As the weeks drag out post–Election Day, this presidential transition, which is taking place during an uncontrolled pandemic, seems cursedly endless. But transitions used to be even longer, before the 20th Amendment switched Inauguration Day to January in 1933. More than once, between Election Day and March 4 (the former Inauguration Day), the country teetered on the brink of disaster—trouble that might have been avoided with a more immediate transfer of power. So why did the founders plan for such a long transition period in the first place?
I asked Sara Georgini, a historian who is series editor for the Papers of John Adams, part of the Adams Papers project at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and author of Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family, to talk about how presidents used the four-month-long transition period in early America. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Rebecca Onion: Here’s something I’ve heard about the length of transitional periods between presidents in early America: “The founders decided to do it this way to leave time for people to travel on horseback to the capital.” My hunch is this is correct but not quite the whole story.
Sara Georgini: Well, I confirm your hunch! I’d say it was a question of travel, especially in the early period, when the capital flipped around so much, between New York City and Philadelphia. And then in 1800, when it switched to the then–very raw, still-in-formation capital city of Washington, D.C., that caused a lot of travel hiccups for presidents and lawmakers and for their households.
And I’d add, with those travel hiccups came delays in mail. Back then, it wasn’t just a matter of traveling to the capital to get started; in order to receive notice of your election or appointment, you had to wait for the mail to arrive at your house in the first place.
Looking at the John Adams papers, what’s interesting to see is this juicy social history of the transitions between presidents. You see things like: Adams absolutely hated the rents in Philadelphia [the capital during most of his presidency]. You know, $900 a year for a house? He thought it was ridiculous. Of course we would jump at that now! But Adams dispatched lots of friends—former Secretary of War Henry Knox and Tench Coxe, a prominent industrialist—to try to negotiate the rent for him.
So there are these matters of the physical transfer of people to the place, and lawmakers are subject to the same kinds of rules as anyone else, looking for good rentals!