Posted by
john on Saturday, December 06, 2008 10:55:37 AM
"At the Constitutional Convention, the delegates had decided to create a federal district, ten miles square, in an unspecified location. This decision generated melodramatic speculation. Some people found the idea of a separate capital fraught with danger, fearing a privileged enclave. Governor George Clinton envisioned the ten-mile square as the scene of a presidential 'court' disfigured by royal trappings and marked by 'ambition with idleness, baseness with pride, the thirst of riches without labor...flattery...treason...perfidy, but above all the perpetual ridicule of virtue.'"
Ron Chernow, "Alexander Hamilton", pp.324-25