1788–89 United States Senate elections
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The 1788–1789 United States Senate elections were the first U.S. Senate elections following the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. They coincided with the election of George Washington as the first president of the United States. As these elections were prior to the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, senators were chosen by state legislatures.
| |||||||||||||
All 26 seats in the United States Senate 14 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||||||||
Results of the elections: Pro-Administration Anti-Administration Territories | |||||||||||||
|
Senators were elected over a wide range of time throughout 1788 and 1789. Pennsylvania was the first state to select its senators on September 30, 1788, and South Carolina was the last state on January 22, 1789. New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island elected their senators between July 16, 1789, and June 12, 1790, after the convening of Congress.[1]
Among the original 13 states, ten of them selected their senators prior to the official start of the 1st United States Congress on March 4, 1789, ranging from Pennsylvania in September 1788 to South Carolina in January 1789. New York failed to elect its senators until July 1789. North Carolina and Rhode Island did not ratify the Constitution until after the 1st Congress began; North Carolina then elected its senators in November 1789, but Rhode Island failed to ratify the Constitution until 1790.
Under Article I, Section 3, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the actual division of the Senate's seats into the three classes was not performed until after the 1st Congress convened. Thus, the 20 elected senators from the ten initial states did not know ahead of time whether they would serve Class 1's interim two-year term, Class 2's interim four-year term, or the full six-year term of Class 3. Then starting with New York, a random draw determined which classes each new state's seats would belong to while keeping the three classes as close to the same size as possible.
As of these elections, formal organized political parties had yet to form in the United States, but two political factions were present: The coalition of senators who supported President George Washington's administration were known as the Pro-Administration Party, and the senators against him as the Anti-Administration Party. Among the initial 20 senators elected before the 1st Congress began on March 4, 1789, 13 of them were Pro-Administration.