the vice presidency, which contained little definitive job description in the constitution. The only official role of the vice president was as the president of the United States Senate, a duty unrelated to the executive branch. The Constitution stipulated that the position would be awarded to the runner-up in the presidential election, or the person with the second highest number of electoral votes. Being from Virginia, Washington (who remained neutral on the candidates) assumed that a vice president would be chosen from Massachusetts to ease sectional tensions. In an August 1788 letter, Thomas Jefferson wrote that he considered John Adams, John Hancock, John Jay, James Madison, and John Rutledge to be contenders for the vice presidency. In January 1789, upon hearing that Adams would probably win the vice presidency, Washington wrote to Henry Knox, saying "[I am] entirely satisfied with the arrangement for filling the second office." Each state's presidential electors gathered in their state's capital on February 4, 1789, to cast their votes for the president. As the election occurred before ratification of the Twelfth Amendment, each elector cast two votes for the presidency, though the electors were not allowed to cast both votes for the same person. Under the terms of the constitution, the individual who won the most electoral votes would become president while the individual with the second-most electoral votes would become vice president. Each state's votes were sealed and delivered to Congress to be counted. Before the votes were counted, Washington had declared his willingness to serve, and was preparing to leave Mount Vernon for New York City, the nation's temporary capital. On April 6, 1789, the House and Senate, meeting in joint session, counted the electoral votes and certified that Washington had been elected President of the United States with 69 electoral votes. They also certified that Adams, with 34 electoral votes, had been elected as vice president. The other 35 electoral votes were scattered. Informed of his election on April 14, Washington wrote in a letter to Edward Rutledge that in accepting the presidency, he had given up "all expectations of private happiness in this world." Start of first presidential and vice-presidential terms The Congress of the Confederation had set March 4, 1789 as the date for the beginning of operations of the new federal government under the new Constitution. Owing to the formidable difficulties of long-distance travel in 18th-century America, Congress was