Ep. 94 – America's First President

Once the Constitution had been ratified, it was time to America to choose its first president. We're joined by Dr. Colleen Shogan – the Archivist of the United States –to hear all about how George Washington was chosen and inaugurated.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Now this is the FCB Podcast Network, the Great US all the Jemmy and
they thought so we America. Hi, and welcome back to the Growing Patriot

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podcast American History for Kids. I'myour host, Amelia Hamilton. We've spent
the last several weeks talking all aboutthe Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
But of course, while all ofthat was being written and debated and then
ratified voted on by the states,there were a lot of other big and
important things going on, and todaywe're going to talk about one of the

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biggest. As you may remember,the first of these new United States to
ratify the Constitution was Delaware and theydid that on December seventh of seventeen eighty
seven, and then on June twentyfirst, seventeen eighty eight, the Constitution
became official when New Hampshire became theninth of the thirteen states to ratify it.

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That was all the votes they neededto make it the law of the
land, although more states did goon to ratify it after that, right
up until May twenty ninth of seventeenninety when Rhode Island became the very last
state to say yes to the Constitution. But let's go back to June of
seventeen eighty eight, when the Constitutionbecame official and America was ready to choose

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a new leader. You might rememberfrom episode seventy three that the Constitution created
an electoral college and a whole systemof how to elect a president, and
now it was time to put thatinto practice. But who were they going
to choose? In this episode,we talk about the very first presidential election,

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which started in December of seventeen eightyeight and only lasted a few weeks
until January of seventeen eighty nine.I have a great guest today, and
I'm so excited to tell you allabout the election of George Washington, how
he was chosen, and about hisinauguration which officially made him the first president
of the United States. And firstsome questions from Emory. My name is

(02:37):
Emory Robson, ten years old,ended in Michigan. My favorite activities are
probably viking, plying on four wheeler, and climed toys. I do also
like plim with my pigs, especiallywhen about for one of my pigs just

(03:00):
sits there with his tongue out,looking little creepy. Well, I'm going
into great next to my favorite food, probably McDonald's chicken nuggets. Ask some
questions to ask you what did GeorgeWashington's campaign, Like, how did he

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know you wanted to run for president? Did it start at an early age?
What does inauguration mean? Do youthink George Washington met add favorite summertime
food or had a dog? Iwonder how he liked being the president.
It must have been harder than hethought. Now to our expert for the

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answers. Hello, my name isdoctor Colin Shogen, and I'm the Archivist
of the United States. Oh mygoodness, what does that mean? Well,
that means that I work at theNational Archives and Records Administration, which

(04:09):
is a governmental agency in the federalgovernment located headquartered in Washington, DC,
and our job is to collect andpreserve and share all of the records of
the United States. Wow, wejust last week wrapped up the Bill of
Rights, the Constitution, and ofcourse we've talked about the Declaration of Independence

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and things like that. So doesthat mean that you've seen those up close?
I have, and my office isonly is only a few steps away
from the Declaration, the Constitution andthe Bill of Rights, which is located
in our rotunda in our building inWashington, d C. And anybody can

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come in seven days a week andbetween the hours of ten and five and
can visit with those documents. AndI take advantage of that every day that
I'm at work. I bet Iwould too, My goodness. We wanted
to talk about the first president andhow how that even came to be.

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So we had a great question tostart with, which is, what was
the campaign like? You know,I think we see we see these big,
long, crazy, kind of lowedcampaigns now and people are running for
president. What was it like inthe very first election? That's a great
question, And the simple answer isthat it's not anything like what we see
now. The first election of ourpresident didn't really have any campaign. What

(05:39):
was decided ahead of time was thatthey needed to select a leader to become
the first president of the United Statesthat everyone thought could do a very good
job and that everyone trusted. Andthe one person in the United States that
had the most trust and was wellknown all across just the few thirteen states

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that we're in the beginning was GeorgeWashington. Because he served as the General
of the Continental Army during the RevolutionaryWar, and he had a national reputation.
So George Washington is the only presidentof the United States to be selected
unanimously by the electors in the ElectoralCollege. So no one voted against him.

