and even to possessions beyond the seas, the Potomac to-day would probably not be graced by the beautiful city of Washington.
Nearly all the members agreed that the capital should be located on some waterway communicating with the Atlantic and connected with the territory of the West. The Delaware, the Susquehanna, the Potomac, and even Codorus Creek, were urged.
In the midst of the diatribes which these debates created, the unconscious comedian of the House, Thomas Vining of Maryland, delivered a speech in favor of the Potomac which became famous not for its lucidity or logic, but for the absurdities of its bombast.
Charles Dickens's comment concerning Congressional debate of a later day, that the constituents of American statesmen boasted not of what their representatives said, but of the length of time they talked, would have fittingly described the attitude of the popular mind toward the fight for the capital. Every member of both Houses had won the plaudits of his respective followers by almost endless speeches championing some locality, or devoted to arraignment of the sinister motives of opponents.
