Presidents of Congress

I was writing a piece the other day on the U.S. Constitution, for another project, and had to do a little research on one or two points. For example, after the constitution was agreed to at the convention in September, 1787, the convention members signed it and sent it over to congress to be voted on. One of the things I looked up was the cover letter of transmittal. It was addressed to the "president" and signed by the President of the Convention (George Washington.) Who was this other president?

I was stymied at first. Then I recalled we were operating under the Articles of Confederation at that time, and the new constitution was being sent to the "President of Congress." (The Continental Congress.)

That brings up the old trick joke of "Who was the first President of the United States?" Some say John Hancock. Wrong. Some say George Washington. Right. George Washington is the right answer because he was the first president of the United States under our present constitution, and before that, the "presidents" were presidents of congress.

There were a lot of presidents of congress, starting back in 1774. Mostly they changed with each session of congress, more or less. They were more like an elected chairman of a committee rather than the "grandeur" of our current system. And John Hancock was, indeed the president of congress on July 4, 1776. But he wasn't President of the United States like now, and he wasn't the first president of congress, either.

The first president of congress was Payton Randolf and the last was one Cyrus Griffin. In between were 14 others (two were duplicates), including the aforementioned John Hancock. Also numbered among those early, rather fleeting in terms, presidents were John Jay, who would become our first Secretary of State and, later serve on the Supreme Court; and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, ancestor of Robert E. Lee. Randolf and Hancock each served two terms each, both non-consecutive.

So it was president of congress number 16, Cyrus Griffin, that the cover letter signed by George Washington was sent, along with the new constitution. Griffin dutifully put the matter before the congress of that time, and the new compact was passed and sent out to the states for their concurrence. Griffin stayed on as president until George Washington was sworn in under the new constitution on April 30, 1789.

One point of interest: one of these old congressional presidents, number 15, was Arthur St. Clair. He was pretty famous and pretty interesting. I won't go into his life here, but he came to America from Scotland, as a British soldier, during the French and Indian War (the 7 Years War, as the British call it) and is the only American president of congress who was born on foreign soil. He was born during the latter stages of the Jacobite Rebellions and his family moved because of them, and that is why his name came to my attention.

I have a little more to say on my other blog about the Jacobite Risings.

I am aware that one of the things other countries hate about Americans is that we always are talking about our Wonderful, Glorious, Constitution and saintly Founding Fathers. A lot of them don't think too much of our constitution as anything special, and are sick of hearing about the traitors who were our founding fathers. To them, I hope they are not offended by this post.

Selling the new constitution

Before many years had passed it became obvious that the Articles of Confederation needed to be replaced by a more effective government.

Oddly, there was no actual provision for the calling of a Constitutional Convention (just as there is no such provision in our present constitution), but representatives of the soon-to-be 13 states agreed to convene a convention anyway, with the intent of producing a governing document that would serve the intent of the people more responsively than the Articles had.

Whether or not our federal government in its present form was what those framers had in mind, and whether or not what our federal government has become is what WE want, will be the subject of our next few polite exchanges.

---------

Soon after our present constitution was drafted, but before ratification, an attempt was made to "sell" it to the American people through a series of  articles which appeared in selected newspapers. These essays were intended to argue the merits of the new constitution, explain the intent of the new document and sway public opinion in its favor. The letters were all signed by the Latin name Publius, but were in actuality written by three men: Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison.

Alexander Hamilton became our country's first Secretary of the Treasury, in the administration of George Washington; John Jay was to be the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; James Madison (who is called the father of the constitution, and was the principal author of it) was a member of the Virginia legislature and later served in the U.S. Congress as a representative of that state. He then became Thomas Jefferson's Secretary of State, and finally he became the 4th President of the United States.

If you have a desire to learn the reasons our constitution was framed the way it is, the thinking that went on in the minds of the men who wrote it and what they were trying to accomplish, read the Federalist Papers. There are 85 essays altogether, most published between October, 1787, and August of 1788. A complete collection of all the essays (including 8 additional essays) was also published in book form in 1788.

One thing that Americans don't often think about, but should realize, is that these men and the rest of the men on your personal list of founding fathers, absolutely were mindful that they were being watched, were making history, and, that future generations of Americans - you - would be looking back and judging them. Their writings and the writings of their contemporaries make that clear.

The Federalist Papers were, of course, advocating the ratification of the new constitution. But, even more importantly, they serve as a first-person primary resource for our interpretation of the constitution. They outlined both the philosophy and motivation of the system of government they were proposing. There is little doubt, simply by the way they are written and the points they repeatedly and painstakingly address, that their intent was to shape future interpretations of their baby. To that end, it is generally agreed that no analysis by later historians matches the incredible depth and breadth of the political science masterpiece contained in the essays of the Federalist Papers. Read the Federalist Papers directly; they are available to you. You do not have to rely on someone else's interpretation of them.

