The Four First Presidents
Washington is only the first President if you don't count the period after the American revolutionaries won the war but before the present constitution was enacted. Between the 1781, when the colonies defeated the British, and 1789, when Washington took office, eight Presidents presided over a loose confederation of states. Little federal power meant the President signed documents but didn't make decisions. John Hanson was the first President elected to a full one year term in this first government of states. The confusion surrounding whether the first federal government actually began in March or November of 1781 means that, even in 2015, a case can be made for a different first president, Samuel Huntington.
The man who presided over the very first Congress of States in 1774, before the declaration of Independence, gives us yet another first President, Peyton Randolph.
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