Posted on 06/02/2004 4:37:36 PM PDT by presidio9
IN his heart of hearts, Bill Stanley probably knows that he's not going to convince the world that George Washington was the 11th president of the United States and that local-boy-made-good Samuel Huntington was the first.
But Mr. Stanley looks like a man on a mission as he picks his way through the ancient gravestones in Colonial Cemetery here toward the refurbished tomb where Huntington and his wife, Martha, are buried. And that mission is to establish that the first president of the United States was not the general from Virginia, but a taciturn, self-educated farmer's son and future Connecticut governor, who served as president of the Continental Congress, and thus president of the new United States when the Articles of Confederation first established the flawed, loose confederation that was superseded by the Constitution approved in 1787.
"I'm not knocking George,'' said Mr. Stanley, a former stockbroker and the head of the Norwich Historical Society. "But the fact that no one is paying attention doesn't make wrong right. You don't think Columbus discovered America, do you? But he gets credit for it. Well, George Washington was the father of our country. He was maybe the greatest American who ever lived. And he was the 11th president."
The basis of the claim is simple and, in a bar-bet way, not entirely nutty. When the Articles of Confederation established the first, loose union of states in 1781, it declared for the first time "the perpetual union'' of the 13 states. And during the years it remained in effect, 10 different men presided over the legislature, serving as presidents of the United States in Congress Assembled. They conducted its business, in much the way President Thomas Mifflin signed the Treaty of Paris in which Britain recognized the new nation. No one is claiming those 10 men had powers and responsibilities in any way comparable to the presidents beginning with Washington.
But as Mr. Stanley says, "It wasn't much of a president, but it was the only one we had.'' And, under this reading of history, the first presidents were not Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison but Huntington, McKean, Hanson and Boudinot.
This is not an argument that Mr. Stanley and his co-conspirators are likely to win.
"George Washington was the first president of a nation, not a loose confederation of states,'' said Shirley Anne Warshaw, a professor of political science at Gettysburg College and a member of the council of scholars at the Center for the Study of the Presidency in Washington. "Under the Articles of Confederacy, you had 13 sovereign states. There was no national government. The coinage of each state was different. The rules of navigation were different. You can't have a nation when you have 13 sovereign states.''
Asked the chances of formal recognition of the Forgotten 10 as presidents of the United States, she replied: "Zero.''
STILL, the Huntington loyalists are undeterred. Up the road in the town of Scotland, the Gov. Samuel Huntington Trust in 1996 bought the house where he was born in 1731. The trust paid for half the $150,000 cost and took out a mortgage for the rest. And the state provided $300,000 needed to restore and salvage it. Stanley L. Klos, who buys and restores historical properties and lives near Pittsburgh, has published "President Who? Forgotten Founders,'' arguing the case for the Forgotten 10. He says he is preparing to go to court if the federal government does not recognize them.
Mr. Stanley, figuring that renumbering the presidents is a certain loser, is hoping to get Congress to approve a presidential wreath on the graves of the Forgotten 10 on their birthdays.
Mr. Stanley, whose other big project is championing the positive part of the legacy of another famous Norwich resident, Benedict Arnold, said he was researching Huntington's life while raising money for the restoration of his tomb, when he came upon his big historical moment.
"It was like finding gold in California,'' he said.
Whether the gold had to do with impeccable history or Barnum-like public relations isn't clear. "I'm not a historian; I'm an Irishman with some blarney,'' he says.
The campaign has helped put some life in Norwich, once one of the 10 biggest cities in the colonies, now a place trying to figure out how to get its piece of the action from the nearby casinos. But even some locals here and in Scotland seem to have their doubts. At the Scotland town hall, town historian Polly Miller rolled her eyes when asked who the first president was.
"I know what I'm supposed to say,'' she said. But she kept her answer to herself.
We've got two Presidents in national government now. The President of the Senate, and the President of the United States, and I don't think both are held by Geo. W. Bush.
This is like arguments about the meaning of this or that Constitutional amendment, where the initial understanding of the people alive when the action happened should take precidence. If the people in 1791 thought that Geo. Wash. wasn't the first president of the United States, then they would have said so. It's not like someone in 1925 got around to reading some old manuscript and said "Eureka! I've discovered that the very first President was some ex-General named Washington".
Another sad case of Too Much Time on My Hands Syndrome.
As for the historian who said "we had no national government, only a confederation of states." she is incompetent. It WAS a national government, but not one of suffient strength and financing.
A demonstration of the weakness of this "President" who was chosen by the Congress, comes from John Hancock. The year that Hancock was elected to serve, he was too ill to travel from Boston to the capitol then in New York. So he never went there, and the government functioned fine in his absence.
Congressman Billybob
After John Hanson, other presidents (before Washington) were: Elias Boudinot, Thomas Mifflin, Richard Henry Lee, Nathan Gorman, Arthur St. Clair, and Cyrus Griffin.
I'm not sure of that. The Articles said the name of the country was The United States of America. And it provided that congress could select a president. No title is given. I don't think it's wrong to say he would be president of the United States of America.
John / Billybob
This guy must be a closet Cubs fan, and he's working his way up to writing a book about the College of Coaches, a great idea for a gum company but not a baseball team.
J.
Washington wasn't even the 1st President under the new Constitution. Someone else was inaugurated before Washington, because Washington couldn't get away from the plantation in time. Washington was inaugurated second.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.