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All sixty nine electors voted for him, and so he was unanimously selected
to be our first president of theUnited States. Wow. And is that
something that he really wanted to doif he excited and tried to get people
to vote for him. No.And that's very different from what we see
today when we see people who arerunning for president who travel all across the

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country and ask people to vote forthem, either in primaries or in our
general election. And George Washington wasvery hesitant about serving as the first president
of the United States because he hadno examples to follow. There was really
nobody even in the world to follow. There had never been a democratically elected

(07:16):
president like that in the history ofthe world, and so George Washington was
really in new territory. Remember,most countries at that point in time in
the history of the world were governedby kings and queens and monarchs and not
people that were selected by the citizenslike George Washington was. So he was

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very nervous about the precedents that hewould set that everybody else that became President
of the United States after him wouldhave to follow. So he was very
intimidated, you might say about thisidea. Yeah, and I believe with
it his choice to go by misterpresident. Did he start that tradition as

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well. There was a lot ofdebate in by the Senate early on about
what they should call the President ofthe United States, and the Constitution that
was the title President of the UnitedStates, but what should we actually call
this person? And there were thingslike, you know, his excellency and
other things that were batted around.But George Washington looked at all of those

(08:26):
options and he said, well,I think the most the best thing would
be just to stick with mister president. And that has stuck since washington selection.
And I think that's a good thing. I do too, and I
think it really speaks to his characterthat he didn't want a fancy, lofty
title. That's right. I meanwhat George Washington didn't want to be one
thing, and that was king.He was. He had fit fought a

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whole entire war against the idea ofhaving a king or a monarch that would
be in charge. And he definitelydidn't want to be as president to be
mismistaken for a king. One thingthat I know about George Washington is that
he loved his farm life. Heloved his quiet life more than more than

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maybe being a public figure. AndEmory who is our guest today as well,
she also lives on a farm andone of her favorite things to do
is play with her pigs. AndI was wondering if you knew George Washington,
you know, did he have animalsin particular. Emory also asked about
dogs. Well, you know,Mount Vernon, which was his his farm

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and plantation, had many animals onit, including you know, sheep,
goats, horses. But Washington wasparticularly he was he was a dog lover.
Washington had many dogs throughout his life. Some people estimate that probably he
owned fifty different dogs throughout his life. Something a little bit different than how

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we would think about dogs today.I have a dog, and you know,
my dog is my pet. Sohe lives a pretty good life.
He's he's sleeping right now. Hedoesn't do too much work. He you
know, he eats and goes forwalks and is a companion for me.
But he's not really a working dog. But the dogs that Washington had on

(10:18):
his farm were what we might considerto be farm dogs or working dogs.
And he was a big fan inparticular of hounds because the hounds could be
used for hunting purposes. And infact, he's viewed by many as the
person who originated the breed we haveright now called the American foxhound, because

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he bred his hounds with the houndsgiven to him by the Marquis de Lafayette,
who he fought, who fought alongsidehim in the Revolutionary War, and
Lafayette sent him French hounds, andthe breed the mix between the two was
what is generally accepted did as theAmerican fox sound today. Wow. Actually,

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in our episode about the Marquis dela Fayette, we heard that he
might have introduced I'm trying to thinkI believe it was Alsatians to America too.
It sounds like he was quite adog lover himself. We do we
know the names of any of GeorgeWashington's dogs. He did have one.
The names of his dogs were kindof funny. One dog in particular,

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his name was Vulcan, and Vulcanwas probably his most famous hound and the
reason why Vulcan was so famous wasthat one day Martha Washington was in the
kitchen with enslaved people who were preparingdinner for that evening, and they were
preparing to serve ham that night fordinner, and Vulcan was a little bit

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of a sneak and he got intothe kitchen. He probably smelled the ham
cooking, and he successfully stole theham out of the out of the kitchen
and ran off with it and tookit back to the kennel where I'm sure
he ate it and maybe others whoother dogs who lived with him in the
kennel. And at the dinner thatnight, someone asked why they weren't having

(12:16):
ham, because I guess Martha Washingtonhad promised him for dinner that night,
and she said she explained that Vulcanhad stolen stolen the dinner that particular dish,
and everybody sort of was a littleannoyed about it. But reportedly George
Washington laughed and laughed and laughed andthought it was the funniest story ever about
what Vulcan had done. And soVulcan is probably the best known out of

