What if New York was the capital of the United States?

samcster94

Banned
New York City was America’s first National Capital following the drafting of the Constitution. It was where George Washington was inaguarated, and was one of the nation’s most influential cities, a position it still holds today. But what if the capital was never moved to the Potomac? What if, somehow, New York City became the capital of the United States, with the area around modern-day uptown and Central Park becoming a government district? What would it take for this to happen? How would the financial and cultural development of New York be effected? How would early American history be effected?
I think there would possibly be a different pro-South concession and fewer Virginians might be President. Could an alt ACW happen early?
 
If New York was able to stay the capital, the United States would probably start building up the Navy earlier. Having the capital on an island would make it pretty easy for the British to decapitate the US government.
 
I don't have time to write about this. It would be a big deal, including on the development of New York itself, in all sorts of ways.

This one has a big POD problem, in that you have to work to come up with a POD and then the POD itself will affect the timeline. The POD problem is not with not creating a planned city and not with just keeping the capital in an established city. The problem is if the decision was made to keep the capital in an already established city, that city would have been Philadelphia, not New York.

My impression is that it was a historical accident that Congress happened to be in New York in the late 1780s/ early 1790s right at the time when the federal government got its start, and of course the convention was in Philadelphia and the federal institutions moved to Philadelphia pretty quickly. New York seems to have been a temporary capital, and I don't have time this morning to look up why the temporary capital was needed at the time.

Of the two cities, Philadelphia was the much more logical choice, it was the larger city, the location was better, and where Congress normally met. If the POD is a problem with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and its relative democratic institutions and the Philadelphia "mob", and this does seem to have been a problem, then the solution as it was ITTL would be a planned city out in the countryside, not another northern city.
 
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