The Nation's Capital, For Seven Weeks

For fifty-three days in the autumn and early winter of seventeen eighty-four, Trenton was the capital of the United States.

Not the capital-in-waiting. Not a temporary meeting point. The actual seat of the national government, such as it was.

The Congress of the Confederation had been moving around like an unwanted houseguest. After a mutiny of unpaid soldiers forced them out of Philadelphia in the summer of seventeen eighty-three, they retreated to Princeton, then to Annapolis, then here. They arrived in Trenton on November first, seventeen eighty-four, and set up at the French Arms Tavern. Richard Henry Lee, a Virginia delegate who had seconded the motion for independence in seventeen seventy-six, served as president of the Congress during the Trenton session.

The Congress was managing the aftermath of a successful revolution: ratifying treaties, arguing over western territories, trying to collect taxes from states that largely ignored them. The Articles of Confederation gave Congress almost no real power. They could ask the states for money; they could not compel them to pay. They could declare war; they couldn't raise the army to fight it without begging.

The Trenton session ended on December twenty-fourth, seventeen eighty-four. Then the Congress moved to New York. Six years later, on November twenty-fifth, seventeen ninety, Trenton was named the permanent capital of New Jersey, a more modest but more durable distinction.

It is easy to forget that this river city, for two months, was where the experiment in self-government was being conducted, imperfectly but with genuine intent.