Who was the first elected president of the United States

In 1789, the first presidential election, George Washington was unanimously elected president of the United States. With 69 electoral votes, Washington won the support of each participating elector. No other president since has come into office with a universal mandate to lead.

Between December 15, 1788 and January 10, 1789, the presidential electors were chosen in each of the states. On February 4, 1789, the Electoral College convened. Ten states cast electoral votes: Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia. New York, however, failed to field a slate of electors. North Carolina and Rhode Island were unable to participate because they had not yet ratified the Constitution. After a quorum was finally established, the Congress counted and certified the electoral vote count on April 6.

Washington was both an obvious first choice for president and possibly the only truly viable choice. He was both a national hero and the favorite son of Virginia, the largest state at the time. Washington ascended to the presidency with practical experience, having served as the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution and president of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

According to Article II of the Constitution, each elector in the Electoral College possessed two votes. The candidate who received a majority of the votes was elected president. The candidate with the second most votes in the Electoral College, whether a majority or a plurality, was elected vice president. Behind Washington, John Adams, who most recently had served as the first U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, finished with 34 electoral votes and became the first vice president of the United States. Being from Massachusetts, Adams’ election provided the administration a regional balance between the South and North. Other candidates receiving multiple electoral votes were John Jay (9), Robert Harrison (6), John Rutledge (6), John Hancock (4), and George Clinton (3). Five candidates split the remaining seven votes. Upon hearing the news of his decisive election, Washington set out from Mount Vernon to take his place in presidential history. Though filled with great anxiety, Washington reported for duty "in obedience to the public summons" and explained that "the voice of my Country called me."

On April 30, 1789, at Federal Hall in New York City, the first capital of the United States, Washington took the presidential oath of office. With a hand on the Bible, a "sacred volume" borrowed from a local Masonic lodge and subsequently known as the "George Washington Inaugural Bible," he said, "I, George Washington, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." At that moment, the Chancellor of the State of New York, Robert Livingston, the person who administered the oath to the first chief executive, exclaimed, "Long live George Washington, President of the United States!"

D. Jason Berggren
Georgia Southwestern State University

Bibliography:

Boller, Paul, Jr. Presidential Campaigns. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Greenstein, Fred I. "Presidential Difference in the Early Republic: The Highly Disparate Leadership Styles of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson," Presidential Studies Quarterly 36, no. 3 (September 2006): 373-390.

Landy, Marc, and Sidney M. Milkis. Presidential Greatness. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000.

McDonald, Forrest. The Presidency of George Washington. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1988.

Michaelsen, William B. Creating the American Presidency, 1775-1789. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987.

On April 30, 1789, George Washington, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, took his oath of office as the first President of the United States. “As the first of every thing, in our situation will serve to establish a Precedent,” he wrote James Madison, “it is devoutly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles.”

Born in 1732 into a Virginia planter family, he learned the morals, manners, and body of knowledge requisite for an 18th century Virginia gentleman.

He pursued two intertwined interests: military arts and western expansion. At 16 he helped survey Shenandoah lands for Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Commissioned a lieutenant colonel in 1754, he fought the first skirmishes of what grew into the French and Indian War. The next year, as an aide to Gen. Edward Braddock, he escaped injury although four bullets ripped his coat and two horses were shot from under him.

From 1759 to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Washington managed his lands around Mount Vernon and served in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Married to a widow, Martha Dandridge Custis, he devoted himself to a busy and happy life. But like his fellow planters, Washington felt himself exploited by British merchants and hampered by British regulations. As the quarrel with the mother country grew acute, he moderately but firmly voiced his resistance to the restrictions.

When the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in May 1775, Washington, one of the Virginia delegates, was elected Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. On July 3, 1775, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, he took command of his ill-trained troops and embarked upon a war that was to last six grueling years.

He realized early that the best strategy was to harass the British. He reported to Congress, “we should on all Occasions avoid a general Action, or put anything to the Risque, unless compelled by a necessity, into which we ought never to be drawn.” Ensuing battles saw him fall back slowly, then strike unexpectedly. Finally in 1781 with the aid of French allies–he forced the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

Washington longed to retire to his fields at Mount Vernon. But he soon realized that the Nation under its Articles of Confederation was not functioning well, so he became a prime mover in the steps leading to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. When the new Constitution was ratified, the Electoral College unanimously elected Washington President.

He did not infringe upon the policy making powers that he felt the Constitution gave Congress. But the determination of foreign policy became preponderantly a Presidential concern. When the French Revolution led to a major war between France and England, Washington refused to accept entirely the recommendations of either his Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who was pro-French, or his Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who was pro-British. Rather, he insisted upon a neutral course until the United States could grow stronger.

