they could move the bank to another city probably a southern one to reverse the compromise
 
"I think this would be more interesting if you compared it to the center of population at the time of statehood. I'd bet Sacramento looks a lot more reasonable in 1860s prior to the rise of LA in the 20th century."

Yes and now. Los Angeles was founded by the Spanish in between two missions and always intended as a major city.

It was? L.A. was founded in 1781. In 1850, the first census after the U.S. conquest, it had only 1,610 residents.
 
On funny hat's question, the Spanish founded their first mission in California, San Diego, in 1769. They built all their initial settlements in California between 1769 and 1781. The puebla of Los Angeles was founded only a dozen years after the founding of the first mission.

The Spanish attempted to build three pueblas, which was where they intended to have cities. One of these, near Santa Cruz, was a failure from the start. The other two were Los Angeles and San Jose. These were the two most logical sites in Alta California to put cities due to communications and access to agriculture.

So the Spanish intended Los Angeles to be an important settlement. Of course the population of Southern California wasn't that impressive in 1850. Everyone had gone north to the gold fields!

The entire relative importance of Northern California in the mid and late nineteenth century was an anomaly due to the gold rush.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
The entire relative importance of Northern California in the mid and late nineteenth century was an anomaly due to the gold rush.
Indeed - San Francisco is one of the great and defensible natural harbours (though the US could have done better fortifying the Golden Gate in the 1850s) but it was tiny and inhospitable until the 49ers showed up.
 
One thing's for certain, had New York City [then considered Manhattan alone] been the US Capitol during the US Civil War/ War Between the States, there would have been virtually no push to have created Border States with Union-sanctioned slavery intact as a means to protect the national capital from being overwhelmed by regional Confederate forces.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
One thing's for certain, had New York City [then considered Manhattan alone] been the US Capitol during the US Civil War/ War Between the States, there would have been virtually no push to have created Border States with Union-sanctioned slavery intact as a means to protect the national capital from being overwhelmed by regional Confederate forces.
Though there is always the possibility that the secession would come a decade or two earlier under TTL - with the capital being in the North and thus seen as beholden to Northern interests.
 
Though there is always the possibility that the secession would come a decade or two earlier under TTL - with the capital being in the North and thus seen as beholden to Northern interests.

On the other hand, New York was the most pro-slavery of the major Northern cities, because it exported Southern cotton to Europe. The mayor wanted to secede alongside the South, and there were draft riots. Baltimore was pro-slavery too, for the same reason. The push for abolition came from Boston, Philadelphia, Upstate New York, and the entire Midwest.
 
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