Forgotten Founders Salutes
Bill Stanley

• President Peyton Randolph was heralded, including by George Washington, as the father of the country.

•  President Henry Middleton surrendered to the British in Charleston, South Carolina in 1780 and swore a loyalty oath to King George III.

•  President John Hancock was the first Head of State who sought to combine the offices of president and Commander-in-Chief in 1775 but lost the election of the later to George Washington.

• President Henry Laurens presided over the final days of the drafting and signing of the first U.S. Constitution, the Articles of Confederation.  He also, as President in 1778, fought hard to retain George Washington as Commander-in-Chief. In 1779 he was captured by the British on a trade mission to Holland where he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and later exchanged for Lord Cornwallis.

•  President John Jay, as Peace Commissioner, would disobey the direct orders of the President and Congress that required him, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin to include France into Treaty negotiations.  In 1783, this strategy resulted in the U.S. obtaining, by treaty, the Northwest Territory (Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota)  which France sought to be set aside as territory for Spain, itself and native Americans.   In 1785, Congress would reward Jay by moving the U.S. Capitol from NJ to NY so he would accept the position U.S. Foreign Secretary.

•  President Samuel Huntington, with the fall of Georgia, South Carolina, most of North Carolina,  former President Middleton declaring allegiance to King George III, Benedict Arnold’s Defection, endless state land disputes, French threats to end the Franco-American Alliance, hyper-inflation and final collapse of the U.S. dollar,  managed to hold the nation together while finally achieving the Articles of Confederation’s ratification on March 1, 1781.

•  Samuel Johnston of North Carolina, after being duly elected the second President of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, declines the office.

• President Thomas McKean would later write declining the offer to run as President Thomas Jefferson’s Vice President “ … President of the United States in Congress Assembled in the year of 1781 (a proud year for Americans) equaled any merit or pretensions of mine and cannot now be increased by the office of Vice President.  [i]”

• John Hanson’s presidential tenure resulted in establishment of the first consular service, a national bank that was chartered, a resolution advocating the printing of a U.S. Bible and the adoption of a uniform system of coinage.

• President Elias Boudinot was forced to order the government to abandon Philadelphia and relocate the federal capitol to Nassau Hall in Princeton, N.J. after the army mutinied holding him and Congress hostage in Independence Hall.

• George Washington resigned his commission in 1783 to President Thomas Mifflin who in 1778 conspired to replace him with General Horatio Gates as Commander-in-Chief in the Conway Cabal.  

•  President Thomas Mifflin ratified the Treaty of Paris ending the war with Great Britain with the words “Given under the seal of the United States. Witness his Excellency THOMAS MIFFLIN, our President, at Annapolis, this 14th day of January 1784, and of the sovereignty and independence of the United States of America, the eighth.  President Mifflin, not George Washington as President Obama maintained in a Shanghai town hall meeting, sent the first trade mission to China.

•  President Richard Henry Lee established the 1785 Western Land Ordinance with the township system utilized to survey all but the 13 original States.  It was also Lee’s resolution that was adopted by Congress declaring the colonies as “free and independent states” from Great Britain on July 2, 1776.

•  President John Hancock, although elected as the 7th President of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, never showed up for work despite five months of assurances he would serve.

• While in office, President Nathaniel Gorham’s State of Massachusetts erupted in armed citizen rebellion and Congress did not have the funds to assemble a federal army large enough to end the insurrection.

• After three months of Congress being unable to achieve a quorum to convene the federal government in New York, President Arthur St. Clair was elected in the midst of the Massachusetts insurrection.  Under his Presidency the Philadelphia Convention was called by his Congress. His congress passed the Northwest Ordinance which created the mechanism for creating states, provide land grants for public education and outlawed slavery in six states creating the Underground Railroad.  The current U.S. Constitution was received by his congress and was sent on to the States for ratification without one change to the Philadelphia Convention’s original document.  St. Clair remains the only foreign born U.S. President because this new constitution only permitted native born citizens to hold the office.

• President Cyrus Griffin’s wife, The Lady Christina, was a Scottish Nobel woman who had eloped with Cyrus in 1776.  While fleeing through the woods she sprained her ankle requiring Cyrus to carry her to the minister to be married.  She would, in 1788, set the First Lady standard for entertaining dignitaries, ambassadors and Heads of State calling on the Presidents of the United States in America.

Everyone knows that the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4^th, 1776, and that George Washington was our first president.  But Washington did not take the oath as president until March 4^th, 1789, the day our constitution became the law of the land.  So who was running the show? 

