Deleted
Deleted Member
@Deleted
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2017 11:38:06 GMT
The first president of the United States under the Articles of Confederation was John Hanson from Maryland. His term began in 1781 and ended in 1782.
True story
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Feb 21, 2017 23:48:16 GMT
The first president of the United States under the Articles of Confederation was John Hanson from Maryland. His term began in 1781 and ended in 1782. True story Hate to be pedantic, but Hanson wasn't really the first president of the United States. At the very least, that's not the whole story. Hanson was "the President of the United States of America in Congress Assembled"--a fancy title for "President of Congress," the presiding officer of the unicameral Congress (under the Articles of Confederation), akin to what we would now call the "Speaker of the House." In fact, even Hanson wasn't the first Congress president, though he was the first officially elected under the provisions of the Articles. Samuel Huntington and Thomas McKean had served before him, and before them five men had served as presidents of the Continental Congress, to which the Confederation Congress was the successor. Actually, the Confederation Congress president had just about no power, even over Congress, the body he officially chaired. He did not even have comparable power to even the weakest of modern-day prime ministers. The POTUS, on the other hand, is the chief executive in a completely different branch of government. There is no similarity at all between the two offices, as just about every historian now agrees. If you really want to look for a forerunner to the POTUS, you'd have to look at the Committee of the States, a small combination upper house/executive body that ran the government while the Confederation Congress was not meeting. (Indeed, ironically, it was quite similar in function to the presidiums of Supreme Soviets in Communist countries!) It was a squabbling, discontent little body that essentially got nothing done. Seeing that having only one branch of government was wildly ineffectual, the Framers of the Constitution decided to create the office of a chief executive to enforce the laws that a now-bicameral Congress made, to be elected every four years indirectly by the people through the Electoral College. They simply used the title from the former Congress president for this new office, called "the President of the United States." And the first person to be elected to that office, in 1789, was...George Washington. How's that for a civics lesson?
|
|
|
Post by Spock on Feb 22, 2017 4:44:57 GMT
Salzmark is correct. Hanson was not the chief executive of the country, he only managed the Senate. More like a Vice President today.
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Feb 22, 2017 4:50:57 GMT
Well, if I'm being backed up by Mr. Spock, I know it's correct. But you resisted the temptation to say, "Hanson as first president? That is illogical, Feologild"!
To be--well, pedantic, again, Spock, it wasn't quite the Senate that he managed. There was no Senate at that point; as I wrote, there was only a unicameral, very weak legislature called Congress. There was also a small half-legislative, half-executive body called the Committee of the States, which functioned when Congress was in recess. The President of the Confederation Congress chaired both. Both were, with some exceptions (most notably the Northwest Ordinance of 1787), virtually powerless.
In fact, the vice president no longer actively manage the Senate; since at least Lyndon Johnson, the VP has had more executive than legislative duties (although it seems current Vice President Pence has a good number of both!) and has not actively chaired the Senate. In his absence, officially the Senate is chaired by the president pro tempore, currently Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah). In actuality, though, the position of presiding officer tends to alternate amongst junior members of the Senate, appointed so that they may learn parliamentary procedure. Because of Senate rules and traditions, the office of President of the Senate is quite weak, in no way comparable to the Speaker of the House of Representatives (which is a partisan position); in many ways, the Majority Leader of the Senate (currently Sen. Mitch McConnell, R.-Kentucky) is more comparable to the Speaker.
|
|
|
Post by Wesley Crusher on Feb 26, 2017 13:23:35 GMT
Well, if I'm being backed up by Mr. Spock, I know it's correct. But you resisted the temptation to say, "Hanson as first president? That is illogical, Feologild"! That is not Mr. Spock ... it is Evil Spock ...The episode involves a transporter malfunction that swaps Captain Kirk and his companions with their evil counterparts in a parallel universe. In the so-called Mirror Universe, the Enterprise is a ship of the Terran Empire, an organization as evil as the United Federation of Planets is benevolent. In the mirror universe, the group realizes something is amiss as they walk off the transporter pad. First Officer Spock, who now has a Van Dyke beard, orders the bridge crew to prepare a phaser barrage on the Halkans in retaliation for their refusal to cooperate, then uses an "agonizer" device to punish the transporter operator for a malfunction. In this alternate universe, the USS Enterprise is called an "Imperial Starship" or ISS Enterprise, and a brutal Terran Empire has replaced the Federation. Officers ascend in rank by assassinating their superiors, uniforms are more revealing, sidearms are standard issue (as well as daggers for officers), and senior officers routinely torture subordinates for indiscipline.
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Feb 27, 2017 2:04:55 GMT
Well, if I'm being backed up by Mr. Spock, I know it's correct. But you resisted the temptation to say, "Hanson as first president? That is illogical, Feologild"! That is not Mr. Spock ... it is Evil Spock ...The episode involves a transporter malfunction that swaps Captain Kirk and his companions with their evil counterparts in a parallel universe. In the so-called Mirror Universe, the Enterprise is a ship of the Terran Empire, an organization as evil as the United Federation of Planets is benevolent. In the mirror universe, the group realizes something is amiss as they walk off the transporter pad. First Officer Spock, who now has a Van Dyke beard, orders the bridge crew to prepare a phaser barrage on the Halkans in retaliation for their refusal to cooperate, then uses an "agonizer" device to punish the transporter operator for a malfunction. In this alternate universe, the USS Enterprise is called an "Imperial Starship" or ISS Enterprise, and a brutal Terran Empire has replaced the Federation. Officers ascend in rank by assassinating their superiors, uniforms are more revealing, sidearms are standard issue (as well as daggers for officers), and senior officers routinely torture subordinates for indiscipline. I surrender! I surrender! Call thee off thy dogs! A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse! I bow to your superior knowledge, Wesley, without resignation (though that latter point is only because of your avatar's being alternating pictures of the always-lovely Audrey Hepburn ). I'm not actually that much of a Star Trek fan, though I think the original series can be quite fun at times.
|
|
|
Post by tarathian123 on Feb 27, 2017 4:57:40 GMT
I've read many remarks over time about the American War of Independence/The Revolutionary War regarding how Americans won their independence from the British. I get some very odd replies when I point out that they weren't actually Americans when the war was fought. The change of nationality didn't come about until the signing of the Declaration of Independence. So in effect the war was really a civil war fought by the British (albeit colonials) against the British. Am I right?
