A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror

by Larry Schweikart

  How to Recognize a 1790s Republican or Federalist*

  REPUBLICANS

  FEDERALISTS

  Leaders:

  Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Gallatin, Clinton, Burr

  Washington, Adams, Hamilton, Morris, Pickering, King, Knox

  Origins:

  Anti-Federalist faction of Revolutionary Whigs

  Federalist faction of Revolutionary Whigs

  Regional Demographic Base:

  South, West, and Middle States

  New England and Middle States

  Local Demographic Base:

  Rural (farms, plantations, and villages)

  Urban (cities, villages, and river valleys)

  Economic Base:

  Farmers, planters, artisans, and workingmen

  Merchants, financiers, tradesmen, and some exporting farmers

  Class:

  Lower and middling classes led by planter elite

  Upper and middling classes

  Ideology:

  Radical Whig

  Moderate Whig

  Localists

  More centralist

  Agrarians

  Commercial

  Promilitia

  Professional military

  Less taxation, balanced budget

  Taxation and deficit

  Egalitarian

  More elitist enlighted paternalists

  Strict construction (of Constitution)

  Broad constructionist

  Pro-French

  Pro-British

  Expansionists

  Reluctant expansionists

  Future incarnations:

  Democratic Party

  Whig Party and Modern Republican Party (GOP)

  Sometime in the early 1790s, Madison employed his political savvy in officially creating the Jeffersonian Republican Party. He began his organization in Congress, gathering and marshaling representatives in opposition to Hamilton’s reports and Jay’s Treaty. To counter the Hamiltonian bias of John Fenno’s influential Gazette of the United States, Madison, in 1791, encouraged Freneau to publish a rival Republican newspaper, the National Gazette. Madison himself wrote anonymous National Gazette editorials lambasting Hamilton’s three reports and Washington’s foreign policy. He simultaneously cultivated national support, encouraged grassroots Republican political clubs, and awaited an opportunity to thwart the Federalists’ electoral dominance. When Jefferson resigned as secretary of state in protest in 1793, the stage was set for the first national electoral showdown between Republicans and Federalists.

  It is true these were not parties in the modern sense of the word.59 They lacked ward/precinct/district organizations; since voting was still the privilege of a few, they did not rely on “getting out the vote.” The few existing party papers were not comparable in influence to those of the Jacksonian age twenty years later. Most important, these parties still relied on ideology—the person’s philosophy or worldview—to produce votes; whereas the Second American Party System, founded by Martin Van Buren and William Crawford in the 1820s, was built on a much more crass principle, patronage. Still, these organs did galvanize those holding the franchise into one of two major groups, and to that extent they generated excitement during elections.

  Democracy’s First Test

  Whereas Hamilton crafted the major Federalist victories of the 1790s, Vice President John Adams dutifully defended them. After Washington, unwilling to serve a third term, finally announced his retirement in 1796, Adams became his party’s de facto standard-bearer against Jefferson in the nation’s first contested presidential election. At an early point, then, the nation came to this key crossroads: could the people transfer power, without bloodshed, from one group to another group holding views diametrically opposed to the first group?

  Federalists enjoyed a distinct advantage, thanks to Washington’s popularity and the lateness of his retirement announcement (the Republicans did not dare announce opposition until it was certain the venerated Washington would not run). Yet Jefferson’s popularity equaled that of the tempestuous Adams, and the two joined in a lively race, debating the same issues that raged in Congress—Jay’s Treaty, the BUS, national debt, and taxation, especially the whiskey tax.

  Adams’s worst enemy turned out to be a former ally, Hamilton, whom the vice president referred to as “a Creole bastard,” and whom Abigail Adams termed Cassius, out to assassinate her Caesar.60 Hamilton distrusted Adams, whom he considered too moderate, and schemed to use the electoral college to elect Federalist vice presidential candidate Thomas Pinckney to the presidency. Similar machinations would reemerge in 1800, when Hamilton and Aaron Burr both tried to manipulate the electoral college for their Machiavellian ends. Under the system in place at the time, the electors voted separately for president and vice president, leaving open the possibility that there could be a president of one party and a vice president of another. (Bundling the two together did not occur until later.) The Founders had anticipated that each state would vote for its own favorite son with one vote, and for the next best candidate with the other elector. Adams won with 71 electoral votes to Jefferson’s 68; Pinckney gathered 59, and Aaron Burr, Jefferson’s vice presidential running mate, finished last with 30. Yet it was a divided and bitter victory. Georgia’s ballot had irregularities that put Adams, in his capacity as presider over the Senate, which counted the votes, in a pickle. If he acknowledged the irregularities, the election could be thrown open because no candidate would have a majority. Adams took the unusual step of sitting down when Georgia’s ballot was handed to him, thereby giving the Jeffersonians an opportunity to protest the ballot. Jefferson, aware of the incongruities, instructed his followers to say nothing. After a moment, Adams affirmed the Georgia ballot and thereby assumed the presidency. This Constitutional confusion (which would soon be corrected by the Twelfth Amendment) made Adams’s rival Jefferson his reluctant vice president. Adams seemed not to mind this arrangement, thinking that at least “there, if he could do no good, he could do no harm.”61 But the arrangement was badly flawed, ensuring constant sniping at the administration from within and a reluctance to pass legislation because of the anticipation that a new election would bring Jefferson into power. Indeed, Jefferson and Madison immediately began to look to the election of 1800.

