Time Line
1789:
Washington elected; new government forms; Congress meets; French Revolution begins
1790:
Hamilton issues the Report on Public Credit
1791:
First Bank of United States (BUS) established
1793:
Washington begins second term; Proclamation of Neutrality; cotton gin patented
1794:
Whiskey Rebellion; Battle of Fallen Timbers
1795:
Jay’s Treaty; Pinckney’s Treaty
1796:
Washington’s Farewell Address; John Adams elected president
1798:
X, Y, Z Affair; Quasi War with France; Alien and Sedition Acts; Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions
1800:
Washington, D. C., becomes national capital
1801:
Congress narrowly selects Jefferson president; Adams appoints John Marshall and “midnight judges”
1802:
Congress recalls most “midnight judges”
1803:
Marbury v. Madison; Louisiana Purchase; Lewis and Clark expedition
1804:
Aaron Burr kills Alexander Hamilton; Jefferson reelected
1805:
British seize American ships
1807:
Embargo Act; Burr acquitted of treason
1808:
African slave trade ends; James Madison elected president
1809:
Congress boycotts British and French trade
1810:
Fletcher v. Peck
1811:
Battle of Tippecanoe; BUS charter expires; first steamboat on Ohio and Mississippi rivers
1812:
United States and Britain engage in War of 1812; Madison reelected
1813:
Battles of Lake Erie and Thames
1814:
British burn Washington, D. C.; Battle of Lake Champlain/Plattsburgh; Hartford Convention; Treaty of Ghent ends war
1815:
Battle of New Orleans
Following the ratification of the Constitution, the Federalists continued their momentum under Washington, and they deserve credit for implementing a sound program during the general’s two terms. Washington’s exit in 1796 constituted no small event: although the election of his vice president, the famed Revolutionary organizer and diplomat John Adams, essentially maintained Federalist power, a popular and respected leader had stepped down voluntarily. Relinquishing the “crown” under such circumstances was unheard of in Europe, much less in the rest of the world, where monarchs clung to their thrones even if it required the assassination of family members. It is not an overstatement to say that Adams’s election in 1796 was one of the most significant points in the evolution of the Republic, and although not on the momentous scale of the complete upheaval four years later, it nevertheless marked a bloodless change in leadership seldom seen in human history.
When the Federalist dynasty evaporated in the span of Adams’s administration, and the Jeffersonian Republicans took over the ship of state in 1800, this, too, contained elements of continuity as well as the obvious components of change. For one thing, Jefferson propagated the “Virginia dynasty,” which began with Washington, then Jefferson, followed later by Madison and, still later, James Monroe. Never in the nation’s history would it again be dominated by so many from one state in such a brief span of time (although Texas, in the late twentieth century, has come close, electing three presidents in thirty-five years).
Movers and Shakers
In New York City in April of 1789, George Washington and John Adams took the oaths of office to become the first president and vice president of the United States of America.1 Both had stood unopposed in the country’s first presidential election five months earlier, and Washington bungled his words, appearing more “agitated and embarrassed…than he ever was by the leveled Cannon or pointed musket.”2 If ceremony threw the general off, neither the responsibility nor the power of the position unnerved him. After all, few knew what the office of the presidency was—indeed, it would have been little without a man such as Washington moving its levers—and someone who had commanded an army that defeated the British was unlikely to be reluctant to exercise power. Washington, as always, disliked public speaking, and although he delivered his addresses to Congress in person, he found pomp and circumstance distasteful. He was, after all, a farmer and a soldier.
Washington knew, however, that in this grand new experiment, the president was in a sense more powerful than any king. A political priest, he governed by virtue of the power of the people, making him in a sense beyond reproach. Certainly Washington had his critics—his enemies pummeled him mercilessly. Philip Freneu’s National Journal attacked Washington so viciously that the general referred to the editor as “that rascal”—damning words from Washington!3 Radical Tom Paine went even further. In a letter to the Aurora, Payne “celebrated Washington’s [ultimate] departure, actually prayed for his imminent death,” and contemptuously concluded that the world would have to decide “whether you are an apostate or an impostor, whether you have abandoned good principles or whether you ever had any.”4 Washington endured it with class. Paine’s reputation, already questionable, never recovered from his ill-chosen words regarding “the man who unites all hearts.”5
If Washington was “the American Zeus, Moses, and Cincinnatus all rolled into one,” he was not without faults.6 His rather nebulous personal religion left him exposed and isolated. Many of his biographers trumpeted Washington’s faith, and a famous painting captures the colonial general praying in a snowy wood, but if Washington had any personal belief in Jesus Christ, he kept it well hidden. Like Franklin, Washington tended toward Deism, a general belief in a detached and impersonal God who plays no role in human affairs. At any rate, Washington approached his new duties with a sense that although he appealed frequently to the Almighty for help, he was going it alone, and for better or worse, the new government rested on his large shoulders.7
The president’s personality has proven elusive to every generation of American historians, none more so than modern writers who, unsatisfied with what people wrote or said, seek to reach the emotions of the popular figures. At this, Washington would have scoffed. The son of a prosperous Virginia planter, Washington married well and rose to high economic, military, and political power, becoming undisputed leader of the American Revolution. Yet the qualities that brought him this power and respect—self-control, solid intellect, hard work, tenacity, and respectability—also shielded the life of the inner man. No one, not even his wife and closest family, really knew the intensely private George Washington.
