{"id":2163,"date":"2018-05-19T14:57:11","date_gmt":"2018-05-19T18:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/statutesandstories.com\/blog_html\/?p=2163"},"modified":"2019-02-10T22:34:59","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T03:34:59","slug":"the-first-congress-1789-1791-breathing-life-into-the-constitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.statutesandstories.com\/blog_html\/the-first-congress-1789-1791-breathing-life-into-the-constitution\/","title":{"rendered":"The First Congress (1789-1791) – Madison breathes life into the Constitution"},"content":{"rendered":"

When did the 13 colonies become the United States? When and how was the federal government formed ? As described below, the federal government did not fully take shape until the First Congress breathed life into the Constitution in 1789 by passing the foundational laws that established the Executive and Judicial branches of the federal government.<\/p>\n

Critical dates leading to the First Congress<\/em>: The colonies declared their independence from Britain in July of 1776. Independence was declared on July 2; the text of the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4; the Declaration was finally signed on August 2.<\/p>\n

The country’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, was adopted by the Continental Congress on November 15, 1777. The Articles were eventually ratified on March 1, 1781. Recognizing systemic defects with the Articles, on February 21, 1787, the Confederation Congress (also known as the “Congress of the Confederation”) called for a Constitutional Convention to amend the Articles of Confederation. Because “plan A” was increasingly recognized as a failure, it was unclear what the future of the Revolution would hold if “plan B” did not succeed.<\/p>\n

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(pictured above is a view of Federal Hall and Trinity Church looking across Wall Street in New York City where the first and second Sessions of the First Congress met in 1789 and 1790)<\/p>\n

The Constitution was drafted in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787. On September 17, 1787 a majority of the delegates signed the final draft of the Constitution, but the Constitution required ratification by nine states to take effect. On December 7, 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify. Ten months later, New Hampshire became the all important ninth state to ratify on July 21, 1788. The nine state threshold was only possible, however, after a compromise was reached in February of 1788 when Massachusetts and other holdout states agreed to ratify with the assurance that a Bill of Rights would be adopted.<\/p>\n

The new federal government did not begin operations until the First Congress met in New York on March 4, 1789, on the date and location selected by the Confederation Congress. President Washington was inaugurated at Federal Hall in New York City on April 30, 1789. Even so, it is fair to say that the federal government was not fully formed until the First Congress adopted the foundational laws that fleshed out the Constitution during its first sessions from 1789 to 1791.<\/p>\n

Indeed, historian Joseph Ellis argues that Lincoln had the dates wrong in the Gettysburg Address because the “nation” was not brought fourth “four score and twenty years” from 1863. Rather, the Articles of Confederation were little more than a “peace pact” between sovereign states that regarded themselves as mini-nations in their own right, that mutually and voluntarily came together in a domestic version of a League of Nations. In the book The Quartet<\/em>:\u00a0Orchestrating the Second American Revolution,<\/em> Ellis contends that four individuals were primarily responsible for the transition from confederacy into a nation: George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. This post tells the final leg of the story, which was consummated by the First Congress.<\/p>\n