How the Rich Men Settled North of Richmond
Oliver Anthony’s viral hit, “Rich Men North of Richmond,” has struck a chord.
As of Sunday morning — less than three weeks after it first appeared on YouTube — the song’s video has surpassed 44 million views. In was No. 3 in the world, according to the Apple iTunes Top 100: Global music chart, after a stint at No. 1.
That kind of success inspires at least one ironic reflection: Anthony’s titular rich men were never supposed to settle north of Richmond in the first place.
The phrase “Rich Men North of Richmond” refers to politicians in Washington, D.C. Anthony’s lyrics, coupled with his raw and powerful delivery, make it clear that he blames those rich politicians for taxes, inflation, human trafficking, high suicide rates and the plight of the modern working class.
Whatever one thinks of Anthony’s song and message, many rich men do indeed reside in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area.
According to U.S. News & World Report, five of the United States’ eight wealthiest counties in 2022 were suburbs of the national capital. This included Loudoun County, Virginia, and Falls Church County, Virginia, which ranked first and second, respectively.
Clearly, therefore, a great deal of wealth has been concentrated in Washington, D.C.
No single development would have disappointed the capital’s founders more than this one.
The story of how and why those founders decided to place the capital on the banks of the Potomac River involves political shenanigans common to every era, but it also involves the sort of aspirations that would appeal to Anthony’s audience.
In 1789, the first U.S. Congress met in New York City. As an impromptu capital, New York served the limited purposes of a very small federal establishment. Congressmen from South Carolina and Georgia had reason to complain about the lengthy journey, but otherwise, the records from that first year show no urgency about relocating the seat of government.
By the following year, urgency had presented itself. In 1790, the politics of the national capital site became entwined with the debate over Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton’s plan to fund the national debt through customs taxes.
Hamilton considered the funding plan inseparable from his broader scheme to bolster U.S. public credit. But James Madison of Virginia, then a member of the House of Representatives and Hamilton’s erstwhile ally in the debate over ratification of the Constitution, opposed the funding plan.
To resolve the dispute, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, also of Virginia, invited Hamilton and Madison to dinner. The three statesmen hashed out a compromise by which Madison would drop his opposition to Hamilton’s funding plan. In exchange, Hamilton would press his Northern congressional allies to agree to relocate the national capital.
The final bill secured Pennsylvania delegates’ support by establishing the seat of government in Philadelphia for 10 years. Thereafter, beginning in 1800, the capital would move to an area along the Potomac River, on the border between Virginia and Maryland.
One might assume that the new Southern location appealed primarily to those who thought in terms of geography. No doubt ordinary politicians from Southern states welcomed the move on such grounds. Jefferson and Madison, however, had loftier reasons for preferring the Potomac site.
“We have it in our power to begin the world anew,” Thomas Paine wrote in 1776. That was never quite true in practice, but it certainly conformed to the sentiment of a revolutionary age.
The decision to build a capital city from scratch in the swampy grounds of southern Maryland and northern Virginia had echoes of Paine. It was tempting in that atmosphere to start all things anew.
More importantly, Jefferson and Madison in particular wanted to separate the seat of political power from the centers of financial power. This meant removing the people’s representatives from places such as New York and Philadelphia.
Above all, a national capital on the sparsely settled banks of the Potomac River would preserve the republic by preventing concentrations of wealth that could lead to the formation of an American ruling class akin to the decadent aristocracies that plagued Europe.
All across the Old World, money and power coalesced. London functioned as Great Britain’s political and financial capital. Paris did likewise for France. Republican self-government could not thrive in such places.
A U.S. capital in an undesirable location, on the other hand, would serve as a daily reminder of the government’s limited scope. Public officials would never forget their place as public servants. Living and working in Washington, D.C., would amount to an honor and a burden.
This was the plan, and it worked.
We know it worked because men who went to Washington, D.C. in the 19th century did not remain there for their entire careers.
In 1882, Republican James G. Blaine, formerly U.S. senator from Maine, eulogized the late President James Garfield as one of only a half-dozen men in the republic’s history who had served in the House of Representatives for 18 or more years.
Men did not treat national politics as a vocation in part because they did not want to live in the mosquito-infested environs of Washington, D.C.
And for those who could tolerate the location, there was no money in it.
Everything changed in the 20th century. Progressives and New Deal liberals brought an expansive view of federal power to the national government, and the capital began to grow accordingly. Federal agencies multiplied. Foreign entanglements gave rise to a national-security state where money and power concentrated. The 18th-century hamlet morphed into an imperial metropolis.
When Jefferson and Madison had their way, however, few rich men settled in the area “north of Richmond” that’s targeted by Oliver Anthony’s song.
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