(12:41):
Washington's dogs. That's pretty funny,and it shows that maybe dogs haven't changed
all that much even though their theirlifestyles are very different. I know mine
will. We'll try to sneak alittle bit every once in a while too.
Um okay, So when you mentionedthis this dinner, that actually leads
perfectly into one of Emory's other questions, which is did he have anything dishes?
Do we know what kind of foodthe Washington's like to eat? Sure,

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Washington liked a lot of different dishesfor main course. He's probably his
favorite dish was fish. Remember thatWashington lived at Mount Vernon, and Mount
Vernon was situated really steps away fromthe Potomac River that runs through Washington,
d c. And there was fishingthat was done every day to feed those

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people who lived at Mount Vernon andalso Washington's guests. So he most likely
ate fish for one of his mealsevery day, and that was a favorite
of his. He also had whatwe might consider to be called a sweet
tooth today. He liked to eatdesserts and he ate a number of different

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pies cakes. Martha Washington enjoyed makingvery large cakes at times, and interestingly
enough, he even enjoyed ice cream, which was only enjoyed by people who
were very wealthy at that moment intime, because you can imagine, there
weren't refrigerators or freezers at the time, so it was very difficult to make.

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But Washington did enjoy ice cream uponoccasion when there was ice available to
make it silent, all right,So that was that's a little glimpse of
his farm life, maybe the lifehe would have preferred. And you know,
he ended up spending so much timein the military and then serving as
president, which kept him away fromhis farm. But back to his public

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life for a minute. What isan inauguration. Let's start there. Once
he became president, what happened next? Well, an inauguration is the beginning
of something, so that that justthat word means the beginning, and in
the American sense, it is thebeginning of a presidential term of office.

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So we elect a president every fouryears, that's the term of office,
and every four years after the election, we have an inauguration ceremony. And
Washington, of course was our firstpresident, so it was the first inauguration
ceremony. It took place in seventeeneighty nine, on April thirtieth, and

(15:16):
it took place in New York Citybecause that was serving as the capital of
the United States at the time.So was it, you know, a
huge ceremony Again, you know today, I know things are very different,
but you see these huge crowds comeout and there are there's music and celebration.
Was it was it something like thator was it a more subdued affair.

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It was more subdued than what wesee today. But actually a lot
of it has remained the same.There was you know, there would have
been music and there would have beenbells ringing in the morning before the inauguration.
Washington took the oath of office alittle past noon on April thirtieth,
and we know right now the presidentand is always inaugurated at noon, so

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that's pretty similar. And Washington decidedthat he would take the oath of office
publicly, so he took it ata place called Federal Hall in New York
City, in Manhattan. And insteadof taking the oath of office just privately
in front of members of Congress andsenators, he decided to actually step out

(16:23):
on the balcony and take the oathof office, so that the people that
were gathered around Federal Hall, thecitizens that were gathered around Federal Hall could
actually see him take the oath ofoffice. They probably couldn't hear him too
much because there was no microphones backthen, no amplification of your voice,
so it would just been his voice. They probably couldn't have heard too much,

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but at least they would have seenhim take the oath of office.
He also took the oath of officeusing a Bible, which we know all
presidents have used a Bible since GeorgeWashington. And one thing that was a
little bit different. He did givean inaugural speech or an address after taking
the oath. In order to dothat, he moved inside so that he

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could give the address to the peopleinside the Senate Chamber that were gathered around.
He didn't do it in a publicpublic area, but he did establish
the practice of giving a speech aftertaking the oath. Say, can you
tell us a little bit more aboutwhat that oath is? It's the oath
is actually in the Constitution, butit is the oath in which a president

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swears to uphold the Constitution to thebest of his or her ability. And
the president does this, takes thisoath because the president is the chief executive
of the United States according to theConstitution, so that person is in charge
of actually carrying out the functions ofgovernment. So that's why you have to

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swear to uphold the principles of theConstitution to do it. Why do you
think it was important for him todo that in public? I think that
Washington probably thought that, you know, given that this was the first he
was the first president, he wantedto make sure that people understood he was
entering this office willingly, that hewas swearing to uphold the Constitution is not

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something This is very different, right, This is not something that a king
or a queen or a monarch woulddo. A king or a queen or
a monarch doesn't have to take anoath because he or she is given their
right to rule by their hereditary,by their family right. They're born into
that role to be a monarch.But Washington wasn't born into the role.

