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This, in turn, intensified the rivalry among the District’s municipalities for congressional attention—particularly regarding commercial needs such as canals and bridges. “One of the early acts of this government … was to throw a mole [dam] across from Mason’s island to the south bank of the Potomac, and thus cut off the channel for boat communication between Alexandria and the water of the upper Potomac,” Hunter cited as an example to his colleagues. “From the time this was done up to the completion of the canal, scarcely a boat was ever seen in Alexandria from the upper Potomac.”5

Indeed, that earlier debate regarding a dam between Mason’s Island (present-day Theodore Roosevelt Island) and the Potomac’s south bank also reflected the rivalry of the municipalities, the inequities of congressional actions, and the resentment in Congress at having to devote time to the municipalities. In that 1804 debate, Virginia Congressman Randolph had declared:

[A] prompt rejection of the bill would serve as a general notice to the inhabitants of the District to desist from their daily and frivolous applications to Congress, to the great obstruction of the public business.

Andrew Gregg of Pennsylvania, however, pointed out that under the Constitution:

The House [was] bound to legislate for these people until it relinquished the claim to the jurisdiction either by authorizing them to legislate for themselves or retroceding them to the states to which they originally belonged.

Regarding the rivalry and inequitable treatment, North Carolina Congressman Nathaniel Macon argued:

The gentlemen in favor of this dam or causeway say it will do no harm.… On the other side, serious apprehensions are entertained of its injurious effects upon … the Eastern Branch [the present-day Anacostia River] and its causing obstructions in the harbor of Alexandria.

In the years leading up to Hunter’s 1846 effort, petitions seeking to detach the Virginia portion of the District of Columbia were repeatedly presented to Congress, resulting in bills that failed to pass in 1824 and 1840. Residents of Georgetown also periodically sought to have their area of the District returned to Maryland, most notably in an 1838 petition presented to Congress and in a bill that failed in 1856.

How, then, did Hunter succeed? Two overarching concerns account for Hunter’s success—and also account for the continued failure of such efforts by District residents on the Maryland side. Over the years, one of those overarching issues diminished, while the other enlarged.

The issue that diminished regarded the location of the nation’s capital itself. Differing visions among the Founding Fathers led to disputes as to whether the capital should be in Philadelphia or New York or a central location or in the South. Only after protracted negotiations between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton was the Potomac River location accepted.6 When Congress first debated retrocession in 1803, Delaware Congressman James A. Bayard voiced this ongoing concern. Should the land be returned to Virginia and Maryland, he worried, “What obligation is there in Congress to remain here? … Unfix the Capitol and recede the District and believe me, Congress will soon take wings and fly to some other place.” But compared to when the Founders had debated the capital’s location, the issue now had an added dimension. President Jefferson was just then concluding the Louisiana Purchase, by which the United States suddenly became twice as large as it had been. If the legislative bolts locating the nation’s capital were loosened, where might the expanded nation want its center of power?

As the Louisiana Purchase evolved, the development of railroads so greatly reduced the burdens of travel that the concerns of the new states and territories did not include relocating the nation’s capital. The primary concern that emerged turned out to be the second overarching issue that contributed to Hunter’s success: slavery.

It was during this era of national expansion that Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter grew up. The