Mr Jefferson, this week if we might I'd like to take you back to March 4, 1801.

The occasion was your first inauguration as President of the United States, sir.

Could you take us back to that day?

Yes, I was the first President to be inaugurated in the District of Columbia.

The capital, the first capital of the United States under our Constitution had been New York,

and then in the famous compromise, the eventual capital was set on the Potomac,

what became the District of Columbia, carved out of Maryland. capital was in the

the District of Columbia, carved out of Maryland and Virginia, but for a 10-year

interim between 1790 and 1800 the capital of the United States was in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia fully expected to keep the capital.

Once the government was established there, they assumed that it would never leave, but George

Washington and I both felt very strongly

that we needed to create a capital in the upper south on the Potomac near Mount Vernon.

I was the Secretary of State and helped to lay out the city and John Adams and his wife

Abigail were the first to live in what you call the White House, but only for a very short time

and he had been inaugurated in Philadelphia.

I was the first president to be inaugurated in Washington city.

Now when you think of Washington, you think of a splendid capital with marble

and many monuments and galleries and museums and so on.

That wasn't the case at all in my time.

It was a raw frontier village in a howling wilderness and there may have been as many as 3,500

people living in Alexandria and Georgetown but they weren't part of the capital per se.

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