Large areas of Atlanta burned before, during, and after Sherman’s brief occupation of it. No one side is responsible for most of it. During wars, fires start and limited resources are available to fight the fires so they spread. The first major fires were reportedly started by rebel forces destroying warehouses of cotton, etc. By the time Sherman entered the city, there was virtually nothing left worth burning from a military standpoint.
Milledgeville was barely harmed at all during the war. The capitol building and the governors mansion were untouched. The state prison was burned down, but by the recently paroled (by the rebels) prisoners! Virtually all the private homes were left intact. The main deliberate destruction by US troops were of armories, the depot and such.
Note that most cities in the path of Sherman’s armies have numerous antebellum buildings, whose salvation is always claimed by locals to be due to Special Actions of the Heroic Townsfolks in persuading Sherman to leave their town (and only their town) alone. Milledgeville and Monroe are classic examples of this. I.e., hardly any city during The March was harmed at all.
To say that Sherman burned Atlanta is quite debatable. To say he “burned Milledgeville” is an utter fabrication.
California’s capital under Spanish and Mexican rule was Monterrey. Following 1849, legislatures passed through San Jose (the “legislature of 1000 drinks”), Vallejo and Benicia before settling in Sacremento in 1854.
There’s actually a lot to be said for NOT having your capital be a major population or commercial center. If there is significant local industry other than the state or national government situated there, it leads to too much conflict of interest. The place may operate a lot more smoothly as a “company town” where the “company” is the government. If you follow this logic through, it may seem that the thing to do is go build a city where one doesn’t exist expressly to be the capital. That thinking has been expressed in national capitals like Washington or Brasilia.
For national governments, having a stand-alone “enclave” for the capital is more secure from attack, also - you can defend a relatively small seat of government rather than a large, unwieldy industrial center.
State or regional governments may emulate the thinking, if they actually choose to put the capital somewhere rather than having it happen by accident or political influence.
The original territorial capitol was Sitka, which is where Baranoff set up his little empire. While gold was discovered in Juneau in 1880, the capitol wasn’t moved until 1906. Moving it from an island to an isolated coastal town wasn’t much of an improvement, but nobody figured the gold would pan out as early as it did. Anchorage was only a tent city in 1906.
Moving the capitol to a more accessible area is still a contentious issue. Juneau is only reasonably accessible by plane, or more slowly by ferry. Citizens of the state don’t feel like they have appropriate access to legislators, particularly for the rope and pitchfork crowd. Voters routinely approve the move, but there is never any money to accomplish it. So in Juneau it remains.
It can work the other way around, too. In my own state, Washington, when it became clear at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century that Olympia, the city chosen for the capital (statehood: 1889), was going to be dwarfed by Seattle, which was really taking off, there were several abortive attempts to move the government from the former to the latter. Obviously, it didn’t happen (for a lot of complicated reasons), but it was more than merely a topic for idle parlor chitchat.
This has to do with the history of the rise of the al-Saud family. The tribe originally ruled from a city called Ad’Diriyah. After a military defeat that destroyed its original capital, the Sauds moved to Riyadh. It was from that base that they began their conquests that resulted in the modern Saudi state.
Prior to the conquests by the British in the 19th century, the largest state on the subcontinent was Mughal Empire, whose capital had been Delhi for a couple of centuries. Delhi had also been the capital for the preceding Delhi Sultanate and cities in the neighbourhood of Delhi had been centers of various states before that.
The British East India Co. founded three important commercial centers – Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. The company began its major territorial conquests in Bengal and Calcutta was the headquarters of its commercial and military activities. After the war of 1857, when the British government took over from the company, the capital of the empire remained at Calcutta. Because Calcutta was the center of contact between the English and Indian cultures, Bengalis were the first group to come into contact with western education and culture. As a result, Calcutta also became the center of political agitation.
In 1905, the viceroy, Lord Curzon decided to partition the huge province of Bengal (into Bengal (including Bihar and Orissa) and East Bengal (including Assam) for what he said were administrative reasons. But Bengalis noticed that the partition also had the effect of dividing Bengalis amongst religious lines. This partition kicked off the Swadeshi movement and widespread agitation. In 1911, the government relented and agreed to put Bengal back together (while slicing off non-Bengali portions of the two provinces).
In order to get the government away from the Bengali agitators and to punish them at the same time, the government also decided to move the capital to Delhi, which had long since come under British domination. They decided to build a new imperial city, New Delhi, on the outskirts.
You didn’t ask about Pakistan. Originally the capital was the commercial center of Karachi. Later, a new planned capital, Islamabad, was built near the historically important city of Rawalpindi.
