1788–89 United States presidential election in the context of Contingent election

The land which became the United States was inhabited by Native Americans for tens of thousands of years; their descendants include but may not be limited to 574 federally recognized tribes. The history of the present-day United States began in 1607 with the establishment of Jamestown in modern-day Virginia by settlers who arrived from the Kingdom of England, and the landing of the Mayflower by English pilgrims to Plymouth in 1620. In the late 15th century, European colonization began and largely decimated Indigenous societies through wars and epidemics. By the 1760s, the Thirteen Colonies, then part of British America and the Kingdom of Great Britain, were established. The Southern Colonies built an agricultural system on slave labor and enslaving millions from Africa. After the British victory over the Kingdom of France in the French and Indian Wars, Parliament imposed a series of taxes and issued the Intolerable Acts on the colonies in 1773, which were designed to end self-governance. Tensions between the colonies and British authorities subsequently intensified, leading to the Revolutionary War, which commenced with the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. In June 1775, the Second Continental Congress established the Continental Army and unanimously selected George Washington as its commander-in-chief. The following year, on July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress unanimously declared its independence, issuing the Declaration of Independence. On September 3, 1783, in the Treaty of Paris, the British acknowledged the independence and sovereignty of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States. On September 17, 1787, the U.S. Constitution was signed by a majority of delegates, and was later ratified by the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the first modern U.S. government.

In the 1788-89 presidential election, Washington was elected the nation's first U.S. president. Along with his Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, Washington sought to create a relatively stronger central government than that favored by other founders, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. On March 4, 1789, the new nation debated, adopted, and ratified the U.S. Constitution, which is now the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in the world. In 1791, a Bill of Rights was added to guarantee inalienable rights. In 1803, Jefferson, then serving as the nation's third president, negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the country. Encouraged by available, inexpensive land, and the notion of manifest destiny, the country underwent westward expansion in a project of settler colonialism marked by a series of conflicts with the continent's indigenous inhabitants. The most notable advocate of manifest destiny was President James K. Polk, who annexed Texas in 1845, and declared war on Mexico the next year. An overwhelming U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War led to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, where the U.S. acquired much of the American Southwest from Mexico. Whether or not slavery should be legal in the expanded territories was an issue of national contention, and led to increasing tensions over slavery.

George Washington's tenure as the inaugural president of the United States began on April 30, 1789, the day of his first inauguration, and ended on March 4, 1797. Washington took office after he was elected unanimously by the Electoral College in the 1788–1789 presidential election, the nation's first quadrennial presidential election. Washington was re-elected unanimously in 1792 and chose to retire after two terms. He was succeeded by his vice president, John Adams of the Federalist Party.

Washington, who had established his preeminence among the new nation's Founding Fathers through his service as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and as president of the 1787 constitutional convention, was widely expected to become the first president of the United States under the new Constitution, though he desired to retire from public life. In his first inaugural address, Washington expressed both his reluctance to accept the presidency and his inexperience with the duties of civil administration, though he proved an able leader.

The history of the United States from 1789 to 1815 was marked by the nascent years of the American Republic under the new U.S. Constitution. George Washington was elected the first president in 1789. On his own initiative, Washington created three departments, State (led by Thomas Jefferson), Treasury (led by Alexander Hamilton), and War (led at first by Henry Knox). The secretaries, along with a new Attorney General, became the cabinet.

Based in New York City, the new government acted quickly to rebuild the nation's financial structure. Enacting Hamilton's program, the government assumed the Revolutionary War debts of the states and the national government, and refinanced them with new federal bonds. It paid for the program through new tariffs and taxes; the tax on whiskey led to a revolt in the west; Washington raised an army and suppressed it with minimal violence. The nation adopted a Bill of Rights as 10 amendments to the new constitution. Fleshing out the Constitution's specification of the judiciary as capped by a Supreme Court, the Judiciary Act of 1789 established the entire federal judiciary. The Supreme Court became important under the leadership of Chief Justice John Marshall (1801–1835), a federalist and nationalist who built a strong Supreme Court and strengthened the national government.