The Fugitive Congress

On the morning of September twenty-seventh, seventeen seventy-seven, the Continental Congress fled Philadelphia. The British under General Howe were closing in, and the delegates scattered north and west. They spent one night in Lancaster, then crossed the Susquehanna River to York, arriving September thirtieth.

For the next nine months, the courthouse on the square in this modest German market town was the seat of the American government in exile. The building they worked in was simple: a two-story wooden courthouse at the center of York's main square. The delegates came from a fractured union of thirteen states, each jealous of its own sovereignty, each skeptical of giving power to any central body.

What they produced while here was the Articles of Confederation, the first governing document of the United States of America. On November fifteenth, seventeen seventy-seven, the Congress voted to adopt it after more than a year of debate. The articles also established the name that would endure: the United States of America.

That phrase, written into the text of the document while delegates sat in this courthouse, was new. It had already appeared in the Declaration of Independence the year before. The York claim to have been the first capital of the United States is one that historians debate carefully.

Philadelphia had housed the Congress before the British came. Baltimore briefly served during another British advance. What York can say with documented certainty is this: the Articles of Confederation were adopted here, the national name was formally codified here, and the first national day of Thanksgiving was proclaimed here in the fall of seventeen seventy-seven, while the delegates were still unpacking their bags on the square.