take note of this—it offered to donate the Mansion of the Governor as
the official residence of the President of the Congress and if that were
not enough, they offered to build thirteen residences and other build-
ings as quarters for the delegations of the thirteen states.
The Congress rejected the offer to establish the Capital in Annapolis
on a permanent basis but decided nevertheless to use the Maryland
State House as its seat temporarily. As a result, some of the most
significant events in the early history of the United States took place
in what is now the capitol of Maryland.
In a tearful but humble ceremony in the Old Senate Chamber of
our State House, now restored and preserved as a national historic
shrine by order of the Interior Department, George Washington tendered
his resignation as Commander-in-Chief of the Army to the Congress
in December, 1783.
Three weeks later in the same chamber, the Congress ratified the
Treaty of Paris, formally ending the hostilities with Great Britain and
establishing the United States as an independent nation.
Two years later in the Maryland State House a convention of the
states was held in which the groundwork was laid for the establish-
ment "of a more permanent union, " as it was later referred to.
It was agreed at the Annapolis meeting that another convention
would be held the following year in Philadelphia to (and I quote)
"take into consideration the situation of the United States, to devise
such further provisions as shall appear... necessary to render the Con-
stitution of the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the
union. " It was at the Philadelphia Convention, as we know, that our
present Constitution was drafted.
It was not until 1791 that the federal government, reinspired and
strengthened by the new Constitution, moved to set up a permanent
seat of government. The decision was made to locate it in a ten-
mile-square tract of land lying athwart the Potomac River, partly in
Maryland and partly in Virginia. The Maryland General Assembly
and the General Assembly of Virginia promptly ceded the territory
to the federal government for the erection of the Federal District. Some
fifty years later, the government restored to Virginia that part of the
territory south of the Potomac, so that today all the land that now
comprises the District of Columbia was once a part of the State of
Maryland.
So much for the historical affinity of Maryland and Washington.
What about other aspects of the relationship?
428
|
