American Capitals: A Historical Geography

CHRISTIAN MONTÈS is professor of geography at the Université Lumière Lyon 2.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2014 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 2014.

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN-13: 978-0-226-08048-2 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-08051-2 (e-book)

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226080512.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Montès, Christian, author.

American capitals : a historical geography / Christian Montès.

pages ; cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-226-08048-2 (cloth : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-08051-2 (e-book)

1. Capitals (Cities)—United States—History.   I. Title.

E180.M66 2014

307.760973—dc23

2013031757

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

American Capitals

A Historical Geography

CHRISTIAN MONTÈS

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Chicago and London

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO GEOGRAPHY RESEARCH PAPER

NUMBER 247

SERIES EDITORS:

MICHAEL P. CONZEN, NEIL HARRIS, MARVIN W. MIKESELL, AND GERALD D. SUTTLES

Titles published in the Geography Research Papers series prior to 1992 and still in print are now distributed by the University of Chicago Press. The list of available titles follows. The University of Chicago Press commenced publication of the Geography Research Papers series in 1992 with number 233.

TITLES IN PRINT (ADDITIONAL TITLES LISTED AFTER INDEX)

246. PHILIP W. PORTER, Challenging Nature: Local Knowledge, Agroscience, and Food Security in Tanga Region, Tanzania, 2006

245. CHRISTIAN A. KULL, Isle of Fire: The Political Ecology of Landscape Burning in Madagascar, 2004

244. CHARLES M. GOOD, The Steamer Parish: The Rise and Fall of Missionary Medicine on an African Frontier, 2003

243. JOHN A. AGNEW, Place and Politics in Modern Italy, 2002

242. KLAUS FRANTZ, Indian Reservations in the United States: Territory, Sovereignty, and Socioeconomic Change, 1999

241. HUGH PRINCE, Wetlands of the American Midwest: A Historical Geography of Changing Attitudes, 1997

240. ANNE KELLY KNOWLES, Calvinists Incorporated: Welsh Immigrants on Ohio’s Industrial Frontier, 1996

239. ALEX G. PAPADOPOULOS, Urban Regimes and Strategies: Building Europe’s Central Executive District in Brussels, 1996

238. EDWARD T. PRICE, Dividing the Land: Early American Beginnings of Our Private Property Mosaic, 1995

237. CHAD F. EMMETT, Beyond the Basilica: Christians and Muslims in Nazareth, 1995

236. SHAUL EPHRAIM COHEN, The Politics of Planting: Israeli-Palestinian Competition for Control of Land in the Jerusalem Periphery, 1993

235. MICHAEL P. CONZEN, Thomas A. Rumney and Graeme Wynn: A Scholar’s Guide to Geographical Writing on the American and Canadian Past, 1993

234. DAVID M. KUMMER, Deforestation in the Postwar Philippines, 1992

233. RISA PALM AND MICHAEL E. HODGSON, After a California Earthquake: Attitude and Behavior Change, 1992

230. CHRISTOPHER MUELLER-WILLE, Natural Landscape Amenities and Suburban Growth: Metropolitan Chicago, 1970–1980, 1990

228–29. BARRY C. BISHOP, Kamali under Stress: Livelihood Strategies and Seasonal Rhythms in a Changing Nepal Himalaya, 1990

226. JEFFREY A. GRITZNER, The West African Sahel: Human Agency and Environmental Change, 1988

225. GIL LATZ, Agricultural Development in Japan: The Land Improvement District in Concept and Practice, 1989

FOR MY PARENTS

Contents

1. Capitals: A New Light on American Cities and Territorial Processes

2. Capitals as Places of Memory

3. Geographical Patterns in the Migration of Capitals

4. In Search of Explanatory Models

5. Capital Choice and the Balance of Power

6. Evolution of State Capitals to the 1950s: The Purgatory Years

7. State Capitals since the 1950s: The Renaissance of Forgotten Cities

8. Validating Models through a Chronological and Concrete Analysis: Three Case Studies

9. Losing Status: The Place of Former Capitals in Today’s America

10. State Capitals Today: Symbols of American Democracy

Acknowledgments

Appendix 1: Demographic and Historical Tables

Appendix 2: A Brief Chronology of Colonial, Territorial, and State Capitals

Notes

References

Index

1

Capitals

A New Light on American Cities and Territorial Processes

Like most boys living in the west-end of Chillicothe [during the 1850s], my entry into school life was through the Western Building, and, naturally, by way of good old Miss Pierson’s room. I have yet a lively recollection of her early discovery of my predilection for geography, and of her choosing me, when visitors were present, to name and point out the State-Capitals; this pleasure was always tempered by the fear that New Hampshire’s capital would be called for, and pride had a fall when such was the case, for the nearest my infantile lips could pronounce it was corn-cob, and I dreaded their laugh raised at my expense.

