1789

NOTE TO TEACHERS: All photographs are in the author’s possession. I either took them, or scanned old pictures, long out of copyright (unless otherwise noted). Feel free to use any you like.

__________ 

“First in war, first in peace,

first in the hearts of his countrymen.” 

Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, referring to George Washington.

__________ 

A new government is launched.

 

March 4: James Madison is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. The Baptists helped him win – since Virginia had long established the Anglican Church. Glebe lands had been granted to the Anglicans, but not to other religions. 

 

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April 6: “The first Congress had no quorum in either branch on March 4th , and did not complete its organization till April 6th. (2/197-198)

 

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April 30: George Washington is inaugurated as first president. At his swearing-in he kissed the Bible. 

“It is done,” cried Chancellor Livingston, “long live George Washington, President of the United States!” 

According to the historian Benjamin Andrews: “The great crowd repeated the cry. It was echoed outside in the city, off into the country, far north, far south, till the entire land took up the watchword, which his own generation had passed on to ours and to all that shall come, ‘Long live George Washington!’” (2/199)

 

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THE FIRST U.S. Supreme Court has only six members, and only three show up the first day. Many others had turned down requests from President Washington to serve on the court. 

    James Wilson, who did take a seat, was also speculating in land, and was jailed twice, for debt, while on the court.  

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Van Loon notes, humorously, that our first president was chosen unanimously. “The very trees and shrubs had shrieked the name of ‘George Washington.’” (124/248)

 

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VAN LOON on Hamilton: 

His mother, a woman of French origin, had first been married to a Danish planter of the island of St. Croix and after she left him had become the common-law wife of a Scotchman by the name of James Hamilton of St. Christopher, with whom she had moved to the island of Nevis where both Alexander and his brother James were born.

 

But in the year 1768 the mother had died and the father had gone into bankruptcy and the boy, as we have said before, had been left more or less to his own devices.

 

He had only been a short time in Columbia University when the revolution broke out. He had offered himself as a volunteer and had shown so much ability for military life that within a very short time he had been made a lieutenant-colonel on the staff of General Washington and for four years thereafter he had acted as that gentleman’s confidential secretary and principal aide. (124/250) …

 

When Hamilton assumed the secretaryship of the treasury, the country was in debt to the tune of some seventy-seven million dollars, an enormous amount in those days. The greater part consisted of notes held by American citizens. Twelve millions made up the sum we owed to foreign banks and governments. And the states could add another twenty million of their own. (124/251)

 

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JOHN CLARK RIDPATH captures much of the tension that surrounded the U.S. Constitution in 1789, and that continues to this day: 

It is a theme of the greatest importance, now that more than a century of time has elapsed since the adoption of the Constitution, to inquire into its effectiveness, and more particularly to note its defects in practical application as the fundamental law of the American people. Among the latter may be noticed first of all the too extensive power and domination of a President. A President of the United States, once elected and inaugurated, becomes for the first time a more powerful ruler, a more absolute monarch we might say, than is the occupant of any of the enlightened thrones of Europe. It is clear in the light of retrospect that the framers of the Constitution did not intend that the President should be a temporary sovereign in the sense that he has become in practice. A second evil relates to the same office, and this pertains to the manner of the President’s election. The will of the people is not fairly and well expressed by the cumbrous intervening electoral college provided for in the Constitution. The Presidential election in the United States is not sufficiently popular and direct. The choice of the chief magistrate should be like every other function of the government – of the people, for the people and by the people – according to the aphorism of Lincoln. This cannot be so long as the complicated and machine-like electoral college is interposed as the agent and organ of the quadrennial election.

 

In the third place, it is clear in the retrospect that the fathers errored in fixing the term of the Presidency at four, instead of six or seven years. The extension of the term to the latter period should of course imply ineligibility to reelection, thereby assuring to the people an administration totally free from the prevalent intent, manner and method of preparing for a reelection of the incumbent and the maintenance of his partisans in office. Nothing can be more disastrous to the integrity of the national government than its conversion by the President and his party into a machine for his reelection. On the other hand it may be truly said that the period of four years is hardly sufficient for the establishment of a given administration and the attestation of its policy.