  Two months earlier, President Washington had delivered his famed Farewell Address. Physically and mentally wearied by decades of service, and literally sickened by the political bickering that characterized his last term in office, Washington decided to step down. He was also motivated by a desire to set a precedent of serving only two terms, a move that evinced the strong fear of authoritarianism shared by all Whig Revolutionaries, Federalist and Republican alike. The Constitution placed no limit on the number of terms a chief executive could serve, but Washington set such a limit on himself, and every president adhered to the 1796 precedent until 1940. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s reversal (via third and fourth terms), even if coming as it did during national crises, so concerned the nation that the Twenty-second Amendment (1951) was added to the Constitution, making Washington’s practice a fundamental law.

  Appropriately, Washington’s farewell speech was written to a great extent by Hamilton, although the president read and edited several drafts. The address called for nationalism, neutrality, and nonpartisanship; Republicans no doubt pondered over the sincerity of Washington’s and Hamilton’s last two points. Certainly, nationalism was a Federalist hallmark, and Washington reiterated his deep belief in the need for union versus the potential dangers of regionalism, states’ rights, and “geographical distinction.” In foreign policy, the chief executive reemphasized the goals of his Proclamation of Neutrality—to offer friendship and commerce with all nations, but to “steer clear” of “political connection…and permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.”

  Much has been made of Washington’s warning not to become involved in European affairs—this, after having just cemented new international tra
de agreements with Spain and Great Britain! Washington knew better than to think the United States could isolate itself permanently. He stated, “Twenty years peace with such an increase of population and resources as we have a right to expect; added to our remote situation from the jarring powers, will in all probability enable us in a just cause to bid defiance to any power on earth” [emphasis ours].62 His concern that the young nation would be drawn into strictly Continental squabbles, especially those between Britain and France, reflected not an unwillingness to engage in the international use of power, but an admission of the weakness of American might. In North America, for example, Washington himself had virtually instigated the French and Indian War, so he certainly was under no illusions about the necessity for military force, nor did he discount the ability of the Europeans to affect America with their policies. Rather, the intent was to have the United States lay low and where prudent refrain from foreign interventions. Note that Washington gave the United States twenty years to gain international maturity, a time frame ending with the the War of 1812.63 Further, America’s insulation by the oceans kept these goals at the core of American foreign policy for the next century, until transportation and communication finally rendered them obsolete. But would Washington, a man willing to fight for liberty, have stood by and allowed an Adolf Hitler to invade and destroy England, or Japanese aggressors to rape Nanking? His phrase, “in a just cause,” suggests not.

  Finally, and incongruously, Washington cautioned against political partisanship. This phrase, penned by Hamilton, at best was a call to better behavior on all sides and at worst was simply a throwaway phrase for public consumption. Washington apparently did not see Hamilton’s scheming and political maneuvering as partisan endeavor, and therefore saw no irony in the pronouncement.

  Concluding with an appeal to the sacred, as he frequently did, Washington stated that “Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.”64 It would be hopeless, he implored, to think that men could have “security for property, for reputation, for life if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths” of officeholders [emphasis ours]. In such arenas as the Supreme Court, where oaths provided enforcement of those protections, Washington somberly noted, mere morality alone could not survive without “religious principle.” His speech was the quintessential embodiment of a phrase often ridiculed more than two hundred years later, “Character counts.” Washington’s warning to the nation, though, was that effective government required more than a chief executive of high moral fiber—the entire nation had to build the country on the backs of its citizens’ behavior. Having delivered this important speech, the general quietly finished out his term and returned to his beloved Virginia, attending one last emotional ceremony inaugurating his vice president, John Adams, after he had won the election of 1796.

  The Father of Our Country would not live to see the new century, but his legacy to American posterity was never exceeded, and rarely matched. Historian John Carroll listed no fewer than ten achievements of Washington’s two administrations, including developing a policy for the disposition of public lands, establishing credit at home and abroad, removing the British troops from the Northwest, and several others.65 Another historian concluded, “By agreeing to serve not one, but two terms of office, Washington gave the new nation what above all else it needed: time.”66 It might also be said that Washington loaned the young republic some of his own character, modeling virtuous behavior of a president for all who followed.

