III

It was one thing to secure acceptance of the new frame, it was another to put it into operation. Here another struggle for power ensued, where the same love of liberty and fear of tyranny emerged. The friends of the Constitution assumed the task of putting it into operation with little experience to guide them. They knew instinctively that they must give positions of trust only to those who favoured the order and that they must gain power and the respect of their opponents. Public confidence they concluded could only be based upon a show of strength and strength began with adequate money and credit. The finances of the new nation were in a chaotic and demoralizing condition, so that the first charge must be to secure the means to pay the debts and current running expenses of the new government.

A stroke of genius was needed and it was forthcoming. President Washington had chosen Alexander Hamilton to be Secretary of the Treasury and he produced the much-needed plans. He was an admirer of the system of British public finance with its skilful use of the national debt and the Bank of England as auxiliaries of the Exchequer and he proposed a similar scheme to the new Congress. He would fund the Confederation debt, assume the debts of the states and create a Bank of the United States with the new government as minority stockholder. Hamilton’s projects appealed to those who wanted strength and power in the new government.

All did not go smoothly. Power is frightening to many people, particularly when it is exercised by strangers who live in other regions and who seemingly have interests which may be conflicting, or ideas which may be unpalatable. When the new government was being put into operation the greater part of the republic was rural; ninety-five per cent of the population lived in isolated hamlets or on lonely farmsteads, a population widely scattered. This meant that a large number of the people had no contacts beyond the few available to farmers. They knew little of the outside world except as news came to them by the meagre newspapers, by the few available books and pamphlets or by the rumours that were carried from mouth to mouth. Some few had correspondence and learned from letters, but mail service was poor and such means of communication not frequently used by the great mass of the people who could not easily engage in letter writing, even had they had anyone to whom to write. The result was that there was a large number of uninformed people who could easily become concerned over matters but vaguely understood, just as three decades before a large number had been concerned by the imperial policies after the Seven Years War.

Power was growing up in distant places, in the cities which they had never seen. In New York, in Philadelphia and Boston a new power was arising which might easily be feared in much the same terms as the British Government once had been feared. The new government had now the authority to tax, with the means to grant subsidies to the favoured at the expense of the population. It was also a government which might send officers to enforce unpopular laws which in turn might possibly be backed by military force. Most politicians in the state capitals were never certain that this new central government might not grow stronger at their expense and lower their prestige and perquisites. It was thus inevitable that there should arise expressions of fear and protest. This protest had to have a vocabulary and, as is usual, the protesters adopted words and ideas which were current, which had a familiar sound and struck familiar chords.

The language of protest had been polished in England, where the tradition of such resistance went back to the days of the Magna Carta and had been vastly reinforced recently in the seventeenth century. The troubled years of the Puritan and Glorious Revolutions had brought naturally to the lips of Englishmen certain words which can be summed up by the terms ‘rights’ and ‘liberties’. They feared tyranny and had come to regard it as their duty to curb and, if necessary, liquidate tyrants. The ‘immemorial rights of Englishmen’ were precious possessions which were more frequently lauded than defined. This vocabulary was fresh in American minds, as it had been used vigorously during the recent War for Independence. When the colonists defied King George III they had formulated their defiance in the terms of the Lockeian political science and psychology, and they then submitted their formula in print as a matter of duty for the information of that’ candid world’ of theirs. Most of the state constitutions contained a bill of rights drawn largely from English sources and the omission of such provisions from the federal Constitution had been a powerful weapon in the hands of those opposed to its ratification. In fact, the addition of a bill of rights to the C9nstitution , in the guise of the first ten amendments to it, had to be promised before ratification could be secured.

When Washington, Hamilton and their Federalist associates set out to develop the power of the central government, it was very easy for their opponents to employ the language of the Revolutionary tradition in vigorous protest against what they envisioned as tyranny, proclaiming that their rights were in danger. To be sure, there was no king, and Washington was sufficiently revered and trusted by most men to make unprofitable the general charge that he was seeking the crown. Yet Jefferson was convinced, or said he was, that Hamilton was trying to persuade the General to become a monarch. The Jeffersonians were wont to accuse the Federalist party, as a group, of having monarchistic preferences. Furthermore, the fact that Hamilton and Washington had set themselves to an elaborate task of debt financing and fiscal organization, particularly in the form of a bank, laid them open to attack for the economic policies of their new federal government.

This line of attack had a very widespread appeal, because of the physiographic, ethnographic and economic variety within the new republic. Physiographically the United States could be divided into several sections. Peculiarities of soil and climate meant that sections such as New England, the Middle States and the South had each its own environment which would encourage different ways of living and different social customs, Ethnographically, distribution was very uneven; the few cities were located predominantly in the more northerly region. In the south the people were scattered over large and small farms having a minimum of communication with their neighbours, with other states or with the world at large. Economically, also, there were sharp contrasts; the commercial and general business activity was largely within the northern states, concentrated in Philadelphia, New York, Boston and their few municipal contemporaries. Outside of these cities few people knew anything of commerce and much less of banking and stock corporation activity. In the South the rural economy was maintained in part by Negro slave labour which produced an economic and social organization markedly different from the rest of the country.