 

Among the powers of the presidential office is that of appointing a cabinet. This idea sprang partly out of the exigencies of the case, and was partly caught from the existing system of Great Britain. The American method has virtually proved a failure. The error lies in the fact that the responsibility of American cabinet officers appertains to the President, instead of to Congress. In this regard the English system is greatly superior to that of the United States. The President appoints certain of his own partisans to be what are called his constitutional advisers. As a matter of fact, they become simply the head men of his party retinue. They have and can have no independent advice to give to the administration. They are virtually the President’s men. The various secretaries have no power of originating policies and presenting and defending the same before Congress; nor have the people any check upon objectionable cabinet officers. It is within the power, and unfortunately within the practice, of American Presidents to keep in office at the head of important cabinet departments men whom four-fifths of the American people would join in ejecting from their places. The abuse which has arisen in this respect under our Constitution is serious and deep-seated. (1219/262-263)

 

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SAMUEL SLATER has now arrived in America. Back home in England he studied factory plans and machines and memorized every detail of their workings. At Pawtucket, Rhode Island he constructs the first factory in America. It was powered by water, which ran machines to make cotton cloth. 

Slater also copied the English by employing young children in his mill.

 

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NOTE TO TEACHERS: Not sure this will be helpful, but here we have a set of questions I wanted students to be able to answer:

 

A New Government Takes Shape 

1. What role does the president’s cabinet serve?

2. What was President Washington’s opinion in regard to political parties?

3. Define: conservative, liberal, radical, reactionary; have students put themselves on the spectrum. 

4. What are some of the dangers of liberalism or conservatism?

5. George Washington would go on to serve only two terms. Some wanted him to serve a third; but he insisted two was enough. Why was this precedent important? 

6. We don’t refer to our president as “His Excellency” or “Your Highness,” rather as “Mr. President” (maybe someday: “Madam President”). What point does this make? 

7. Why did the men who wrote the U.S. Constitution set up a government with three branches? 

8. If Abigail Adams, or some other figure from this era, could come back today, what do you think they’d say about current politics? 

9. What issues do you care about today and which political party seems to have policies more closely aligned with your interests? 

 

In terms of gaining ratification of the new constitution, “With multitudes Washington’s influence had more weight than any argument.” (2/207)

 

Time-Life notes that George Washington wrote to Henry Knox, telling him, as time came to take charge of the new government, that he felt “not unlike a culprit who is going to the place of his execution.” 

 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: I had students fill out the following chart. (A similar chart for modern political parties would work.)

 

Mark “H” for Hamilton, “J” for Jefferson, “M” for Madison 

_____ Believed the federal government should be powerful.

_____ Ordinary people can govern themselves.

_____ Government should be run by the aristocratic class.

_____ The masses of people often followed leaders mindlessly, like sheep.

_____ Favored free education for all.

_____ Favored the addition of a Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution.

_____ Favored freedom of the press, including criticizing members of the government.

_____ Felt farmers and landholders were the backbone of America.

_____ Didn’t want to see speculators make money if the national debt was to be paid off.

_____ Believed the government should pay the debt if it was to be trusted and respected.

_____ Wanted to encourage business and industry.

_____ Favored tariffs to increase the cost of foreign goods and “protect” American industry.

_____ Favored creation of a national bank.

Legislative branch: Congress makes the laws.

Executive branch: The president enforces the laws.

Judicial branch: The courts interpret the laws and the Constitution.

 

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Nude dancing! 

ONE COURT CASE the Founding Fathers never saw coming involved nude dancing, and freedom of expression. 

The Supreme Court confronted the issue of nude dancing and the First Amendment in Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc. (1991), in which two clubs and individual dancers employed by the clubs objected to the application of an Indiana public indecency law prohibiting public nudity. 

The law required that the dancers wear G-strings and pasties, which the dancers argued detracted from their erotic messages. The Court upheld the law by a 5-4 vote, but the five justices split across three different opinions. Eight of the nine justices agreed that nude dancing has First Amendment implications. 

Chief Justice Rehnquist described nude dancing as “expressive conduct within the outer perimeters of the First Amendment, though we view it as only marginally so.”

 

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THE RIGHT TO VOTE was not guaranteed for most Americans; land ownership was often required at the time of the Constitution. The Revolution spread the idea of liberty, and the vote was part of that. There was a fear that workers could not vote their own mind (most people voted publicly). 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 protected racial minorities and the right to vote. These barriers were finally swept away: 

A)   Poll tax

B)    Literacy test

C)   Must be able to explain a portion of the Constitution

 

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Women, children, and idiots. 

AROUND THIS TIME Joseph Dyer earned the reputation as an extremist, “at least as great as any of the wild Men of the French Revolution.” Dyer believed a perfect equality of suffrage was essential to liberty. 

John Adams wondered if that meant Dyer advocated suffrage “of Women, of Children, of Idiots, of Madmen, of Criminals, or Prisoners for Debt or for Crimes.” (45/59) 

 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: It used to get the young ladies in my class fired up to note that for most of history the dumbest man in the world would have had greater political rights than the smartest woman.