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Show the Confederacy, March Fourth, has always been observed as the beginning begin-ning of the Presidential term. Curiously adds the Trade Record, while the new government with its congress and chief executive were thus established in the City of New York ,the actual ' seat of the government govern-ment only remained here for a comparatively com-paratively short time. All the sections sec-tions of the country, New England, the Middle States and the South, j were respectively clamoring for the I establishment of the permanent capi-i capi-i tol and the matter was finally settled I in favor of the South by a compro-1 compro-1 mise by which certain southern mem-1 mem-1 bers withdrew their objections to a bill providing that the government ! of the United States should assume ! the $26,000,000 of debts which the various states had incurred during the Revolutionary War, and a measure meas-ure establishing the permanent seat of the government "on the Potomac River" was adopted, the necessary buildings for its occupancy to be ready by the year 1800 and the sessions ses-sions of Congress meantime to be held in the city of Philadephia. j This establishment in the wilder-j wilder-j ness of a new seat of government at j a point distant from any great busi-1 busi-1 ness center marked a new era in capi-tol capi-tol making, and is now being followed follow-ed in Australia where the new city of Canberre is being established as the future capitol of the commonwealth common-wealth of Australia. term. And it al happened on "Wall Street" within a stone's throw of the door of The National City Bank of New York where the Trade Record is published. It was in the City 0 New York that the old "Congress of the Confederacy" Con-federacy" held its final session. It had led a peripatetic life holding sessions ses-sions in no less than eight different cities and town, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Balti-more, Lancaster) Pa., York, Pa., Princeton, N. Y., Annapolis, Md., Trenton, N. J., and then New York where its session began, in 1785, and where it sat in the old City Hall at the corner of Wall and Nassau Streets. During its last session, in July 1788, it received official notice that the new Constitution, framed by a constitutional convention held at Philadelphia in 1787, had been ratified rati-fied by the necessary number of .states and it providing that the selection sel-ection of presidential electors by the various states as provided in the new constitution should occur on the "1st Wednesday in January 1789," that he electors should cast their votes for President on the "first Wednesday Wednes-day in February" and that the President Presi-dent thus elected should be inaugurated inaugur-ated on the "first Wednesday in March." And as it happened that the "first Wednesday in March," of that year occurred on the fourth day of the month the date for the beginning begin-ning of the Presidential term was thus fixed for the historic date, the "Fourth of March." And while it happened that in the absence of railways, rail-ways, telegraphs, long distance telephones, tele-phones, wireless telegraphy and the radio, George Washington, seated at his comfortable home at Mount Vernon, Vern-on, Va., did not receive official notice no-tice of his 'election in time to reach New York by March 4 and was in fact inaugurater on April 3ft, the date fixed for the inauguration by the act of the expiring Congress of WHY MARCH FOURTH? How did it happen that the fourth day of the month of March was fixed as the permanent date for the inauguration in-auguration of the President of the United States and the beginning of the Presidential term? Now that the usual quadrennial proposition to "change the date of inauguration" has received the approval ap-proval of one branch of Congress and may be. offered as an amendment to ' the Constitution, it is interesting, says the Trade Record of The National Na-tional City Bank of New York, to know just how it happened that this rather peculiar date, the fourth day of March, was fixed as tfiat for the inauguration of the President and at the beginning of the presidential |