Picking the Brains of the Founding Fathers

"There is no one Founding Father position," said John Kaminski, a historian at the University of Wisconsin and editor of a 28-volume collection of documents on the ratification of the Constitution.

But several prominent scholars who have studied the period say there appeared to be little debate on whether residents of the new federal enclave would have the vote.

"The Constitutional Convention overlooked it," said Kenneth Bowling, a George Washington University historian and author of "The Creation of Washington, D.C." "The issue was not on their radar screen."

Historians traditionally have traced the District's status to a raucous demonstration in 1783 by unpaid Revolutionary War veterans outside what's now known as Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The federal Congress, which used the building, was not in session at the time; the rioters were aiming their wrath at a meeting of the Pennsylvania state executive council.

But some congressmen who were proponents of a strong central government seized on the incident, saying it underscored the need for a federal enclave under Congress's control, historians say. They got their way when the Constitution was drawn up.

Soon afterward, Alexander Hamilton and a few other politicians realized the Constitution did not provide specifically for congressional representation for residents of the new capital. Hamilton suggested that the first Congress fix the problem, but his amendment went nowhere.

Opponents of the current bill view the Hamilton amendment as a sign that the issue was debated at the time -- and that Hamilton lost.

"It was as controversial then as it is now," Jonathan Turley, a legal scholar from George Washington University, said at last week's Senate hearing.

But Bowling and other historians disagree, saying the young states and the first U.S. Congress were preoccupied with weightier issues -- such as the amendments that became known as the Bill of Rights.

"They had to organize the entire government!" declared Bowling, co-editor of a 22-volume edition of records and letters from the first federal Congress, which met in 1789-91. "They certainly weren't going to pay a lot of attention to the federal district when it didn't even exist yet."

In fact, it was 1790 before the U.S. government decided where to locate the capital -- on land ceded by Maryland and Virginia. Residents of the new district continued to vote in those states until 1801.

But in that year, Congress passed the Organic Act, assuming control of the District of Columbia and providing no provision for its residents to vote for members of Congress or a president.

That would seem a clear enough sign of Congress's intent. But historians caution that that act, too, should be seen in the context of the politics of the time.

It was passed by a lame-duck Congress fearful that the incoming president, Thomas Jefferson, an anti-federalist, would junk their vision of a strong capital, said William diGiacomantonio, a historian who has studied the period.

The outgoing Congress "really did want to preserve the independence of the District. And so they passed this really haphazard thing," he said, referring to the act.

"It's politics," the historian added. "It doesn't have anything to do with principle."