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 podcast American History for Kids. I'm your host, Amelia Hamilton. We've spent the last several weeks talking all about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But of course, while all of that 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 today we're going to talk about one of the biggest. As you may remember, the first of these new United States to ratify the Constitution was Delaware and they did that on December seventh of seventeen eighty seven, and then on June twenty first, seventeen eighty eight, the Constitution became official when New Hampshire became the ninth of the thirteen states to ratify it. That was all the votes they needed to make it the law of the land, although more states did go on to ratify it after that, right up until May twenty ninth of seventeen ninety 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 Constitution became official and America was ready to choose a new leader. You might remember from episode seventy three that the Constitution created an electoral college and a whole system of how to elect a president, and now it was time to put that into practice. But who were they going to choose? In this episode, we talk about the very first presidential election, which started in December of seventeen eighty eight 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 all about the election of George Washington, how he was chosen, and about his inauguration which officially made him the first president of the United States. And first some questions from Emory. My name is 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, especially when about for one of my pigs just 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 George Washington's campaign, Like, how did he know you wanted to run for president? Did it start at an early age? What does inauguration mean? Do you think George Washington met add favorite summertime food or had a dog? I wonder how he liked being the president. It must have been harder than he thought. Now to our expert for the answers. Hello, my name is doctor Colin Shogen, and I'm the Archivist of the United States. Oh my goodness, what does that mean? Well, that means that I work at the National Archives and Records Administration, which is a governmental agency in the federal government located headquartered in Washington, DC, and our job is to collect and preserve and share all of the records of the United States. Wow, we just last week wrapped up the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and of course we've talked about the Declaration of Independence and things like that. So does that mean that you've seen those up close? I have, and my office is only is only a few steps away from the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which is located in our rotunda in our building in Washington, d C. And anybody can come in seven days a week and between the hours of ten and five and can visit with those documents. And I take advantage of that every day that I'm at work. I bet I would too, My goodness. We wanted to talk about the first president and how how that even came to be. So we had a great question to start with, which is, what was the campaign like? You know, I think we see we see these big, long, crazy, kind of lowed campaigns now and people are running for president. What was it like in the very first election? That's a great question, And the simple answer is that it's not anything like what we see now. The first election of our president didn't really have any campaign. What was decided ahead of time was that they needed to select a leader to become the first president of the United States that everyone thought could do a very good job and that everyone trusted. And the one person in the United States that had the most trust and was well known all across just the few thirteen states that we're in the beginning was George Washington. Because he served as the General of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, and he had a national reputation. So George Washington is the only president of the United States to be selected unanimously by the electors in the Electoral College. So no one voted against him. All sixty nine electors voted for him, and so he was unanimously selected to be our first president of the United States. Wow. And is that something that he really wanted to do if 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 are running for president who travel all across the country and ask people to vote for them, either in primaries or in our general election. And George Washington was very hesitant about serving as the first president of the United States because he had no examples to follow. There was really nobody even in the world to follow. There had never been a democratically elected president like that in the history of the 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 governed by kings and queens and monarchs and not people that were selected by the citizens like George Washington was. So he was very nervous about the precedents that he would set that everybody else that became President of the United States after him would have to follow. So he was very intimidated, you might say about this idea. Yeah, and I believe with it his choice to go by mister president. Did he start that tradition as well. There was a lot of debate in by the Senate early on about what they should call the President of the United States, and the Constitution that was the title President of the United States, but what should we actually call this person? And there were things like, you know, his excellency and other things that were batted around. But George Washington looked at all of those 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 character that he didn't want a fancy, lofty title. That's right. I mean what George Washington