To his disappointment, two parties were developing by the end of his first term. Wearied of politics, feeling old, he retired at the end of his second. In his Farewell Address, he urged his countrymen to forswear excessive party spirit and geographical distinctions. In foreign affairs, he warned against long-term alliances.

Washington enjoyed less than three years of retirement at Mount Vernon, for he died of a throat infection December 14, 1799. For months the Nation mourned him.

The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from “The Presidents of the United States of America,” by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Copyright 2006 by the White House Historical Association.

Learn more about George Washington’s spouse, Martha Dandridge Custis Washington.

1st quadrennial U.S. presidential election

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Nominee	George Washington
Party	Independent
Home state	Virginia
Running mate	John Adams (competitively elected)
Electoral vote	69
States carried	10
Popular vote	39,624
Percentage	90.5%

Presidential election results map. Green denotes states won by Washington. Black denotes states that did not appoint any electors. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes cast by each state.[note 1]

The 1788–1789 United States presidential election was the first quadrennial presidential election. It was held from Monday, December 15, 1788, to Saturday, January 10, 1789, under the new Constitution ratified that same year. George Washington was unanimously elected for the first of his two terms as president and John Adams became the first vice president. This was the only U.S. presidential election that spanned two calendar years without a contingent election.

Under the Articles of Confederation, which were ratified in 1781, the United States had no head of state. The executive function of government remained with the legislative similar to countries that use a parliamentary system. Federal power, strictly limited, was reserved to the Congress of the Confederation whose "President of the United States in Congress Assembled" was also chair of the Committee of the States which aimed to fulfill a function similar to that of the modern Cabinet.

The Constitution created the offices of President and Vice President, fully separating these offices from Congress. The Constitution established an Electoral College, based on each state's Congressional representation, in which each elector would cast two votes for two candidates, a procedure modified in 1804 by the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment. States had varying methods for choosing presidential electors.[2] In five states, the state legislature chose electors. The other six chose electors through some form involving a popular vote, though in only two states did the choice depend directly on a statewide vote.

The enormously popular Washington was distinguished as the former Commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. After he agreed to come out of retirement, he was elected with ease unanimously; Washington did not select a running mate as that concept was not yet developed.

No formal political parties existed, though an informally organized consistent difference of opinion had already manifested between Federalists and Anti-Federalists. Thus, the contest for the Vice-Presidency was open. Thomas Jefferson predicted that a popular Northern leader such as Governor John Hancock of Massachusetts or John Adams, a former minister to Great Britain who had represented Massachusetts in Congress, would be elected vice president. Anti-Federalist leaders such as Patrick Henry, who did not run, and George Clinton, who had opposed ratification of the Constitution, also represented potential choices.

All 69 electors cast one vote for Washington, making his election unanimous. Adams won 34 electoral votes and the vice presidency. The remaining 35 electoral votes were split among 10 candidates, including John Jay, who finished third with nine electoral votes. Three states were ineligible to participate in the election: New York's legislature did not choose electors on time, and North Carolina and Rhode Island had not ratified the constitution yet. Washington was inaugurated in New York City on April 30, 1789, 57 days after the First Congress convened.

Candidates

Though no organized political parties yet existed, political opinion loosely divided between those who had more stridently and enthusiastically endorsed ratification of the Constitution, called Federalists or Cosmopolitans, and Anti-Federalists or Localists who had only more reluctantly, skeptically, or conditionally supported, or who had outright opposed ratification. Both factions supported Washington for president. Limited, primitive political campaigning occurred in states and localities where swaying public opinion might matter. For example, in Maryland, a state with a statewide popular vote, unofficial parties campaigned locally, advertising.

Federalist candidates

• 

  Former Minister to the Netherlands
  John Adams
  from Massachusetts

• 

  Secretary of Foreign Affairs
  John Jay
  from New York

• 

  Former Governor
  John Rutledge
  of South Carolina

• 

  Governor
  John Hancock
  of Massachusetts

• 

  Governor
  Samuel Huntington
  of Connecticut

• 

  Lieutenant Governor
  Benjamin Lincoln
  of Massachusetts

• 

  Former Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army
  George Washington
  from Virginia

Anti-Federalist candidates

• 

  Governor
  George Clinton
  of New York

General election

No nomination process existed at the time of planning, and thus, the framers of the Constitution presumed that Washington would be elected unopposed. For example, Alexander Hamilton spoke for national opinion when in a letter to Washington attempting to persuade him to leave retirement on his farm in Mount Vernon to serve as the first President, he wrote that "...the point of light in which you stand at home and abroad will make an infinite difference in the respectability in which the government will begin its operations in the alternative of your being or not being the head of state."

