American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [Jefferson on ward republics]: Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, Feb. 2, 1816, quoted in Yarbrough, “Republicanism Reconsidered,” p. 89.

  [Yarbrough on Jefferson’s proposed local public forums]: ibid., p. 90.

  [Virtue]: John Agresto, “Liberty, Virtue and Republicanism,” Review of Politics, Vol. 39, No. 4 (October 1977), pp. 473-504; Yarbrough, “Republicanism Reconsidered”; Douglass Adair, “Fame and the Founding Fathers,” in Harold Trevor Colbourn, ed., Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays by Douglass Adair (W. W. Norton. 1974). pp. 2-26. See, in general, Austin Ranney, “ ‘The Divine Science’: Political Engineering in American Culture,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 70, No. 1 (March 1976), pp. 140-48.

  3. The Experiment Begins

  [Washington informed of his election]: Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1954), Vol. 6, p. 164.

  [Washington “oppressed with … anxious sensations”]: Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of George Washington (Little, Brown, 1858)., p. 461. Quote is from missing diary entry for April 16, 1789.

  [Washington on Alexandria]: Washington to Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. June 28, 1788, in John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington (Government Printing Office, 1939), Vol. 30, p. 9.

  [Washington forced to borrow money]: John C. Fitzpatrick, ed. The Diaries of George Washington, 1748-1799 (Houghton Mifflin. 1925), Vol. 4, p. 7.

  [Alexandria celebration]: Pennsylvania Packet, April 23, 1789.

  [Washington’s haste and preoccupation with the tasks ahead]: Freeman, Vol. 6, pp. 167-68.

  [Crowd at Susquehanna crossing]: ibid., p. 172.[Ode at Trenton]: ibid., pp. 175-76.

  [Washington on entry into New York]: Washington Irving, Life of George Washington (Putnam, 1857), Vol. 4, p. 511.

  [Washington’s inaugural suit]: Frank Monaghan, “Notes on the Inaugural Journey and the Inaugural Ceremonies of George Washington as First President of the United States” (New York Public Library, 1939), passim.

  [Debate over protocol]: James T. Flexner, George Washington and the New Nation (1783-1793) (Little, Brown, 1970), pp. 182-83.

  [Livingston announces “it is done”]: Freeman, Vol. 6, p. 192.

  [Washington’s Inaugural Address]: Fitzpatrick, Writings of Washington, Vol. 30, pp. 281-96.

  The Federalists Take Command

  [Washington’s ambivalence about serving as President]: Fitzpatrick, Writings of Washington, Vol. 30, passim.

  [Presidential election of 1788-89]: Congressional Quarterly, Presidential Elections Since 1789 (Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1975); Merrill Jensen and Robert A. Becker, eds., The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections (University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), Vol. 1, p. xi.

  [Hamilton’s interference in the vice-presidential election]: Hamilton to James Wilson, Jan. 25, 1789, in Harold C. Syrett, ed., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (Columbia University Press, 1962), Vol. 5, pp. 247-49; see also Hamilton to Theodore Sedgwick, Jan. 29, 1789, ibid., pp. 250-51.[Reaction of John Adams]: Page Smith, John Adams (Doubleday, 1962), Vol. 2, pp. 759-60.

  [Electing the 1st Congress]: Jensen and Becker, Vol. 1, esp. Chs. 1 and 2.

  [Madison’s election]: James Madison to George Washington, Jan. 14, 1789, in Gaillard Hunt, ed., The Writings of James Madison (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), Vol. 5, pp. 318-21; see also Madison to Thomas Jefferson, March 29, 1789, ibid, pp. 333-38.

  [Pennsylvania elections]: Jensen and Becker, pp. 227-429.

  [Washington on obtaining lodgings]: Washington to Madison, March 30, 1789, Fitzpatrick, Writings of Washington, Vol. 30, pp. 254-56. [Abigail Adams at Richmond Hill]: Smith, p. 770.