didn't want to be one thing, and that was king. He was. He had fit fought a whole entire war against the idea of having a king or a monarch that would be in charge. And he definitely didn't want to be as president to be mismistaken for a king. One thing that I know about George Washington is that he loved his farm life. He loved his quiet life more than more than maybe being a public figure. And Emory who is our guest today as well, she also lives on a farm and one of her favorite things to do is play with her pigs. And I was wondering if you knew George Washington, you know, did he have animals in particular. Emory also asked about dogs. Well, you know, Mount Vernon, which was his his farm and plantation, had many animals on it, including you know, sheep, goats, horses. But Washington was particularly 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 we would think about dogs today. I have a dog, and you know, my dog is my pet. So he lives a pretty good life. He's he's sleeping right now. He doesn't do too much work. He you know, he eats and goes for walks and is a companion for me. But he's not really a working dog. But the dogs that Washington had on his farm were what we might consider to be farm dogs or working dogs. And he was a big fan in particular of hounds because the hounds could be used for hunting purposes. And in fact, he's viewed by many as the person who originated the breed we have right now called the American foxhound, because he bred his hounds with the hounds given to him by the Marquis de Lafayette, who he fought, who fought alongside him in the Revolutionary War, and Lafayette sent him French hounds, and the breed the mix between the two was what is generally accepted did as the American fox sound today. Wow. Actually, in our episode about the Marquis de la Fayette, we heard that he might have introduced I'm trying to think I believe it was Alsatians to America too. It sounds like he was quite a dog lover himself. We do we know the names of any of George Washington's dogs. He did have one. The names of his dogs were kind of funny. One dog in particular, his name was Vulcan, and Vulcan was probably his most famous hound and the reason why Vulcan was so famous was that one day Martha Washington was in the kitchen with enslaved people who were preparing dinner for that evening, and they were preparing to serve ham that night for dinner, and Vulcan was a little bit of a sneak and he got into the kitchen. He probably smelled the ham cooking, and he successfully stole the ham out of the out of the kitchen and ran off with it and took it back to the kennel where I'm sure he ate it and maybe others who other dogs who lived with him in the kennel. And at the dinner that night, someone asked why they weren't having ham, because I guess Martha Washington had promised him for dinner that night, and she said she explained that Vulcan had stolen stolen the dinner that particular dish, and everybody sort of was a little annoyed about it. But reportedly George Washington laughed and laughed and laughed and thought it was the funniest story ever about what Vulcan had done. And so Vulcan is probably the best known out of Washington's dogs. That's pretty funny, and it shows that maybe dogs haven't changed all that much even though their their lifestyles are very different. I know mine will. We'll try to sneak a little bit every once in a while too. Um okay, So when you mentioned this 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 food the Washington's like to eat? Sure, Washington liked a lot of different dishes for main course. He's probably his favorite dish was fish. Remember that Washington lived at Mount Vernon, and Mount Vernon was situated really steps away from the Potomac River that runs through Washington, d c. And there was fishing that was done every day to feed those people who lived at Mount Vernon and also Washington's guests. So he most likely ate fish for one of his meals every day, and that was a favorite of his. He also had what we might consider to be called a sweet tooth today. He liked to eat desserts and he ate a number of different pies cakes. Martha Washington enjoyed making very 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 in time, because you can imagine, there weren't refrigerators or freezers at the time, so it was very difficult to make. But Washington did enjoy ice cream upon occasion 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 life he would have preferred. And you know, he ended up spending so much time in the military and then serving as president, which kept him away from his farm. But back to his public life for a minute. What is an inauguration. Let's start there. Once he became president, what happened next? Well, an inauguration is the beginning of something, so that that just that word means the beginning, and in the American sense, it is the beginning of a presidential term of office. So we elect a president every four years, that's the term of office, and every four years after the election, we have an inauguration ceremony. And Washington, of course was our first president, so it was the first inauguration ceremony. It took place in seventeen eighty nine, on April thirtieth, and it took place in New York City because 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 come out and there are there's music and celebration. Was it was it something like that or was it a more subdued affair. It was more subdued than what we see today. But actually a lot of it has remained the same. There was you know, there would have been music and there would have been bells ringing in the morning before the inauguration. Washington took the oath of office a little past noon on April thirtieth, and we know right now the president and is always inaugurated at noon, so that's pretty similar. And Washington decided that he would take the oath of