Students of American Government cannot fully grasp, I don't think, the reasoning that went into our constitution unless they read and study the Federalist Papers of Hamilton, Jay and Madison. Especially read Madison's essays and you will come away with a new appreciation of the then-groundbreaking concepts that have been mimicked by dozens of governments over the years.

---------

An example of one of the Federalist essays can be read here.

(Then click on the red "Federalist 29" to enlarge it.)

---------

[Next: The problems with the Articles of Confederation, how the new constitution would remedy those problems, and an explanation of the concept of Federalism. Please don't shy away; this will be fun!]

Chugging right along. Part 3

As we begin to deal with more and more detailed events, I will no longer rely on my memory to tell this story, as I mostly have up until now. I revert to my more-loved role of interpreter.

After the American Revolution, a new country called the United States of America was formed by a union of the 13 separate former colonies. Hereafter, these colonies would begin calling themselves "states."

As mentioned in the earlier posts, this union was not really an easy or natural thing, since the colonies had always been (and would continue to be) separate entities, each with its own government, and each with differing values and goals.

The revolution, however, as well as the previous common experience of the French and Indian War, had brought them closer together and, now that they were free of British rule, there was a need for some sort of central government to be established to handle the interactions between the several former colonies who suddenly found their fate and survival very much tied together - at least in terms of self defense from outside powers. They still weren't too keen on banding together for other purposes, save, perhaps, the regulation of commerce between the several new "states."

The Continental Congress was a legislature, consisting of representatives from the various colonies, which was, in effect, the central government of the colonies during the time they were in rebellion against Great Britain. They met in Philadelphia. The British would not have minded a bit hanging the members of this legislative body of the rebels. They even sailed a fleet up the Delaware to clear out the irritating nest, but the rebel legislators simply moved out of Philadelphia for a while. Frankly, they knew the lay of the land much better than the British, and were able to simply fade into the population. But the government in rebellion is a story for another day.

As early as 1776, following the declaring of independence from Great Britain, the Second Continental Congress, with the conviction, I assume, that the colonies would prevail against the mother country and gain their independence, had appointed a committee to draft up a plan for future confederation. The final draft was approved by the Second Continental Congress in 1777. However, these Articles were not ratified by the states until March of 1781. In the meantime, there was a war going on.

So, with a lot of input and debate from each colony's representation, the official document was drawn up, and eventually ratified, which outlined what powers they would delegate to the new central government. Not very much, as it turned out.

The word "confederation" simply refers to the fact that certain parties, or groups, have banded together for some common purpose. The current entity called the European Union, for example, is a "confederation" of several countries which have agreed to act in concert for a common (in this example, economic) purpose. Similarly, when the 13 former American colonies agreed to band together for economic purposes and for a common defense, the result of that agreement was called a confederation.

The ratification in 1781 resulted in the formalization of this agreement to form a confederation, and the document that stated the rules for the confederation, and told what powers the states agreed to give to the new government, was called "The Ariticles of Confederation." In effect, these Articles were the basis our first constitution, though that constitution was a separate document.

The Articles stated that our name would be "The United States of America". Our first president was Samuel Huntington of Connecticut. It should be noted that, under the Articles, the "president" (although called "The President of the United States") was not the Chief Executive authority as the office is today under our present constitution, but was the presiding officer of the congress, chair of the cabinet, and performer of various administrative functions.

This first attempt at a federal government failed pretty miserably and was later replaced by our second federal government which still exists today, empowered by a new constitution ratified by the states in 1787.

But let's stop for a moment and talk about what the Articles of Confederation were all about and why that government failed. It is important that we understand this period of our country's beginnings, because from the mistakes in the original Articles came many of the enduring strengths of our current constitution.

If one were to make one general statement to explain why our first federal government failed, it would probably be that the individual states still saw themselves as too individual and independent, and therefore were not willing to delegate enough power to the new central government for it to do its job. At least that is this blogger's opinion. Almost everything the new government did had to be approved by the several states. Without sufficient authority, nothing ever got done and the government failed.

In our next post, we will concentrate on the failings of the Ariticles of Confederation, and the subsequent struggle to produce a stronger, more viable, constitution. The struggle was pretty fierce, as the individual states fought to protect their own sovereignty and agendas.

This struggle, and the eventual compromises that produced our present constitution make for lively debate and interesting conversation so I hope you will stay tuned for tomorrow's post.

May the force be with you.