The Founders Fought About Titles, and His Highness Lost to Mr. President

Picture the scene. It is the spring of 1789. The new government has barely opened its doors. There is no revenue system yet, no federal courts, no cabinet departments, a Revolutionary War debt nobody knows how to pay, and a frontier full of trouble. And the United States Senate, the most distinguished deliberative body in the new republic, is spending its days arguing about what to call the president.

I am not making this up. Folks, if you ever think Washington wastes time today, take comfort. It started on day one. But here is the wonderful part of the story: the argument mattered, the right side won, and the answer tells you more about what America is than a dozen textbooks.

The question nobody had answered

The Constitution says there shall be a "President of the United States of America." It says nothing about how to address him. In 1789 that was a real question. Every other head of state in the world was a "Majesty," a "Highness," or at the very least an "Excellency." George Washington himself had been "His Excellency" throughout the war, as commanders and governors usually were. Diplomats would arrive expecting a form of address. Formal letters needed one. Ceremonies needed one.

So when the Senate gathered in New York in April 1789, Vice President John Adams, presiding, raised the issue. Adams was a brilliant man, a patriot who had risked his neck for independence and the author of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, the oldest written constitution still in force anywhere, which we discuss in John Adams Wrote the Oldest Working Written Constitution in the World. He was also, let us say, a man with strong views on the dignity of office.

Adams believed that a government needed the trappings of respect. Foreign courts, he argued, would sneer at a chief executive with a plain title. The people themselves would hold the office in higher regard if it carried some splendor. According to the journal kept by Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvania, Adams complained that the bare word "president" was also used by the heads of fire companies and cricket clubs. That is a fair point, as far as it goes. It just does not go very far.

His Highness, the Protector

The Senate appointed a committee. And in May 1789 the committee came back with its recommendation. Ready? The proposed form of address, which the sources report in slightly different wordings, ran along these lines:

His Highness the President of the United States of America, and Protector of their Liberties.

Read that out loud. Go ahead. It takes about six seconds, which is roughly five and a half seconds longer than "Mr. President." Now imagine saying it every time you want to interrupt him at a meeting. "Your Highness the President of the United States of America, and Protector of Our Liberties, the soup is getting cold."

Other suggestions floated around in the debate. "His Elective Highness" was one. "His Excellency" had defenders, since it was already in use. Adams pushed for something grand. William Maclay, a plain-spoken farmer-lawyer from western Pennsylvania, fought every inch of it, and his private diary of these weeks is one of the funniest documents of the founding era, filled with exasperation at the vice president's fascination with ceremony.

Here is the thing to notice. The fight was not silly to the people having it. Both sides understood that a name is a statement of principle. A "Highness" sits above the people. A "President" presides over a meeting of equals. Which one were Americans going to have?

The House settles it

While the Senate argued, the House of Representatives simply acted. When the House drafted its formal reply to Washington's inaugural address, delivered on April 30, 1789, it addressed him plainly as the President of the United States. James Madison, then a member of the House from Virginia, helped steer that course. The House was the body closest to the people, and it saw no need for a title the Constitution did not supply.

That left the Senate stuck. It could insist on "His Highness" and start a fight between the two chambers over a form of address in the first weeks of the government, or it could accept the House's usage. In mid-May the Senate gave way and adopted "President of the United States" for its own reply. It recorded in its journal that it still thought some respectable title proper, but it went along for the sake of harmony with the House.

So "Mr. President" won by default, which is the most American way to win anything. There was no grand proclamation. There was a House that just went ahead and did the obvious thing, and a Senate that eventually noticed nobody was following it.

Adams pays a price

The debate did lasting damage to John Adams's reputation. Critics mocked him as a closet monarchist. They coined a nickname, "His Rotundity," which tells you how affectionate the early republic's political humor could be. Thomas Jefferson, then serving as minister in Paris, wrote to Madison that the title proposal was superlatively ridiculous.

That is a little unfair to Adams, and it is worth saying so. He was no monarchist. He had spent his life fighting a king. His concern was that a republic without dignity would not command respect, at home or abroad, and that respect was a kind of glue for a new and fragile government. He got the remedy wrong, but he was asking a fair question: how does a free people honor an office without worshipping the person holding it?

Adams did not drop the idea, either. In 1790 and 1791 he published a series of essays, the Discourses on Davila, arguing that the desire for distinction and the esteem of others is one of the deepest passions in human nature, and that a wise government channels it rather than pretending it does not exist. There is real insight in that. People do crave recognition. Armies give medals, schools give diplomas, and every office in America has a nameplate on the door.

