US Capital in the Midwest

What if Abraham Lincoln established a new capital somewhere in the Midwest, feeling that Washington, D.C.'s location put him in imminent danger and believing that the new location would be more uniting for the country? Could the border states seceding be a plausible POD for this to happen? What would happen to Washington D.C. after the war if this city was kept as capital?
 
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What if Abraham Lincoln established a new capital somewhere in the Midwest, feeling that Washington, D.C.'s location put him in imminent danger?

Why would Lincoln do that? No one would dare move the capital from DC at any point after it's creation; unless the land could not be lived on.
 
What if Abraham Lincoln established a new capital somewhere in the Midwest, feeling that Washington, D.C.'s location put him in imminent danger?

I suppose that a location like Chicago or St. Louis might be a good place to put a temporary capital, should D.C. be captured, and/or trashed, by the Rebels.....other than that, though, there might need to be some real work done on where to build a new capital; maybe on the Illinois-Wisconsin border, along the Rock River, for instance?
 
This is an interesting premise, but I don't think the Civil War is the right time to make it happen, since Washington would only be abandoned at gunpoint. There's a reason Lincoln basically suspended the Constitution in Maryland to keep them from seceding.

I think the only way you'd get this result is if the US gets into a war with a European power and DC gets burned again (perhaps by the UK in 1895?). The political class might decide that moving the federal government to the interior would be a wise course of action. Another option might be a Communist revolution, with the leaders deciding that the seat of the decadent bourgeois regime needs to be abandoned to make a clean break.

There was a plan of indeterminate seriousness to build a new national capital at Metropolis, Illinois, in 1850. This certainly makes a lot of geographic sense, as would a capital at St. Louis.
 
That's true?? I had read that on Metropolis's Wikipedia page years ago when planning a spring break trip, but I searched the internet for evidence of it, and found none. I thought the whole thing was made up.
 

jahenders

Banned
If it was moved during the civil war, it would probably be to NY or Philadelphia.

In terms of moving to the Midwest, that's probably a bit more likely (though NOT likely) once you add a lot of NW states in 1870-1900 and the population out West grows a lot. Some argue that we should move the capitol to something near the the geographic (and/or population) center of the country. The geographic center would be near Grand Island, NE.

If we ever did decide to move it, we could start with bare land and design the city from the ground up so government is laid out for efficient interaction. An outer ring, for companies could be sold at a significant price, with most companies being farther out.

If we did that, a lot of stuff in DC would fade over time "the capitol" would largely be a museum district.
 
The US is not going to move its captial during the ACW unless it has to--and even then only temporarily (unless of course it loses the war).
 
There was a plan of indeterminate seriousness to build a new national capital at Metropolis, Illinois, in 1850. This certainly makes a lot of geographic sense, as would a capital at St. Louis.
Oh wow, you linked to my blog. :D

There isn't really much information on the proposal that I could find beyond that map, so I don't really know how serious it was at the time. However, there would be some advantages to having the capital be closer to the center of the country.

I believe there was also a speculation by William Gilpin that the Missisippi watershed and the Great Plains would become the central heartland of America and that the capital should be located there. Being one of the early Colorado settlers, he suggested Denver as the capital, but further east would probably be better suited for the location.
 
At a speech in St Paul, Minnesota, in the late 1860s or early 1870s (I can't recall at the moment), Seward actually said that he envisioned St Paul as the future capital of a united North America. If I can find the reference, I will link to it. It's from an old book of remarks and anecdotes from XIXth-century Minnesota, which can be found online. Who knows (?) if this was something discussed in Washington circles at the time or if this was his personal idea, new or old.
 
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