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He was elected according to the Constitutionand drived his powers democratically from the citizens
of the United States. So Ithink he thought it was very important to
do that in a public way.So after his first term was up four
years later, what happened then,Well, Washington was once again reelected and
so he ended up serving two termsof office eight years, and I think

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the Washington would have probably liked tohave just done four years and said that
was it, but he was encouragedthat it was still really early in the
execution of the new constitutional government.So he was persuaded to stay for another
term to give young American democracy moretime to be solidified and to establish more

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precedents. So he decided to serveone more term. Did anyone run against
him in that second term or didhe run unopposed? No, nobody ran
against Washington. Nobody ever ran againstWashington. I wouldn't think that though nobody
wanted to mess with George Washington.That's for sure excellent. And so I
loved Emory's last question, which wasbeing president harder than Washington thought? Or

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you know what did he think ofbeing president? Well? I think that
Washington understood this was a duty andhe was very unique positioned to be able
to excel in this role. Andgiven that the American government was so new
and was trying to do things thatno other government had really done for a

(20:15):
large country like the United States,he thought that he was particularly fit for
the role. But it was reallyhis sense of duty that encouraged him to
take on those responsibilities. I thinkhe probably ended up at the end thinking
that it was maybe a little bitharder than he had ever imagined, although

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he went into it with his eyeswide open. He had a lot of
challenges, particularly in his second termof office. A war broke out between
England and France, which were thetwo world superpowers, the equivalent of what
we would call a world war today. So the two big superpowers in the
world, England France are fighting eachother. It put Washington in a really

(21:00):
difficult position about whether he should takesides in that conflict. He had Thomas
Jefferson urging him to take the sideof France, he had Alexander Hamilton urging
him to take the side of Britain, and so Washington ended up adopting the
neutrality policy. So he took nosides in that war and declared the United

(21:22):
States to be neutral. But thatwas a controversial position to take, and
he got a lot of criticism fromsome people about it, which I don't
think he really liked. There wasa rebellion in the United States, the
Whiskey Rebellion, and people got angrybecause there had to be taxes that were
levied upon citizens. You have topay for this government. The government's not

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free. You're starting to establish departmentsand functions of government. You're going to
have a military presence, and asa result, you have to have taxes,
or they were called tariffs at thatpoint in time, and there was
a tariff on whiskey and farmers andWestern Pennsylvania got very upset and they thought
this tax was unfair, that itwas way too high and was inhibiting their

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ability to be able to succeed asfarmers, and so they rose up and
it was called a rebellion. AndWashington actually the only American president to actually
go into ride a horse into battlein some ways, although either really was
no shots fired or anything like that. But Washington got on his horse and
rode out to Western Pennsylvania to callthe rebellion and was successful in doing so.

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But I'm sure he didn't particularly enjoythat. And then the rise of
political parties in the United States.Washington was not a fan of political parties.
He thought that we really should beunited based upon the principles that were
contained in the Declaration of Independence andin the Constitution, and that we really
should. We could have voting andwe could have a democracy, but we

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shouldn't divide into what was called factionsor political parties. But by the time
Washington left office, the beginnings ofpolitical parties had started to form, and
I think Washington probably didn't like thatvery much either. Yeah, I think
we're really fortunate in a first presidentwho was overseeing all of these incredible changes,

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that we had someone with a prettylevel head, steady hand at the
tiller to keep things together when wewere brand new. I think we're very
fortunate. We were incredibly fortunate tohave someone like George Washington at the beginning,
because someone with a little bit lessof character, a little less focus
of mind, might have been verytempted to accept what some people wanted him

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to do, which was to basicallycrown himself as an American king. And
Washington resisted that at all times,and anytime someone suggested that he do something
that reminded him in some ways ofmonarchy or kings or queens, he said,
no, this isn't this isn't thepurpose of why we created a democratically

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elected chief executive. So he hadthat in the foremost part of his mind
and were very, very lucky thatwe had someone with Washington's character and his
steadfastness to be able to lead usthrough those first eight years of government.
A final question about him being likehe said, steadfast, Do you think
that his wife, Martha Washington hada part in that. Oh, I'm

