United States Congress | Rare official printing of the Acts of the first Congress, including the first official House printing of the Bill of Rights

United States Congress

Acts passed at a Congress of the United States of America, begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the Fourth of March, in the Year MDCCLXXXIX. And of the Independence of the United States, the Thirteenth. Being the Acts Passed at the First Session of the First Congress of the United States. New-York: Printed by Francis Childs and John Swaine, [1789]

Folio (240 x 217 mm, uncut). Issue with the index on pp. xcvi–cv; some signatures browned, a couple of ink blots, a very few marginal tears or chips. Original sheep-backed marbled boards, plain endpapers; rubbed, some tears and chips to spine with some early oversewing. 

First and official edition of the acts of the first session of the first Congress, as adjourned 29 September 1789, preceded by a full printing of the Constitution, with a roster of its Signers, the two resolutions adopted by the Constitutional Convention recommending the procedures for ratification and for the establishment of government under the Constitution, and George Washington’s influential cover letter to Arthur St. Clair, the President of the Confederation Congress, urging ratification. This printing of the Constitution was ordered by a Congressional resolution of 6 July 1789, which appears on A2r.

The volume also includes on pages 92–93 a very early printing of twelve "Articles in Addition to, and Amendment of, the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the legislatures of the several states, pursuant to the fifth article of the original constitution." Largely the work of James Madison, these twelve proposed amendments were sent to the states for ratification. The first two were not ratified but proposed amendments 3 through 12 became the first ten amendments to the Constitution—the Bill of Rights. (Incredibly, the originally proposed second amendment, which stipulated that any salary increases for Congress take effect only after an intervening election, was finally ratified in 1992 as the twenty-seventh amendment.)

The first session of the first Congress met in New York on 4 March 1789, and continued until the end of September. It officially ratified the Constitution and Washington’s election as the first president, and passed much of the most basic legislation for the machinery of government, regulating the Customs, Judiciary, Post Office, Mint, and the like. Much time was spent on the Bill of Rights, which appears here in its earliest official House printing. "The importance of the First Federal Congress cannot be exaggerated. It played a critical role as the body which began to implement and interpret the new Constitution of the United States. The conception of the government occurred at the Federal Convention, but it was not until the First Federal Congress began to make decisions and pass enabling legislation that life was breathed into that government" (Documentary History of the First Federal Congress).

A fine copy in original binding, uncut, and with intriguing early annotations: on a leaf inserted in the back and in the margins of eleven pages are notes in a neat early hand recording modifying acts of Congress from various dates between 1792 and 1819.

This official House of Representatives publication is much scarcer than the analogous Journal of the First Session of the Senate of the United States of America, Begun and Held at the City of New-York, March 4th, 1789  (New York: Thomas Greenleaf, 1789; Evans 22207, ESTC W20564), which includes much of the same legislation. Since the present copy of the Acts appeared in the 2000 Laird Park sale, four other copies have been sold at auction, while over the period eight copies of the Journal of the … Senate were sold.

REFERENCE:

Evans 22189; ESTC W14332

PROVENANCE:

Laird U. Park Jr. (Sotheby's New York, 29 November 2000, lot 359)