About the
First Federal Congress Project

Mission | Model Editions Partnerships | Co-sponsors and Funders

Mission:   The First Federal Congress Project, a chartered University Research Center and affiliated with the Department of History at the George Washington University, has a dual mission: collecting, researching, editing and publishing the universally acclaimed and well reviewed Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, l789-l791, and serving as a research center on the most important and productive Congress in U.S. history. The Johns Hopkins University Press has published fourteen volumes of the records of this Congress and the editing of five volumes of the correspondence to and from the members and other related materials has begun.

The project's offices in suite 255 at 2l20 L St. N.W. house copies of all the known primary documentary record of this Congress. In addition the Project has an extensive Revolutionary War--Early National period library, particularly modern documentary editions and other primary sources. The Project has hosted numerous researchers working on everything from monographs to legal cases to lesson plans. The coeditors have taught several institutes for secondary school teachers, participated in many professional conferences, and consulted for media productions. They have helped teachers and others to understand the importance of this Congress, which acted as a virtual second sitting of the Federal Convention, addressing issues that the Convention found too potentially divisive to handle such as the jurisdiction and structure of the federal judiciary, the funding of the Revolutionary War debt, and the location of the federal capital. The First Congress fleshed out the structure of the federal government provided in the Constitution and provided stability for the new nation.

Model Editions Partnership:  The First Federal Congress Project is also part of the Model Editions Partnership, exploring ways to present historical editions in electronic formats (internet and CD-rom). To learn more about this project and view the FFCP's mini-edition on the subject of creating the executive departments, visit the MEP website at http://mep.cla.sc.edu/

Co-sponsors and Funders:
  The National Historical Publications and Records Commission
  The George Washington University
  The Johns Hopkins University Press
  National Endowment for Humanities
  The MARPAT Foundation
  The H. W. Wilson Foundation
  The U.S. Capitol Historical Society
  The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation

First Federal Congress Project
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
Phone: 202-676-6777

Comments or questions should be sent to: ffcp@www.gwu.edu