York served as the capital of the United States for nine months when Congress fled Philadelphia ahead of the British occupation in September 1777. It was in York that Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first governing document of the new nation, on November 15, 1777. The Articles were imperfect — they created a weak central government that would eventually be replaced by the Constitution — but they represented the first formal agreement among the states to govern themselves as a unified body.
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STORIES
HISTORICAL VOICE
The Document That Held the Union Together
The Articles of Confederation were not a great document. The men who wrote them knew it. The debates in the York courthouse had revealed every fault line in the American union — large states against s...
MODERN VOICE
The Courthouse That Was a Capital
York is not on most people's Revolutionary War itinerary. Philadelphia is an hour east, Gettysburg is half an hour west, and both of those draw millions of visitors. We get a fraction of that traffic,...