If you ask someone on the street who was the first President of the United States, there’s a good chance they’ll respond with “George Washington” which we all know is correct, right? As history buffs and lovers of technicalities well know, millions of us got this question wrong as there were ten Presidents before George Washington, and this Sunday, February 2 is the anniversary of our ninth President, Arthur St. Clair’s election!
The term “President” is used widely throughout our government and worldwide, and its etymology gives a clue into this technicality. President derives from the Latin prae which means “before” + sedere “to sit”, so a president “sits before” something; typically before a legislative body as its presiding officer. While we still use the term to reference a presiding officer, such as the United States Vice President being the presiding officer of the Senate, the term is now used heavily by Republics to denote the head of state. The record naming the President in the Constitutional Convention is sparse, but there are suggestions that the term was borrowed from American Academia where the term “President” was used in place of “Chancellor” because of their less complete programs compared to universities in Britain.
Turning back to St. Clair, the reason he and the other ten “Presidents” of the United States aren’t well known is that they were Presidents in the old usage of the term. During the Revolution and up until the Constitutional Convention the nation was governed under the Articles of Confederation, which was a much weaker national government than we have nowadays. There was only one house of Congress, the national government couldn’t tax or regulate, and, most importantly for this article, there was no Executive. The President of the Confederation undertook administrative roles but little more. In fact, when John Hancock was elected to serve a second term he never attended Congress anyway, and the Congress knew this before electing him!
By the time St. Clair was elected President of the Confederation, time was running out for the Revolutionary government. Three months into his term of office, delegates met in Pennsylvania to discuss amending the Articles, which turned into the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The only notable event during his time in office was the passage of the Northwest Ordinance. This law organized the Ohio territory, established the 60,000 population requirement for statehood, and further divided the territory into townships similar in size and importance to those here in New England.
So, while Washington technically wasn’t the first person to have the title “President” in the national sense, this historical factoid is just that, a mere technicality. Washington will still live on as the first modern President as the chief executive, while St. Clair will remain little more than a footnote in our history.