office publicly, so he took it at a place called Federal Hall in New York City, in Manhattan. And instead of taking the oath of office just privately in front of members of Congress and senators, he decided to actually step out on the balcony and take the oath of office, so that the people that were gathered around Federal Hall, the citizens that were gathered around Federal Hall could actually see him take the oath of office. They probably couldn't hear him too much because there was no microphones back then, no amplification of your voice, so it would just been his voice. They probably couldn't have heard too much, but at least they would have seen him take the oath of office. He also took the oath of office using a Bible, which we know all presidents have used a Bible since George Washington. And one thing that was a little bit different. He did give an inaugural speech or an address after taking the oath. In order to do that, he moved inside so that he could give the address to the people inside the Senate Chamber that were gathered around. He didn't do it in a public public area, but he did establish the practice of giving a speech after taking the oath. Say, can you tell us a little bit more about what that oath is? It's the oath is actually in the Constitution, but it is the oath in which a president swears to uphold the Constitution to the best of his or her ability. And the president does this, takes this oath because the president is the chief executive of the United States according to the Constitution, so that person is in charge of actually carrying out the functions of government. So that's why you have to swear to uphold the principles of the Constitution to do it. Why do you think it was important for him to do that in public? I think that Washington probably thought that, you know, given that this was the first he was the first president, he wanted to make sure that people understood he was entering this office willingly, that he was swearing to uphold the Constitution is not something This is very different, right, This is not something that a king or a queen or a monarch would do. A king or a queen or a monarch doesn't have to take an oath 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. He was elected according to the Constitution and drived his powers democratically from the citizens of the United States. So I think 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 terms of office eight years, and I think the Washington would have probably liked to have just done four years and said that was it, but he was encouraged that 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 more time to be solidified and to establish more precedents. So he decided to serve one more term. Did anyone run against him in that second term or did he run unopposed? No, nobody ran against Washington. Nobody ever ran against Washington. 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 was being president harder than Washington thought? Or you know what did he think of being president? Well? I think that Washington understood this was a duty and he was very unique positioned to be able to excel in this role. And given that the American government was so new and was trying to do things that no other government had really done for a large country like the United States, he thought that he was particularly fit for the role. But it was really his sense of duty that encouraged him to take on those responsibilities. I think he probably ended up at the end thinking that it was maybe a little bit harder than he had ever imagined, although he went into it with his eyes wide open. He had a lot of challenges, particularly in his second term of office. A war broke out between England and France, which were the two 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 each other. It put Washington in a really difficult position about whether he should take sides in that conflict. He had Thomas Jefferson urging him to take the side of 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 no sides in that war and declared the United States to be neutral. But that was a controversial position to take, and he got a lot of criticism from some people about it, which I don't think he really liked. There was a rebellion in the United States, the Whiskey Rebellion, and people got angry because there had to be taxes that were levied upon citizens. You have to pay for this government. The government's not free. You're starting to establish departments and functions of government. You're going to have a military presence, and as a result, you have to have taxes, or they were called tariffs at that point in time, and there was a tariff on whiskey and farmers and Western Pennsylvania got very upset and they thought this tax was unfair, that it was way too high and was inhibiting their ability to be able to succeed as farmers, and so they rose up and it was called a rebellion. And Washington actually the only American president to actually go into ride a horse into battle in 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 call the rebellion and was successful in doing so. But I'm sure he didn't particularly enjoy that. 