Episode 1 of 4

First State of the Union Address

Name: First State of the Union Address
Start: 1790-01-08
Location: New York City

When: January 8, 1790
Where: New York City
Part of: Establishment of the Early United States Government

President Washington delivered the first regular annual message to Congress in New York City.

George Washington delivered the first regular annual message before a joint session of Congress on January 8, 1790, in New York City, then the provisional U.S. capital. This established the precedent for the State of the Union address.

Sources

State of the Union Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-22

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.