The Compromise of 1790 was a compromise between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson with James Madison where Hamilton won the decision for the national government to take over and pay the state debts, and Jefferson and Madison obtained the national capital (District of Columbia) for the South. The compromise resolved the deadlock in Congress. Southerners were blocking the assumption of state debts by the treasury, thereby destroying the Hamiltonian program for building a fiscally strong federal government. Northerners rejected the proposal, much desired by Virginians, to locate the permanent national capital on the Virginia–Maryland border.