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ping and maintaining its contingent. Hamilton now proposed that the United States Government should assume these various State debts, which would aggregate $21,000,000 and bring the National debt to a total of $75,000,000. Hamilton's suggestion that the State debts be assumed caused a vehement outcry. Its opponents protested that no fair adjustment could be reached. The Assumptionists retorted that this would be the only fair settlement, but the Anti-Assumptionists voted them down by a majority of two. In other respects, Hamilton's financial measures prospered, and before many months he seized the opportunity of making a bargain by which the next Congress reversed its vote on Assumption. In less than a year the members of Congress and many of the public had reached the conclusion that New York City was not the best place to be the capital of the Nation. The men from the South argued that it put the South to a disadvantage, as its ease of access to New York, New Jersey, and the Eastern States gave that section of the country a too favorable situation. There was a strong party in favor of Philadelphia, but it was remembered that in the days of the Confederation a gang of turbulent soldiers had dashed down from Lancaster and put to flight the Convention sitting at Philadelphia. Nevertheless, Philadelphia was chosen temporarily, the ultimate choice of a situation being farther south on the Potomac. Jefferson returned from France in the early winter. The discussion over Assumption was going on very virulently. It happened that one day Jefferson met Hamilton, and this is his account of what followed: As I was going to the President's one day, I met him [Hamilton] in the street. He walked me backwards and forwards before the President's door for half an hour. He painted pathetically the temper into which the legislature had been wrought; the disgust of those who were called the creditor States; the danger of the secession of their members, and the separation of the States. He observed that the members of the administration ought to act in concert; that though this question was not of my department, yet a common duty should make it a common concern; that the President was the centre on which all administrative questions ultimately rested, and that all of us should rally around him and support, with joint efforts, measures approved by him; and that the question having been
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