ALEXANDRIA, Va. (7News) — A Georgia congressman’s viral proposal to add Arlington and Alexandria back into Washington, D.C., is called the “Make D.C. Square Again Act,” which has a history lesson buried inside it.

Rep. Rick Allen McCormick posted the idea on X this week, arguing the two Virginia jurisdictions were “always meant” to be part of the nation’s capital. His proposal comes as Virginia fights a federal court order blocking certification of results from a special election tied to its ongoing congressional redistricting battle.

“What we want to do is make D.C. square again,” McCormick wrote. “We repeal that unconstitutional law, give back Virginia exactly what it should have, give D.C. what it should have, and get this thing right.”

There is currently no indication the proposal has any support in Congress or from leaders in D.C. or Virginia. But the history behind it is complicated.

When Congress established a permanent home for the federal government through the Residence Act of 1790, Virginia and Maryland each surrendered territory to create it. The 100-square-mile District was made up of 69 square miles from Maryland and 31 square miles from Virginia, including what’s now known as Arlington and Alexandria.

When those areas were absorbed into the new District, its residents lost their Virginia state citizenship and, after 1802, could no longer vote in congressional or presidential elections.

Almost from the moment of its passage in 1801, Virginia was looking for a way to get its territory back. But it was economics, specifically the economics of slavery and the domestic slave trade, that ultimately made it happen.

Beginning in the 1820s, Alexandria became a major port of the domestic slave trade, with a series of slave trading companies operating out of a slave pen at 1315 Duke Street. Enslaved people from the Upper South, where tobacco farming was in decline, were bought and sold in Alexandria before being shipped to cotton plantations further south.

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Interior view of a slave pen at 1315 Duke Street in Alexandria, Virginia between 1861 and 1869. (Library of Congress)

Abolitionists had been vigorously lobbying Congress to end slavery and the slave trade in the District. In response, Alexandrians who profited from slaveholding wanted the town returned to Virginia’s jurisdiction, fearing abolitionists would succeed in banning the practice within the District.

A series of bills to return the “town and county of Alexandria” portion of D.C. to Virginia were proposed in Congress beginning in 1804. Both abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates at various times supported the effort, though for opposing reasons.

A key turning point came in 1844, when Congress ended its self-imposed ban on debating anti-slavery petitions. This was a sign that abolitionist political power was growing, and that the worst-case scenario for Virginia slaveholders was becoming more plausible.

Undated engraved portraits of President James Polk believed to be created 1775-1849. (Library of Congress)

By 1846, white civic leaders were actively lobbying for Alexandria and Arlington’s return to Virginia. Congress passed a retrocession act, and President James K. Polk signed it into law in July 1846. Virginia formally accepted those areas back under its jurisdiction in March 1847.

The decision had immediate consequences for Alexandria’s Black community. African American residents soon experienced the negative impacts of retrocession, including the closure of schools and other gathering sites they had previously been permitted to use while living under the District’s laws.

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McCormick’s bill undoes the retrocession act passed by Congress. He has framed it as a solution to Virginia’s ongoing redistricting disputes, arguing the congressional map chaos could have been avoided under his proposal.

In a statement, Democratic Congressman Don Beyer, who represents the affected areas in Northern Virginia, called McCormick’s bill “an embarrassing legislative tantrum” and “unconstitutional.”

Wednesday, a federal judge blocked Virginia from certifying results from a redistricting-related special election, ruling both the referendum and the underlying bill unconstitutional. Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones confirmed his office will appeal.

No co-sponsors have emerged for McCormick’s proposal. It would also face enormous legal, political, and practical hurdles, including questions about whether Congress can unilaterally alter state boundaries and what it would mean for the about 250,000, largely Democrat, residents of Alexandria and Arlington who currently hold Virginia citizenship.

Democrats are celebrating after Virginia approved a redistricting plan that could help their party net up to four additional congressional seats in the race for control of the House. But it was a close call, thanks to lackluster turnout in Democratic areas and a rightward shift across much of the state, an NBC News Decision Desk analysis of precinct data shows.

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INSTITUTE, W.Va. — A chemical leak at a West Virginia silver recovery business on Wednesday killed two people and sent 19 others to the hospital, including one in critical condition, authorities said.

The leak occurred at the Catalyst Refiners plant in Institute as workers were preparing to shut down at least part of the facility, Kanawha County Commission Emergency Management Director C.W. Sigman said.

A chemical gas reaction occurred at the plant involving nitric acid and another substance, Sigman said at a news briefing. He added that there was “a violent reaction of the chemicals and it instantaneously overreacted.”

“Starting or ending a chemical reaction are the most dangerous times,” Sigman said.

The chemical reaction that was believed to have occurred during a cleaning process produced toxic hydrogen sulfide, Kanawha County Commission President Ben Salango said.

Among the injured were seven ambulance workers responding to the leak, officials said.

Other people were taken to the hospitals in private cars or even in one case a garbage truck, Sigman said.

One person was in critical condition, Salango said.

Vandalia Health Charleston Area Medical Center, one of several hospitals in the area, was treating multiple patients, some brought by ambulance, while members of the community were arriving Wednesday afternoon asking to be checked, hospital spokesman Dale Witte said.

Witte said patients were experiencing respiratory symptoms including cough, shortness of breath, sore throat and itchy eyes. They were being evaluated in the emergency room.

WVU Medicine Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston said in a statement it has cared for a dozen patients, including eight who arrived by personal vehicle and were not at the scene but were in the area at the time. It said those injuries were not considered life-threatening.

A shelter-in-place order was issued for the surrounding area and lifted more than five hours later. Officials said all the deaths occurred on the plant site.

“You had to get really close to the facility to smell it,” Sigman said.

The leak required a large-scale decontamination operation in which people had to remove their clothes and be sprayed down, authorities said.

Catalyst Refiners works to remove silver from what remains of chemical processes and can find thousands of dollars of the precious metal just by vacuuming the floors in a plant’s offices, Sigman said.

Ames Goldsmith Corp., the owner of Catalyst Refiners, said it is saddened by the deaths and its thoughts were with all those affected and their families.

“This is an unfathomably difficult time,” company President Frank Barber said in a statement released at the briefing. “Our thoughts and prayers are with our colleagues and their families.”

Ames Goldsmith promised to work with local, state and federal officials as they investigate the leak. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has opened an investigation into what happened, a spokesperson said, adding that the agency has six months to complete its examination.

Silver is in a number of items ranging from circuit boards and other electronics, photographic and X-Ray films and jewelry. Nitric acid is used to dissolve materials, leaving behind silver nitrate that can be processed to recover pure silver. Recovery businesses can also crush or sandblast items with silver and use magnets or differences in density to sort out the precious metal.

Sigman said Ames Goldsmith recovers silver from the various plants at the Institute complex “and they’ll use it again. When they vacuum their carpets in their office, they recover so many thousands of dollars’ worth of silver out of it just vacuuming their carpets.”

The plant is located near Institute, a community about 10 miles west of Charleston, the state capital. The plant is in a region known as West Virginia’s “chemical valley,” although many plants that lined the area along the Kanawha River and produced hazardous materials have closed or changed ownership in the past several decades.

Raby writes for the Associated Press. Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, S.C., and Gary Robertson in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.