During the American Revolution, the City of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Served as the United States' Capital for Just One Day

The Second Continental Congress had already adjourned for the day when a letter arrived for its president, John Hancock. In the September 18, 1777, missive, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton delivered a dire warning: “If Congress have not yet left Philadelphia, they ought to do it immediately without fail, for the enemy have the means of throwing a party this night into the city.” He’d learned this lesson the hard way, losing his horse and one of his men to British gunfire while attempting to cross a nearby river. Hamilton’s message triggered an early morning exodus from Philadelphia, which had served as the capital of the nascent United States for much of the previous year. (Under threat from the British, the nation’s leaders operated out of Baltimore between December 1776 and February 1777.) Over the next week, more than two dozen delegates made their way west to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with a trove of important government records in tow.

The men followed a circuitous route to avoid detection, traveling nearly 180 miles when “the directest road is not more than 88 miles,” as Massachusetts delegate John Adams reported in a letter to his wife, Abigail. The Congress convened in Lancaster’s courthouse on September 27, meeting for just a few hours to discuss routine matters related to the ongoing war with Great Britain. Toward the end of the session, the delegates decided to relocate west once again, this time to York, across the Susquehanna River.

The men realized that “it wasn’t that hard for them to get here, so it wasn’t going to be that hard for the British to get here,” says Stephanie Townrow, director of interpretation and exhibitions at LancasterHistory, a nonprofit museum and research center. Lancaster’s brief stint as the nation’s capital was over almost as quickly as it began. Today, Lancaster is one of just nine American cities that have served as the U.S. capital, however fleetingly.

Nearly 250 years later, however, the city wears its title with pride, even hosting an annual Capital Day celebration to commemorate the occasion. When the American Revolution began in 1775, Lancaster was the Colonies’ largest inland city, “surrounded by rich farmland and dozens of mills, ironworks and rifle shops,” historian Thomas J. McGuire writes in The Philadelphia Campaign.

Home to an estimated 3,000 people, the city “was a large supply depot and crucial staging area for troops and supplies passing between New York State, Virginia and the western frontier at Fort Pitt,” on the other side of Pennsylvania. Lancaster’s contributions to the Revolution weren’t limited to a single day in 1777. Craftsmen manufactured rifles for the Continental Army, and “farmers supplied many of the provisions that kept our soldiers alive,” Townrow says.

The city also housed British and Hessian prisoners of war, as well as hospitals where locals cared for wounded soldiers. Support for the patriot cause ran strong in Lancaster, but the local populace also included loyalists and individuals who were apathetic toward the fight for independence. The region was home to many German immigrants, some of whom had recently arrived in North America and had little stake in the conflict.