A little off topic I agree, but I didn't see the need to create a new thread for this particular question as it's quite close to the topic of this thread.
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Feb 28, 2017 18:05:04 GMT
I've read many remarks over time about the American War of Independence/The Revolutionary War regarding how Americans won their independence from the British. I get some very odd replies when I point out that they weren't actually Americans when the war was fought. The change of nationality didn't come about until the signing of the Declaration of Independence. So in effect the war was really a civil war fought by the British (albeit colonials) against the British. Am I right? A little off topic I agree, but I didn't see the need to create a new thread for this particular question as it's quite close to the topic of this thread. I don't have a perfect reply for you, Taranthian, but I'll try to give it a go... I wouldn't exactly call the American Revolutionary War a civil war, though, during the American Civil War, the Southerners certainly thought it was (and that they was replicating the American Revolutionaries). That's for a number of reasons, central among them being that Americans were not British citizens. (Yes, I know the concept of "citizenship" wasn't truly cemented in political discourse until after the French Revolution, but I'll use it here, in this context, to mean "possessing the rights of Englishmen," which is what the colonists desired.) What I mean is, they did not vote to elect representatives to Parliament, and they were not bound to the same law as the individuals in the mother country. (Those were the rights for which they were originally fighting!) In that sense, then, the American Revolution was neither radical nor, in fact, truly revolutionary (it did not seek to overthrow the existing social order, merely to substitute one government for another--"a revolution not made but prevented," in Burke's terms.) So, while the colonists were "British," they were not "British" in the same sense that Brits were. Another point. Nationality is a nebulous concept; in particular, comparative political scientists define a nation-- distinct from "the state," "the country," or "the ethnicity"!--as "a large aggregate of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language..." Arguably, American colonials possessed a separate history and culture than their British cousins at the time (both sides certainly thought so!), so it is a difficult case to make that they had British nationality to begin with (especially due to the British policy, before the Stamp Act, of "salutary neglect"). British heritage, yes--nationality, no. I would argue, then, that there was no real "change of nationality" at all; at the very least, the Declaration of Independence did not affect (or effect) it in either way. That is to say, as the colonists won, they existed under a distinct state, with the same nationality as they had before; if they had lost, they would have been under the same state, with the same nationality. To be fair, some participants on both side probably thought it was a civil war--I'd argue that Tom Paine and George III both thought so--but, with the eyes of history, I'd argue that it is a separation between the British Colonies and Britain but not, because of distinct nationalities and lack of "citizenship," a civil war.
|
|
|
Post by tarathian123 on Feb 28, 2017 20:11:56 GMT
Thanks for the explanation, salzmank.
I'm not sure if I agree with your conclsuion or that of Tom Paine and Farmer George. However it's all hypothetical I suppose. Here's another follow-up question, also hypothetical:
In your opinion, if the demands of the colonists had been fully granted, do you think the colonies would have remained British territory, or would perhaps other reasons have been found for a breakaway.
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Mar 2, 2017 23:37:10 GMT
Thanks for the explanation, salzmank. I'm not sure if I agree with your conclsuion or that of Tom Paine and Farmer George. However it's all hypothetical I suppose. Here's another follow-up question, also hypothetical: In your opinion, if the demands of the colonists had been fully granted, do you think the colonies would have remained British territory, or would perhaps other reasons have been found for a breakaway. Another great question! To be honest, I don't know. Could something have been worked out? Probably. The majority of the Founders were not interested in upsetting the fabric of society--thus, as I wrote before, making our revolution one "not made but prevented." It is very possible that, if the colonists' demands were granted, something akin to the Albany Plan of Union (proposed by Benjamin Franklin, 1754) or Galloway's Plan of Union (proposed by Joseph Galloway, 1774) could have been adopted. With that said, it would have to be in a quite different format than had already existed. Yes, Tom Paine, and a few other radicals, would have fumed and fretted and screamed, but I think that something probably could have been worked out. There were forces on both sides who wanted something to be worked out (cf. Burke's "Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies," the 1st Continental Congress's "Petition to the King," and the 2nd Continental Congress's "Olive Branch Petition," which George III--Farmer George!--unfortunately decided not to read). That makes me wonder what side I would have been on during the Revolution--which seems unpatriotic for me to ponder now, because I do love my country! In the end, though, I would have to agree with William F. Buckley, Jr., who gave his answer as... "Hard to say. I am easily irritated, and would have probably found His Majesty's interventions intolerable. On the other hand, I'd have looked for organic solutions. I'd have found little in common with Sam Adams, much in common with John."
|
|
|
Post by tarathian123 on Mar 3, 2017 1:09:07 GMT
Another terrific answer salzmank. Many thanks.I read somewhere recently that a suggestion has been put forward that the US could join the Commonwealth of Nations (formerly the British Commonwealth). The noises coming from the current US administration seemed to be of a positive note. Do you think it would work?
|
|