Question:

Why doesn't history teach us that John Hanson was our 1st USA President?

by Guest21182  |  earlier

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http://www.marshallhall.org/hanson.html

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  1. Under the Articles of Confederation, John Hanson was the third President of the United States in Congress Assembled.

    1) Samuel Huntington from March 1,1781 to July 9, 1781.

    2) Thomas McKean from July 10, 1781 to November 4, 1781.

    3) John Hanson from November 5, 1781 to November 3, 1782. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of...

    Edit:

    Article 1 of the Articles of Confederation states that the confederation will be named  "The United States of America."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of...

    The Articles were not official until signed by all thirteen colonies. Maryland was the last colony to sign and the Articles were ratified on March 1,1781. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of...


  2. Simply put, he wasn't.  He was the president of Congress, but that post does not equate to President of the United States.  It more closely equates with the modern Speaker of the House.  Moreover, the current government was not created until ratification of the Constitution (rather than the Articles of Confederation) in 1788.  So, the first "president" of the United States in Congress Assembled (Articles of Confederation) was Hanson, but the first President of the United States of America under the Constitution (which is the government we still have today) was George Washington.  Do you know who the first president of the Continental Congress was?  Peyton Randolph.  His position was very much like Hanson's.

  3. The United States only teaches presidents that came after we became an independent country and were under an actual constitution.  Hanson and six others held the position of President of the Continental Congress.

  4. Hanson doesn't count because he was before America became the USA.

  5. Primarily because he wasn't elected by the people under our current constitutional system not to mention that the revolution was still going on so the British had not surrendered the colonies to the new country.  It's really seen as more of a technicality that there were presidents before Washington because they were not elected in a truly democratic manner but rather elected by their political constituents.

  6. he was the first president of the united states in congress assembled, as you will read in wikipedia (below). because the articles were not successful and becuase there was no executive branch at the time, it's hard to really claim that he was the official first president of the united states.

    "Therefore the President of the Continental Congress, which was a position similar to a Prime Minister, was the highest authority; under the Articles, the position adopted the title President of the United States in Congress Assembled, and Hanson was the first presiding officer of the Congress to use that title when dealing with foreign governments, diplomats, or treaties. Congress had little authority beyond those powers, which had been specifically delegated to it by the states, and its weakness during this period led directly to a decline in influence and the 1787 Constitution, with a more robust federal model."

    with the creation of the official constitution (as we know it today) we gained a very clear understanding of the duties and powers of the executive branch....some of which were quite different from the "presidency" with the articles of confederation.

    it's not that the articles of confederation (and subsequently john hanson's role in the creation of our government) isn't taught...but the point is to learn the process by which we came to create our most important document and how that document has been protected and upheld from that day to the present. it helped us stand apart from so many other countries who were at the mercy of a monarchical system of government.

  7. Just a note, since we have some awesome answers already..........andymark above was right on the money!

    Spanish Jews that came over with Cortez.... and stayed (they were wealthy Jewish business people running from the Spanish Inquisition)....were the first non-Americans to come to this area of the world and STAY.....BUT..........

    He forgot the Dutch slave ship that got seriously blown off course during a hurricane when it was enroute to the islands for slave trade.

    Out of food and drinkable water, sick, and exhausted, and only wanting to get to a port... and LIVE....

    They DUMPED their CARGO on Islands off the Southeastern Coast.

    Live Africans.

    They survive us still!

    Some call them the Gullah.

    They still reside on the Islands off the coast of South Carolina.

    Even President George Washington stated the HE was NOT the FIRST US president.

  8. American History, as a highschool class, is pretty much just a celebration of British and German culture in the Americas. They belittle or ignore embarrassing failures of Brits, such as the Articles of Confederation, a weak and underfunded government, and the Colony of Croatan, where whites defected to the Native American tribes, and ignore the accomplishments of non-whites, such as the settling of New Mexico by Spanish Jews BEFORE Jamestown even existed, or that much of our government, from representative democracy to a seal with an eagle holding a bunch of arrows, was directly taken from the Iroquois Confederacy. Instead, they focus on, and glorify, the successes of Anglo peoples, such as the Pilgrims at Massachusetts Bay, or the writing of our current Constitution and the Presidents that followed its writing. The American History class is not about giving the history, but giving White people pride about what they've done in the past.

  9. Because he wasn't

    when the UsA became the USA, George Washington was the first president

    Now there were presidents of the continental congress.. but that was like a committee.. and the USA was not a country then.. Not until the Constitution was ratified..

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