These numerous and deeply felt differences, plus the fact that most people lived isolated lives without much means of communication, made it possible for politicians to utilize local situations, to capitalize interests and prejudices and to develop a propaganda along simple lines of thought and emotion.

The opposition to the policies of the Federalists for putting the new government into operation began, first in New York and later in Philadelphia, among active men closely associated in the Washington Administration, and in the two houses of Congress. Here individual differences, incompatible personalities and rival ambitions worked, as they always do, to divide co-operating groups. Within Washington’s official family were Jefferson and Hamilton, brilliant men who rubbed each other the wrong way. As Hamilton was quicker and more dynamic and had greater influence with Washington he seems to have given Jefferson something akin to a feeling of inferiority; this feeling in the breast of the latter scarcely hindered his growing belief that the political policy of the Administration was dangerous.

In Congress, men of different temperaments, ideas and backgrounds were becoming acquainted with their duties and each other. In the association with each other they were inevitably exchanging likes and dislikes, and forming cliques. In this process, sectionalism continued to play a role, as it had done in the Continental Congress of Revolutionary days and under the Articles of Confederation. Men from New England, the Middle States and the South, while they had much in common, represented different ways of life which would naturally be reflected in their legislative behaviour. Therefore, when the Washington Administration presented its fiscal policy there was bound to be a contest based upon personal and environmental differences. Those who for one reason or another wished to block or modify the new policies would appeal to and capitalize these differences. Likewise they would make use of certain ideas which were then current.

Jefferson and Madison took the lead in opposition to the Administration and therefore in the founding of partisan organization in the new republic. At first they had been willing to follow Washington and Hamilton in supporting the fiscal policies because they felt, with all the Administration, that the government must have credit and funds. Jefferson had gone so far as to intervene to secure reluctant Virginia votes in Congress. However, as his relations with Hamilton, in Washington’s official family, grew more complex and as he saw that these fiscal policies were very profitable to certain northern speculators and business groups, he began to wonder. He soon discovered that the southern and indeed the rural regions in general were getting very little direct benefit nor were they sharing much in the profits. For his part, Madison began to take the lead in a Congressional bloc that was critical of the Hamiltonian policies.

Foreign relations were also complicating this growing partisanship. The French Revolution had begun almost simultaneously with the Washington Administration and had immediately aroused great interest in the United States. There seemed to be a bond between the two nations forged by the Enlightenment; many Frenchmen had been connected, sympathetically, with the American Revolution. The philosophers had watched it intently, the enthusiasts like Lafayette had participated in it, and the politicians had aided it. Then Franklin had taken Paris by his wit, wisdom and charm, combined with a delightful eccentricity of manner and an eye for the ladies. Jefferson, too, had been stationed there. Mably had written his Observationssur le gouvernementet les lois des États-Unis d’Amérique and Brissot de Warville had been to America and was now talking and writing of his experiences though his book was not to come out until the French Revolution was further advanced.

Americans remembered all this and many rejoiced that their republicanism was spreading to France. The great monarchy was yielding to the force of American virtue. What a compliment! American Revolutionary documents and constitutions had been translated and were being read. What a triumph of human reason! The United States was prepared to encourage France as she embarked on the unfamiliar waters of constitutionalism in search of liberty. But the halcyon days did not last long. The French became more radical; heads, even crowned ones, fell, the Christian religion was abandoned in favour of a godless rationalism and the forces of world politics began to operate. England and France were at war.

These developments divided American public opinion. When France, beset by her enemies, notably Great Britain, called upon the new republic for aid under the treaty of 1778 the issue was placed squarely before the American Government and public. By this dine a reaction against France had set in. The excesses of the Revolutionaries in destroying life, property and religion had not gone unnoticed and many pious and conservative people shuddered. Also the commercial and financial ties between London and the United States had been resumed profitably and war would sunder them. Furthermore, the new republic had practically abandoned its armament and had neither force nor money with which to go to war. Washington and his Administration, including Jefferson, friend of France though he was, decided that neutrality was the only course. Nevertheless Jefferson resented this decision as a further evidence of favour to England, which he knew was Hamilton’s interest; and it did not improve their relationships. Other friends of France who resented neutrality might be rallied against Washington.

Altogether Jefferson had excellent material out of which to build party organization: fear of profiteers, of corruption and of Britain, the prejudices of rural taxpayers, friendship for liberty and for France. He began a skilful mobilization. There were no modern conveniences for political organization but he proceeded in methodical fashion. He talked to many. He wrote to leaders in the various states. He sought to stimulate men to assume leadership. He travelled, ostensibly for recreation, but he knew whom to visit. He made friends among the local editors and subsidized an organ from State Department funds. Thus he and Madison and his friends spread their ideas. They set up little formal machinery. They held no great conventions, no meetings of delegates. But there was constant letter writing; and at such gatherings as sessions of state legislatures everywhere, at sittings of county courts in the South and at town meetings in New England, friends of Jefferson met, conferred and decided to endorse candidates for office. Gradually the idea grew that the administration of the federal government was in the hands of monarchists and reactionary friends of the rich who were careless or disdainful of rights and liberties.