Having just watched the DC area freak out yet again over a heavy rainstorm, I am forced to comment: yes, yes, it was important to have the capital city be built from scratch, and in roughly the center of what was then the settled portion of the USA.
But did it have to be in the middle of a freaking swamp?
That’s a feature, not a bug.
It’s in the middle of a swamp because where else would you dump all the refuse?
Yes. But they really shouldn’t have drained it, left it as it was. Anything to make living there more miserable so people wouldn’t want to stay.