L. W. RENICK, CHE-LE-CO-THE, GLIMPSES OF YESTERDAY 1896

According to Michel de Certeau (1988), historical investigation has only one way to resolve the dilemma between the social status of contemporary historians—the fact that the past is a construction of the present—and the necessary virginity of researchers: surprise—surprise with regard to a text, a silence, or an absence of archives. This study originated in a personal surprise at the small size of most American state capitals. The second surprise was that nobody has written a global history of these cities, the only exceptions being a few popular or juvenile works.¹ It is perhaps because memorizing state capitals at school has left scholars—all of them former pupils like Mr. Renick, cited above—with the idea that these cities are to be taken for granted and not seen as possible subjects of intellectual investigation (figure 1.1 nevertheless reminds readers of their names and locations). More than forty years ago, an American geographer asked the same question I am asking today (Browning 1970). He did so in a journal article intended for schoolteachers rather than for the academic world, and since then nobody has taken his first approach to the question further than his perceptive but general remarks.

FIGURE 1.1 State capitals of the United States of America. Credit: Christian Montès and M. L. Trémélo.

A Very Diverse Corpus

Although capitals appear alike on national maps (a star most of the time), they form a highly heterogeneous corpus, reflecting the absence of any uniform national mind in the United States of America. According to the 2010 census, our state capitals ranged in population from 7,855 (Montpelier, VT) to 7,559,060 (Boston combined statistical area [CSA]), and their share of the state’s population ranged from 0.66% (Annapolis) to 152.1% for Providence, Rhode Island (exceeds 100% because the metropolitan area of Providence extends beyond Rhode Island’s boundaries). Nor does any regional convergence emerge. For instance, the once clear difference between New England, where towns were founded at first, and southern tidewater plantations, which were almost without towns, is no longer perceptible in the current size of state capitals. The reverse might even be true. In New England, which includes the six states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, three capitals are small cities, and three are large (Boston, Hartford, and Providence). In the Southeast, Atlanta, Nashville, Raleigh, and Richmond are conurbations of a million or more people; Montgomery, Jackson, Columbia, and Harrisburg also have metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) between 0.3 and 1 million people.² Of the capitals in that region, only Frankfort, Annapolis, and Dover are small cities. The same opposition is present in the percentage of a state’s population living in its capital: 1.26%, 9.20%, 11.12%, 33.92%, 115.4%, and 152.1% for New England, versus 0.66%, 1.63%, 1.95%, 7.84%, 11.86%, 15.73%, 17.24%, 18.08%, 25.05%, and 54.39% for the Southeast.

Table 1.1 underlines the fact that the study of capitals cannot be reduced to small-town analysis, a field that has undergone recent renewal, mostly from a cultural point of view.³ Nor does it belong to medium-sized city analysis (Hollingsworth and Hollingsworth 1979). The situation has changed since the 1950s because many capitals have become metropolises, from Atlanta to Salt Lake City and Austin. Indeed, the 2010 census revealed that 24% of state capitals had fewer than fifty thousand inhabitants in their municipalities, 28% had more than a quarter of a million inhabitants, and 34% had a million or more in their CSAs or MSAs. The difficulty in classifying state capitals was well expressed in the appraisal of Columbia, South Carolina’s seat of government: It’s a wonderful city. . . . It’s still a big small town—it’s small enough that you are always running into someone you know, but not so small that you know everyone.⁴ Such diversity shows that the history of American state capitals is complex and needs some explanation.

Fundamental Questions

By a Capital I mean a city which is not only the seat of political government, but is also by the size, wealth, and character of its population the head and centre [sic] of the country, a leading seat of commerce and industry, a reservoir of financial resources, the favored residence of the great and powerful, the spot in which the chiefs of the learned professions are to be found, where the most potent and widely read journals are published, whither men of literary and scientific capacity are drawn.

