Talk Elections

The General was gone.

Having looked impressive despite his continued silence (and enormous frustration) at the Constitutional Convention, few were concerned when George Washington showed the first signs of illness, attributing it to the heat inside the Convention due to the windows of the meeting hall being nailed shut. The General itself felt more annoyed than anything, growing increasingly dismayed at the bitter infighting among delegates and the problems of adapting the finer points of Madison's proposals for a new system of government. And yet the illness soon grew worse, leaving all delegates - and indeed, the entire young nation - stunned when General George Washington died on July 1st, 1787. Gone was the man the convention had in mind to be the first President of the United States, the only man to whom great executive power could be trusted.

The Convention limped for several weeks in chaos as Madison and Hamilton's proposals were thrown into chaos, and growing disagreements over the office of President threatened to rip the Convention apart. That the delegates held together and forced each other to compromise was only possible due to the exhausting work of Benjamin Franklin and the new President of the Convention John Hancock, both men shaming delegates with the memoy of Washington whenever passions ran too high. In the end, while several of the previous compromises held firm, the idea of a strong executive proved too much for delegates to stomach without Washington present to shape the office. Amidst suggestions that a reduced executive could work to maintain balance, the office of President of the United States was created as a ceremonial rule, power delegated to the legislative.

Slowly but surely, the concept of parliamentary government took strenght as the proper way to lead the nation. While the concerns of small states would be protected with the existence of a Senate appointed by the legislatures, the nation itself would be able to choose directly elected representatives to the National Assembly, the main body of power in the nation. Ceremonially presided with a non-partisan Speaker, the duties of government would fall to a First Secretary appointed by the President and with the confidence of the Assembly, thus adapting and reworking parts of the British system of government without fully imitating an example they did not wish to follow.

With great pain and hard work the Constitutional Convention would finally end its work on November 10th, 1787 as the new United States Constitution was signed by the delegates after a moving tribute to General Washington. Spending the entirety of 1788 on ratification, a small-scale Presidential election to choose the first President resulted in John Hancock narrowly defeating George Clinton and Samuel Adams  to take over the mostly ceremonial office. As the first President of the US prepared for his own inauration, the first election to the National Assembly (and indirectly, the Senate) was called. With the nation developing its first political factions, the citizens of the nation watched with great interest the outcome of such an election.

Just who would become the first First Secretary of the nation?