The confederate Congress, at its final session in 1788, had fixed the time for the election of President and Vice-President under the Constitution, and the time and place for the meeting of the first Congress of the new government. The day appointed was the first Wednesday of the following March, and, as that date fell on the fourth of the month, a precedent was established which has ever since been observed in the installation of a new President. The place was not so easily determined. The choice lay between New York and Philadelphia, and the struggle was prolonged, not because the question of the temporary seat of government was of much moment, but because of the influence the decision might have upon the future settlement of the permanent place for the capital.

No quorum of the new Congress was present at New York on March 4, 1789, and neither house was organized until early in April. On the 23rd Washington arrived; and on the 30th he took the oath of office as first President of the United States, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall,[123] at the corner of Wall and Broad streets, a site now occupied by another building used as the subtreasury. A week before, when the ceremonies proper for such an occasion were a subject of discussion in Congress, the question of fitting titles for the President and Vice-President came up for consideration. It was decided that when the President arrived the Vice-President should meet him at the door of the senate chamber, lead him to the chair, and then, in a formal address, inform him that the two houses were ready to witness the administration of the oath of office. "Upon this," says John Adams in a letter written three years afterward, "I arose in my place and asked the advice of the Senate, in what form I should address him, whether I should say 'Mr. Washington,' 'Mr. President,' 'Sir,' 'May it please your Excellency,' or what else? I observed that it had been common while he commanded the army to call him 'His Excellency,' but I was free to own it would appear to me better to give him no title but 'Sir,' or 'Mr. President,' than to put him on a level with a governor of Bermuda, or one of his own ambassadors, or a governor of any one of our States."

Thereupon the question went to a conference committee of both houses, who reported that no other title would be proper for either President or Vice-President, at any time, than those which were given by the Constitution. To this report the Senate disagreed and appointed a new committee.[124] This proposed that the President should be called "His Highness the President of the United States and Protector of their Liberties." When wise men are absurd they presume on their prerogative. The Senate accepted the report, but the House had the good sense to reject it, consenting, however, to leave the question in abeyance. On these proceedings Mr. Madison thus commented in a letter to Jefferson:—

"My last inclosed copies of the President's inaugural speech, and the answer of the House of Representatives. I now add the answer of the Senate. It will not have escaped you that the former was addressed with a truly republican simplicity to George Washington, President of the United States. The latter follows the example, with the omission of the personal name, but without any other than the constitutional title. The proceeding on this point was, in the House of Representatives, spontaneous. The imitation by the Senate was extorted. The question became a serious one between the two houses. J. Adams espoused the cause of titles with great earnestness. His friend, R. H. Lee, although elected as a republican enemy to an aristocratic Constitution, was a most zealous second. The projected title was, His Highness the President of the United States and the Protector of their Liberties. Had the project succeeded, it would have subjected the President to a severe dilemma, and given a deep wound to our infant government."

Washington has sometimes been accused of wishing for the title of "His Highness," and of having[125] suggested it. Had this been true, Madison would have been certain to know it, and he was quite incapable of asserting in that case that such a title would have been to the President "a severe dilemma." About Mr. Adams he was perhaps mistaken, as he might easily have been, since he was not a member of the Senate, and probably heard only a confused report of how the question was brought before that body. As Mr. Adams's letter, quoted just now, shows, he regarded the charge as a calumny and resented it. He gave them, according to his own statement, no other opinion than that he preferred "Sir," or "Mr. President," as a more proper address than "Excellency," a title then, as now, pertaining to governors of States. He probably took no further part in the debate, but it is not impossible that he may in private have avowed a preference for some other and higher title than either "Mr. President" or "Your Excellency." "For," he said in the explanatory letter to his friend, "I freely own that I think decent and moderate titles, as distinctions of offices, are not only harmless, but useful in society; and that in this country, where I know them to be prized by the people as well as their magistrates as highly as by any people or any magistrates in the world, I should think some distinction between the magistrates of the national government and those of the state governments proper." A distinction might be proper enough if there were to be any titles whatever; but certainly[126] they were the wiser who preferred good homespun to threadbare old clothes. Had rags of that sort been made a legal uniform, it is almost appalling to reflect upon the absurdities to which the national fondness for titles would have carried us.

From March 4 to April 1, though the House of Representatives met daily, there were not members enough present to make a quorum. The first real business brought before the House, except that relating to its organization, was introduced by Madison, two days after the inauguration. It was a proposition to raise a revenue by duties on imports, and by a tonnage duty on all vessels, American and foreign, bringing goods, wares, or merchandise into the United States. The essential weakness of the late Confederacy was, first of all, to be remedied by uniform rules for the regulation of trade. Revenue must be provided for the support of government, and that in a way which should not be oppressive to the people. Commerce, Mr. Madison said, "ought to be as free as the policy of nations will admit," but government must be supported, and taxes the least burdensome and most easily collected are those derived from duties on imports. He agreed, however, as he said on the second day of the debate, with those who would so adjust the duties on foreign goods as to protect the "infant manufactories" of the country. With little interruption this subject was debated for the first six weeks of the opening session of the First Congress. No other could have been hit upon to[127] test so thoroughly the strength of the new bond of union. It was to brush aside all those trade regulations in the several States which each had hitherto thought essential to its prosperity. Every interest in the country was to be considered, and their different, sometimes opposing, claims to be reconciled.

