It’s my feeling that at the end of the Civil War the USA should have moved the capital from Washington DC, which is on the east coast, to a more central location - St. Louis. I feel the advantages would have been:
Allow a more central administration of the country since it was clear we would be across the whole continent.
It would have made the capital safer from invaders (remember the British invaded and burned the capital in 1812).
It would have helped to bring the country together since Missouri really divides the country north and south and east and west (straddles the Mississippi).
Many countries have capitals located in their center like Paris, Berlin, Mexico City, Bejing, Moscow, and others.
Side note - in a way it would also have returned to our ancient roots since St. Louis was the sites of some of the largest native american cities.
How would a St. Louis capital “bring the country together?” It didn’t even bring the North and South together despite being not too far from the Mason-Dixon line,.
Would Missouri cede land to the federal government for a “district?”
Washington itself was a compromise to bring the North and South together, and it’s barely 100 miles from Richmond (easily traveled by rail in those days), so geographical location clearly wasn’t a unifier.
And in 1866, the West was pretty much still all frontier. The Transcontinental line was only three years old, and it didn’t even pass anywhere near St. Louis. It would have made only slightly less sense to put the capitol in Omaha, and probably much more sense to put it in Chicago. The Mississippi River had been bridged at Rock Island in 1856, and that route went straight to Chicago. St. Louis didn’t get a bridge until 1874.
In “those days” of May 1861. The upstart Confederate States of America moved its capitol from Birmingham to Richmond, and a railroad between Richmond and the Potomac River (with a steamboat to cross the river to Washington) had existed since 1834.
As I said, the proximity of Washington didn’t help to unify the country.
I don’t see what advantage ‘more central administration’ would actually provide; it wouldn’t be near the major population centers (which were primarily on the East Coast, and later some on the West Coast), and I don’t see what proximity to a lot of open land would do for the capital. I also don’t see how it would ‘bring the country together’ to have the seat of government out there, having DC in the middle of the most populated areas didn’t prevent the civil war. And the ability to defend it is utterly pointless - in 1812 the US was weak enough that invasion was a risk (and even then the British weren’t able to take and hold the city), but by 1860 the US was a Great Power and was simply not at any realistic risk of invasion.
There doesn’t seem to be any actual benefit from the idea, and a lot of things to oppose it. Also:
Paris is in the North of France (about 5x as far from the Southern border as the Northern by eyballing it), Berlin is nearly on Germany’s eastern border and much more north than south, Mexico city is not all that central now and was very far to the south before the Mexican-American war, Beijing is very much to the east and north in China, and Moscow is in the far west of Russia (and the capital at the time of the USCW was St Petersburg, which is even more off-center). I really don’t think any of these are an example of ‘central’.
Native Americans are a population that was largely eradicated and replaced for European settlers, and whose cultures were actively suppressed in America. They’re not the ‘ancient roots’ of the USA.
I think you don’t actually know anything about St. Louis.
All of the native peoples were long dead by the time the first mostly French settlers arrived. Imported diseases wiped out the entire Cahokia culture. There are some artifacts you can go look at in a fairly small museum in Cahokia; there is not actually any Native American presence of any significance.
The roots of St. Louis come from the mostly French settlers, but that is mainly in the form of French place names that are mispronounced.
Also, Missouri was bitterly divided in the Civil War, and certainly would not have brought the country together in its aftermath.
There was a brief moment in American history where you might have had some kind of argument based on St. Louis being a rail hub… but Chicago would’ve been better for that.
In 1865 St. Louis was still pretty non-central to the U.S. population.
I’m not sure what advantages you think these bring. The USA was not going to be invaded anytime soon; the country in 1865 was so much more powerful than it had been in 1812 that it’s night and day. I also don’t know that the center of administration matters.
As to point 3, I dunno. DC, after all, was in its time EXACTLY what you’re asking for here - a compromise position between North and South. Didn’t prevent the Civil War. Other countries have created capitals for similar purposes, without any particular benefit I am aware of. The foreign capitals you mention have mostly been that way for centuries, and many are not as central as I think you think they are - Moscow is west of 90% of Russia, Beijing is nowhere near the center of China in any sense, and Paris is absolutely not in the center of France.