Last week we discussed the implementation of the new Federal government as the Confederation Congress faded out of existence. The states elected Senators and Representatives who would meet at the First Congress in New York in March of 1789. The other big election was that of president, which was held separately from the congressional elections.
Presidential Election
The presidential elections of 1789 were nothing like elections today. For starters, no states chose their presidential electors the way almost all states do today, that is the candidate with the most votes statewide gets all the electoral votes for that state.
In fact, many states did not have an election at all. The constitution left it up to each state to decide how to choose electors. Connecticut, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Georgia simply had the state legislature choose the electors for their states.
In the states that did have elections, people did not vote for candidates. They voted for electors. These were men with well known political views who would independently make a decision as to whom they would select as president and vice president. Most electors publicly pledged to vote for a particular candidate. Some states elected a slate of electors statewide. Others opted to let each congressional district vote for one elector.
Those states that got their act together in time held their elections on January 7, 1789, as had been directed by the Confederation Congress four months earlier. We don’t have complete records of the popular vote, but turnout does seem to have been surprisingly low. Some newspapers report turnout of between 20% and 50% of eligible voters - and, of course, voter eligibility was much harder to obtain back then. Across the six states that held popular votes, there appear to have been less than 30,000 total votes cast for electors.
North Carolina and Rhode Island, which had not yet ratified the Constitution, were unable to participate in the elections. New York had ratified, but never passed a state law that would specify how electors would be chosen. The anti-federalist majority in the General Assembly voted for one method. The federalist majority in the Senate voted for a different method. The result was a deadlock, with neither side willing to compromise. This deadlock remained until after the electoral college met and selected a president, meaning that New York simply did not put forward any electors who participated in the election
For the ten states that chose electors, those electors met in each of the state capitals to vote. The states had elected a total of 73 electors, but two votes from Maryland and two from Virginia were never cast. In Virginia one of the districts simply failed to turn in any results. Another delegate, Warner Lewis, simply failed to show up to vote. In Maryland, two of the delegates, George Plater and William Richardson, were present for the electoral vote, but did not cast their votes.
There was no nomination process for the presidency, nor were there any candidates who ran for election. Running would have been considered unseemly. Americans would have been skeptical of anyone who campaigned for office. They did not want someone who wanted power for themselves.
Besides, everyone knew who the first president would be. At the Constitutional Convention and at all the various ratifying conventions, pretty much everyone assumed that George Washington would fill that role. In addition to being the man who had won the Revolutionary War, Washington had earned national respect by retiring at the end of the war. This proved he was not a man who grasped for more power. Rather, he simply did his duty for his country, then retired to his plantation. This convinced voters that Washington would not use the presidency as a stepping stone to becoming king. That remained a real fear in America at this time.
Perhaps the only other person with good positive name recognition was Benjamin Franklin. Although Franklin served as Pennsylvania’s President until November of 1788, he was too old and infirm for any service in the new government. He had been carried to the Constitutional Convention meetings in 1787 and, even at that time, was often too weak even to give speeches. Following the convention, Franklin was rarely seen in public. He mostly remained in his sick bed. He was in no condition to be considered for any office, let alone president.
Most other possible contenders for the office were regional favorites. John Adams was popular in New England, but not so much elsewhere. Other candidates might be popular within their states, but no one had Washington’s national appeal. In the end, Washington received the unanimous election of every elector who cast a vote, a total of 69 votes.
The vice presidential election was another story. There was no nationwide figure to take on that role, but John Adams was the odd-on favorite. Adams had been an important leader in the Continental Congress, and had been a key negotiator of the peace treaty that ended the war. He remained in Europe after the war, serving as America’s first Ambassador to Britain.
Adams only returned to America in the summer of 1788, after Massachusetts had already ratified the Constitution. He returned to his farm and to his life as a private citizen. He did not campaign for any office and did not advocate for himself. That said, he did not discourage others from putting him forward as a candidate.
Adams seemed like a good choice to many. In addition to his credentials and experience, Adams was from New England, which provided regional balance to Washington as a southern candidate. Adams seemed to be in line with Washington’s views. Both men generally believed in the new Constitution and supported a stronger federal government. As a result, Adams quickly became the consensus candidate for vice president.
