 Do it again, and you can find somebody else. We're not going to be there. Whoa. When I say whoa, I mean whoa. Well, everyone knows that Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States, but it wasn't always the case. At first, Philadelphia was the capital, but when the veterans of the Revolutionary War marched on Philadelphia in 1783 demanding back pay, Congress snuck out of the city and reassembled in Princeton, New Jersey.