UNION OF THE AMERICAS IN 1999.
By permission of the Pan-American Exposition Co. of Buffalo, N. Y.
In 1990, by decree of Congress of the United Americas, and at the close of a Capital transferred to Mexico. special national election held for that purpose, both houses of Congress by a two-thirds vote, elected to transfer the seat of our National government from Washington, D. C., to the city of Mexico, which in 1999, commanded a position midway between the North and South sections of the great Republic. Although transferred by act of Congress to the city of Mexico, our National Capital in 1999 still retained the glorious name of Washington. The name of Washington, D. C., was changed to that of Columbia.
Statesmen in 1990 wisely decided to retain the name of Washington for the National Capital of the great Republic. A few were in favor of retaining the ancient name of Mexico for the new capital but the vast majority of our American voters in 1990 treasured with patriotic love and tenderness the revered name of the Father of his Country. They believed that no matter where the capital of the Republic might be moved to, whether it were located in Brazil or in Alaska, the fame of Washington must go with it and bear the honored association of that name.
Washington, D. C., took the new name of Columbia, having become a city of secondary political importance. The name of Washington belongs to the national capital alone, the home of Congress, the residence of the National Executive and forum of the Supreme Court of the Americas. The hero of Valley Forge and champion of American Independence was still near and dear to every heart in 1990, and may centuries yet unborn honor his memory.
The city of Mexico became the Capital of the Americas for manifold reasons, Mexico a Natural Centre. chiefly political, strategical and commercial. To those, who, in 1899 had been accustomed from birth to regard the United States as that narrow strip of country lying between Canada and the Gulf of Mexico, the announcement that the capital of the Americas had been transferred to the city of Mexico, must cause a shock of unpleasant sensation.
It is a human weakness to worship our idols. Woe to those who would destroy them. Tradition must not be tampered with. Americans of 1899 had been taught that a small and beautiful city on the Potomac was the capital of our Federal Union. To them it must come in the nature of a shock to learn that in 1990 the name of that city had changed to Columbia, and Washington, the National Capital, had been transferred to the State of Mexico.
There are, however, other instances on record in which it has been deemed advisable to change the capital of a great nation. If in the year 1810 an intelligent Russian had announced to his countrymen that the seat of government in Russia would be transferred in 1812 from golden, sacred Moscow to bleak, cold St. Petersburg on the barren swamps of the Neva, his prediction would have been laughed to scorn; such a statement would have encountered a tempest of derision. Your orthodox Russian would have raved at the mere mention of such an eventuality. In 1810 any intelligent Russian would have regarded the abandonment of ancient Moscow, the custodian of the Kremlin, for a barren spot on the shores of the Baltic, as a positive sacrilege. Yet it is historically true that in 1812 this very thing came to pass.
Instead of uprooting our National Capital from a spot hallowed with sacred traditions In Perpetual Sunshine and Flowers. and transplanting it into a cold, sterile region, as in the case of the Russian capital, Washington, as a seat of government, was removed from the banks of the Potomac into the splendors of a tropical region,—into the domain of Montezuma and his brave Aztec warriors, where fruits and flowers chase one another in an unbroken circle through the year; a paradise where the gales are loaded with perfumes of the forests in which birds of radiant plumage and exquisite song fill the air with their delicious melodies.