This raised some concerns though. Under the Constitution, each elector would cast two votes. Based on the final results the recipient of the most votes became president. The second-place finisher would become vice president. There was no way for electors to specify that they were casting one vote for president and the other for vice president.
Some insiders feared that politicians might use this process to bypass Washington. Alexander Hamilton very much wanted Washington to become the first president. He began writing to others that, if pretty much all the electors voted for Washington and Adams, that just a small handful of electors might withhold their votes for Washington, and allow Adams to get the most votes, thus becoming president.
Hamilton wrote about his concerns to several other leaders around the country. He noted that the Adams faction in New England had often allied itself with the Lee faction in Virginia to win various political battles in Congress. In fact, the two factions had once before teamed up against George Washington in the Conway Cabal, an effort in 1777 to replace Washington with Horatio Gates as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army.
There was no actual basis for such a conspiracy to snatch the presidency from Washington, but that did not get in the way of Hamilton’s paranoia. Hamilton did not really have any political disagreements with Adams. The two men generally found themselves on the same side of most policy matters. But Hamilton still feared that politics might somehow get in the way of electing Washington.
Hamilton reached out to seven or eight electors in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, asking them to vote for someone other than Adams on their second vote. This, he thought, would be enough to ensure that Washington would receive more votes.
Hamilton had nothing to worry about. While the electors voted unanimously for Washington, they showed no such unanimity with their second votes. The Connecticut electors that Hamilton had contacted voted for Samuel Huntington, Governor of Connecticut. Two Pennsylvania delegates voted for John Hancock, Governor of Massachusetts. New Jersey delegates only gave one vote to Adams and five to John Jay of New York. So more that those contacted there chose other candidates. Other electors across the continent gave various votes to others, casting votes for a total of eleven candidates for their second vote.
The result was that Adams only received 34 votes, one vote shy of a majority. Even though he received nearly four times the vote of the next highest candidate, Adams felt humiliated by his poor showing. He called it a stain on his character, and even considered declining the office. At the time, he did not know about the political scheming behind the vote. When he later found out about Hamilton’s role in all of this, it created a rupture between the two men, which never healed.
Despite his private disappointment, Adams retained his cheerful public demeanor and accepted his election as vice president. He also congratulated George Washington on his victory and praised the new president's talents.
According to the schedule created by the Confederation Congress, the elections were supposed to take place in January, 1789. The electors would vote in early February, and Congress would convene for the first time on March 4. One of their first official acts would be to confirm the electoral college vote and notify the new president and vice president.
When the newly elected members of Congress assembled at Federal Hall on the morning of March 4, they discovered that they were pretty lonely. Only eight out of twenty-two senators were present, and only thirteen out of fifty-nine representatives had made it to New York. All but two of those were from just three states, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. None of the New York delegation was present because that state had held late elections and still did not have the results of those elections. Several other elections were still being challenged in the courts. In other cases, members either hadn’t bothered to leave on time, or had travel problems that delayed their arrival.
Without a quorum to do business, Congress could do nothing. The members who had arrived simply hung round the city waiting for more of their colleagues to show up. Ten days later, on March 14, James Madison finally arrived in town. By that time, only two other congressmen, and no additional senators had arrived. Madison wrote to Washington that nothing could be done. They couldn’t even count the votes for president.
Massachusetts Representative Fisher Ames called the situation “mortifying” and wondered if “the public will forget the government before it is born.” The secretary of Congress, still holding that position from the Confederation Congress, Charles Thomson, began writing to absent Senators and Representatives, begging them to come. He wrote to Senator George Read of Delaware:
As a friend, [I] entreat you to lay aside all lesser concerns & private business and come on immediately. Those who feel for the honor and are solicitous for the happiness of this country are pained to the heart, while those who are averse to the new constitution and those who are unfriendly to the liberty & consequently to the happiness and prosperity of this country, exult at our languor.
