During these days of financial panic (late September 2008) I thought I’d copy out something I wrote 15 years ago about our country’s very first months of our very first year (1789) under our very first president and very first secretary of the treasury and very first Congress. It’s my belief that we handled matters brilliantly and honorably and set an example for you and me.

When a Constitutional Convention was called, George Washington hesitated about going. He was already old − 55 − and a worldwide figure.

But he went to Philadelphia (1787) and was made president of the convention that produced our Constitution, the very one we have today. “He was more nationalist and less provincial then anybody,” Samuel Morrison wrote.

In crafting details, Madison, the Constitution’s chief writer, and the others subconsciously bestowed broad executive powers on the prospective president with the almost certain knowledge that it would be Washington.

With the Constitution completed, Washington went home to work for its ratification by Virginia. (He had none of the ambivalence of Robert E. Lee, who 73 years later in very different circumstances decided he was a Virginian first. Washington thought only in terms of the nation.) Alexander Hamilton didn’t like the Constitution but supported it. Jefferson, in Europe, was lukewarm. The sheer centralized power of the proposed government frightened many Virginians. The brilliant Federalist Papers and the knowledge that Washington was wholeheartedly supportive swung the day and it was ratified. He became our first president having never campaigned nor sought the office. The Electoral College elected him unanimously.

He took office in 1789. There were 4 million people in the United States, the 1790 census told us. As in war, we were lucky in peace. Our first president set a standard in governance that helped make us the nation we quickly became. Washington secured our western frontiers and saw a tremendous surge in population growth. He appointed the most distinguished staff in our history, four key men − Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison and Randolph. He was irritable, demanding, tough, but they revered him, even Jefferson, his secretary of state. As a military man, Washington knew how to delegate. The new nation was understandably a notorious credit risk. We were broke. It would be hard to gain respectability in Europe. We’d failed even to pay our interest. We were a sprawl of indebtedness at several levels of government. We were indeed broke.

We should be proud of those idealists and iron-willed realists who were there when needed.

Four million people.

Imagine even having such a thing as a census. Four million free spirits sprawled in a thin 800-mile line with a whole new setting of basic goals, parameters, achievements. Each government policy itself revolutionary, unprecedented. Plus a peerless leader.

George Washington and his treasury secretary, the young Alexander Hamilton, combined the whole mess: war debts, previous central government debts, even state indebtedness in one swoop and paid every penny. Speculators who’d gambled on this got rich. But within 10 years, the 6 percent bonds we’d issued were trading in Europe at a 10 percent premium! Washington with the support of Congress established a Bank of the United States. This was a truly fresh-faced nation, fiscally, honorably unique.

One hundred years after Washington’s death (1900) the United States of America was the largest industrial (manufacturing) country in the world.

Attorney Austin Cunningham has been the president of five business companies and in 1988 was named Outstanding Elder Citizen of the Year for South Carolina.

You must be logged in to comment.