New England was sure that, should the tax on molasses be too high, the distilleries would be shut up, and a great New England industry destroyed. Nor would the injury stop there. The fisheries, as well as the distilleries, would be ruined. For three fifths of the fish put up for the West Indies could find no market anywhere else; and a market existed there only because molasses was taken in exchange. A prohibitory duty on that article, or a duty that should seriously interfere with its importation, would wellnigh destroy the fisheries. What then would become of the nursery of American seamen? With no seamen there would be no shipbuilding. What sadder picture than this of a New England without rum, without codfish, without seamen, and without ships! One can easily conceive that even in that restrained and dignified First Congress there was no want of serious and alarmed expostulation, and even some threatening talk from such men as the tranquil Goodhue, the thoughtful and scholarly Ames, and the impulsive Gerry.

Then the South, for her part, was alarmed lest, among other things, too high a tonnage duty should[128] leave her tobacco, her rice and indigo, rotting in the fields and warehouses for want of ships to take them to market. She had no ships of her own and could have none, and she invited the ships of the rest of the world to come for her products and bring in return all she needed for her own consumption. The picture of the possible ruin of New England was as nothing to that of the Southern planter scanning the horizon with weary eyes in vain for the sight of a sail, while behind him was a dangerous crowd of hungry blacks with nothing to do. That desolation seemed complete to the southernmost States when it was also proposed to levy a tax of ten dollars upon every slave imported. In short, the whole subject bristled with difficulties. The problem was nothing more nor less than how to tax everything, and at the same time convince everybody that the scheme was for the general good, while nobody's special interests were sacrificed. The "infant industries," to which Mr. Madison alluded, really received no special consideration in the final adjustment, and they were too feeble then even to cry for nursing. They have grown stronger since, though they are "infants" still; and they should never cease to be grateful to him who, however unwittingly, gave them a name to live by for a hundred years.

But the most remarkable part of the debate was that upon the proposition of Mr. Parker of Virginia to impose a duty upon the importation of[129] slaves. Could the progress of events have been foreseen, that proposal might have been regarded as meant to protect an "infant industry" of the northernmost slave States. But the wildest imagination then could not conceive of the domestic slave trade of a few years later, when a chief source of the prosperity of Virginia would be her perennial crop of young men and women to be shipped for New Orleans and a market. But Mr. Parker had no ulterior motive when he avowed his regret that the Constitution had failed to prohibit the importation of slaves from Africa, and hoped that the duty he proposed would prevent, in some degree, a traffic which he pronounced "irrational and inhuman." It would have been difficult to have found a Virginian of that day who would not have taken down his shotgun on hearing that there were miscreants prowling about his kitchen doors in the hope of buying up the strongest young people of his household for export to the Southwest.

Judging from the imperfect report of the debate upon the subject, it would seem that the bargain relative to the slave trade, made in the Constitutional Convention of two years before between New England and the two southernmost States, might still hold good. Or there may have been a new bargain; or, perhaps, both sides trusted to a tacit recognition of the eternal fitness of things, and made common cause where legislation threatened at the same time the distillery and the[130] slave-ship.[11] At any rate, the extreme Southerners expressed surprise at the audacity which would disturb a compromise of the Constitution; the extreme Northerners deprecated it as quite uncalled for in any consideration of the subject of revenue. The principle of Mr. Parker's motion, Mr. Sherman of Connecticut thought, was to correct a moral evil; the principle of the bill before the House was to raise a revenue. At some other time he would be willing to consider the question of taxing the importation of negroes on the ground of humanity and policy; but it was a sufficient reason with him for not admitting it as an object of revenue that the burden would fall upon two States only. Fisher Ames of Massachusetts could only take counsel of his conscience. From his soul, he said, [131]he detested slavery; and—forgetting, apparently, that this tax was provided for by the Constitution—he doubted whether imposing it "would not have the appearance of authorizing the practice" of trading in slaves. This was his reason for wishing to postpone the subject. But Mr. Livermore of New Hampshire was more ingenious still. If the imported negroes were goods, wares, or merchandise, they would come within the title of the bill, and be taxed under the general rule of five per centum, which would be about the same rate as ten dollars a head; but if they were not goods, wares, or merchandise, then such importation could not properly be included in the consideration of the question of a revenue from duties on such articles of trade.

Mr. Madison came to the help of his colleague, and brushed aside the sophistries of the New England allies of the slave traders. If there were anything wanting in the title of the bill to cover this particular duty, it was easy to add it. If the question was not one of taxation because it was one of humanity, it would be quite as difficult to deal with it under any other bill for levying a duty as under this. If the tax seemed unjust because it bore heavily upon a single class, that would be a good reason for remitting many taxes which there was no hesitation in imposing. If ten dollars seemed a heavy duty, a little calculation would show that it was only about the proposed ad valorem duty of five per centum on most other[132] importations. "It is to be hoped," he added, "that by expressing a national disapprobation of this trade we may destroy it, and save ourselves from reproaches, and our posterity the imbecility ever attendant on a country filled with slaves." "If there is any one point," he continued, "in which it is clearly the policy of this nation, so far as we constitutionally can, to vary the practice obtaining under some of the state governments, it is this.... It is as much the interest of Georgia and South Carolina as of any in the union. Every addition they receive to their number of slaves tends to weaken and render them less capable of self-defense.... It is a necessary duty of the general government to protect every part of the empire against danger, as well internal as external. Everything, therefore, which tends to increase this danger, though it may be a local affair, yet, if it involves national expense or safety, becomes of concern to every part of the union, and is a proper subject for the consideration of those charged with the general administration of the government." No Northern man, except Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, supported this measure; and none from the Southern States, except three of the Virginia members, with Madison leading. As the foreign slave trade was protected in the Constitution for twenty years by a bargain between the two southernmost States and New England, so now the same............