JAMES BRYCE, THE AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH (1891)⁵

First we require a definition of the word capital. Following Bryce’s definition would lead to the conclusion that there is no real capital in the country, echoing Alexis de Tocqueville, who thought that the decentralization of power brought by the absence of a real capital was the cause of the survival of democratic institutions in America. But to work on an a priori definition is not the best way to analyze the question. First, Bryce’s definition refers to European centralized states rather than to the American federal system, in which urban primacy and politics follow a different logic (Glaeser 1999).⁶ Second, his definition is based on the broadest interpretation of the word capital; the Latin word caput means head, and he stated that a capital must be at the head of the political, economic, social, and cultural spheres. This study takes the opposite course, studying the actual status of political capitals in the organization of the United States instead of the position they should or might have. I also analyze how American leaders or citizens looked at their capitals and how they envisioned them. The executive secretary of the American Civic Association asked some interesting questions about the essence of state capitals.

Where should the State buildings be located? How many of them should be centralized in the State capitals? What provision should be made for future expansion? What is the desirable location of the business district of the capital city in relation to State buildings? . . . What do the State officials owe the capital city? How can the city fathers serve the State? . . . Have the citizens of the State a feeling of ownership and pride in the State capital? Should the State capital be located in a commercial or industrial city? Should it be near the center of the State? Should the State universities and other State institutions be located in the State capital? Should all of the executive departments be centralized in the capital city? (James 1925–26, 387–88)⁷

Paul W. Pollock answered these questions, perhaps a little too emphatically, when he argued that the state capitals still form the nucleus of our country’s vital nervous system. They are the life-force of our economic and political society. As such, they together exert incalculable influence on all areas of American life. (Pollock 1960, foreword). Putting these questions and ideas in a broader perspective yields the thesis that underlies this book: studying state capitals is a useful way to look at some fundamental questions regarding the United States of America.

Table 1.1 State capitals: Basic facts

Sources: US Census Bureau, 2010; local histories

Note: New town means the town was intended to become the capital when founded; village means the town was very small when designated as the capital.

* μSA: micropolitan statistical area; MSA: metropolitan statistical area.

† For Annapolis and Montpelier, the population is the municipal population.

There are three fundamental concerns: the building of the national territorial structure; how the American democracy worked during that period; and the evolution of the American city and the inhabitants’ relationship to it. To address these concerns, three geographical levels must be taken into account: a state capital is a capitol (a building; both words are pronounced identically), a municipality (a fact usually overlooked), and the state it symbolizes. All levels have precise boundaries that are both exclusive and inclusive (a Texan is not an Oregonian, for instance).

The first issue arising from that framework is the status of state capitals in the national democratic balance. The fact that American democracy is based on the idea that power must be as decentralized as possible—the definition of possible varying according to the ebbs and flows of federalist ideas—has been thoroughly studied.⁸ But the operation of this idea at the local level has been given far less attention, and such studies have mostly tended to scrutinize the municipal level. Capitals have only been treated from the political point of view, as places where decisions are taken at the state level, and almost never from the spatial point of view. Nor have they been looked at through the lens of the changing relationships between the private sector and the public sector, especially during current deregulation and privatization processes, although capitals epitomize such relationships.

The second issue concerns the status of capitals in the American urban system: Do they form a parallel system, disconnected from the classic system, largely based on economic criteria? Capitals were indeed part of the construction of the states and the urban system, but in a spatial framework that is quite varied. Does the capital of tiny Rhode Island have a status similar to the capital of Alaska? This leads us to inquire into the role of state boundaries in the building and workings of the United States, and still further into the relationships between the political and economic realms. State capitals, with some exceptions (such as Boston, Atlanta, and Indianapolis) developed much more slowly than most other American cities. The reason was not the will to be secluded from economics. On the contrary, capitals also dreamed of becoming economic metropolises. This is clearly put by a member of Michigan’s House of Representatives in his comment on the victory of Lansing at the end of the 1847 capital contest: To me and my constituents in Clinton County, it was the opening and building of roads from Pontiac and Ann Arbor and for seventy miles into the wilderness where we lived. It was opening for us a way to markets and bringing us again into connection with the civilization from which we had unwisely but voluntarily exiled ourselves (Upton 1990, 402).

