Good evening Tim!
Timothy Raty, in response to Frank Reichert, wrote...
There were fourteen Presidents of Congress between
1774 and 1789. Here are the names, dates, and
homestate of those who held this position:
1774 Peyton Randolph, Virginia
1774-75 Henry Middleton, South Carolina
1775 Peyton Randolph, Virginia
1775-1777 John Hancock, Masschusetts
1777-78 Henry Laurens, South Carolina
1778-79 John Jay, New York
1779-81 Samuel Huntington, Connecticut
1781 Thomas McKean, Delaware
1781-82 John Hanson, Maryland
1782-83 Elias Boudinot, New Jersey
1783-84 Thomas Mifflin, Pennsylvania
1784-85 Richard Henry Lee, Virginia
1785-1786 John Hancock, Massachusetts
1786-1787 Nathaniel Gorham, Massachusetts
1787-88 Arthur St. Clair, Pennsylvania
1788-1789 Cyrus Griffin, Virginia
* Courtesy of "The American Presidents" by David C.
Whitney.
Thanks for greatly updating my list.
Two things that I am curious about however, since the decade
subsequent from the Articles of Confederation have often
fascinated me somewhat, namely because they remain rather obscure
in terms of currently written US history:
1. The Articles of Confederation have often been represented as
having flaws, sometimes obvious flaws, but more often simply
flaws that could have likely been easily overcome by later
Amended revisions. Historically, very little is known about the
Executive dimension, that of the prior to Washington Presidents,
who were defacto in charge of Executive functions while Congress
was not in session. Basically, I suspect, that US History today
is couched insofar as the Federal Government is concerned with
the genesis of the US Constitution, forgetting a lot of stuff
that went on in the aftermath of the Declaration of Independence.
Honestly, this is rather fascinating considering that most
current students of US history focus on linking the former with
the ratification of the US Constitution itself.
2. Secondly, and probably the most significant, are those signing
on to the Articles of Confederation, and particularly those who
served at the highest level as President of Congress during those
definitive years of US history.
From your amended list, here are a few (the parathesis are mine):
1775-1777 John Hancock, Masschusetts
1784-85 Richard Henry Lee, Virginia (father of Robert E. Lee,
General of the Confederate Army no less)
1785-1786 John Hancock, Massachusetts (AGAIN!)
What's interesting here, are that some of the more prominent
names most generally notable in the founding of the U.S.
government, e.g.: Thomas Jefferson, George Washington et al, do
not appear. It might be an interesting thesis for an aspiring
young University Master in Government major to explain why the
Presidency of the Country during the years we indicate above, are
somehow absent in terms of Executive power during this period of
time in US History.
In keeping with such questions, I might add just a couple more:
1. State Sovereignty seems to crop up all the time today (as it
did with George C. Wallace in the 1960s) with the radical right,
but hardly mainstream in terms of today with either political
party holding office today. Under the Articles of Confederation,
and presumably, those individuals holding Executive rank at that
time, the Articles of Confederation was very clear on the notion
that every state was, unless excluded by the Articles, a
Sovereign nation in and of itself.
2. Why are the US 'Founding Fathers' as current history books
record them, reluctant, absent, or not included within the ranks
of those Presidents with Executive authority who served before
the ratification of the US Constitution?
You really have to wonder, don't you? There are a lot of other
questions that I might like to ask as an objective journalist,
just as to why the US Federal Government today can demonstrate
that it might derive its power from the Declaration of
Independence itself, since the former document did NOT induce the
Constitution, but something very different in character, at least
recognizing the sovereign character of States governing most
their own internal affairs.
You might imagine that a discerning individual might ask why the
simple Charter of the Articles of Confederation didn't hold for
very long, and why that segment in US History has been so
obscured and virtually obliterated from the History books are
children are allowed to read today. I agree, there were obvious
flaws in the Articles of Confederation -- but the question
remains, why wasn't it possible to address and correct such flaws
rather than going in an entirely different direction, that of
creating a centralized police state, which this nation has become?
Kindest regards,
Frank
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