The Bill of Rights - in the Acts of the First Session of the U.S. Senate

Journal of the First Session of the Senate of the United States of America, Begun and Held at the City of New-York, March 4th, 1789. First edition. New York: Thomas Greenleaf, 1789. 172 pp., 8 1/2 x 13? in. The U.S. Congress met for its first session at Federal Hall in New York City from March 4 to September 29, 1789. The U.S. Senate did not achieve a quorum until April 6, when both houses of Congress assembled to count the electoral votes for president.The Bill of Rights appeared in two 1789 book printings-this volume of Senate Journals, and the Acts Passed at a Congress of the United States (New York: Childs and Swaine). Both were printed soon after the close of the First Session of the First Federal Congress on September 29. Although priority has not been definitively established, the Senate printing likely came first. Thomas Greenleaf began soliciting subscribers for the Senate Journal in July 1789, and advertised it through his newspaper, the New-York Journal, and Weekly Register through Oct. 8, when he informed subscribers that they could pick up their copies on the 11th. ExcerptsJohn Langdon of New Hampshire declared "that the Senate and House of Representatives had met, and that he, in their presence, had opened and counted the votes of the Electors for President and Vice President of the United States.whereby it appears, that George Washington, Esq. Was unanimously elected President,-And John Adams, Esq. Was duly elected Vice President, Of the United States of America." (p7)First Address of Vice President John Adams as President of the Senate (p16-18)George Washington's First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789 (p23-25)"On the one hand, I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years-a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies." (p23)Back to the Senate: "From a decent respect for the opinion and practice of civilized nations . the Senate have been induced to be of opinion, that it would be proper to annex a respectable Title to the Office of President of the United States: But the Senate, desirous of preserving Harmony with the House of Representatives, where the practice lately observed in presenting an address to the President was without the addition of Titles, think it proper for present to act in conformity with the practice of that House: "Therefore Resolved, that the present address be- 'To the President of the United States'-without addition of Title." (p34-35)Important pieces of legislation passed in this session include (with dates of enactment):July 4, Tariff of 1789, which provided much-needed funding for the federal government;July 27, Department of Foreign Affairs established (later the State Department). (On Sept. 29, though still in Paris as U.S. Minister to France, Thomas Jefferson became the first Secretary of State);July 31: Customs Service and official ports of entry established;Aug. 7: War Department established. (On Sept. 12, Henry Knox became the first Secretary of War);Sept. 2: Treasury Department established. (On Sept. 11, Alexander Hamilton was nominated and confirmed as the first Secretary of the Treasury); andSept. 24: Judiciary Act, which established the federal j. (See website for full description).…