  [Washington on Congress as “the first wheel of government”]: draft of proposed address to Congress [April? 1789], in Fitzpatrick, Writings of Washington, Vol. 30, pp. 299-300.

  [Maclay vs. Adams on reference to President’s address]: Edgar S. Maclay, Journal of William Maclay (D. Appleton, 1890), pp. 10-11; Smith, pp. 750-51.

  [Washington on the judicial branch as keystone of the national polity]: Washington to John Jay, Oct. 5, 1789, Fitzpatrick, Writings of Washington, Vol. 30, pp. 428-29. [John Jay’s early activities as Chief Justice]: correspondence with Justice Cushing, Nov. and Dec. 1789, and Jay to Richard Law, March 10, 1790, John Jay Papers, Columbia University.

  [Organizing and manning the new government]: see, in general, Leonard D. White, The Federalists (Macmillan, 1948).

  [Adams’ denial of patronage to friends]: Smith, p. 762. [Washington on nepotism]: Washington to Bushrod Washington, July 27, 1789, in Fitzpatrick, Writings of Washington, Vol. 30, p. 366.

  [Washington on national government being organized]: Washington to Gouverneur Morris, Oct. 13, 1789, ibid., p. 442.

  [Washington on reasons for his trip]: ibid., pp. 446-47. [Basic sources for information on the trip]: ibid., pp. 450-56; Fitzpatrick, Washington Diaries, Vol. 4, pp. 20-52; William Spohn Baker, Washington after the Revolution, 1784-1799 (Lippincott, 1898), pp. 150-61; Freeman, Vol. 6, pp. 240-45; Flexner, pp. 227-31.

  [Roads and taverns in New England, 1789]: see esp. George F. Marlowe, Coaching Roads of Old New England (Macmillan, 1945), and Forbes and Eastman, Taverns and Stagecoaches of Old New England (State Street Trust Co., 1954), 2 vols. See also the relevant portions of Fitzpatrick, Washington Diaries.

  [Ports and farmers]: Rollin C. Osterweis, Three Centuries of New Haven, 1638-1938 (Yale University Press, 1953). p. 17l Richard J. Purcell, Connecticut in Transition (American Historical Association and Oxford University Press, 1918), pp. 98-99, 120.

  [New Haven c. 1789]: Purcell, pp. 120-21; Albert P. Van Dusen, Connecticut (Random House, 1961), p. 175. On the changing character of town politics in this period, see Edward M. Cook, Jr., The Fathers of the Towns: Leadership and Community Structure in Eighteenth-Century New England (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), esp. p. 191.

  [Slavery in Connecticut]: Robert A. Warner, New Haven Negroes: A Social History (Yale University Press, 1940), p. 5.

  [Washington’s remark at Wallingford, Connecticut]: Fitzpatrick, Washington Diaries, Vol. 4, p. 26.

  [Colonel Wadsworth’s “Woolen Manufactory”]: William B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, 1620-1789 (Riverside Press, 1891), Vol. 2, p. 853.

  [Manufacturing in Hartford]: Purcell, pp. 120-21, which comments as well on the state of manufacturing throughout Connecticut at this time.

  [Springfield and its arsenal]: Weeden, Vol. 2, p. 792; Marlowe, p. 49.

  [IsaacJenks’s tavern]: Marlowe, pp. 42-43. [Washington quote on houses in the Connecticut Valley]: Fitzpatrick, Washington Diaries, Vol. 4, p. 30.

  [Massachusetts agriculture during this period]: Flexner, p. 229; James T. Adams, New England in the Republic, 1776-1850 (Little, Brown, 1926), pp. 84, 186-88, 190. [The small farm]: Adams, p. 191.

  [The incident at the Boston town line]: Justin Winsor, ed., The Memorial History of Boston, l630-1880 (Ticknor, 1886), Vol. 3, pp. 197, 573; for Washington’s own remarks, see Fitzpatrick, Washington Diaries, Vol. 4, pp. 33-34, along with the appended footnotes.

