Washington Elected Unanimously: First President Chosen

George Washington received every electoral vote cast on February 4, 1789, a unanimous selection that has never been repeated in American presidential history. The sixty-nine electors from ten states chose him without a single dissent, a reflection not of political uniformity but of Washington’s singular stature as the general who won the Revolution and then voluntarily surrendered his power. John Adams, with thirty-four votes, became vice president. The election itself was a logistical experiment. The Constitution had been ratified only months earlier, and the mechanisms of democratic governance were being invented in real time. New York failed to appoint electors due to a legislative deadlock. North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified the Constitution. The electors who did vote were chosen through a patchwork of methods: some states held popular votes, others let their legislatures decide. Washington took the oath of office on April 30, 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City, the temporary national capital. Congress offered him a salary of $25,000, a substantial sum that Washington initially refused before accepting to avoid establishing the precedent that only wealthy men could serve. He insisted on being called "Mr. President" rather than the grander titles the Senate proposed, including "His Highness the President of the United States of America and Protector of their Liberties." Every decision Washington made set a precedent for the office. He created the cabinet system, established the tradition of presidential messages to Congress, deferred to the Senate on treaties, and navigated the bitter rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson without letting either destroy the new government. After two terms, he refused to seek a third, establishing the norm of peaceful transfer of power that held for 150 years until codified as the Twenty-Second Amendment. His presidency proved that a republic could function without a king.