But for the first ten years, the capital was in the of New York and Philadelphia. How does that square with the statement that the Constitution requires that the capital can’t be in a state?
We are drifting from the question of the name to the actual constitutional basis of the Capital District. But what I’ll say to this is, yeah, it’s a “may” not a “shall”. Not an absolute mandate and it does not create perpetuity once it is executed (see the retrocession of Arlington/Alexandria).
What law made Philadelphia the capital?
Making DC (or all of DC except for the tiny bit encompassing the Capitol and White House) a state would still require an amendment, because of the existing amendment that gives DC three electoral votes.
Being discussed in the Statehood for DC thread.
Thus the fairness you speak of is impossible also. Fairness would be to allow the district to become a state just as the various territories were able to.
I see that as being substantially less fair. There’s no ideal solution.
As a Seattleite, I have never said that I am from Washington, unless I am specifically asked which state I’m from. Outside of the U.S., Washington means DC.
I like Douglass, but I’ll probably always think of the Douglas fir tree. I did say I’m from Seattle.
My odd idea would be Hanson after the other first president.
Well, sort of. DC was carved out of Virginia and Maryland. It was originally a square. The part that was in Virginia went back to Virginia, during the civil war, i believe, and is now Arlington, VA. The part that’s in Maryland is the part seeking statehood.
The Residence Act (1790), for one. It designated Philadelphia as the temporary capital for a ten-year period, while the permanent capital, also established by the Act, could be built.
I had all of those thoughts the other day. I feel like new states should have Native names wherever possible. Though I’m not fluent in that lingo, I know ‘Potomac’ was the name of the Algonquin village that was there first, so I would strongly advocate for that. (There are other places called ‘Potomac’ but I don’t think they’re comparable enough to cause much confusion).
I’d have to agree with Potomac. Not only won’t it confuse people - it’s way less confusing than DC is now and would be less confusing in the transition because you can easily locate it in your mind when hearing it.
And it also sounds much more like a state than the rest of the suggestions. I know that many states are ultimately named after people, but I haven’t had all my life to get used to a new state-that-is-also-someone’s-name, so those suggestions would sound distinctly un-statelike for a decade or more.
There’s already a Potomac, Maryland, though I like the idea of an indigenous name.
Yes, I would not want to name a new state after a person. You know there’d be endless political wrangling and nobody would be happy about it.
Of course some people won’t be happy unless it’s named after a dead white dude, but I think it’s solidly defensible to name that place after its earliest known name, so named by the people who lived there and “donated” the land for its present purpose.
There is no part in Maryland. It was removed from Maryland long ago. Should 12 states in part or in whole be considered part of Louisiana?
I can just imagine the debates between people wanting to name it the State of Madison or, yeah, what the heck, State of Reagan, and those wanting to call it the State of Ellington; plus of course those who would be proposing Statey McStateface for the lulz
…and those supporting State of Marion Barry just to troll and piss off everyone.
I like it. And they’d have their state song all ready to go:
Hail, hail Freedonia…
The return was made in 1847. It’s unlikely we would have given part of the District of Columbia back to Virginia during the Civil War.
Ninjaed!