  [Washington vs. Hancock]: Fitzpatrick, Writings of Washington, Vol. 30, pp. 451-53; Baker, pp. 154-55. For a description of Hancock, see Winsor, Vol. 3, p, 201; for skepticism concerning his “gout,” Smith, Vol. 2, p. 782, and Harold and James Kirker, Bulfinch’s Boston, 1787-1817 (Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 104.

  [Life in Boston at the time of Washington’s visit]: Jean Pierre Brissot, “Boston in 1788,” Old South Leaflets (The Directors of the Old South Work, n.d.), Vol. 6, pp. 2-10; Weeden, Vol. 2, pp. 848, 851-52, 863; Marjorie Drake Ross, The Book of Boston: The Federal Period (Hastings House, 1961), pp. 46, 49, 68; Samuel Eliot Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 (Houghton Mifflin, Sentry Edition, 1961), PP· 30, 43.

  [Harvard in 1780]: Brissot, pp. 7-8. [Higher education in New England]: “Education,” Dictionary of American History, rev. ed. (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), Vol. 2, pp. 394-95· 397
.

  [Washington on playing-card factory]: Fitzpatrick, Washington Diaries, Vol. 4, p. 38. [Shoe manufacturing in Massachusetts]: B. E. Hazard, Organization of the Boot and Shoe Industry (1921), passim. [Fishing and whaling]: Morison, pp. 32, 134-35, 141, 396 (table). [Commerce and trading in New England as a whole]: Walter B. Smith and Arthur H. Cole, Fluctuations in American Business, 1790-1860 (Harvard University Press, 1935), p. 4.

  [Cotton in Beverly]: Robert W. Lovett, “The Beverly Cotton Manufactory: Or, Some New Light on an Early Cotton Mill,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, Vol. 26, No. 4 (December 1952), pp. 220-37.

  [Washington on the “factory girls”]: Fitzpatrick, Washington Diaries, Vol. 4, pp. 37-38.

  [Newburyport and Portsmouth in 1789]: Joshua Coffin, A Sketch of the History of Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury (1845) (Peter E. Randall, 1977), pp. 260-61; Benjamin W. Labaree, Patriots and Partisans: The Merchants of Newburyport, 1764-1815, (Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 66-67, 70-71 84, 89; Nathaniel Adams, Annals of Portsmouth (C. Norris, 1825), pp. 288-89.

  [Sources on New England shipbuilding]: reports on the industry submitted to Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton; see esp. Joseph Whipple to Hamilton, Dec. 19, 1789, Syrett, Vol. 6, pp. 19-24; Benjamin Lincoln to Hamilton, Dec. 22, 1789, ibid., pp. 27-31; and an unknown citizen of Massachusetts to Hamilton, Oct., 1789, ibid..Vol. 5, pp. 479-81. See also J. T. Adams, p. 201.

  [New Hampshire industry]: George D. Nash, Issues in American Economic History-(D. C. Heath, 1964), p. 117; Rolla M. Tryon, Household Manufactures in the United States, 1640-1860 (University of Chicago Press,1917), p. 135

  [ Washington’s visit to Andover]: Fitzpatrick, Washington Diaries, Vol. 4, p. 47; see also the entries under “Phillips, Samuel’” in Dictionary of American Biography, Dumas Malone, ed. (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934), Vol. 14, p. 543, and The National Cyclopedia of American Biography (James T. White, 1900), Vol. 10, p. 94.

  [Phillips Academy in 1780]: Mary E. Brown and Helen G. Brown, The Story of John Adams, a New England Schoolmaster (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1900), pp. 36, 45, 53-54

  [The Lexington school]: D. Hamilton Hurd, comp., History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts (J. W. Lewis, 1890), Vol. 2, p. 621.[State of American schools in 1789]: “Education,” pp. 394-97.

  [Lexington c. 1789]: Hurd, pp. 614, 630-31, 634, and Charles Hudson, Abstract of the History of Lexington, Massachusetts (T. R. Marvin & Son.. 1876), p. 22.

