April 5, 1792: President George Washington issued the first presidential veto in the history of the United States, vetoing a bill that would use data from the first census to shift congressional power towards northern states. Washington himself attended the Constitutional Convention where presidential veto power was formulated. He made clear in explaining the first presidential veto that it was strictly based on the bill itself being unconstitutional, as violating the ratio of representatives put forth in the Constitution. After consulting the members of his cabinet, Washington sided with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Attorney General Edmund Randolph on this over the opinions of the others. As historian Lindsay M. Chervinsky emphasizes, it is significant that the president requested written opinions from his cabinet members on this matter. Indeed, he did not hold a cabinet meeting to discuss this partly because cabinet meetings were not yet a vital part of American presidential administrations.
Recommended reading to learn more:
Citations: Harry C. Thomson, “The First Presidential Vetoes,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 8, no. 1 (Winter 1978): 29-30, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27547373; Lindsay M. Chervinsky, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020), 169; “Portrait of George Washington,” woven portrait with a cartouche (location unknown, 1856), collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (New York, NY), public domain, https://www.si.edu/object/portrait-george-washington:chndm_1959-53-1.
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