The First Congress
How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government
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3.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $1.99
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
This “fascinating” (Chicago Tribune), “lively” (The New York Times) history tells how the First Congress and the Washington administration created one of the most productive and far-reaching governments in American history—“gracefully written…and well worth reading” (The Wall Street Journal).
The First Congress may have been the most important in American history because it established how our government would work. The Constitution was a broad set of principles that left undefined the machinery of government. Fortunately, far-sighted, brilliant, and determined men such as Washington, Madison, Adams, Hamilton, and Jefferson (and others less well known today) labored to create a functioning government.
In The First Congress, award-winning author Fergus Bordewich brings to life the achievements of the First Congress: it debated and passed the first ten amendments to the Constitution, which we know as the Bill of Rights; admitted North Carolina and Rhode Island to the union when they belatedly ratified the Constitution, then admitted two new states, Kentucky and Vermont, establishing the procedure for admitting new states on equal terms with the original thirteen; chose the site of the national capital, a new city to be built on the Potomac; created a national bank to handle the infant republic’s finances; created the first cabinet positions and the federal court system; and many other achievements. But it avoided the subject of slavery, which was too contentious to resolve.
The First Congress takes us back to the days when the future of our country was by no means assured and makes “an intricate story clear and fascinating” (The Washington Post).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian and journalist Bordewich (America's Great Debate) addresses a less-discussed institution of the Revolutionary period in this mainstream history of America's first Congress. Tasked with making the promise of the recently minted U.S. Constitution a functioning reality, the first Congress began its work in 1789. At the time the Constitution, still absent the Bill of Rights, was a work in progress, with a long list of difficult questions lurking in its aspirational text. The legislator players included Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, John Adams, and Washington, as well as a colorful mix of others, many of whom Bordewich skillfully brings to life through brief biographical sketches. Bordewich doesn't tie then-dominant issues to current politics, but the constancy of fundamental political issues is striking: the question of congressional power versus presidential power, the nature of the federal courts, the powers that the Constitution respectively conveys to federal and state governments, taxes and finances, citizenship, and the intractable challenges of slavery and race. Additionally, the first Congress also debated the pivotal issues included in the Bill of Rights. Bordewich's noteworthy exploration of the foundation for a working constitutional government provides an important perspective on American history.
