Launching the Federal Government: Washington and the Bill of Rights
The first federal government took shape through the Constitution, acts of Congress and Washington’s presidential precedents. This CLEP U.S. History I lesson explains executive departments, the Judiciary Act of 1789 and the Bill of Rights. Learn to distinguish a written rule from a statute or an unwritten practice, then test the distinction with the questions below.
U.S. History to 1877 | Chapter 8 | Lesson 8.1
How Did Congress Organize the Executive and Courts?
The first Congress and President George Washington had to make the new framework govern. Congress created the Departments of State, Treasury, and War and provided for an attorney general. A central practical question concerned removal: could the president dismiss executive officers without Senate approval? The 1789 debate exposed competing views of presidential removal, Senate participation and congressional authority. Madison argued that presidential control of department heads supported executive responsibility; other representatives disputed his constitutional reading. Washington then gathered leading officers for advice. The Constitution never names a presidential cabinet, but this informal practice became durable. The Judiciary Act of 1789 supplied another missing structure by creating district and circuit courts beneath the Supreme Court and defining federal jurisdiction. The act did not settle every question about federal and state judicial power, but it made Article III operational.
What Presidential Precedents Did Washington Establish?
Washington understood that conduct could define the office. He used the title “President of the United States,” delivered messages to Congress, toured the states, and generally avoided the ceremonial display of a monarch. He served two terms and then retired, establishing a precedent that lasted until the twentieth century. At the same time, the presidency was not modest in every respect: Washington asserted executive authority in administration, diplomacy, and enforcement. Precedent therefore meant translating broad constitutional grants into repeated practice, not simply limiting the office.
Why Was the Bill of Rights Added?
Ratification had left a political debt. Many Americans feared that the Constitution did not protect individual liberty explicitly enough. Representative James Madison drafted amendments from state proposals. Ten were ratified in 1791. The Bill of Rights protects religion, speech, press, assembly, petition, criminal-procedure rights, and other liberties. The Ninth warns that listing rights does not deny others retained by the people, while the Tenth reserves undelegated powers to the states or the people. At first these restrictions applied to the federal government, not the states. That distinction matters when interpreting early controversies.
Review the Bill of Rights and First Congress
This US National Archives lesson supplies a second explanation of the same period. Note where chronology, cause, and perspective connect.
Video: The Bill of Rights and the First Federal Congress, US National Archives.
Check your understanding
- Which action most clearly established an unwritten presidential precedent?
- Congress’s creation of executive departments
- Washington’s consultation with department heads as a cabinet
- Congress’s establishment of lower federal courts
- The Senate’s approval of negotiated treaties
- State legislatures’ selection of United States senators
- The Judiciary Act of 1789 primarily
- abolished state courts
- allowed popular election of judges
- made the Supreme Court superior to Congress
- created lower federal courts
- incorporated the Bill of Rights against the states
- Deep Practice: select all that apply. Which were features of the federal government by 1791?
- executive departments
- a national cabinet practice
- lower federal courts
- ten ratified rights amendments
- direct popular election of senators
- Deep Practice: open response. In two or three sentences, distinguish a constitutional rule from a Washington-era precedent.
Write a brief response using a named fact from the lesson.
Open the answers and reasoning
Independent preparation. CLEP is a registered trademark of the College Board, which does not endorse this lesson.
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