Another uncertainty was the choice for the vice presidency, which contained no definite job description beyond being the President's designated successor while presiding over the Senate. The Constitution stipulated that the position would be awarded to the runner-up in the Presidential election. Because Washington was from Virginia, then the largest state, many assumed that electors would choose a vice president from a northern state. In an August 1788 letter, U.S. Minister to France Thomas Jefferson wrote that he considered John Adams and John Hancock, both from Massachusetts, to be the top contenders. Jefferson suggested John Jay, John Rutledge, and Virginian James Madison as other possible candidates.[3] Adams received 34 electoral votes, one short of a majority – because the Constitution did not require an outright majority in the Electoral College prior to ratification of the Twelfth Amendment to elect a runner-up as vice president, Adams was elected to that post.

Voter turnout comprised a low single-digit percentage of the adult population. Though all states allowed some rudimentary form of popular vote, only six ratifying states allowed any form of popular vote specifically for presidential electors. In most states only white men, and in many only those who owned property, could vote. Free black men could vote in four Northern states, and women could vote in New Jersey until 1776. In some states, there was a nominal religious test for voting. For example, in Massachusetts and Connecticut, the Congregational Church was established, supported by taxes. Voting was hampered by poor communications and infrastructure and the labor demands imposed by farming. Two months passed after the election before the votes were counted and Washington was notified that he had been elected president. Washington spent one week traveling from Virginia to New York for the inauguration. Similarly, Congress took weeks to assemble.[citation needed]

As the electors were selected, politics intruded, and the process was not free of rumors and intrigue. For example, Hamilton aimed to ensure that Adams did not inadvertently tie Washington in the electoral vote.[4] Also, Federalists spread rumors that Anti-Federalists plotted to elect Richard Henry Lee or Patrick Henry president, with George Clinton as vice president. However, Clinton received only three electoral votes.[5]

Results

Popular vote

Source: United States Presidential Elections, 1788-1860: The Official Results by Michael J. Dubin[6]

(a) Only six of the 11 states eligible to cast electoral votes chose electors by any form of popular vote.
(b) Less than 1.8% of the population voted: the 1790 Census would count a total population of 3.0 million with a free population of 2.4 million and 600,000 slaves in those states casting electoral votes.
(c) Those states that did choose electors by popular vote had widely varying restrictions on suffrage via property requirements.

Electoral vote

Source: "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved July 30, 2005. Source (popular vote): A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns 1787–1825[7]

(a) Only 6 of the 10 states casting electoral votes chose electors by any form of the popular vote.
(b) Less than 1.8% of the population voted: the 1790 Census would count a total population of 3.0 million with a free population of 2.4 million and 600,000 slaves in those states casting electoral votes.
(c) Those states that did choose electors by popular vote had widely varying restrictions on suffrage via property requirements.
(d) As the New York legislature failed to appoint its allotted eight electors in time, there were no voting electors from New York.
(e) Two electors from Maryland did not vote.
(f) One elector from Virginia did not vote and another elector from Virginia was not chosen because an election district failed to submit returns.
(g) The identity of this candidate comes from The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections (Gordon DenBoer (ed.), University of Wisconsin Press, 1984, p. 441). Several respected sources, including the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress and the Political Graveyard, instead show this individual to be James Armstrong of Pennsylvania. However, primary sources, such as the Senate Journal, list only Armstrong's name, not his state. Skeptics observe that Armstrong received his single vote from a Georgia elector. They find this improbable because Armstrong of Pennsylvania was not nationally famous—his public service to that date consisted of being a medical officer during the American Revolution and, at most, a single year as a Pennsylvania judge.

Results by state

Popular vote

The popular vote totals used are the elector from each party with the highest vote totals. The vote totals of Virginia appear to be incomplete.

Electoral vote

Sixty-nine electors voted out of a possible 81. (Two electors from Maryland and two from Virginia neglected to vote; the New York State Legislature was deadlocked and no electors were appointed from that state.) As per the terms of the unamended constitution, each elector was permitted two votes for president, with a majority of "the whole number of electors appointed" necessary to elect a president. Of the 69 participating electors, each cast one vote for Washington, who was elected president. Of the remaining candidates, only Adams, Jay, and Hancock received votes from more than one state; with 34 votes, Adams finished second behind only Washington, and by virtue of which fact was elected vice president.

Source: "The Electoral College Count for the Presidential Election of 1789". Washington Papers. University of Virginia. Retrieved October 28, 2022.