The capitals’ developmental delay is often charged to a corrupt government on one hand, and to a relatively unenlightened citizenry on the other. Only in the most recent generation or two have these factors changed for the better. A more generous interpretation of state capitals reads them as the currently fading expression of the Jeffersonian ideal—a democracy based upon small but educated farmers. All but eleven of the state capitals were selected during the nineteenth century, thirty-five of them before 1861, an era of pioneer and idealized territorial vision. Washington, DC, the national capital city, could therefore have served as the model for state capitals, just as the national capitol building came to be virtually the standard design for state capitols. The Washington model removed the political capital from economic centers. The choice of Washington grew from a compromise between North and South. By contrast, state capitals grew each in their own way, out of the flux and hurly-burly that was American development. Local elites tried to win state capital status not only for economic advantage but also for the political stability that such a status might provide. Most of the time, however, stability proved elusive, and state capitals migrated—often westward, like the pioneers. Capitals shifted as political factions grabbed control and railway companies fought over new territories. The United States is littered with towns that once dreamed of the capital’s crown—like Prince Charmings—but were either unable to catch it or unable to retain it.

Do state capitals consequently express an imbalance between form and function? A historian of Frankfort, Kentucky’s capital, wrote that as early as 1977, some of the city’s business and political leaders were voicing concern over Frankfort’s image as a ‘company town’ whose economy was excessively dominated by state government (Kramer 1986, 386). Are state capitals akin to company towns, dominated by one function? Are they in essence public company towns? The difference is that in this case, the one function—government—never ceases to reinforce itself. Unlike business, government almost never goes bust. Are state capitals more than simply symbolic towns? Most Americans believed—and still do—that political power is the key to the solution of most problems and to the advancement of society. Capital cities were and are the embodiment of such power, which brings us back to the first issue, American democracy.

A Study in Complexity

What would be the best scientific approach to understanding the choice and subsequent evolution of colonial, territorial, and state capitals? The major question is how to encompass four centuries of history for about 180 cities throughout the United States (all former and current capitals). We must also take into account that this would be the first book on the subject. A multifocused approach seems the best way to convey the complexity of the processes and to take into account the variety of sources available. My intention is to lay a sound foundation for an intellectual debate on American state capitals, as Donald Meinig did (in a far broader way) for the historical geography of the United States. To achieve such an aim, following a single theoretical path would be too narrow an approach. This does not mean that there is no major point of entry into the subject. This study is based on a transversal approach close to Immanuel Wallerstein’s notion of space-time (2004). The analysis is cultural (and not culturalist), because culture has to deal with the political and economic as well as the spatial processes at stake. This means that I try to go beyond linearity through the building of a model that reveals a certain permanence as well as rendering (sources allowing) multiple temporalities. I also try to go beyond general processes to study groups, individuals, and representations (such as the small town). My approach is fundamentally incremental and tries to build an explanatory model progressively, without imposing it a priori and without predetermining its components. It is based on possible hypotheses—coming from various disciplines—among which I try to determine the most probable ones. As always in social sciences, this model is seen only as a means, not an end.

The use of narration goes with that cultural approach: it provides chronological frameworks, suspense around moments of crisis rendered through stories that offer some part of individuality, and models that take into account explanations based on the long term. I refuse dogmatism and wish to shed various kinds of light on the richness of my subject. If we must find an academic slot for this study, historical geography would be the best one, since it has long been characterized by liberal eclecticism (Holdsworth 2002).

I fully agree with David Hamer, who wrote, Why should historians feel inhibited about doing research just because they are unable to find some convenient category in which to slot their work? (Hamer 1990, 3). Ted Margadant, in his study of urban rivalries in Revolutionary France, expressed how difficult it is for such an analysis to follow the well-trodden paths of historical research and how necessary it is to broaden the analytical scope. According to him—and I heartily concur—that difficulty is the very interest of the study:

The social historians have assumed that conflicts within towns were more important than conflicts between towns; most institutional historians have overlooked the extraordinary efforts that townspeople made to gain the new directories and lawcourts; and cultural historians have ignored the fundamental beliefs that these townspeople shared about the economic interests at stake in the reorganization of the kingdom. The subject of urban rivalries over the institutions of the state does not fit easily into any of these interpretative frameworks. Its anomalous position has the advantage of bringing a different angle of vision to bear on contentious issues within the field of revolutionary historiography. (Margadant 1992, 443–44)⁹