But follow the Senate committee's logic one step further than its authors did. If the president is "His Highness," the vice president needs something too. "His Slightly Lower Highness"? The Speaker of the House? The chief justice? Before long you have a table of precedence, a court, and a set of people whose job is deciding who walks into dinner first. That is exactly the world the colonists had left behind, and it is exactly where the passion for distinction goes when government feeds it instead of restraining it.

The answer the country gave was the right one. You honor the office by keeping its title plain and its powers limited. You respect the man by holding him to the oath he took. You let the craving for distinction find its outlet in achievement, in business, science, the arts and public service, rather than in rank conferred by the state.

Why the plain title was the Constitution's answer

Here is where the founding text settles the matter. Let me give it to you in a numbered argument, because this is not just a funny story. It is a principle.

1. The Constitution bans titles of nobility, twice. Article I, Section 9 says: "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." Article I, Section 10 forbids the states, too, to "grant any Title of Nobility." Even the Articles of Confederation had contained a similar ban. A grand title for the president would not have been a title of nobility in the strict sense, since it would not pass to his heirs, but it would have run against the spirit of both clauses.
2. Hamilton called the ban the cornerstone. In Federalist 84, Alexander Hamilton, no enemy of a strong executive, wrote that the prohibition of titles of nobility "may truly be denominated the corner-stone of republican government; for so long as they are excluded, there can never be serious danger that the government will be any other than that of the people." Hamilton saw that titles are the first step toward a governing class set apart from everyone else.
3. The office is a trust, not a possession. The president's oath in Article II promises to "faithfully execute the Office of President." The office belongs to the people. The man occupies it for a term. A title like "His Highness" describes a person. "President" describes a job.
4. Equality before the law requires equality of address. The Declaration of Independence holds "that all men are created equal." A republic where the chief magistrate is a Highness has smuggled rank back in through the front door.
5. Plainness is a check on ambition. The Founders worried constantly about men who wanted to be kings. A plain title is a daily reminder, to the president and to everyone around him, that he is a citizen holding a temporary office.

For the full list of things the Constitution says Congress may never do, see Article I, Section 9 Lists the Things Congress May Never Do to You.

Washington's example

What did George Washington think? He was, by temperament and choice, a man of formal dignity. He held levees, rode in a fine carriage and carried himself like the most famous man in the world, which he was. But he also understood that every act of his would become a precedent. He was creating an office, not inheriting one, and he knew it. The plain title suited the restraint that defined his public life. The man who surrendered his commission to Congress at Annapolis in 1783 and who would step down after two terms in 1797 was not a man who needed "Highness" to feel important.

His greatest acts were acts of giving power back. That is the deeper meaning of "Mr. President." It is a title that assumes the holder will one day leave. For more on how Washington shaped the Constitution with very few words, read Washington Spoke Once at the Convention and Still Made the Constitution Possible.

The coverage then and now

Notice how the story was told at the time. The opposition press made Adams into a joke, which was easier than engaging his actual argument about national dignity. That habit has survived. Every generation of reporters finds a way to treat the trappings of the presidency as either scandalous or sacred, depending on who is in office. The honest view sits between: the office deserves respect because of what it is, and the person deserves scrutiny because of what he does.

There was even a later attempt to strengthen the ban. In 1810 Congress sent the states a proposed amendment that would have stripped citizenship from any American who accepted a title of nobility or an honor from a foreign power without Congress's consent. It fell short of ratification and remains one of the handful of amendments still technically pending. The point it made had already been made in 1789.

What the plain title teaches today

The plain title fits the whole design of Article II. One executive, with real energy, as Hamilton argued in Federalist 70, but bounded by elections, impeachment, the courts and a Congress that controls the money. That balance is the subject of The Executive Power Shall Be Vested in a President, and Every Word Counts and Federalist 70 Read Closely, Hamilton's Case for Energy in One Executive.

The spirit of the titles debate also applies far beyond the White House. Every time a government official expects deference because of a position rather than earning it by conduct, the old question returns. Every time an agency treats a citizen as a subject rather than a sovereign, the Senate committee of 1789 is back in session. The answer in 1789 was the right one, and it is still the right one: in America, the people are the sovereign, and the president works for them.

The case in brief

1. In April and May 1789 the Senate debated how to address the president, and a committee proposed a grand form of address built on "His Highness" and "Protector."
2. The House, with Madison's help, simply addressed Washington as President of the United States, and the Senate gave way in mid-May while noting its preference for a grander title.
3. John Adams paid for the episode with ridicule, though his concern for the dignity of the new government was sincere.
4. The Constitution bans titles of nobility in Article I, Sections 9 and 10, and Hamilton in Federalist 84 called that ban the cornerstone of republican government.
5. "Mr. President" describes a temporary office held in trust by a citizen, which is exactly what the Founders intended.

What you can do: read Article I, Sections 9 and 10 and Federalist 84 on the Constitution page, then test your family on the founding era with the civics test.