In fact, there were four distinct stages in the formation of the United States of America:

1.      Continental Congress of the United Colonies of America – September 4, 1774 to July 1, 1776

2.      Continental Congress the United States of America  - July 2, 1776 to February 28, 1781

3.      United States of America – Articles of Confederation - March 1, 1781 to March 3, 1789

4.      The United States of America, a Republic - March 4, 1789 to Present. 

Each stage marks a clear, but different origin date for the United States of America.  In this program we will explore the birth and evolution of the U.S. Head of State office now known as President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America.   Who were the Presidents of the Continental Congress and, later, the Presidents of the United States under the nation’s first constitution?  What were their duties?  How did they cope with a war, hyper-inflation, the complete collapse of the U.S. dollar, massive federal debt, religious tolerance, treaties, imprisonment,  court-martials, state disputes, taxes, and a constitution so flawed that the framers ultimately chose to discard the document completely.

Although these Confederation Presidents had duties quite different from those performed by current President they were, nevertheless, Heads of State and, in the case of ten men, Presidents of the United States under the Articles of Confederation.  

“Forgotten Founders” offers an exploration of an essential but hitherto neglected aspect of our nation’s early history.  Not only are the stories of these presidents full of surprising facts (President Henry Middleton, for example, surrendered to the British in 1780, while Arthur St. Clair was the only foreign-born president) but they provide keen insight into the shaping of the office of the presidency, as well as of the constitution itself, and into such historic issues as the expansion of United States’ territory, the institution and abolition of slavery, and the role and significance of the First Lady.  Moreover, the narrative of the tumultuous early days of our country, when the nascent confederation repeatedly drew itself back from the brink of economic, political, or military disaster, can shed light, as well on the issues we face today.

Selection of the Presidents

1.     Each Colony/State elected or appointed a delegation to the Continental Congress or constitutional government known as “The United States, in Congress Assembled.”

2.     Regardless of population or delegation size, each state had only one vote in both the Continental Congress and the United States, in Congress Assembled.  Presidents were elected by a simple majority of the states in attendance once a quorum was formed.

3.     The confederation Presidents utilized their unicameral office to exercise much influence on United States public affairs and legislation.  For example,

• The President, in conjunction with his state’s delegation, had one vote of thirteen in the unicameral government. Quite often, his “yes” or “no” represented 1/9th and sometimes 1/7th of all the votes required in quorums necessary to enact legislation under the Articles of Confederation 

•  Each President presided, in a voting “Speaker of the House Capacity,” over the judicial, legislative and executive confederation business. 

• Presidents also had the power to call for the confederation government’s assembly and adjournment. 

• Presidents received, read, answered, and at their own discretion held or disseminated the official state and foreign correspondence. 

•  Presidents chaired the Committee of the States that governed the confederation when the congress was not in session.[1]

•  Presidents received visiting dignitaries at the Capitol as the Head of State extending the nation’s official hospitality.[2]

•  Presidents acted as judicial officers presiding over numerous cases including Federal Court Appeals, [3] Death Penalty Appeals,[4] Military trials[5] and State boundary disputes.[6]

• Presidents, although not serving as Commander-in-Chief, issued military orders and signed military commissions. They also executed diplomatic commissions, treaties, proclamations, resolutions, ordinances and loans.

4.     The government of the United States did provide for the President’s expenses, servants, clerks, housing, and transportation. Their home state provided for their salary only as a voting delegate.

[1] Ibid, Articles of Confederation, Article IX, March 1, 1781

[2] The Comte de Moustier to John Jay , February 19, 1788, US Diplomatic Correspondence  348-349.

[3] Ibid, “South Carolina appeal for congressional intervention in hearing boundary dispute with Georgia” September 11, 1786.

[4] JCC, 1774-1789, United States in Congress Assembled, “approves acquittal of leaders of the Philadelphia mutiny,” September 13, 1783.

[5] Ibid, “Rejects motion for more severe corporal punishment for Continental troops,” June 16, 1781

[6] Ibid, “Connecticut-Pennsylvania boundary dispute” June 27, 1782 and January 3, 1783 - first settlement of interstate dispute under Articles.

The specific and primary purposes for which this corporation is formed are:  

1. To secure national and international U.S. Presidential and Head of State recognition for the ten men who served as Constitution of 1777 U.S. Presidents under the Articles of Confederation.

2. To secure national and international founding and Head of State recognition for the six men who served as Presidents of the United Colonies and States of America.

3. To secure national and international founding recognition for the U.S. Founding delegates, commissioners, judges, ministers, boards, military officers and other government officials serving the United Colonies and States of America from 1774 to 1788.

4. To operate for the advancement of U.S. Founding education, research and other related charitable purposes. 

5. To establish a United States Presidential Library honoring the fourteen Presidents while aiding in the establishment of individual presidential libraries for each of the Forgotten Founder Presidents and their spouses.