232 Years Of Congress: What’s Changed Since That First Legislative Session in 1789?

As Congress — the 117th Congress, to be precise — speeds toward a government shutdown, we slowed down to look back at the first Congress. Are things really all that different now than they were at the beginning?

It was September 29, 1789, and the first-ever legislative session of the United States Congress was coming to a close. They had passed the Bill of Rights and created key departments like State and Treasury.

We here at GBH News are lucky to have an expert in oddities, Edgar B. Herwick III, who finds questions for listeners at our Curiosity Desk. He chatted with Morning Edition host Aaron Schachter and brought in historian Fergus Bordewich, who gave a mini history lesson on the first legislative session. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Edgar B. Herwick III: So let's go back quickly through this period of U.S. history. The United States wins the Revolutionary War and we set up our government under the Articles of Confederation. That does not go very well, and it quickly became clear we needed something else.

So we had the Constitutional Convention. That happened in 1787 — that's when the Constitution is written and signed. Then it goes to the states to ratify. Enough of them ratify it, so we're going to form a government under the Constitution, and that is what we are talking about here: This is the first time Congress goes to sit under the Constitution. This happens from March of 1789 to March of 1791 in New York City.

Aaron Schachter: Everyone thinks of Washington, don't they?

Herwick: Well, Washington is established as the future seat of government as one of the acts of this Congress.

Schachter: So, Edgar, what we're talking about here are the 13 original colonies, right?

Herwick: Actually, no. In this case, we're talking about 11 of those 13 — two states, North Carolina and our neighbors, Rhode Island, had not ratified the Constitution. There was a lot of anti-constitutional sentiment out there.

And I spoke with Fergus Bordewich. He's an author and historian. He's written about this first Congress, and as he points out, anti-Federalists, as they were called — these are the anti-Constitution people were led by a Massachusetts man.

Fergus Bordewich: The anti-federalists, led by Elbridge Gerry and a couple of other men, were articulate in speaking for the anti-federalist, anti-constitutional minority that was very vociferous and indeed even threatening in the country at large.

Herwick: Now, crucially, Gerry was one of Massachusetts' representatives in the House of Representatives. So even though he was an anti-constitutionalist, he still went and sat at the Congress and fought the cause of the people who were worried about too strong of a federal government. And in fact, one of their accomplishments is to push for a Bill of Rights.

Schachter: That's one pretty important Massachusetts representative to this Congress. Tell us about some others.

Herwick: Bordewich pointed out a few really notable Massachusetts folks — not really household names today. One is Dedham's Fisher Ames, who Bordewich actually calls his favorite member of the first Congress —

Bordewich: A man who loomed large, who is very young, by the way. He was a kind of proto-Daniel Webster, marvelous orator, recognized by everyone as probably the best orator in the first Congress.

Herwick: And a staunch defender of New England interests. He fought against things like taxation of molasses, which was important here. Then there was Theodore Sedgwick, who was born in Connecticut but had settled in the western part of our state.

Bordewich: He was one of the most outspoken anti-slavery men in that first Congress. And that, one could say, is the worst shortcoming of the first Congress. It just never came to grips with slavery, even though it was a lobbying campaign — the first in American history — to attempt to persuade the first Congress to pass legislation against slavery.

Herwick: And then there was George Thatcher, who represented the northeast of Massachusetts, which is today, of course, Maine.

Bordewich: Who was a kind of crusty Yankee of the old school, a real contrarian, a wonderful writer of letters, and who was basically an atheist, which was remarkable.

Herwick: Bordewich says remarkable because Puritan New England elected this man a number of times, which he says says something about the relative open-mindedness of the early republic.

Schachter: So tell us what this first Congress accomplished. Big stuff, right?

Herwick: We mentioned earlier: the Bill of Rights, and that's a pretty big one. The Bill of Rights gets passed by the Congress during this first session. They also created the Department of State, the Department of War, the Department of the Treasury. They created the Supreme Court, the federal court system. They established the first criminal code. They established the first revenue stream for the federal government — which, by the way, was heavily in debt. So they did a lot.

All of that, by the way, during this first session, they go on to do more, including launching the first census, establishing the first treaties — which were with Native American nations — and, deciding that Washington, D.C. would be the seat of government.

Schachter: It's a whole lot different from what gets done in Congress today, which is very little — or at least that's the way it seems. Does this first Congress have any lessons for us today, for our lawmakers?

Herwick: I asked Fergus Bordewich, the author, about this. And I used the term, one that we hear a lot, which is that "our system is broken, government is broken, Congress is broken." I asked him, as somebody who knows the very first Congress, what do you think when you hear that today? And he basically said, "I think it's a useless term."

Bordewich: It is delusional on our part to imagine that our ancestors were somehow better at the job, more committed to consensus and so on. They were always fighting it out, that's the nature of American politics, and creative solutions to political problems come from that struggle. They had confidence enough in themselves and in their heirs, their descendants — that's us — that we would work out the nation's problems through that struggle, debate, argument. Yes, compromise, compromise, compromise.

Herwick: The one thing he did point out that worries him that is different about our current moment is a lack of faith in our institutions. That, he said, is a little different.