  Quasi War

  Despite the succession of a member of Washington’s own party and administration, the election of 1796 elevated to power a man much different in temperament and personality than the great general he replaced. John Adams was both ably suited for, and considerably handicapped in, the fulfillment of his presidential duties. The sixty-two-year-old president-elect still possessed a keen intellect, pious devotion, and selfless patriotism, but age had made him more irascible than ever. His enemies pounced on his weaknesses. The Aurora referred to him as “old, Guerelous [sic], bald, blind, and crippled,” to which Abigail quipped that only she was capable of making such an assessment about her husband!67 Adams, however, excelled in foreign policy matters, which was fortunate at a time when the nation had been thrust into the imbroglio of Anglo-French rivalry. With no help from Republican opponents or Federalist extremists within his own party, Adams rose above factionalism and averted war. In the process he paid a huge political price for his professionalism.

  For at least a decade the British had bullied Americans on the high seas and at the treaty table; in 1797 the French decided it was their turn. Angered by Federalist Anglophilia and the subservience evidenced in Jay’s Treaty, France, too, began to seize and confiscate American shipping to the tune of three hundred vessels. French aggression shocked and silenced Republicans. Among the Federalists, the response was surprisingly divided. Predictably, Hamiltonians and other arch-Federalists, who had bent over backward to avoid war with Britain, now pounded the drums of war against France. A popular toast of the day to Adams was, “May he, like Samson, slay thousands of Frenchmen with the jawbone of a Jefferson.”68 Adams himself and the moderates, however, followed the president’s lead and tried to negotiate a peace. They were stymied initially by unscrupulous Frenchmen.

  To negotiate with the French foreign minister Charles Talleyrand—a master of personal survival skills who had avoided the guillotine under the Jacobins, later survived the irrationalities of l’empereur Napoléon, and later still had returned to represent the restored Bourbon monarchy—Adams sent Charles Cotesworth Pinckney (Thomas’s brother), John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry to Paris. Upon arrival, however, the Americans were not officially allowed to present their credentials to the foreign minister—an immense snub. At an unofficial meeting with three French agents—referred to anonymously by the American press as Agents X, Y, and Z—the Americans learned that the French agents expected a bribe before they would be granted an audience with French officials. Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry refused such a profane act, and immediately returned home. Newspapers later reported that Pinckney had proclaimed to Agents X, Y, and Z that Americans would gladly spend “millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.” It’s more probable he uttered the less quotable, “It is no, not a sixpence,” but regardless, the French got the message. The negotiations abruptly ended, and the arch-Federalists had their issue.69

  Before long, the infamous X, Y, Z Affair produced a war fever and temporarily solidified the Federalists’ power base. After recovering somewhat from their initial shock, Republicans asked why Americans should declare war on France for aggression identical to that which Great Britain had perpetrated with impunity for nearly a decade. Adams stood between the two groups of extremists, urging more negotiations while simultaneously mustering thousands of soldiers and sailors in case shooting started. He had benefited from the authorization by Congress, two years earlier, of six frigates, three of which were rated at forty-four guns, although only the United States and the Constellation actually carried that number.70 These vessels, which Adams referred to as “floating batteries and wooden walls,” entered service just as tensions on the oceans peaked. In February 1799, open fighting between American and French ships erupted on the high seas, precipitating an undeclared war, dubbed by historians thereafter as the Quasi War.

  Adams already had his hands full with peacemaking initiatives without the interference of George Logan, a Pennsylvania Quaker who traveled to Paris on his own funds to secure the release of some American seamen. Logan may have been well intentioned, but by inserting himself into international negotiations, he endangered all Americans, not the least of which were some of those he sought to help.71 His actions spawned the Logan Act of 1799, which remains in effect to the present, forbidding private citizens from negotiating with foreign governments in the name of the United States.

  Meanwhile, buoyed by a 1798 electoral sweep, the so-called arch-Federalists in Congress continued to call for war ag
ainst France. Pointing to alleged treason at home, they passed a set of extreme laws—the Alien and Sedition Acts—that would prove their political undoing. A Naturalization Act, aimed at French and Irish immigrants, increased from four to fourteen the number of years required for American citizenship. The fact that these immigrants were nearly all Catholics and Republicans no doubt weighed heavily in deciding their fate. A new Alien Act gave the president the power to deport some of these “dangerous Aliens,” while the Sedition Act allowed the Federalists to escalate their offensive against American Francophiles by abridging First Amendment speech rights. The Sedition Acts forbade conduct or language leading to rebellion, and although the wording remained rather vague, Federalist judges evidently understood it. Under the act, they arrested, tried, convicted, and jailed or fined twenty-five people, mostly Republican newspaper editors, including Matthew Lyon, a jailed Republican congressman who won his reelection while still behind bars.

  Application of modern-day values, not to mention civil liberties laws, would make the Alien and Sedition Acts seem outrageous infringements on personal liberties. In context, the sedition clauses originated in the libel and slander laws of the day. Personal honor was a value most Americans held quite dear, and malicious slurs often resulted in duels. The president of the United States, subjected to vile criticism, had no means of redress to defamatory comments. It would be almost a half century before courts routinely held that a much higher bar governed the protection of public figures’ reputations or character from attacks that, to an ordinary citizen, might be considered libelous or slanderous.