THE FIRST ELECTIONS UNDER THE CONSTITUTION[1]
This article treats the election of electors and their choice of the first President and Vice-President, and of the election of representatives and senators to the first Congress. Information has been sought chiefly upon the legal provisions which the States made, the political parties and the campaign, and the voting for candidates and its results. Many facts greatly to be desired are either inaccessible or wholly lacking. The printed official records of Georgia, Delaware, and New Jersey are scant. Little information about the first elections of senators has come down to us. This article must therefore lack in completeness and in uniformity of treatment.
New Hampshire, June 21, 1788, won the distinction of making the Constitution effective by giving the ninth vote in its support. The next step towards putting the new system into operation fell to the Congress of the Confederation. Its action was delayed several months by a wrangle over the place where the seat of government should be. Having settled this point in favor of New York, Congress, on September 13, 1788, passed a resolution that the States should appoint electors on the first Wednesday in January, 1789, that these electors should vote for President on the first
- ↑ This article was originally prepared as a paper for a seminar in American Constitutional History conducted by Professor J. Franklin Jameson at the University of Chicago.