Failure of New York to appoint electors

Control of the bicameral New York State Legislature was divided following ratification of the federal constitution, and lawmakers could not reach an agreement to appoint electors for the forthcoming presidential contest. Federalists, backed by the great landed families and the city commercial interests, were the largest faction in the Senate, the smaller of the two chambers for which roughly a quarter of the state's free white male population was eligible to vote; but in the House of Representatives, with its larger membership and electorate, Anti-federalists representing the middling interests held the majority. The fight to ratify the United States Constitution was still fresh in the memories of the legislators, and the Anti-federalists were resentful for have been forced by events to accept the constitution without amendments. Bills to govern the selection of electors were proposed in each house and rejected by the other, leading to an impasse. The deadlock still stood on January 7, 1789, the last day for electors to be chosen by the states, and New York thus failed to appoint the eight electors allocated to it by the constitution.[14][15]

Electoral college selection

The Constitution, in Article II, Section 1, provided that the state legislatures should decide the manner in which their Electors were chosen. State legislatures chose different methods:[16]

(a) New York's legislature did not choose electors on time.
(b) One electoral district failed to choose an elector.

See also

• 1788 and 1789 United States House of Representatives elections
• 1788 and 1789 United States Senate elections
• History of the United States (1789–1849)

Footnotes

1. ^ New York had ratified the Constitution but its legislature failed to appoint presidential electors on time, while North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified. Vermont governed itself as a republic.

References

1. ^ "National General Election VEP Turnout Rates, 1789-Present". United States Election Project. CQ Press.
2. ^ See "Alternative methods for choosing electors" under Electoral College.
3. ^ Meacham 2012.
4. ^ Chernow, 272–273.
5. ^ "VP George Clinton". www.senate.gov. Retrieved April 15, 2016.
6. ^ Dubin, Michael J. (2002). United States Presidential Elections, 1788-1860: The Official Results by County and State. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. pp. 1–3. ISBN 9780786410170.
7. ^ "A New Nation Votes".
8. ^ "A New Nation Votes". elections.lib.tufts.edu. Retrieved December 31, 2020.
9. ^ "A New Nation Votes". elections.lib.tufts.edu. Retrieved December 31, 2020.
10. ^ "A New Nation Votes". elections.lib.tufts.edu. Retrieved December 31, 2020.
11. ^ "A New Nation Votes". elections.lib.tufts.edu. Retrieved December 31, 2020.
12. ^ "A New Nation Votes". elections.lib.tufts.edu. Retrieved December 31, 2020.
13. ^ "A New Nation Votes". elections.lib.tufts.edu. Retrieved December 31, 2020.
14. ^ Merrill Jensen, Gordon DenBoer (1976). The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788-1790. University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 196–197.
15. ^ Ratcliffe, Donald (2013). "The Right to Vote and the Rise of Democracy, 1787-1828". Journal of the Early Republic. 33 (2): 225–229.
16. ^ "The Electoral Count for the Presidential Election of 1789". The Papers of George Washington. Archived from the original on September 14, 2013. Retrieved May 4, 2005.

Bibliography

• Bowling, Kenneth R., and Donald R. Kennon. "A New Matrix for National Politics." Inventing Congress: Origins and Establishment of the First Federal Congress. Athens, O.: United States Capitol Historical Society by Ohio U, 1999. 110–37. Print.
• Chernow, Ron (2004). "Alexander Hamilton". London, UK: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-1101200858.
• Collier, Christopher. "Voting and American Democracy." The American People as Christian White Men of Property:Suffrage and Elections in Colonial and Early National America. N.p.: U of Connecticut, n.d, 1999.
• DenBoer, Gordon, ed. (1990). The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788–1790. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-06690-1.
• Dinkin, Robert J. Voting in Revolutionary America: A Study of Elections in the Original Thirteen States, 1776–1789. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1982.
• Ellis, Richard J. (1999). Founding the American Presidency. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8476-9499-0.
• McCullough, David (1990). John Adams. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4165-7588-7.
• Meacham, Jon (2012). Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4000-6766-4.
• Novotny, Patrick. The Parties in American Politics, 1789–2016.
• Paullin, Charles O. "The First Elections Under The Constitution." The Iowa Journal of History and Politics 2 (1904): 3-33. Web. February 20, 2017.
• Shade, William G., and Ballard C. Campbell. "The Election of 1788-89." American Presidential Campaigns and Elections. Ed. Craig R. Coenen. Vol. 1. Armonk, NY: Sharpe Reference, 2003. 65–77. Print.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to United States presidential election, 1789.

• Presidential Election of 1789: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress
• A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns, 1787–1825
• "A Historical Analysis of the Electoral College". The Green Papers. Retrieved February 17, 2005.
• Election of 1789 in Counting the Votes Archived May 25, 2016, at the Wayback Machine

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