Organizing the Federal Government

Most political leaders hoped that the partisanship of the Federalist/Antifederalist struggle would fade away with the ratification of the Constitution. The electoral college’s unanimous decision to name George Washington the first president helped calm some of this political turmoil. John Adams was selected as vice president. On April 30, 1789, Washington and Adams were sworn in at the nation’s capital in New York City.

Washington quickly established four departments—State, War, Treasury, and Justice—to bring order to his administration. Thomas Jefferson was named secretary of state; Henry Knox, secretary of war; Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the treasury; and Edmund Randolph, attorney general, head of the Department of Justice. These men had been major figures in the Revolution and helped draft the Constitution.

Congress was also busy in the spring of 1789. The Constitution called for a Supreme Court, but it offered little guidance on its practical organization. The Judiciary Act of 1789 established a Supreme Court composed of six justices along with thirteen district courts and three circuit courts to hear cases appealed from the states. Congress also worked quickly to establish a bill of rights. Representative James Madison gathered more than two hundred resolutions passed by state ratifying conventions and honed them down to twelve amendments, which Congress approved and submitted to the states for ratification. In 1791 ten of the amendments were ratified by the necessary three-fourths of the states, and these became the Bill of Rights. It guaranteed the rights of individuals and states in the face of a more powerful central government, including freedom of speech, the press, religion, and the right to petition.

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Federal Hall This drawing shows Federal Hall, located on Wall Street in New York City. Originally built in 1700 as City Hall, the building housed the Stamp Act Congress in 1765 and the confederation congress from 1785 to 1788. In 1789 it became the seat of Congress under the new Constitution and the site of President Washington’s first inauguration. New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY