How Washington became Donald Trump’s chew toy
The politics are particularly potent today, but their origins are older than the republic itself
America’s capital city is particularly vulnerable to the dictates of President Donald Trump because of an insurrection against Congress—not the one on January 6th 2021 but a more successful one a couple of centuries earlier. On June 21st 1783 hundreds of mutinous soldiers surrounded Congress in what was effectively the capital, Philadelphia, to demand back-wages that the revolutionary government could not afford to pay. Unlike the insurrectionists of 2021, they did not attack the building or hurt anyone, but they chased Congress out of town.
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This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Capital punishment”
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