If you were to ask a bunch of people who was the first President of the United States most of them would probably tell you that George Washington was the first President.
Those people would be wrong.
While it is true that George Washington was the first person to hold the title of "President of the United States of America" there were actually multiple people who were President of the United States before him, they just didn't hold the actual title of "President of the United States of America".
In fact the first Presidents of the United States actually held the title of "President of the Continental Congress" and they were not chosen by the people, but by the Continental Congress (which was the legislative body of the United States before the constitution basically dissolved the Continental Congress and split it into two with the creation the Senate and the House of Representatives) and in reality was closer to what we would consider to be the modern day Speaker of the House than President of the United States, and was more of an honorable title that held little authority. Still, the President of the Continental Congress was the Head of State for the United States, and therefore the Presidents of the Continental Congress were in fact the first Presidents of the United States.
Now Peyton Randolph was the first President of the Continental Congress, but he is not the first President of the United States, and for two very good reasons: One, he was president before the United States declared independence, and two, he actually died before the United States declared independence from Great Britain.
Now John Hanson first President of the Continental Congress to be elected under the Articles of Confederation, but Samuel Huntington was the President of the Continental Congress when the Articles of Confederation was ratified, and therefore many people consider him to be the first President of the United States.
Now of course Elias Boudinot could also be considered the first President of the United States because he was President of the Continental Congress when Great Britain officially recognized our independence on September 3, 1783, and he signed the Treaty of Paris, but the United States government doesn't recognize that date to be the date this country's independence. Instead the government officially considers July 4, 1776, the day the Continental Congress adopted and signed the Declaration of Independence, as the date of this country's independence.
So who was really the true first President of the United States?
It was John Hancock.
The Continental Congress, and the title of President of the Continental Congress was created before the Revolutionary War even began, and when the Declaration of Independence was adopted and signed, John Hancock was President of the Continental Congress (and of course one of the document's most famous signatories) and was actually President of the Continental Congress for almost 16 months after the Declaration of Independence was adopted and signed. Therefore since Hancock was President of the Continental Congress during and after signing of the Declaration of Independence, he is really the first President of the United States.
Of course there are others who will say otherwise...
I'm going to have to disagree with you.
ReplyDeleteThis game has been played many times over the past 200 years, and it's a "gotcha" game. (The TV sitcom "Webster" even did an episode on it, where the little tyke got ridiculed for saying John Hanson was the first President of the United States). The problem is, the "gotcha" punchline isn't very strong because none of these potential candidates are in any way comparable to the office that we know began in 1789. The whole thing rides on a semantic game, which is the meaning of the word "president."
The "presidents" of these legislative assemblies are in no way comparable to the post-1789 office of the President of the United States. In most cases their powers were purely parliamentary--they could act upon motions from the floor, for example--but they had no state power.
The pre-indepdendence Continental Congresses had no state power whatsoever. They could not, and did not purport to, take action to bind individual states to do anything. It was established not as a governmental body but as sort of a political action committee. Claiming that the president of the Continental Congress is the "president of the United States" is like claiming that the chairman of your local Chamber of Commerce is "CEO" of all the businesses in your town. It's just not an apposite claim.
Furthermore, it is not accurate to state that the "presidents" of these various legislative bodies were the "head of state" in the same sense the post-1789 President is. There was effectively no head of state from 1775 to 1789. This concept was not really recognized in the modern sense at that time anyway, and the men who wrote the Constitution deliberately considered themselves as breaking with pre-standing tradition by establishing the President as a true head of state. Characterizing the legislative "presidents" as heads of state is not supportable, in my view.
It's tempting to supply an answer different than "George Washington" when one asks who was the first President of the United States, but the more you investigate these claims, they more disappointing they turn out to be.
Hmm... never thought of it that way... Thank you for this information about history!
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