To bring to light the processes of the selection and evolution of capitals, I have therefore tried in this study to follow what Anne Kelly Knowles described as the best method for historical geographers to follow: empirical research that digs for answers to historical questions, critical examination of landscape, and a desire to understand how the material world has been shaped by human action and ideas (Knowles 2001, 469). To fulfill such aims, I have intertwined two methodological paths. This study is located within modern academic and civic concerns but without eliminating Meinigian narratives (Holdsworth 2002, 675). The first approach searches for models that throw light on the processes at work and for theories that explain the formation, evolution, and image of urban America, which help in understanding capitals. The second methodology owes much to the work of Tuan, Giddens, and others on the role of perceptions and emotions in the understanding of cities and urbanity. Capitals are an interesting field to study because their heavy symbolism enhances the affects and sentiments that people manifest toward them (Widdowfield 2000). I have therefore tried to revive the main actors in what is now studied as a process or an overall pattern and also to revive the places—to describe their landscapes and their amenities, as well as their shortcomings, all of which played a part in the final choice of a new capital. The examples given aim not only to entertain readers but to prove that history and geography have to be true to their categorization as social or, better, human sciences. Three themes have therefore been privileged.

1. Capitals as what French historian Pierre Nora called the places of memory (lieux de mémoire), that condense the long-lasting time in the instantaneous one (Debarbieux 1995, 105).¹⁰ Capitals having evolved throughout several centuries—for the oldest ones—Fernand Braudel’s concept of long-lasting time (temps long) is very useful.

2. The process of capital choice as a revealing moment of crisis. A crisis belongs to short-term processes, but it should not be opposed to long-term ones, both being the two faces of the same coin, that is, urban rhythms. Braudel’s approach was mainly based on long-term processes (since he had been influenced by Paul Vidal de la Blache and structuralists, for whom permanence and durability were foremost). I prefer Marcel Roncayolo’s approach. Inverting Braudel’s method, he asks how short-term phenomena create long-term structures (Roncayolo 2002). The processes of capital choice are revealing because their effects are often still at work today. Selecting capitals induced the incremental processes of economic evolution and the construction of an image. This refers to the question of heritage and identity, issues that have received recent academic scrutiny. Identity is built by three major elements: the human subject, society, and geographical space. Identity is crystallized by elements that, by becoming part of a common heritage, create a collective identity and a powerful social mobilization (Di Meo 2002). Capitals and capitols are very strong unifying forces in a nation that is more and more diverse, be it ethnically or socially. Contrary to the cultural relativism of the postmodernist approach, which artificially fabricates cultural objects, capitals and capitols are clear bases of the American identity. They also were and remain major public spaces in a country where the forces of privatization are very strong.

3. Capitals as symbolic places that participate in territorial construction and in interactive adjustments to other ways of territorial structuring.

From a Plurality of Sources to Multiple Points of View

I did the research for this study primarily in libraries, searching for local histories of capitals and states, as well as for general studies in American politics, urbanism, and so forth.¹¹ Numerous local historical journals are published in the United States; almost every state has produced one, and some have two journals that proved very useful. Second, research was also conducted in state archives. This often proved disappointing, as in the Alabama State Library and Archives, where no minutes of the legislative debates are preserved. The only state newspaper published in 1846 preserved there was Tuscaloosa’s Independent Monitor, but there was only one issue, for April 8, 1846, which held nothing of interest for this study. In fact, Montgomery’s first capitol burned in 1849, destroying the state library with its numerous documents about the early history of the state, although the public records were fortunately saved. Likewise, research in the state archives, the state library, and the municipal library of New Jersey did not yield many results. Trenton was chosen in 1790 as the permanent capital, but the legislative minutes only began in 1800. Before that date, only dry records of the decisions taken (with no record of the debates preceding the votes) are available. The state’s newspapers (e.g., the State Gazette) between 1786 and 1792 are not preserved. The primary sources seem therefore hard to find. The only possible ones are Governor Paterson’s papers, which are to be found at Paterson University, New Jersey. In 1990, the Trenton Historical Society held a bicentennial program honoring Trenton’s selection as the state capital, called A Capital Place: New Jersey’s Quest for a Permanent Seat of Government, but the records of the events—if they exist—were nowhere to be found. Fortunately, secondary sources exist (see Walker 1929; WWP New Jersey 1939; McCormick 1981).

Field trips, the foundation of geographical research, provided the third way to look at state capitals—a more impressionistic but very useful means of knowledge. I visited thirty-one state capitals, from Augusta to Sacramento and from Albany to Baton Rouge. To inhale the atmosphere of a city, to walk in and around its monuments and streets, and to converse with its inhabitants gives more reality to the sometimes cold analyses that one can find on each capital.

