Apart from this matter, the session, which lasted until September 29, was almost wholly occupied with measures to organize the new government.  To understand the significance of the action taken, it should be remembered that the passions excited by the struggle over the new Constitution were still turbulent.  Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, a member without previous national experience, who watched the proceedings with keen observation, early noticed the presence of a group of objectors whose motives he regarded as partly factious and partly temperamental.  Writing to a friend about the character of the House, he remarked:  “Three sorts of people are often troublesome:  the anti-federals, who alone are weak and some of them well disposed; the dupes of local prejudices, who fear eastern influence, monopolies, and navigation acts; and lastly the violent republicans, as they think fit to style themselves, who are new lights in politics, who are more solicitous to establish, or rather to expatiate upon, some sounding principle of republicanism, than to protect property, cement the union, and perpetuate liberty.”  The spirit of opposition had from the first an experienced leader in Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts.  He had seen many years of service in the Continental Congress which he first entered in 1776.  He was a delegate to the Philadelphia convention, in whose sessions he showed a contentious temper, and in the end refused to subscribe to the new Constitution.  In the convention debates he had strongly declared himself “against letting the heads of the departments, particularly of finance, have anything to do with business connected with legislation.”  Defeated in the convention, Gerry was now bent upon making his ideas prevail in the organization of the government.

On May 19, the matter of the executive departments was brought up in committee of the whole by Boudinot of New Jersey.  At this time it was the practice of Congress to take up matters first in committee of the whole, and, after general conclusions had been reached, to appoint a committee to prepare and bring in a bill.  A warm discussion ensued on the question whether the heads of the departments should be removable by the President.  Gerry, who did not take a prominent part in the debate, spoke with a mildness that was in marked contrast with the excitement shown by some of the speakers.  He was in favor of supporting the President to the utmost and of making him as responsible as possible, but since Congress had obviously no right to confer a power not authorized by the Constitution, and since the Constitution had conditioned appointments on the consent of the Senate, it followed that removals must be subject to the same condition.  He spoke briefly and only once, although the debate became long and impassioned.  But he was merely reserving his fire, as subsequent developments soon showed.  Without a call for the ayes and nays, the question was decided in favor of declaring the power of removal