Washington was, reportedly, unhappy at home. Economics had weighed heavily in his choice of a wife—supposedly, he deeply loved another woman—and his relationship with his own mother was strained. His goal of becoming a British army officer, a task for which he was particularly well suited, evaporated with the Revolution. Although he assumed the duties of commander in chief, it was a position the Virginian reluctantly took out of love of country rather than for personal fulfillment. Solace in religion or the church also evaded him, although he fully accepted man’s sinful nature and his own shortcomings. Stiff and cold, the general nevertheless wept at the farewell to his officers. Never flamboyant and often boring, Washington eludes modern writers dazzled by the cult of celebrity. Once, on a bet, a colleague approached Washington warmly and greeted him by patting him firmly on his back; the individual won his bet, but for the rest of his life shivered at the memory of the look of reproach on Washington’s face!
A top-down centralist and consolidator by the nature of his military experiences, much like another general/president, Dwight D. Eisenhower some two hundred years later, Washington compromised and negotiated when it seemed the right strategy.8 As a result, it is not surprising that he thoroughly endorsed, and spent the next eight years implementing, the centrali
st economic and military policies of his most important aide, Alexander Hamilton. To ignore Washington’s great vision and innovations in government, however, or dismiss them as Hamilton’s, would shortchange him. He virtually invented out of whole cloth the extraconstitutional notion of a cabinet. At every step he carefully weighed not only the needs of the moment, but also the precedents he set for all future leaders of the nation. For a man to refuse a crown from his adoring nation may have been good sense in light of the fate of Louis XVI a few years later; to refuse a third term marked exceptional character.
That character also revealed itself in those with whom he kept counsel—his associates and political appointees, most of whom had great virtues but also suffered from fatal flaws. Vice President John Adams, for example, possessed the genius, personal morality, and expertise to elevate him to the presidency. But he antagonized people, often needlessly, and lacked the political savvy and social skills necessary to retain the office. Short and stocky (his enemies disparagingly called Adams His Rotundity), Adams rose from a humble Massachusetts farming family to attend Harvard College and help lead the American Revolution.9 A brilliant attorney, patriot organizer, and Revolutionary diplomat, Adams exuded all the doctrinal religion missing in Washington, to the point of being pious to a fault. Other men at the Continental Congress simply could not stand him, and many a good measure failed only because Adams supported it. (His unpopularity at the Continental Congress required that a declaration of independence be introduced by someone else, even though he was the idea’s chief supporter.) On the other hand, Adams brought a sense of the sacred to government that Washington lacked, placing before the nation an unwavering moral compass that refused compromise. By setting such an unbending personal standard, he embarrassed lesser men who wanted to sin, and sin greatly, without consequence.
Predictably, Adams failed in the arena of elective politics. His moderate Revolutionary views and distrust of direct democracy combined with his ability to make others despise him ensured his lack of a political base. Thanks to his own failings and Republican propaganda, the public wrongly came to perceive Adams as an elitist and monarchist (and in Adams’s terminology the phrase executive and monarch were almost interchangeable). But to portray him as antithetical to Revolutionary principles is unwarranted and bizarre. Where Washington subtly maneuvered, Adams stubbornly charged. He had much—perhaps too much—in common with Alexander Hamilton, almost guaranteeing the two would be at odds sooner or later. Ultimately, Adams’s great legacy, including his Revolutionary-era record, his dealings with foreign powers, and his judicial appointments, overshadowed perhaps an even greater mark he made on America: establishing the presidency as a moral, as well as a political, position.10
The third of these Founder giants, James Madison, arguably the most brilliant thinker of the Revolutionary generation, soon put his talents to work against his fellow Federalists Washington and Hamilton. A Virginian and Princeton graduate, Madison stood five feet four inches tall and reportedly spoke in a near whisper. He compensated for a lack of physical presence with keen intelligence, hard work, and a genius for partisan political activity. Madison’s weapons of choice were the pen and the party caucus, the latter of which he shares much credit for inventing. Into his endeavors he poured the fervent ideology of a Whig who believed that strands from both the national and state governments could be woven into a fabric of freedom.
