J831.] 
iocAlTion of the capital. 
13 
of the country adjacent; and though the conflictmg claims of 
other states, particularly those of Pennsylvania, were strongly 
urged against the measure, yet, fortunately for the nation, the 
popularity and influence of Washington surmounted every ob- 
stacle, and permanently fixed the seat of the general government 
in, perhaps, the best possible position that could be selected in 
any part of the United States. 
It may be mentioned as a curious coincidence, and a fact not 
generally known, that the present permanent seat of our national 
legislature is contiguous to the very spot where formerly were 
lighted the council-fires of the Powhattans, the most prominent, 
nmnerous, and powerful nation of red men in Virginia ; and on 
the banks of the Potomac, extending from the shores of Chesa- 
peake to the Patuxent. These people lived under a royal govern- 
ment, their despotic monarch being the father of the celebrated 
Pocahontas. The valley at the foot of Capitol-Hill, washed by 
the Tiber Creek, the Potomac, and the Eastern Branch, was, as 
we are informed by tradition, periodically visited by the Indians, 
who named it .their Jishing-g7^ound, in contradistinction to their 
hunting-ground. Here, the tradition adds, the aborigines assem- 
bled in great numbers, in the vernal season, for the dou.ble pur- 
pose of preserving fish and consulting on the aifairs of the nation, 
Greenleafe's Point was their principal camp, and the residence 
of the chiefs, where councils were held among the various tribes 
thus gathered together. This tradition was doubtless familiar to 
Washington. , ' ' 
It has been said above that a more eligible site for the seat of 
oin- national government could not have been selected. It is true 
that a hostile fleet has once violated the purity of these waters, 
conveying a sufficient military force to invest the capital of the 
nation, from which most of its physical strength had been drawn 
to defend points which seemed more exposed to immediate attack. 
But we were then a young, weak, and divided people, contending 
with a gigantic power. Things have changed since that period; 
and the waters which have borne the warlike Potomac with her 
frowning batteries so many leagues from the interior to her 
destined element, can scarcely again, in the course of human 
events, be agitated by a hostile keel. 
Under the old confederation, by which the states were norni- 
