When members of the Continental Congress fled Philadelphia in September 1777, they carried with them the fragile aspirations of a nation that did not yet legally exist. Their destination, after a brief stop in Lancaster, was the small but industrious town of York, Pennsylvania, situated on the western side of the Susquehanna River. For nine consequential months—from September 30, 1777, to June 27, 1778—York served as the de facto capital of the United States, and within its modest courthouse and taverns, delegates wrestled with questions that would determine whether the American experiment survived its infancy or collapsed under the weight of military setbacks, political intrigue, and diplomatic uncertainty. The story of revolutionary York is not a tale of battlefield heroism; it is a story of governance under duress, of men attempting to build a constitutional framework and secure an international alliance while their army starved and froze at Valley Forge less than a hundred miles to the east.
PEOPLE
KEY EVENTS
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,...