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An incredible rarity with unique association to one of the people who played an active role in creating the laws passed here.
The Bill of Rights appeared in two 1789 book printings—this Senate Journal and the Acts Passed at a Congress of the United States—both printed soon after the close of the first session of the First Federal Congress on September 29. Although priority has not been definitively established, the Senate printing likely came first. Thomas Greenleaf began soliciting subscribers for the Senate Journal in July 1789 and advertised it through his newspaper, the New-York Journal, and Weekly Register through October 8, when he informed subscribers that they could pick up their copies on October 11.
[BILL OF RIGHTS]. Theodore Sedgwick.
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, 1st ed. New York: Thomas Greenleaf, 1789. Signed by Theodore Sedgwick on title page. 172 pp., 8½ x 13? in. On laid paper, watermark “HS”
Inventory #27204.99
Price: $285,000
The U.S. Congress met for its first session at Federal Hall in New York City from March 4 to September 29, 1789. The U.S. Senate did not achieve a quorum until April 6, when both houses of Congress assembled to count the electoral votes for president.
Of particular interest are two versions of what would become the Bill of Rights. On June 8, 1789, James Madison proposed a series of amendments. After considerable debate, the House approved seventeen proposed amendments on August 24, sending them to the Senate for consideration (printed on pp 103-107). Over the next few weeks, the Senate reduced those seventeen to twelve, which it passed on September 9. A few weeks later, on September 25, both houses approved the final version of twelve amendments.
President George Washington sent them to the various states on October 2, 1789. By December 15, 1791, the required three-quarters of the states had ratified ten of the amendments, which became the “Bill of Rights.”
Bill of Rights Excerpts
While finishing other important legislation establishing the government, the Senate returned several times to the Bill of Rights.
On September 3, a resolve to replace the words, “Religion or prohibiting the free Exercise thereof”, with “One Religious sect or Society in preference to others,” failed. Another suggested replacement, “Congress shall not make any law, infringing the rights of conscience, or establishing any Religious Sect or Society,” also failed, as did, “Congress shall make no law establishing any particular denomination of religion in preference to another, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, nor shall the rights of conscience be infringed.” On the proposed fourth amendment, a motion to insert after “Press,” “In as ample a manner as hath at any time been secured by the common law” also failed. (p116–117)
On September 4–8, the Senate passed their new text for what would become the second amendment, “That Congress shall make no law, abridging the freedom of Speech, or of the Press, or the right of the People peaceably to assemble and consult for their common good, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” (p118)
On September 8, a motion, “That there are certain natural rights, of which men, when they form a social compact, cannot deprive or divest their posterity, among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety” failed (p122). A motion ““that some tribunal, other than the Senate, be provided for trying impeachments of Senators” also failed. (p127)
On September 9, the Senate passed another version of the religious freedom amendment. (p129)
On Sept. 24, the Senate was one comma and a “to” away from the final text of what became the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble[,] and [to] petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (p148)
On September 25, both houses approved the final version of twelve proposed Amendments to be sent to the states for ratification. (The final text is printed on p163–164.)
Additional Excerpts
John Langdon of New Hampshire declared “that the Senate and House of Representatives had met, and that he, in their presence, had opened and counted the votes of the Electors for President and Vice President of the United States…whereby it appears, that George Washington, Esq. Was unanimously elected President,—And John Adams, Esq. Was duly elected Vice President, Of the United States of America.” (p7)
First Address of Vice President John Adams as President of the Senate (p16-18)
George Washington’s First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789 (p23-25)
“On the one hand, I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years—a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies.” (p23)
Back to the Senate: “From a decent respect for the opinion and practice of civilized nations … the Senate have been induced to be of opinion, that it would be proper to annex a respectable Title to the Office of President of the United States: But the Senate, desirous of preserving Harmony with the House of Representatives, where the practice lately observed in presenting an address to the President was without the addition of Titles, think it proper for present to act in conformity with the practice of that House: “Therefore Resolved, that the present address be— ‘To the President of the United States’—without addition of Title.” (p34-35)
Important pieces of legislation passed in this session include (with dates of enactment):
· July 4: Tariff of 1789, which provided much-needed funding for the federal government;
· July 27: Establishment of the Department of Foreign Affairs (later Department of State). On Sept. 29, though still in Paris as U.S. Minister to France, Thomas Jefferson became the first Secretary of State;
· July 31: Establishment of Customs Service and official ports of entry;
· Aug. 7: Establishment of War Department. On Sept. 12, Henry Knox became the first Secretary of War;
· Sept. 2: Establishment of Department of the Treasury. On Sept. 11, Alexander Hamilton was nominated and confirmed as the first Secretary of the Treasury; and
· Sept. 24: Judiciary Act of 1789, which established the federal judiciary and the office of Attorney General.
Theodore Sedgwick(1746-1813) was born in Connecticut and attended Yale College but did not graduate. He continued to study law, was admitted to the bar in 1766, and practiced in Massachusetts. He served as a major in the Continental Army during the 1776 expedition against Canada, and began his political in 1780. In 1781, he and his law partner, Tapping Reeve, represented Elizabeth Freeman, who escaped her enslaver and sued for her freedom citing cruel treatment (Brom and Bett v. Ashley, 1781). Based on a clause in the Massachusetts Constitution that “all men are born free and equal,” they successfully challenged her enslavement, and the decision was upheld in the state’s Supreme Court. He represented Massachusetts in the First Federal Congress, serving in the House of Representatives until he was elected to the Senate in 1796. In 1799, he was reelected to his congressional seat, and served as Speaker of the House until 1801. Though he was critical of John Adams’ attempts to end the undeclared naval war with France1801, when Adams skipped Jefferson’s inauguration on March 4, the retiring Sedgwick shared the carriage ride home.
Thomas Greenleaf (1755-1798) was born in Massachusetts, studied printing with Isaiah Thomas, and had a print shop in Boston until the Revolutionary War. Greenleaf served as a lieutenant of marines on the Angelica out of Boston but was captured by a British frigate in 1778. Committed to Forton prison in England, he appealed to diplomat John Adams for assistance but later escaped. After the war, Greenleaf was a printer in New York City, where he edited the semi-weekly New-York Journal, and Weekly Register and the daily Argus and served as a printer to the U.S. Senate. He died in the yellow fever epidemic of 1798 in New York City.
Condition: Deckled edges preserved (a few leaves toned, scattered very occasional foxing, small marginal tear from final leaf); original paper boards; hinges cracked.
Evans 22207; William S. Reese, The Federal Hundred (New Haven, CT: William Reese Company, 2017), 25; Grolier American, 20; Sabin 15551.
Provenance: Theodore Sedgwick, 1746-1813 (ownership signature on title page). Christie’s, May 24, 2022, lot 62.