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sure she did. You know,there's unfortunately not as many. This is
the why the importance of records.You know, Martha Washington and George Washington
wrote back and forth many letters toeach other, all during the Revolutionary War.
She joined him whenever he became presidentin New York, but you know,
at other times that were critical duringthe Constitutional Convention. So it would

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be great to have access to thoseletters to know exactly, you know,
what Mark Washington's reactions were. Youknow, I'm sure George Washington also shared
some of his concumes back and forthwith her. But Martha Washington decided upon
Washington's death, she decided to burnall of those letters. And she did

(25:15):
destroy them because I think she thoughtat that point in time she was protecting
Washington's ability to have private counsel andprotecting perhaps their privacy. But it would
be it would be really nice ashistorians and as students of history, if
we were able to see some ofthose exchanges back and forth between George and

(25:37):
Martha Washington. It's just an unfortunateoccurrence in history that that took place.
But we do know that he tookher opinion very seriously and she was very
active in his life, and infact, she didn't want to join him
in New York City when he becamepresident, but she knew that she also
had a role to play as hefulfilled his role as president, that there

(26:00):
would be great opportunities for socializing,there would be opportunities for dinner parties and
meetings that would be critical to theoperations of the government, and that she
was there to help support those conversationsto take place. Yeah, as Washington
was kind of creating the role ofpresident and defining what that would look like,

(26:22):
she was really creating what a firstlady would be. That's true,
and the role that term first ladywouldn't come for for many, many years
later. But we found that therole of first lady is actually, you
know, it's much studied something thatpeople are very interested in historically, because
presidents have truly relied upon their spousesfor all kinds of informal council feedback and

(26:47):
input as their administrations have unfolded.Yeah, when you look back at major
figures in history, there are somethat are so interesting and so important,
but maybe you wouldn't want to actuallyspend a lot of time with them.
The Washington strike me as someone andI would love to have a cup of
tea with or a glass of aleand you know, actually have a conversation,
right, And if you're an adult, they did like to They like

(27:11):
to drink wine a lot. Sothat's that's what they might have offered you
in the evening, but certainly inthe morning or the afternoon they would have
offered you coffee or tea. That'sright, wonderful, all right. So
as we look back on George Washingtonand his presidency, what are some of
the key things that we should keepin mind. Well, sometimes going first
is actually really important. That's that'swhat I say about Washington anything. A

(27:34):
lot of times when we think ofwhy does the president do this, or
why is this tradition or even youknow, the White House, why does
it exist where it is so notall the time, but a lot of
time, the answer is George Washington. Washington went first, and sometimes people
think, well, going first,he wasn't quite as the government, wasn't
quite as formed as it is now, wasn't quite as big, it wasn't

(27:56):
as vast as important. But reallyWashington was the one to put those building
blocks in place. So we shouldbe very thankful once again to George Washington.
Because putting the principles of the Constitutionon paper is one thing and really
important. We can thank James Madisonas the primary architect of the Constitution,

(28:19):
but then really putting those principles intoaction and into practice, then we have
to thank George Washington for what hedid. Yes, absolutely, and I
think we should always still remain gratefulfor the solid foundation that we have.
Absolutely, all right, Doctor Shergan, thank you so much for joining us

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today and giving us this great introduction. Thank you very much for having me,
and I hope everybody is encouraged bythe study of American history. And
you know, you're welcome to cometo visit us at the National Archives in
Washington, DC, or you canvisit us online at a Nara narav And

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we have a lot of resources forkids and for teachers who are curious about
learning more about American history. Thatwas such a cool overview of George Washington
becoming our very first president and withthat America was officially up and running.

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I'd love to thank Emery and doctorShogen for taking part today. And like
doctor Shogen said, if you're everin Washington, DC, you really should
stop by the National Archives. Itis really incredible to see that history up
close. But if you're not ableto make it to Washington, DC,
NAARA dot gov has a lot ofreally cool stuff to see. Thanks for

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listening today and I can't wait totalk to you next time. In the
meantime, you can find us andthe Growing Patriot books at Growing Patriots dot
com. And you can find usat Growing Patriots on Facebook, Instagram,
and Twitter. See you next time. They create us solved Jeremy standything and

(30:15):
they fuck away would be America.And this has been a presentation of the
FCB podcast Network, where real talklifts. Visit us online at FCB Podcasts
dot com.