  The New Yorkers

  [Major sources on New York City, 1780-90]: Sidney I. Pomerantz, New York: An American City, 1783-1803 (Columbia University Press, 1938); Frank Monaghan and Marvin Lowenthal, This Was New York (Doubleday, Doran, 1943).

  [Federal Hall]: Bruce Bliven, Jr., “Federal Hall” (National Park Service, 1975); Pomerantz, passim; Monaghan and Lowenthal, passim.

  [ Washington’s assurances against a military dictatorship ]: Address to the New York Legislature, June 26, 1775, Fitzpatrick, Writings of Washington, Vol. 3, p. 305.

  [Daily life in lower Manhattan]: Monaghan and Lowenthal, passim, and sources cited below. Mrs. Ellen Yager assisted me in identifying sources and conducting research in New York City libraries and archives.

  [Washington on the trappings of office]: quoted in Freeman, Vol. 6, p. 252.

  [Where leaders lived in New York City]: Rufus Rockwell Wilson, New York: Old and New (Lippincott, 1909), Vol. 1, pp. 270-73.

  [Federal officials and employees]: White, Ch. 24.

  [Samuel Provoost]: James Grant Wilson, ed., Memorial History of the City of New York (New York History Co., 1893), Vol. 3, p. 100; Rev. Morgan Dix, Trinity Church Bicentennial Celebration (J. Pott, 1897), p. 31. On religious life generally in New York City, see Pomerantz, pp. 372-95.

  [New York City tavern life]: W. Harrison Bayles, Old Taverns of New York (Frank Allaben Genealogical Co., 1915), pp. 346-47, 356-57, 376-77.

  [Social life and organization]: Bayard Still, Mirror for Gotham (New York University Press, 1956), esp. pp. 58-69; the observer of “three distinct classes” is cited on p. 60 of this work.

  [Entertainment]: Pomerantz, Chs. 8 and 10.

  [Competitive, factious background of New York politics]: Patricia U. Bonomi, A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York (Columbia University Press, 1971) and sources cited therein.

  [New York merchants observing ships starting through the Narrows]: Maxwell F. Marcuse, This Was New York (LIM Press, 1970), pp. 145-46.

  [Visiting English actor on daily life of merchants]: Hugh E. Macatamney, Cradle Days of New York (Drew & Lewis, 1909), p. 124; Still, p. 69.

  [Manufacturing in New York]: Pomerantz, pp. 194-99.

  [Alleged Dutch exclusiveness]: Macatamney, p. 124.

  [Jewish leadership]: Pomerantz, pp. 386-87; Encyclopaedia Judaica.Vol. 12 (Macmillan, 1971), p. 1070.

  [Black leaders]: Dictionary of American Biography, passim.

  [Tammany in 1789-90]: Gustavus Myers, The History of Tammany Hall (published by the author, 1901); M. R. Werner, Tammany Hall (Doubleday, Doran, 1928]: the initiation song is quoted from Werner, p. 12.

  [Tammany goals]: Werner, p. 10.

  The Federalist Thrust

  [John Adams on the need for ceremonial]: Smith, p. 754.

  [Washington’s display in New York City]: Freeman, Vol. 6, pp. 226-27.

  [Mercantile interests among the Federalists]: William Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History (World, 1961), pp. 149-62; see also Fred Moramarco, “Hamilton and the Historians: The Economic Program in Retrospect,” Midcontinent American Studies Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring 1967), pp. 34-43.

  [Madison’s tariff proposals]: “Speeches in the First Congress—First Session, Duties on Imports,” Hunt, Vol. 5. pp. 339-55.

  [Machiavellian aspect of Hamilton]: John C. Miller, Alexander Hamilton: Portrait in Paradox (Harper & Brothers, 1959), P· 227.

  [Sources of Hamilton’s economic proposals, and earlier correspondence]: Syrett, Vol. 5, pp 439, 464-65, 538-57; ibid. (1962), Vol. 6, pp. 51-65; see also Miller, Ch. 16.

