In the 1780s, the American people met the challenge of self-government. When they discovered that it was dangerous to give themselves too much power, they created governments regulated by a system of checks and balances that protected the people from themselves. The ratification of the Constitution closed an era of protest, revolution, and political experimentation. The future seemed to belong to the free people of a strong nation. The American people had won their sovereignty and accepted the resulting responsibility, and created a new, stronger government based on the Constitution. Yet no one really knew whether this republican experiment would work.
The government of the United States was to begin to function on March 4, 1789, but only eight senators and thirteen representatives were in the capital of New York; a quorum was not achieved until late in April. President Washington was therefore duly sworn in on April 30 at City Hall before members of Congress and spectators. He delivered a modest address to the assembled crowds in which he promised that his administration of the government would "be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens and command the respect of the world." The government of "we the people" was underway.
Much of the initial business of Congress was rather mundane. Matters of protocol had to be decided, such as the proper terms of address for the President. Was Washington to be called "Your Highness," or perhaps "Your Republican Majesty"?.We smile at such things, but they point out the experimental nature of this new government. (They finally decided on the republican sounding "Mr. President.")
Congress had to write its own rules—there was no Roberts' Rules of Order to guide them, only precedents borrowed from the British, and that done very cautiously. The new government had very little bureaucracy—the State Department consisted of Secretary of State Jefferson and a couple of clerks. The jobs and responsibilities of the four cabinet officers— secretaries of State, Treasury, and War and the Attorney General—and their "departments" had to be invented, and under the Constitution Congress was required to create a federal court system; the Constitution named only one specifically—the Supreme Court—and even there the number of justices was left to Congress to determine.
Because America had been governed by congresses or assemblies since 1775, that branch probably had the easiest time finding its way. (Many members of Congress had also had experience in colonial assemblies before the Revolution.) Congress's first major act was to create a federal court system, which was accomplished by the Judiciary Act of 1789.
Recall also that ratification of the Constitution had been a near thing: In Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York a mere handful of votes on the other side would have doomed the Constitution. Ratification was possible in part because the conventions attached to their acceptance of the document suggestions for the amendments that became the Bill of Rights. Thus one of the first orders of business in the First Congress was the adding of the Bill of Rights, a task ably managed by James Madison. From more than two hundred proposals submitted by the state conventions, Madison narrowed the list to seventeen. (There was much duplication on the suggested amendments.) Of those proposals, twelve were approved by Congress in 1791, and ten were quickly ratified and became the "Bill of Rights."
One more amendment, a historical oddity, languished unratified for almost two hundred years until a graduate student in history discovered that it was still technically alive. That student raised the issue with the states that had not ratified the forgotten amendment, and it was finally declared ratified in 1992, 201 years after being passed by Congress. It is now the 27th Amendment. It reads:
No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
It is interesting that in that very skeptical age that amendment did not get ratified quickly enough to keep pace with the addition of new states. The wheels of government sometimes turn very slowly!
World History
