George Washington Takes Office

I'm Dr John Panero, professor of history at Acquaintance College in Grand Rapids,

Michigan.

This course is entitled The Rise of Political Parties

and the era of Thomas Jefferson,

and our first module is about the presidency of George Washington.

The Constitution might have been completed,

and Washington might have been elected president unanimously, in fact,

with really nobody else in in the running, Uh,

and yet the Constitution had been a compromise document,

and the historian Forrest McDonald calls it a a practical accomplishment,

not a theoretical one.

So a lot of compromises have been made. James Madison, at the time

in 17 88 17 89 said, We're in a wilderness with no path.

So the first thing

to think about what the presidency of George Washington

as if Washington had become president because

he had proven himself trustworthy with power.

He had had all the power he could have could have made himself dictator.

Some wanted to make him king,

and instead he had voluntarily resigned his commission in

the Continental Army and retired back to Mount Vernon,

only to be called into service to

preside over the Constitutional convention in 17 87

uh, to lend credence to it so that people would take it seriously.

And then finally,

there was no question about who might fill the new role of the presidency,

because again, Washington didn't just say, Hey, you can trust me with power.

He had actually been trusted with power and had relinquished it voluntarily,

and that's really the difference. But what the country was going to look like?

How the republic was going to function wasn't really that clear,

so the United States might be independent.

It was a republic. It wasn't a monarchy. It was a nation that stretched

from the Mississippi River all the way to the East Coast of North America.

But it was very fragile.

This is the second Constitution the Americans were under

in under 10 years.

So there's not the expectation that this one

might last even more than another decade.

So there's a lot of nervousness. The New Republic's fragile

incomes,

Washington and everything he's going to do is going to

set a precedent how he takes the oath of office,

what his titles are going to be beyond president.

They end up with His Excellency, But it could have been any number of titles.

John Adams wanted his high my Penis, and that didn't really go over well,

but that was a title from the Dutch Republics.

So Washington decided, for instance, to take the oath of office.

Uh, and his presidency began in New York,

shifted to Philadelphia when the capital was moved there in a

transitional phase while the new federal city was being built.

That federal city came to be known

as the City of Washington. Even in Washington's time,

though, he never called it that.

But the idea behind the federal district was the states had created a union.

No state should control

the capital of the new central government.

So Virginia and Maryland had donated some territory,

and on that would be the federal district and within that would be the federal city.

But Washington himself personally chose the architectural plans for the U.

S Capitol. He chose the architectural plans for the White House,

and he also had a heavy hand in the development of the city.

So it's only appropriate that it was already known as a city of Washington.

One of the things Washington did also that set

a precedent was when he nominated men to serve in

the executive branch offices.

He treated them like a Cabinet, like an advisory body,

but it's not at all clear from the Constitution

that the president would need to do that.

But he would ask questions of his Cabinet, no matter what the role was.

He might ask the secretary of Treasury, for instance,

foreign policy questions rather than just the secretary of state.

So during the Washington administration, which ran from 17 89 to 17 97

there were just four members of that Cabinet. Uh, there was the State Office,

the Treasury office,

the war office and then the attorney general.

His first Cabinet

was composed of Edmund Randolph, who was from Virginia and a related

to Thomas Jefferson.

And he was Attorney General Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, uh,

Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton

and as Secretary of War Henry Knox.

Washington had served with Knox and Hamilton

in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, so he very much trusted them.

He knew Jefferson

sort of, and Jefferson looked up to him as a father figure,

and Randolph was another Virginia.

So I think other folks didn't recognise it at the time,

but Washington clearly already sensed a sectional divide in the country.

Knox was from Massachusetts. Hamilton was from New York.

So you have to Northerners and then to others, from Virginia to Southerners.

What came to happen,

as the Washington administration considered policy

is out of the State Department.

Jefferson led a charge in a lot of ways against the administration,

particularly the policies of Alexander Hamilton.

And we're going to explore in depth in a later module Alexander Hamilton's

financial plan and Thomas Jefferson's opposition to it in its own module.

But

the financial plan was meant to meant to get the

country on a firm footing and invite foreign investment.

These were all things the United States have been unable to do under

its previous constitution in the 17

eighties called the Articles of Confederation.

So Hamilton was very concerned

that the United States would limp along and remain in debt and that the

New Republic would crumble and whatever would take its place would be much worse.

So he's looking for some way to centralise

the financial system of the United States,

centralised banking in the United States,

and he really promotes this idea of a commercial

nation. Washington, in most cases agreed with Hamilton

Hamilton, who he thought was more forward looking.