Yeah, a lot of times the state capital has followed the population migrations of the state in question. Georgia has had capitals in Savannah (colonial capital), Augusta (centrally located at the time), Louisville (still centrally located, but to the west a bit), Milledgeville (more or less centrally located at the time & bigger than Louisville), and Atlanta. Considering how the state was populated - from Savannah in the southeast corner outwards towards the Alabama line and also upwards towards Tennessee - the progression of capitals makes sense.
Nashville was the State Capital prior to 1817, when it re-located to Murfreesboro.
Then, it re-located back to Nashville in 1826.
Technology was the final cause of the last change. Tennessee had few roads, but the paddlewheel steamboat came into wide usage. Nashville’s Cumberland River is easily navigable; Murfreesboro’s Stone’s River is utterly unnavigable.
I agree that some of it is just inertia. Take Santa Fe, New Mexico. It’s the oldest capital in the United States, dating all the way back to the early 1600s and the establishment of the area as a Spanish territory.
The first capitol of the Wisconsin territory was Belmont (in the ASW, near Platteville) because of the lead mining in the area. IIRC it was only for a year or 2.
Anyhow, there was great debate about where to put the state capital.
The owner of the land that is now Madison basically offered free land to legislators in return for voting for Madison.
This is clever because the land was very cheap and thus ofn the face of it didn’t look like a large bribe. BUT of course, if the legislator DID vote for Madison, then the land they got suddenly becomes MUCH more valuable…
There was a bill in the Legislature to move the territorial capitol from St. Paul to a more centrally located town, St. Peter. It passed. Then, before it could be officially recorded by the territorial secretary of state, the official copy of the bill was stolen by a famous character, Pierre (Pig’s Eye) Parrant, the bootlegger who founded St. Paul. He took off for the woods, and hung out there with that bill until after the Constitutional Convention to set up the state of Minnesota. That convention (actually, it split into 2 conventions, a republican one and a democratic one, and each created a constitution for the state) had enough delegates from the St. Paul metro area that a majority now opposed moving the capitol, so it never happened.
Personally, I’ve always wondered how hard the authorities actually looked for him. For much of this time, he was said to be still operating his trading post, about a days ride down the river from the city. The territorial governor & the local sheriff both owned large chunks of land in the St. Paul area. That land would have been worth much less if Pig’s Eye had been caught, and this bill had made it into law. But perhaps I’m just being cynical.
The name Pig’s Eye lives on in a couple of ways in Minnesota.
The sewage treatment plant for the whole metro area is called the Pig’s Eye Plant, and is said to be located on the site of one of his later trading posts alongside the Mississippi river.
And up till a couple of years ago, the Minnesota Brewing Company produced a beer named after him. Apparently, many beer drinkers thought this was one of the worst beers ever sold in the state. Others said it was just typical of low-end cheap beer in general. It was definately cheap – it sold for about $7-$8 for a case of 24 cans.
Rio was the capital of Brazil until the 60s. The Brazilian government built Brasília and moved the capital there in order to encourage settlement (and other activity) in the interior, as most of the population seems stuck near the coast.
Yes, as I recall from my visit there, Brasilia was a “purpose-built” city. It had a nice layout with fantastic wide streets and wonderful highways with nobody on them! You could go out and almost set up a couple goals under an underpass and play football in the shade, only having to yell “Time-out!” from oncoming traffic once in a while! Really a strange and mysterious place.
Carson City is the capital of Nevada because its just plain nicer than that big mess in the south!
Minor nitpick: the river separates the city(s) from the northern suburbs like Liberty, North KC, Gladstone, etc. KCK and KCMO are separated by nothing more than a street called “State Line Road”. I used to be able to walk two short blocks to Kansas from my apartment in Missouri, though there was seldom any reason to.
Florida’s capital, Tallahassee, was chosen when two men left on horseback left from Pensacola and St. Augustine and met in the middle. These two cities were the main population centers in early Florida.
I believe Baton Rogue, capital of Louisiana, was chosen because the state capital had to be 60 miles away from New Orleans as some sort of compromise.
Arizona’s capital moved from Prescott to Tuscon to Phoenix. Tucson was considered too sympathetic to the Confederates during the Civil War
Further nitpick: The Missouri River separates Kansas City, KS, from Parkville, Riverside, and North Kansas City (all in MO) – Liberty and Gladstone do not reach the river. About half the separation of KCK from KCMO is from the Kansas (Kaw) River, the other half is from State Line Road (or its theoretical extension).
The majority of State Line Road separates Kansas City, MO from Kansas towns such as Fairway, Mission Hills, Prairie Village, and Leawood (all part of the metro area, to be sure, but not actually part of Kansas City, KS).
Really a strange and mysterious place.