  [Jackson’s attack]: Broadus Mitchell, Alexander Hamilton: The National Adventure (Macmillan, 1962), p. 78. [Madison’s “desertion”]: John C. Miller, The Federalist Era (Harper &Row, 1960), p. 41. On assumption of state debts, see Whitney K. Bates, “Northern Speculators and Southern State Debts: 1790,” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 19, No. 1 (January 1962), pp. 30-48.

  [Hamilton’s banking policy]: see in general Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America (Princeton University Press, 1957]: Thomas Francis Gordon, War on the Bank of the United States (Burt Franklin, 1967); Herman E. Krooss, ed., Documentary History of Banking and Currency in the United States (McGraw-Hill, 1969), Vol. 1.

  [Text of Hamilton’s report on a National Bank]: Syrett, Vol. 7, pp. 236-342

  [John Fenno’s poem]: Gazette of the United States, Feb. 23, 1793, quoted in L. Michael Golden, “Precedent, Conflict, and Change: A Case Study of the National Banking System” (Williams College, 1978).

  [Madison on Hamilton’s national bank proposal, February 2, 1791]: Hunt, Vol. 6, p. 36.

  [Jackson on the harmful effect of the bill]: quoted in M. St. Clair Clarke and D. A. Hall, Legislative and Documentary History of the Bank of the United States (Gales and Seaton, 1832), p. 37.

  [Hamilton’s defense of the constitutionality of the bank bill]: Syrett, Vol. 8, pp. 97-134.

  [Washington’s deliberateness]: Miller, The Federalist Era, p. 58.

  [House request for Treasury Plan]: The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (Gales and Seaton, 1834), Vol. 1, p. 1058.

  [Hamilton’s inventory]: Mitchell, Ch. 8; see in general Williams, pp. 162-70.

  [Proposed anti-civil-libertarian constitutional amendments]: Miller, The Federalist Era, p. 21.

  [Adoption of the Bill of Rights]: See in general Irving Brant, The Bill of Rights (Bobbs- Merrill, 1965); Rutland.

  [Newspapers in 1790]: Donald H. Stewart, The Opposition Pre
ss of the Federalist Period (State University of New York Press, 1969), Ch. 1.

  [Washington’s mediation between Hamilton and Jefferson]: Miller, The Federalist Era, p. 95; Fitzpatrick, Writings of Washington, Vol. 32, pp. 130-31, 185-86.

  [Lack of theoretical understanding of potential role of parties in a republic]: Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of a Party System (University of California Press, 1969), passim; Daniel Sisson, The American Revolution of 1800 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), esp. Ch. 2.

  [Jefferson and Madison’s “botanical” expedition of 1791]: James MacGregor Burns, The Deadlock of Democracy (Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 26-27, and sources cited therein.

  [Jefferson urges Washington to stay on]: Jefferson to President, May 23, 1792, in Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1895), Vol. 6. p. 5.

  [Coinage with figure of liberty instead of Washington]: Miller, The Federalist Era, p. 8.

  The Deadly Pattern

  [Washington’s birthday ball]: James T. Flexner, George Washington: Anguish and Farewell 1793-1799) (Little, Brown, 1969), pp. 13-14. [“Tranquility reigns”]: Freeman, Vol. 6, p. 321. [National Gazette attack]: Flexner, Anguish and Farewell, p. 15.

  [“Invitation” to settle in the Southwest]: Madison to Washington, March 26, 1789 (enclosure), in Hunt, Vol. 5, pp. 331-33.

  [John Quincy Adams on policies toward Indians]: quoted in George Dewey Harmon, Sixty Years of Indian Affairs (University of North Carolina Press, 1941), p. 362. [President Washington’s policy]: Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Policy in the Formative Years (Harvard University Press, 1962), esp. pp. 43-50. [Wars with Indians]: Keith Irvine, general ed., Encyclopedia of Indians in the Americas (Scholarly Press, 1974).