Thomson was pretty much running the government on his own until the new Congress could reach a quorum. John Jay, who had been appointed Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the Confederation Congress, was still managing foreign policy issues. Henry Knox, another confederation holdover, was still managing the military, which consisted of only a few hundred soldiers.
The French Minister to the US, the Comte de Moustier wrote back to officials in Paris that “Congress, like their predecessors, suffer from the general indifference toward public service when it comes to actually doing their part.” The absence of a quorum for weeks proved this point. He believed that the new country could not survive without foreign protection, and that if France did not provide it, Britain would find a way to take back into control of its former colonies.
Those members who did arrive could not conduct official business, but they could hang out in taverns and begin discussing things informally. Rather than talk about pressing issues, like creating a judiciary, or establishing a new system of tariffs, they mostly fought over where they should move the seat of government. The Pennsylvania delegation, which was one of the few states that showed up on time, had a plan to call for an adjournment as soon as the presidential election was counted, and move the Congress to Philadelphia.
After four long weeks, the House finally got to a quorum on April 1. Twenty-nine of the fifty-five representatives were present, just over half of the body. Meeting in chambers that were still under construction, they elected Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania as speaker, and began organizing the House rules and committees.
It would take another week, until April 6, before enough senators arrived, giving that body a quorum. At that point, Congress could finally count the electoral votes and proclaim George Washington to be the first president, and John Adams vice president.
Everyone had known for weeks how the electors had voted. But until the official count by Congress, there was nothing official. George Washington remained home at Mount Vernon. He did not want to appear eager or desirous of the presidency. In fact, there is good reason to believe that this was not simply a show of false modesty. Washington really wanted to remain retired from public life. During the elections, Washington said nothing to encourage others, and several times angrily silenced people who discussed the elections in his presence.
On April 1, a month after the electoral college should have met, Washington wrote to Henry Knox, expressing relief at the delay.
I feel for those Members of the new Congress, who, hitherto, have given an unavailing attendance at the theatre of business. For myself, the delay may be compared to a reprieve; for in confidence I can assure you—with the world it would obtain little credit—that my movements to the chair of Government will be accompanied with feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution: so unwilling am I, in the evening of a life nearly consumed in public cares, to quit a peaceful abode for an Ocean of difficulties, without that competency of political skill—abilities & inclination which is necessary to manage the helm.
Leaders like Hamilton and Madison, and even Lafayette in France, had written letters to Washington, imploring him to accept the presidency, fearing the government would fail without him, and with that failure the entire United States was at stake. Comments like those of the Comte de Moustier made clear that Europeans were ready to pounce if the new government proved ineffective.
Washington resigned himself to the idea that he would have to serve as president for at least a few years to get the new government going. In late March, he wrote to Madison in New York, asking him to find appropriate accommodations. He asked for a small home or apartment. He wanted to avoid a larger mansion since he wanted to avoid having to hold large receptions for guests in his home. He also believed a smaller residence would help to reduce criticisms that he was effectively taking on the role of a king. Publicly, however, Washington took no steps to assume he had won the election. He remained at home, continuing with his regular life.
After Congress confirmed the electoral vote on April 6, they dispatched Secretary Charles Thomson to ride to Virginia and inform Washington. The trip to Mount Vernon took a week. On April 14, Thomson met with Washington to inform him of his election. Washington had prepared for this moment by writing out his response, which he read to Thomson and then sent back to Congress:
Sir, I have been long accustomed to entertain so great a respect for the opinion of my fellow citizens, that the knowledge of their unanimous suffrages having been given in my favour scarcely leaves me the alternative for an Option. Whatever may have been my private feelings and sentiments, I believe I cannot give a greater evidence of my sensibility for the honor they have done me than by accepting the appointment.
I am so much affected by this fresh proof of my country’s esteem and confidence, that silence can best explain my gratitude—While I realize the arduous nature of the task which is conferred on me and feel my inability to perform it, I wish there may not be reason for regreting the choice. All I can promise is only that which can be accomplished by an honest zeal.
Washington also informed them that he would leave for New York within two days. Washington had already prepared for his trip. The reason for a delay was that he rode to Fredericksburg to visit his mother, who was dying of breast cancer. He spent the night at his mother’s house before returning to Mount Vernon the following day.
