First Senators Elected

On September 30, 1788, the first two members of the United States Senate were elected. The Pennsylvania state assembly, under the provisions of the newly ratified U.S. Constitution, chose Robert Morris and William Maclay.

Planning for Senate elections had begun in earnest after June 21, 1788, when New Hampshire’s ratification of the Constitution provided the necessary margin to put that charter into effect. When New York ratified the following month, the existing Congress under the Articles of Confederation set to work on an election ordinance, which it issued in mid-September. The ordinance provided that states that had ratified the Constitution could begin electing senators immediately and that presidential electors would be chosen, within such states, on the first Wednesday in January 1789. The electors would convene in their respective states on the first Wednesday in February to cast their ballots for president and vice president. Finally, the new Congress would meet to count the electoral ballots on the first Wednesday in March—March 4, 1789.

A half-dozen prominent Pennsylvanians were mentioned as candidates for the two Senate seats in the six months preceding the legislature’s action. On September 29, a large contingent of assembly members adjourned to a nearby tavern and agreed to support Morris and Maclay, whom the assembly elected the following day. The unsuccessful contenders then shifted their attention to the forthcoming popular elections for Pennsylvania’s eight seats in the House of Representatives.

Both Morris and Maclay had worked actively for the adoption of the Constitution. A Philadelphia merchant and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Morris had served as the nation’s superintendent of finance from 1781 to 1784. Well regarded within the state, Maclay provided a western and agrarian balance to Morris, who identified clearly with Philadelphia’s eastern and commercial orientation. Maclay and Morris thus became the first of the 1,792 persons chosen to serve in the United States Senate during its first two centuries.