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Chapter V - First President and the Bill of Rights
First President and the Bill of Rights 1789
In the years between George Washington's election in 1789 and Thomas Jefferson's in 1800, financial difficulty, European wars and political infighting between the Federalists and Jeffersonians beset the new United States of America. As the 1800s began, however, the United States had managed to establish a strong central government, sidestep a major war with England and France and create a viable two-party system. Yet government stability and freedom from external and internal strife did not come without a high price - a price to be paid in the decades to come by women of all classes and free and enslaved black people. Because the nation's economic strength depended on the exploitation of the unpaid labor these groups provided, those who wielded power would relentlessly continue to repress them, denying them equal social, political and economic power and neglecting to grant or protect their rights as citizens.
In April 1789 the electoral college chose the two men who were to steer the nation through precarious waters at home and abroad. Not surprisingly, they unanimously elected George Washington as president with sixty-nine votes and John Adams as vice-president with the second highest number of votes, thirty-four. These men, along with the recently elected, predominantly Federalist Congress, faced four critical problems: first, raising badly needed revenue to support the new national government; second, setting up various executive departments; third, organizing a federal judiciary; and fourth, of particular importance to the Anti-Federalists, the inclusion of a strong bill of rights in the Constitution.
Led by Virginia's James Madison, Congress quickly achieved what the Confederation Congress had failed to do. They imposed a tariff on selected imported goods, thus creating the first effective national tax law. Madison also persuaded his fellow congressmen to confront the impending bill of rights issue. They chose the first eight amendments from the Virginia Bill of Rights written by George Mason in 1776 when Britain directly threatened individual rights. The First Amendment prohibited Congress from passing any law restricting the people's right to freedom of religion, speech, press, peaceable assembly or petition. The Second and Third Amendments provided for a "well regulated militia" and the people's right to "keep and bear arms." The Fourth Amendment prohibited "unreasonable searches and seizures" while the Fifth and Sixth protected those accused of crimes. The Seventh created procedures for jury trials in both civil and criminal cases, and the Eighth forbade excessive bail and "cruel and unusual punishment." The Ninth and Tenth Amendments protected states' rights, proclaiming that the "enumeration of rights" in the Constitution "shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people" and that "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution . . . are reserved to the states respectively, or the people." For the Anti-Federalists, the proposed bill of rights was only half a victory. Although they had persuaded Congress to guarantee that the central government would not infringe on citizens' personal rights, amendments modifying the actual powers of the federal government did not pass.
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