Short on cash, Washington had to borrow money for his trip to New York. Charles Thomson accompanied the president, along with his aide, David Humphreys, his secretary, Tobias Lear, and his personal servant Billy Lee. Martha did not go with him. She would join him a month later. She does not seem to have been happy at Washington’s new role. Days after he left, she wrote to her nephew saying:
I am truly sorry to tell that the General is gone to New York, Mr. Charles Thompson came to express to him, on the 14th - when or wheather he will come home again, god only knows, - I think it was much too late for him to go in to publick life again, but it was not to be avoided.
Washington did his best to avoid pomp, not wanting to appear as a new king. He often tried to leave towns early in order to avoid parades, and tried to downplay all of the celebrations. But he had little luck with this. The people wanted to celebrate this grand event.
Each city celebrated Washington as he passed through towns on his way to New York. Celebrations honored the new president with celebrations in each town. Parades, bells, military escorts, and musket fire celebrated the new leader. In Trenton, thirteen young maidens threw flower petals at his feet while singing “Welcome, mighty Chief”. In Philadelphia, they placed a laurel wreath on his head, as had been done for Roman emperors. He may not have wanted to appear as a king, but the people seemed to want to honor him as such.
The group finally arrived in Elizabethtown, New Jersey on April 23, where a committee of elected officials met him, along with an honor guard to carry him aboard a large ferry across the Hudson River to a welcome celebration.
With the new president having arrived in the capital, the new government could get to work.
Next week: the new government gets to work.
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Next Episode 359 The Federal Government Begins
Previous Episode 357 Implementing the Constitution
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Further Reading
Websites
Presidential Election of 1789 https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/presidential-election-of-1789
Presidential Electors in Maryland: https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/speccol/sc2600/sc2685/html/electors.html
1789 President of the United States, Electoral College https://elections.lib.tufts.edu/catalog/zp38wf06k
1789 Electoral College Results https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/1789
Documentary History of the First Federal Congress https://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/default.xqy?keys=FFCP-print&mode=TOC
“From George Washington to James Madison, 30 March 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-01-02-0362.
“From George Washington to Benjamin Harrison, 9 March 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-01-02-0286
“From George Washington to Henry Knox, 1 April 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-02-02-0003
Address to Charles Thomson, 14 April 1789,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-02-02-0057
President Washington's Inauguration in New York City https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-first-president/inauguration/new-york
Free eBooks
(from archive.org unless noted)
Documentary History of the Constitution of the United States of America, Vol 2, Washington: Dept. of State, 1894.
This Constitution: From Ratification to the Bill of Rights, Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, Inc. 1988 (borrow only).
Brant, Irving James Madison: Father of the Constitution, 1787-1800. Bobbs-Merrill Co. 1950 (borrow only).
Ford, Paul L. Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, Brooklyn, NY: 1888.
Renwick, Henry B. Lives of John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, 1817-1895, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1840.
Rutland, Robert A. The Ordeal of the Constitution: The Antifederalists and the Ratification Struggle of 1787-1788, Northeastern University Press, 1983 (borrow only).
Books Worth Buying
(links to Amazon.com unless otherwise noted)*
Bradford, M.E. Original Intentions: on the Making and Ratification of the United States Constitution, Univ. of GA Press, 1993 (borrow on archive.org).
Elkins, Stanley M. and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800, Oxford Univ. Press, 1993.
Ellis, Joseph J. The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution 1783-1789, Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.
Leibiger, Stuart (ed) A Companion to James Madison and James Monroe, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Jensen, Merrill The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788-1790, Vol. 1 Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1976.
Morris, Richard B. Witnesses at the Creation: Hamilton, Madison, Jay and the Constitution, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1985.
Rossiter, Clinton Alexander Hamilton and the Constitution, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. 1964 (borrow on archive.org).
Schlesinger Arthur, et al History of American Presidential Elections 1789-2008, Facts on File 2011.
Slonim, Shlomo Forging a new Nation, 1787-1791, Palgrave Macmillan 2017.
* As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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