As a result, this study does not pretend to provide the definitive and complete answer to the capital question, but it offers a first approach to the complex processes leading to the selection of capitals as well as a first assessment of their subsequent evolution and of their integration into the broader processes of territorial and urban development. Bear in mind that this work was written in 2012, and that it is impossible to bring forward any true revival of the past. This book is meant as a basis for future work that will correct the factual errors that are certainly present and modify or challenge its interpretations. Since social sciences are more social than scientific, scholars know that theses are only put forward to be corrected or discarded by further research and new theoretical frameworks. This book presents my truth, and my hope is that readers will find that it is not too far off the(ir) mark.

The ten chapters follow a long-term analysis through two lenses—one long-term, one short-term—from the choice of the first colonial capitals to the fate of the fifty present capitals. Chapter 2 emphasizes that capitals are singular in the American urban fabric, from physical and social perspectives, because of the monumentality and the public spaces they offer. This sheds light on their enduring symbolic power as places of memory. The next three chapters consider the processes of capital choice as moments of crisis, and they progressively build an explanatory model. First, chapter 3 looks at the spatial patterns of the migration of capitals that almost all states have experienced, taking a diachronic approach to the framework of American territorial construction. This study progressively uncovers the processes at work, as well as their interrelations. The search for criteria for the model begins with chapter 4: Puritanism, small town ideals, the booster model, and the gateway model are successively examined. Chapter 5 takes a closer look at the major factor of explanation: politics. It examines the balance of powers that resulted from the process of choice and assesses the degree of democracy present at the time by looking at the power of king, Congress, territories, legislatures, and the influence of the people through referenda. It then proposes a global model.

The next two chapters change the perspective. Having scrutinized the processes of selection, we examine the evolution of present capitals in order to explain their place in American territorial construction and their position in the American urban system. The developmental delay of many of them is also addressed. Chapter 6 deals with what could be called the sleeping or purgatory years of state capitals, ending in the 1950s, when a majority experienced a slow demographic and economic growth in a rapidly growing nation and suffered under a Babylonian image. Chapter 7 looks at the current revival—or late awakening—of most state capitals, which became open to more political purity and economic success in the so-called postindustrial age. However, the national urban hierarchy has not been fundamentally altered by their growth. Chapter 8 aims to validate all the previous models, while rendering them more concrete. It presents a deeper study of the evolution of three capitals, which serve as examples of three types of transformation—from the brightest (Columbus, Ohio) to the medium-sized but locally grand (Des Moines, Iowa) and through modest but real evolution (Frankfort, Kentucky). Chapter 9 sheds light on the fate of former capitals, showing that although hosting the capitol did not often induce significant growth, being the seat of government allowed capitals a better fate than befell cities that lost such a coveted status, at least until the current politics of heritage revival. Chapter 10 briefly concludes the study by considering the modification of the image of capitals. The book ends with an appendix that provides demographic and historical tables in order to sum up the evolution of capitals.

2

Capitals as Places of Memory

Capital cities differ from other cities from two points of view. First, they often depart from the supposed uniformity of American cities from coast to coast. Second, one could argue that capitals are the most American of the nation’s cities—not because they have more characteristic features than other cities (in terms of location, frontier history, etc.), as such thinking suffers from a necessarily subjective and incomplete choice of attributes,¹ but because they are symbols of the United States of America. Capitals are places of memory and are studied here through the three rhetorical figures put forward by Bernard Debarbieux (1995):

1. The place as an attribute, a stereotype that has a constant meaning, as does, for instance, the Empire State Building for New York. For state capitals, capitol buildings play that role.

2. The generic place that materializes an element of the historical core of the nation and is an allegory to the social group that constitutes that very place. The national capitol, for instance, materializes American democracy as the state capitols and grounds materialize the entire state.

3. The place of condensation, as an image and an environment. Such places are built and identified by a society that gives itself to be seen through them, [they] . . . narrate its history and anchor its values (Debarbieux 1995, 100). In these places, individual and collective experiences take place that revive their reference to the social group and to its territory. Borrowing a phrase from linguistics, they are spatial and social synecdoches. Urbanism and monuments are conceived so as to render a visit to the capital edifying. They concentrate emblems and dignitaries; they are the strong points of the territory and welcome the significant events of the society (e.g., laying the capitol’s cornerstone or the inauguration of a new capitol).