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 be united based upon the principles that were contained in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution, and that we really should. We could have voting and we could have a democracy, but we shouldn't divide into what was called factions or political parties. But by the time Washington left office, the beginnings of political parties had started to form, and I think Washington probably didn't like that very much either. Yeah, I think we're really fortunate in a first president who was overseeing all of these incredible changes, that we had someone with a pretty level head, steady hand at the tiller to keep things together when we were brand new. I think we're very fortunate. We were incredibly fortunate to have someone like George Washington at the beginning, because someone with a little bit less of character, a little less focus of mind, might have been very tempted to accept what some people wanted him to do, which was to basically crown 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 of monarchy or kings or queens, he said, no, this isn't this isn't the purpose of why we created a democratically elected chief executive. So he had that in the foremost part of his mind and were very, very lucky that we had someone with Washington's character and his steadfastness to be able to lead us through those first eight years of government. A final question about him being like he said, steadfast, Do you think that his wife, Martha Washington had a part in that. Oh, I'm 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 to each other, all during the Revolutionary War. She joined him whenever he became president in New York, but you know, at other times that were critical during the Constitutional Convention. So it would be great to have access to those letters to know exactly, you know, what Mark Washington's reactions were. You know, I'm sure George Washington also shared some of his concumes back and forth with her. But Martha Washington decided upon Washington's death, she decided to burn all of those letters. And she did destroy them because I think she thought at that point in time she was protecting Washington's ability to have private counsel and protecting perhaps their privacy. But it would be it would be really nice as historians and as students of history, if we were able to see some of those exchanges back and forth between George and Martha Washington. It's just an unfortunate occurrence in history that that took place. But we do know that he took her opinion very seriously and she was very active in his life, and in fact, she didn't want to join him in New York City when he became president, but she knew that she also had a role to play as he fulfilled his role as president, that there would be great opportunities for socializing, there would be opportunities for dinner parties and meetings that would be critical to the operations of the government, and that she was there to help support those conversations to take place. Yeah, as Washington was kind of creating the role of president and defining what that would look like, she was really creating what a first lady would be. That's true, and the role that term first lady wouldn't come for for many, many years later. But we found that the role of first lady is actually, you know, it's much studied something that people are very interested in historically, because presidents have truly relied upon their spouses for all kinds of informal council feedback and input as their administrations have unfolded. Yeah, when you look back at major figures in history, there are some that are so interesting and so important, but maybe you wouldn't want to actually spend a lot of time with them. The Washington strike me as someone and I would love to have a cup of tea with or a glass of ale and you know, actually have a conversation, right, And if you're an adult, they did like to They like to drink wine a lot. So that's that's what they might have offered you in the evening, but certainly in the morning or the afternoon they would have offered you coffee or tea. That's right, wonderful, all right. So as we look back on George Washington and his presidency, what are some of the key things that we should keep in mind. Well, sometimes going first is actually really important. That's that's what I say about Washington anything. A lot of times when we think of why does the president do this, or why is this tradition or even you know, the White House, why does it exist where it is so not all 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 as vast as important. But really Washington was the one to put those building blocks in place. So we should be very thankful once again to George Washington. Because putting the principles of the Constitution on paper is one thing and really important. We can thank James Madison as the primary architect of the Constitution, but then really putting those principles into action and into practice, then we have to thank George Washington for what he did. Yes, absolutely, and I think we should always still remain grateful for the solid foundation that we have. Absolutely, all right, Doctor Shergan, thank you so much for joining us today and giving us this great introduction. Thank you very much for having me, and I hope everybody is encouraged by the study of American history. And you know, you're welcome to come to visit us at the National Archives in Washington, DC, or you can visit us online at a Nara narav And we have a lot of resources for kids and for teachers who are curious about learning more about American history. That was such a cool overview of George Washington becoming our very first president and with that America was officially up and running. I'd love to thank Emery and doctor Shogen for taking part today. And like doctor Shogen said, if you're ever in Washington, DC, you really should stop by the National Archives. It is really incredible to see that history up close. But if you're not able to make it to Washington, DC, NAARA dot gov has a lot of really cool stuff to see. Thanks for listening today and I can't wait to talk to you next time. In the meantime, you can find us and the Growing Patriot books at Growing Patriots dot com. And you can find us at Growing Patriots on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. See you next time. They create us solved Jeremy standything and they fuck away would be America. And this has been a presentation of the FCB podcast Network, where real talk lifts. Visit us online at FCB Podcasts dot com.
