a unified territorial government for the entire District of Columbia. The new government consisted of an appointed governor and 11-member council, a locally elected 22-member assembly, and a board of public works charged with modernizing the city. The Seal of the District of Columbia features the date 1871, recognizing the year the District's government was incorporated. The Act did not establish a new city or city government within the District. Regarding a city of Washington, it stated that "that portion of said District included within the present limits of the city of Washington shall continue to be known as the city of Washington". In the present day, the name "Washington" is commonly used to refer to the entire District, but DC law continues to use the definition of the city of Washington as given in the 1871 Organic Act. In 1873, President Grant appointed an influential member of the board of public works, Alexander Robey Shepherd, to the post of governor. Shepherd authorized large-scale municipal projects, which greatly modernized Washington. In doing so however, the governor spent three times the money that had been budgeted for capital improvements, bankrupting the city. In 1874, Congress replaced the District's quasi-elected territorial government with an appointed three-member Board of Commissioners. Direct rule by Congress continued until the 1973 passage of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, a century later. Conspiracy theories The Act is the basis of several claims held by the sovereign citizen movement. According to these, the Act made the District, and consequently the whole United States, into a business corporation. These claims stem from the term municipal corporation used in the Act. There are many kinds of corporations; a corporation is any group authorized to legally act as a single entity; in this case, an incorporated, organized district of the United States. Most U.S. cities and counties are municipal corporations. This was later used by QAnon supporters to falsely claim that former president Donald Trump would be sworn in as the 19th president of the "original United States" on March 4, 2021. This date corresponds to the original presidential inauguration date because they claimed the Twentieth Amendment was invalid, as it was not passed by the original United States. See also District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801 History of Washington, D.C. District of Columbia home rule References External links "An Act to provide a Government for the District