Capitals belong to the three figures, the third one being the most important. These figures function as a signifying continuum, translating three relationships to time: past events, perceived as the coming of a new order; perpetuation;² and instantaneity of experience. In other words, they take part in both the long-term and immediate processes that are the basis of this study’s approach. From the geographical point of view, they offer a unique pattern, because no other country demonstrates a similar condensation from the national scale (Washington, DC, with the national capitol) to the regional scale (fifty state capitals, with capitols that often mimic the national one). Scale and social construction are strongly linked: capitals express a symbolic language paraphrasing the social space and paraphrasing Washington, DC.³ These rhetorical figures are seen through four successive lenses (which are not always simultaneously present in all state capitals):

1. Capitals as generic places, through the naming of capitals, which enhances their strong symbolic meaning, distinguishing them from other cities in the state.

2. Condensation processes in capitals, through their platting, which stage and translate the polity in the physical pattern of capital cities.

3. Debarbieux’s three figures are seen through the lens of the erection of monuments, the most impressive of which are the capitols. Once symbols of the reality of statehood, they have become symbols of permanence, linking the states with their history.

4. Finally, we emphasize that condensation does not always encompass the whole place and the entire population of state capitals. This point is studied through the unique relationship between the public and the private spheres. Capitals certainly host and stage the most important public spaces and places in their states, but they do not always create harmony and equality.

Naming or Renaming Capitals—a Political Action

A capital is first a name on a map—a name that owes nothing to chance but often a lot to politics. The names of American capitals reflect the leading group(s) that founded or ruled the state. They also reflect the history of the building of the United States of America; in this sense, they belong to Debarbieux’s generic places. Tables 2.1 and 2.2 show two overlapping categories of capital names. The first one is linguistic (40% of the names are not English); the second one is thematic.

Table 2.1 Naming the capital: Language (English excluded)

Table 2.2 Naming the capital: Main themes

These names express the diverse origins of the national population. The four main groups behind the United States’ colonization are represented in table 2.1: besides the ultimate winners, the British and the first immigrants—Native Americans—are represented, along with the French and the Spanish. The presence of German names is a testimony to the largest single group of immigrants that came to the United States. But there is a telling exception: the African Americans were left aside when choosing capitals’ names, as they had been left aside in early American history and were denied their original names.

French names come mostly from local landscapes. Louisiana’s future capital was christened Baton Rouge. This name, given to the fort built in 1721, comes from the red pole with the heads of fish and bear stuck upon it that the French explorer Iberville had seen on the same spot in 1699 (Davis 1959, 30).⁴ Idaho’s capital is called Boise City, an inconspicuous, bucolic name in the midst of a mining boom. The name derives from the Boise River (Wooded River), named by French Canadians in the early 1810s (Arrington 1994, 108). The city lives up to its name; it is now nicknamed the City of Trees. Des Moines also comes from the French name of the Des Moines River (Trappist Monks had lived there). The War Department preferred it to Fort Raccoon (the name of the town’s other river), which was suggested by Captain Allen, the first head of the garrison. But some think that Des Moines could be derived from the Indian word moingona, meaning river of the mounds—burial mounds were located near the river (see the city’s website). Nature (or lack of imagination) also inspired the founders of Springfield, on the tributary waters of Spring Creek (Krohe 1976, 4); Sacramento (the river); Little Rock, and Salt Lake City.⁵

Another discernible trend in the choice of a name was the attempt to bring success to the newborn settlement by placing it under the aegis of God or natives. The oldest American state capital (1609) was given the name of Santa Fe (Holy Faith).⁶ The explorers of that quite unknown part of the Spanish Empire must have had great faith for them to imagine that their tiny settlement would outlive them or even the coming winter. Salem’s name comes from the Hebrew word shalom (peace) and refers directly to Jerusalem. In a Christian vein, when Roger Williams fled Boston’s overly strict Puritans in June, 1636, and founded a new town, he named it Providence. In a famous speech made for the occasion, he said, I, having made covenantes of peaceable neighborhood with all the sachems and natives round about us, and having in a sense of God’s merciful providence unto me in my distresse, called the place Providence. I desired it might be for a shelter for persons distressed of conscience. (quoted in McLoughlin 1978, 9). More than two centuries later, a similar quest for peace with the local Indians influenced the naming of Cheyenne. The Union Pacific Railroad Company decided to call the town by its present cognomen in hopes of conciliating the interesting Savages (Stelter 1967, 7). Vain hopes. To pay lip service, Iowa City and Indianapolis stressed the native names of those states. Topeka, which means wild potato in Shawnee, was so named because this vegetable grew plentifully upon the rich bottom land along the river⁷ (Cutler 1883). Tallahassee is the Apalachee Indian word for old town or abandoned fields, which was perhaps not a very propitious choice. Michigan had also an eponymous new capital for a few months in 1847. The legislators had at first approved the name Aloda, but changed it to Michigan, before again modifying it to Lansing in 1848 (Dunbar and May 1995, 238). In fact, the only capital bearing an autochthonous name is Honolulu (protected bay), for the Hawaiians had already named it before the archipelago was colonized by the United States.

