the States, not of a State) by Jefferson, secretary of state, and Edmund Randolph, attorney-general. It was not long before the drift of opinion in cabinet meetings showed an irreconcilable divergence, on almost every subject, between these two elements, and Hamilton and Jefferson became the representatives of the two opposite tendencies which have together made up the sum of public American history. At the end of 1792 matters were in train for the general recognition of the existence of two parties, whose struggles were to decide the course of the constitution's development. The occasion came in the opening of the following year, when the new nation was first brought into contact with the French Revolution.
The Jefferson school of politics.148. The controlling tendency of Jefferson and his school was to the maintenance of individual rights at the highest possible point, as the Hamilton school was always ready to assert the national power to restrict individual rights for the general good. Other points of difference are rather symptomatic than essential. The Jefferson school supported the States, not out of love for the States, but out of a belief that the States were the best bulwarks for individual rights. When the French Revolution began its usual course in America by agitation for the “rights of man,” it met a sympathetic audience in the Jefferson party and a cold and unsympathetic hearing from the Hamilton school of Federalists. The latter were far more interested in securing the full recognition of the power and rights of the nation than in securing the individual against imaginary dangers, as they thought them. For ten years, therefore, the surface marks of distinction between the two parties were to be connected with the course of events in Europe; but the essence of distinction was not in the surface marks.
The Hamilton school.149. The new Government was not yet four years old; it was not familiar, nor of assured permanency. The only national Governments of which Americans had had previous experience were the British Government and the Confederation: in the former they had had no share, and the latter had had no power. The only places in which they had had long-continued, full, and familiar experience of self-government were their State Governments: these were the only governmental forms which were then distinctly associated in their minds with the general notion of republican government. The governing principle of the Hamilton school, that the construction or interpretation of the terms of the constitution was to be such as to broaden the powers of the Federal Government, necessarily involved a corresponding trenching on the powers of the States (§ 106). It was natural, then, that the Jefferson school should look on every feature of the Hamilton programme as “anti-republican,” meaning, probably, at first no more than opposed to the State system, as hitherto known, though, with the growth of political bitterness, the term soon came to imply something of monarchical and, more particularly, of English tendencies. The disposition of the Jefferson school to claim for themselves a certain peculiar title to the position of “republicans” soon developed into the appearance of the first Republican party, about 1793.
Party differences.150. Many of the Federalists were shrewd and active
business men, who naturally took prompt advantage of
the opportunities which the new system offered. The
Republicans therefore believed and asserted that the whole
Hamilton programme was dictated by selfish or class
interest; and they added this to the accusation of
monarchical tendencies. These charges, with the fundamental
differences of mental constitution, exasperated by the
passion which differences as to the French Revolution
seemed to carry with them everywhere, made the political
history of this decade a very unpleasant record. The
provision for establishing the national capital on the
The national capital.
Genet's mission.
Potomac (1790) was declared to have been carried by a
corrupt bargain; and accusations of corruption were
renewed at every opportunity. In 1793 a French agent,
Genet, appeared to claim the assistance of the United
States for the French republic. Washington decided to
issue a proclamation of neutrality, the first act of the kind
in American history. It was the first indication, also, of
the policy which has made the course of every president,
with the exception of Polk (§ 223), a determined leaning
to peace, even when the other branches of the Government
have been intent on war. The proclamation of
The Whisky Insurrection.
1793 brought about the first distinctly party feeling; and
it was intensified by Washington's charge that popular
opposition in western Pennsylvania (1794) to the new
excise law had been fomented by the extreme French
party. Their name, Democrat, was applied by the
Federalists to the whole Republican party as a term of
contempt, but it was not accepted by the party for some
twenty years; then the compound title “Democratic-Republican”
became, as it still is, the official title of the
Admission of Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
party. There was no party opposition, however, to the
re-election of Washington in 1792, or to the admission of
Vermont (1791); Kentucky (1792), and Tennessee (1796)
as new States.
151. The British Government had accredited no minister to the United States, and it refused to make any commercial treaty or to give up the forts in the western territory of the United States, through which its agents still exercised a commanding influence over the Indians. In the course of its war with France, the neutral American vessels, without the protection of a national navy, fared Jay's treaty. badly. A treaty negotiated by Chief-Justice Jay (1794) settled these difficulties for the following ten years. But, as it engaged the United States against any intervention in the war on behalf of France, and as it granted some unfamiliar privileges to Great Britain, particularly that of extradition, the Republicans made it very unpopular, and the first personal attacks on Washington's popularity grew out of it. In spite of occasional Republican successes, the Federalists retained a general control of national affairs; Election of 1796. they elected John Adams president in 1796, though Jefferson was chosen vice-president with him; and the national policy of the Federalists kept the country out of entangling alliances with any of the European belligerents. To the Republicans, and to the French republic, this last point of policy was only a practical intervention against France and against the rights of man.
152. At the end of Washington's administration the French Directory, following up its successes in Germany and Italy and its exactions from conquered powers, broke off relations with the United States, demanding the abrogation of Jay's treaty and a more pronounced sympathy The “X. Y. Z.” mission. with France. Adams sent three envoys to endeavour to re-establish the former relations; they were met by official or unofficial demands for “money, a great deal of money,” as a prerequisite to peace. They refused; their letters home were published; and the Federalists at last had the opportunity of riding the whirlwind of an intense popular desire for war with France. Intercourse with France was suspended by Congress (1798); the treaties with France were declared at an end; American frigates were authorized to capture French vessels guilty of depredations on American commerce, and the president was authorized to issue letters of marque and reprisal; and an American army was formed, Washington being called from his retirement Quasi-war with France. at Mount Vernon to command it. The war never went beyond a few sea-fights, in which the little American navy did itself credit, and Napoleon, seizing power the next year, renewed the peace which should never have been broken. But the quasi-war had internal consequences to