Throughout the course of his intellectual development, Madison veered back and forth between the poles of national versus state government authority. By the early 1790s, he leaned toward the latter because his old protégé Hamilton had drifted too far toward the former. Always alert to the blessings of competition in any endeavor, Madison embraced the concept of factions and divided government. As the first Speaker of the House of Representatives, James Madison began to formulate the agenda of the party of Jefferson and in so doing became heir apparent to his Virginia ally.11
Creating the Cabinet
One of Washington’s most important contributions to American constitutionalism involved his immediate creation of a presidential cabinet. Although the Constitution is silent on the subject, Washington used executive prerogative to create a board of advisers, then instructed them to administer the varied economic, diplomatic, and military duties of the executive branch and report directly back to him. He did so instantly and with surprisingly little controversy. He perceived that these appointees should be specialists, yet the positions also could reward loyalists who had worked for the success of the party. As appointees, needing only the approval of the Senate, Washington bypassed the gridlock of congressional selection systems.
Soon after his election and establishment of the cabinet, Washington realized that staffing the government would be a permanent source of irritation, writing, “I anticipated in a heart filled with distress, the ten thousand embarrassments, perplexities, and troubles to which I must again be exposed…none greater [than those caused] by applications for appointments.”12 Little could the Virginian have dreamed that federal job seeking would only grow worse, and that eighty years later Abraham Lincoln would have lines of job seekers stacked up outside his office while he was in the middle of running a war.
The importance of the cabinet to evolving party politics was, of course, that Washington’s inner circle hosted the two powerhouses of 1790s politics Hamilton and Jefferson. Secretary of State Jefferson is ever present in the history of American Revolutionary culture and politics.13 A tall, slender, redheaded Virginian, Jefferson was the son of a modest Virginia planter. Young Jefferson, a student at William and Mary College, developed a voracious appetite for learning and culture in myriad forms. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, for example, he wrote ably about Mound Builder culture, Native American languages, meteorology, biology, geology, and, of course, history and political science.14 He spoke French fluently, learned architecture from books (and went on to design and build his own elaborate Monticello home), and practiced his violin for at least an hour each day. Everything he touched reflected his wide and extraordinary tastes. For example, military expeditions that he ordered to explore the Louisiana Territory received their instructions for scientific endeavors from the-then president Jefferson; and he worked with his nemesis Hamilton to devise one of the most commonsense coinage systems in the world (based on tens and hundreds), an approach that Jefferson naturally tried to apply to the land distribution system.15 Widowed in the 1780s, Jefferson promised his wife on her deathbed he would never remarry; he later apparently pursued a decades-long love affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemmings, with a historical debate still raging over whether this union resulted in the birth of at least one son.16
Jefferson’s political career soared. After authoring the Declaration of Independence, he followed Patrick Henry as Virginia’s wartime governor, although in that capacity he was merely adequate. Unlike Washington or Hamiliton, Jefferson never served in the Continental Army and never saw combat. After the war, as American ambassador to France, he developed a pronounced taste for French food, wine, and radical French politics. Back home in the 1790s, he claimed to detest partisan politics at the very time he was embracing some of its most subtle and important forms—the anonymous political editorial, the private dinner party, and personal lobbying. Anyone who knew Jefferson said he possessed a certain kind of magic—a charisma. Love of good company and conversation provided him great joy and, simultaneously, a lethal weapon to use against his political foes.
Fueling Jefferson’s political endeavors was a set of radical Whig beliefs that had not changed much since he penned the Declaration of Independence in 1776. That famed document’s denunciation of centralized economic, military, judicial, and executive governmental authority combined with a hatred of state religion to spotlight his classic radical Whig ideas. Although it is debatable whether Jefferson in fact penned the celebrated words, “Government is best which governs least,” there is no doubt that he believed and acted on them in virtually all
areas except slavery. On all other issues, though, Jefferson remained consistently oriented toward small government, and he may well have flirted with the principles behind the words later penned by Henry David Thoreau: “That government is best which governs not at all.”
Just as Jefferson did not unthinkingly favor small and weak government, as has been portrayed, neither did his antithesis, the secretary of the treasury Alexander Hamilton, endorse a Leviathan state, as his opponents have asserted. Hamilton was Washington’s brilliant aide-de-camp during the war and the nation’s most noted nationalist economic thinker. His origins were humble. Born out of wedlock in the British West Indies, he was saved from a life of obscurity when a wealthy friend recognized his talents and sent him to study in New York City at King’s College (now Columbia University).17 Possessing a talent for writing about economics, law, and radical politics, he rose in patriot ranks to stand as General Washington’s chief military, and later, political, adviser. He personally commanded one of the assaults on the redoubts at Yorktown. In the early 1780s, Hamilton became a disciple of Robert Morris’s program to grant the Confederation national taxing and banking powers. A moderate Whig, Hamilton was neither a mercantilist nor a follower of the free-market ideas of Adam Smith, but was a fusion of the two—and so suspicious of government that he thought the only way to ensure it did not spin out of control was to tie it to the wealthy.18
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