The presence of Greek names is interesting. It was the cause of some merriment among the legislators of Indiana. The process involved a prolonged discussion by the House, in Committee of the Whole. Judge Jeremiah Sullivan of the Supreme Court, who was a member of the legislature at the time, related the circumstances of the naming as follows. After an entire day had been lost, and many names had been rejected (e.g., Tecumseh or Suwarrow), Sullivan proposed Indianapolis the next day. After a first laugh, Sullivan reckoned it was adopted because the Greek termination would indicate to all the world the locality of the town (Dunn 1910, 26–27). But not everyone was pleased with this manifestation of onomastic Greek revival. Vincennes’s newspaper, the Indiana Centinel, favoring Tecumseh, published this incensed account in its January 15, 1821, edition: Such a name, kind readers, you would never find by searching from Dan to Beersheba; nor in all the libraries, museums, and patent offices in the world. . . . For this title your future capital will be greatly indebted, either to some learned Hebraist, some venerable Grecian, some sage and sentimental Brahmin, or some profound and academic Pauttowattomie (Dunn 1910, 27).

In fact, despite some incensed prose, Americans had already had recourse to venerable Grecian when naming Annapolis, Gallipolis, or Philadelphia. Missouri’s capital, City of Jefferson (commonly called Jefferson City), narrowly escaped being named Missouriopolis. Minneapolis was first named Teutopolis, owing to its German population. The Indiana Centinel would have been horrified at the name of a new town founded in December 1788 by a New Jersey speculator and his Kentucky associates. It was called Losantiville, meaning the city across the mouth of the Licking River. L stood for Licking; os was Latin for mouth; anti was opposite or across from; ville was for city. English, Latin, Greek, and French had been used in a single word! But when on January 2, 1790, Governor Arthur St. Clair arrived to make the town the new capital of the Northwest Territory, he rechristened it Cincinnati, to honor the Society of the Cincinnati, formed by Revolutionary War officers.⁸ Because of (or despite) its new name, Cincinnati immediately thrived (Knepper 1989, 66–67). Indeed, before the Greek revival of the 1820s, the classical education given to the youngsters of the American elite had accustomed them to Latin and Greek.⁹ But Latin was not abandoned: Corvallis, briefly the capital of Oregon in 1855, took its name from two Latin words that mean the heart of the valley.

Besides classics, the usual inspiration behind the names of capitals leaned toward grandness, before as well as after independence. Albany owes its name to the second title (Scottish) of the Duke of York that was given to the Dutch Fort Orange (founded 1624) in 1664, when it became English.¹⁰ The town did not retain its Mohican name of Pempotowwuthut-Muhhcanneuw, meaning the fireplace of the Mahikan nation (Kennedy 1983, 22). Lansing’s name follows the wishes of the first settlers, who came from Lansing, New York, a town that had been christened in honor of John Lansing Jr. (1754–1829), one of the nation’s founding fathers and a New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention.

Grander—and more secure—were the names of great presidents, used for Jefferson City, Madison, Jackson,¹¹ and Lincoln.¹² The latter’s case is more complex. Nebraska’s capital, Lincoln, is indeed a tribute to the great president, but also the result of a political miscalculation. North and South Platte factions embodied different political conceptions, for and against slavery. When a bill was drawn in 1867 that empowered the governor, the secretary of state, and the state auditor to select a site within southern counties to be named Capital City, the North Platters thought they could still retain the capital.¹³ Senator Patrick proposed to name the future capital Lincoln, certain that his South Platte opponent, Senator Reeves of Nebraska City, a strong Confederate, would refuse it, thus crushing southern hopes. But Senator Reeves agreed, and Lincoln became the capital (McKee and Duerschner 1976, 1). In the case of North Dakota, the afterthoughts with regard to grandness were economic. The capital was named Bismarck to thank and attract German investors in a newly built transcontinental railroad, of which the capital was the temporary terminus in 1873.¹⁴

In a simpler