Shaping a new republic

An experiment in popular rule

The early American republic represented a profound, and risky, experiment in popular rule in the late 18th century. Establishing a republic spanning hundreds of thousands of square miles with a population of just under 4 million people, some 800,000 of whom were enslaved, greatly contrasted with the small city-state republics from European history as well as with the monarchical great powers of Great Britain and France. The United States was then bordered on three sides by potential rivals and tense allies, its novel system of government remained unproven, and the new republic’s financial situation was precarious.

On April 30, 1789, George Washington was inaugurated in the temporary capital of New York City as the first President of the United States with John Adams serving as his Vice President. While Washington enjoyed immense popularity at the time of his inauguration, how he would exercise the still unclear powers and responsibilities of the presidency was an unsettled question. Recognizing an immediate need for informed counsel, Washington worked with Congress to create the Cabinet, the Senate confirmed heads of the different executive departments tasked with implementing federal policies and priorities. Washington’s first Cabinet remains one of the most studied in American history, headlined by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton; Secretary of War Henry Knox had distinguished himself at the Battle of Ticonderoga in the American Revolution and had served as Secretary of War during the latter years of the Articles of Confederation and Attorney General Edmund Randolph had served in the Continental Congress and as governor of Virginia as well as proposing the Virginia Plan at the Constitutional Convention. While later vice presidents have essentially functioned as advisory members of the Cabinet, Vice President John Adams served primarily as the President of the Senate, constitutionally prescribed largely ceremonial role that frustrated Adams; today, the vice president presides over the Senate during legislative sessions in which they may need to cast a tie-breaking vote and also during the constitutionally mandated annual State of the Union address from president to the Congress.

Hamilton versus Jefferson

During Washington’s first term as president (1789-1793), emerging political tensions between Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson produced critical results for the new country while exposing profound rifts within the new republic. Tasked with improving the country’s financial situation, Hamilton proposed the establishment of a national bank, assumption of state debts by the federal government, and an emphasis on embracing industrialization as well as elevated tariffs on imported goods to protect American manufacturers from foreign, primarily British, competition. While focusing on foreign affairs, Jefferson feared excessive centralization of power at the federal level and also promoted agricultural interests and the “yeoman” agrarian foundations of the American republic. Jefferson and his fellow Virginia planter,** James Madison**, an influential member of the House of Representatives, opposed the creation of a national bank, arguing that the Constitution did not explicitly authorize this action; the philosophy of relying solely upon the written text of the Constitution for the powers of the government is known as strict constructionism. Arguing from a loose[r] constructionist position, Hamilton argued that the Constitution provides the federal government, including Congress, with implied powers based upon the elastic clause in Article I Section 8 as well as Congress’s powers to tax, regulate interstate commerce, and regulate currency. Eventually, after the most (in)famous dinner party in American history, Jefferson and Madison agreed not to oppose Hamilton’s plans for assumption of state debts by the federal government and the creation of a national bank in exchange for Hamilton’s support for the establishment of the new capital on the border of Virginia. The bitter rivalry between Hamilton and Jefferson would continue throughout Washington’s first presidential term.

Foreign perils

In the first few months of Washington’s presidency, events across the Atlantic Ocean upended the established order in Europe and excited and concerned Americans. Jefferson, having served as the United States’s primary diplomat to France during the middle 1780s, the United States did not begin naming ambassadors officially until 1893, detested the excesses of the French monarchy and welcomed what he viewed as a freer and more democratic system emerging in the early French Revolution. Hamilton, by contrast, admired the British system of government and was horrified by the violence and extremism that he read about occurring in France. Throughout the 1790s, including both of Washington’s term and John Adams’s one term as president, both France and Great Britain sought to influence, and potentially coerce, the United States into providing support and assistance in their wars against each other. Both Hamilton and Jefferson sought to influence President Washington to weigh in on the conflict between France and Great Britain and the appropriate responses from the United States; prompted by what he considered indiscreet meddling by the French ambassador, Charles Genet, in April 1793, shortly after being inaugurated for his second term, Washington issued a Proclamation of Neutrality, indicating that the United States would not take sides in the war between revolutionary France and much of Europe, including Great Britain. Washington and later Adams would insist on the right of the United States to trade with all countries, a policy that infuriated both France and Great Britain. France, in particular, sought to prevail upon the United States as an ally, dating back to the American Revolution, and even demanded significant American financial assistance in the infamous XYZ Affair, a diplomatic meeting, in the late 1790s.

Neutrality Proclamation, April 22, 1793

Whereas it appears that a state of war exists between Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, Great-Britain, and the United Netherlands, of the one part, and France on the other, and the duty and interest of the United States require, that they should with sincerity and good faith adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerent powers:

I have therefore thought fit by these presents to declare the disposition of the United States to observe the conduct aforesaid towards those powers respectively; and to exhort and warn the citizens of the United States carefully to avoid all acts and proceedings whatsover, which may in any manner tend to contravene such disposition.

Whiskey Rebellion

In a previous lesson, you learned about Shays’s Rebellion involving indebted farmers in Massachusetts, often considered a catalytic event for the convening of the Constitutional Convention. During Washington’s second term as president, farmers in Pennsylvania became enraged over increased taxation on whiskey production, attributable to Alexander Hamilton’s plan for improving the country’s financial solvency; by the summer of 1794, several hundred armed farmers attacked the home of the US marshal sent to collect the tax. Washington personally led the combined militias of several states, including Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia, to confront these farmers and the Whiskey Rebellion ended before the arrival of Washington and these nearly 14,000-armed militia. The lasting significance of the Whiskey Rebellion is that the American government under the Constitution and with resolved leadership swiftly ended the Whiskey Rebellion in marked contrast to the less decisive response to Shays’s Rebellion only 8 years earlier.

Washington’s farewell

As George Washington’s second administration neared its expiry, politicians, citizens, and foreign governments wondered about the future of the American republic. While Thomas Jefferson had resigned as Secretary of State at the end of 1793, he had not truly retired from politics and would seek the presidency in 1796. Vice President John Adams and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton feuded with each other with both harboring their own presidential ambitions. After President Washington indicated that he would not seek a third term, he then turned to Hamilton for assistance in preparing his closing presidential remarks. In Washington’s Farewell Address, the departing president conveyed, using Hamilton*s phrasing, advice and admonitions that are still frequently cited by Americans today. Washington urged Americans not to become overly partisan, warning about the pernicious impacts of factions; he also warned Americans against maintaining large standing armies during peacetime and to hew primarily to a policy of friendly and consistent neutrality in foreign affairs.

Washington’s Farewell Address to the People of the United States, September 19, 1796

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.