The big flash point to the Washington administration came

not just because of Hamilton's plan, but part of his plan was a tax on whiskey,

UN distilled spirits.

And there was an outright rebellion in some parts of the United

States that Washington had to decide how best to keep order.

The old government again, under the previous Constitution, under the articles,

had not been able to do a good job keeping order.

There have been the rebellion of Daniel Shays, right?

When the United States was considering whether to tinker with

the articles of Confederation because of Shay's rebellion in 17 86

they decided instead to to write a wholly new constitution.

Uh, so the new government better be able to keep order. So that's one controversy.

Another was policy toward revolutionary France.

The year Washington took office, 17 89 revolution broke out in France.

Americans seemed rather positive towards it at first because there was a

lot of talk of liberty and even a talk of equality.

But soon it grew more and more violent.

More and more unstable,

and the end result was that from 17 89 all the way through 18 15,

the entire early history of the United States played

out in the shadow of first the revolution in France

and then the war between Great Britain and France

and then finally the Napoleonic Wars and that shaped

the development of political parties. Even

it might seem strange to us that political

parties in the United States would develop based on

foreign concerns in foreign policy.

As we'll see in the other modules,

the Jeffersonians tended to support revolutionary France and the Hamilton Ian's

tended to support Great Britain in the warfare that was ensuing in

in Europe.

So that was another of Washington's big concerns.

How to how to balance that, especially in the face of of, uh,

popular sentiment in favour of France.

Because France, of course, had been the United States is key ally,

and there wouldn't have been a United States

without French military involvement in the Revolutionary War.

Other concerns in the Washington

administration concerned the Northwest territory,

where the Spanish and the British British troops still

remained in some places in the Northwest Territory.

But the Spanish and the British and their Native American allies

were engaging in warfare and pushing, pushing instability,

and the United States wanted to expand into those areas to.

And the Native Americans are caught in the middle

and being used in some ways by both sides

and also promoting their own interests, of course.

And so

Washington, by the time he left office,

had managed through war and treaty to stabilise that part of the country and had

also managed through treaties to set the rest of the borders of the country.

Probably the most controversial thing Washington did was in April of 17 93

while Congress was out of town and an opposition to Thomas Jefferson,

Washington issued a proclamation of neutrality in the war in Europe.

The revolution had invited, in effect in France, British intervention,

an Austrian intervention, and pretty soon all of Europe was at war.

Washington thought at best

to stay out of the warfare in Europe.

To those who said that France is still our ally, those treaties still hold.

Washington polled his cabinet.

Uh,

in general they thought that the treaties from the revolution didn't still hold.

But Jefferson complained that neutrality was

really a pro British neutrality since

the British Navy was able to blockade the continent of Europe,

and so that when you say you can trade

with any of the belligerents in the warfare in Europe,

you really mean you could only trade with the British.

And that trade was actually key to Alexander Hamilton's plan.

So by the time Washington finished his second administration,

he was deeply unpopular among those who oppose that neutrality proclamation.

In fact, I'd say it was probably if we had taken a public opinion poll in those days,

maybe 80% opposed to that.

But this was a time period

where the death of the old deferential politics,

where citizens are expected to defer to those who know better

and her wiser and whom they've elected was still in place.

And the new, more democratic politics was starting to take its place.

But Washington is really the transitional figure here,

so he expects to be deferred to.

And then he draws up a treaty with Great Britain,

also unpopular so that in Washington's farewell address,

besides warning about the growing political parties which he thought were extra

constitutional entities that get in the way between the people and government,

and they're not called for by the Constitution.

And they served themselves, not the people and not the government.

Besides warning about political parties,

besides saying that Americans need religion because virtue flows from religion,

not the other way around.

And in a republic you need a virtuous population. If they can't

behave interior early,

then they're not going to be able to behave in their public life.

Besides, those two things.

Also in the farewell address later very famous in American foreign policy circles,

was Washington's warning against permanent alliances,

particularly with European countries alliances it would buy in the United States.

Washington didn't want to hit the American waggon to France or Britain.

But just stay neutral and see this fragile union through

at least his eight years so that people could.

Americans could come to see the benefits that grow from the new union,

the benefits that grow from the new Constitution

without actually experiencing the benefits of that liberty.

Washington didn't think Americans would love that liberty.

So in his farewell address, he also said,

uh, the Appalachian of American should always take pride of place over your state,

your your state loyalty,

But you should know that not every American was on the same page as Washington,

but he strongly nationalist.

Then at that point, and when he surprised the world again, saying he was going to be,

that he was going to retire and go back to Mt.

Vernon,

not too many people believed him until out came that farewell address

in 17 96.