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