Towns

MD, USA

Annapolis Serves as National Capital

November 26, 1783

DateNovember 26, 1783
Precisionday

From November 1783 through August 1784, Annapolis served as the seat of the Continental Congress — the de facto national capital. Congress had fled Philadelphia in June 1783 after unpaid Pennsylvania veterans surrounded the State House. During the Annapolis session Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris and received Washington's resignation.

People Involved

George Washington(Commander-in-Chief)

Virginia planter and Continental Army commander-in-chief who owned and managed Mount Vernon's enslaved workforce. Absent from his estate for most of the war, he directed Lund Washington's management by correspondence and returned to find the plantation's human community shaped by eight years of wartime disruption.