The Great Divide

by Thomas Fleming

  In a painful scene, the President challenged Randolph to explain himself. Stunned and floundering, the Secretary of State called the demand an insult and resigned. He was soon at work on a long essay, defending his reputation and accusing Washington of betraying him to the Federalists in his cabinet. The President struggled for weeks to find a replacement for Randolph. A half-dozen prospects, from New Jersey’s William Paterson to Virginia’s Patrick Henry, turned him down. No one wanted to share the cascade of abuse that was descending on the President.

  Washington finally offered the job to the admittedly undiplomatic Timothy Pickering, who accepted it with reluctance. That meant he had to be replaced as secretary of war. At this point, Attorney General William Bradford died, which led to a double round of offers, refusals, and final acceptances from two fairly distinguished men. Marylander James McHenry, a popular aide to General Washington during the struggle for independence, became secretary of war, and Charles Lee, brother of Governor Henry Lee, attorney general.

  Somehow, in the midst of these distractions, Washington kept his temper under control and focused on the most important task on his presidential agenda—his annual message to Congress. He sent Alexander Hamilton a detailed outline of his remarks, and worked closely with him on the text. At one point, he told Hamilton to call a halt and wait until Washington sent him a new “ground plan” for the speech. It was a sign not only of how important the President sensed this public appearance was, but of how much he wanted it to reflect his own thinking.

  Tension ran high in Congress and in the spectators’ gallery when Washington mounted the rostrum on December 8, 1795. They remembered the man who had condemned the Democratic Societies the year before. They expected even more thunderous denunciations of the mobs in the streets and the torrent of personal denunciations that were in every Democratic-Republican paper. Everyone knew how thin-skinned this man was—and how hot his temper could be. Senators and congressmen braced themselves for a memorable explosion.

  Instead, the man who stood on the rostrum smiled solemnly at them and began speaking in a soft, unmistakably agreeable voice. “Fellow citizens,” he began. Never before had he come before them so convinced that they had “just cause for mutual congratulations.” He invited them to join him “in profound gratitude to the Author of all Good for the numerous and extraordinary blessings we enjoy.”

  Gasps of astonishment, gapes of amazement, blinks of disbelief circulated through Congress. The President began to describe these blessings. General Anthony Wayne, the man James Madison and his colleagues had refused to thank for the victory at Fallen Timbers, had just negotiated a treaty with five of the most warlike tribes in the Northwest Territory, promising peace and the opening of millions of acres of land to settlement. At the other end of the thousand-mile western frontier, the commissioners he had dispatched to the Creeks had persuaded the Indians to confirm treaties negotiated in past years. Not even “wanton murders” perpetrated by frontier Georgians had deterred them.

  Next the President reported peace with the Emperor of Morocco and the Algerine pirates, thanks to another treaty. The Algerines had even promised to restore “our unfortunate fellow citizens from a grievous captivity.” Then came truly sensational news. The special envoy to Madrid, Thomas Pinckney, had informed him that Spain had agreed to open the Mississippi River to American ships and products for export through New Orleans. This meant the discontent that was souring the public mind of Kentucky was banished, forever. The news would be greeted with equal pleasure by westerners in Virginia and Pennsylvania.

  In the same mild voice, the President turned to Jay’s Treaty. Now would come the explosion, everyone thought. But all he said was what the legislators already knew. He had signed it with “a condition that excepts part of one article.” He had summoned the “best judgment” he “was able to form of the public interest” and with “full and mature deliberation added my sanction.” It was now up to “His Britannic Majesty” to accept the change.

  Whereupon the President urged Congress to join him in “consoling and gratifying reflections” on the promising future these agreements offered to the nation. He could only hope that “prudence and moderation on every side” would produce an end to the “external discord” that had recently “menaced our tranquility.”

  The dazed legislators were by now almost numb with surprise—or in some cases—disappointment. The President began discussing domestic matters. Now, surely, he would let the protestors and calumniators have it. Instead, he found “equal cause for contentment and satisfaction.” While Europe was being desolated by war and famine, our “favored country” was enjoying peace and prosperity. The President wondered if “it was too much to say” that America was becoming “a spectacle of national happiness” hitherto unseen in human history. He could only hope that Congress would continue to “unite” their efforts “to…improve our immense advantages.” It was the “fervent and favorite” wish of his heart to “cooperate with you in this desirable work.” Washington added a brief summary of what he called “internal disturbances.” He swiftly made it clear he was talking about the Whiskey Rebellion. “The blessings of quiet and order” now prevailed in western Pennsylvania. Next he urged Congress to do more for the nation’s defense. It was time to create a standing army and a decent-sized navy. Even more important was legislation to promote peace and understanding with their Indian neighbors. He spent several earnest minutes discussing how much this would please him and cast “luster on our national character.”

  Finally came closing words in the same mild, cordial voice. There would no doubt be “important subjects” for them to consider in the coming session of Congress. “Mutual forbearance” when there was a difference of opinion was “too obvious and necessary” to need any recommendation from him.

  It was perhaps the most extraordinary performance of George Washington’s life. The only comparable event was his resignation as commander in chief of the Continental Army in 1783. Then, he had rejected a crown and chosen to become a mere citizen again, subject to laws passed by a Congress that was almost hopelessly inept. Here, he was rescuing another Congress—and the entire federal government—as well as the nation he loved—from imminent dissolution. He was incidentally proving he was the master politician of his era.22

  Painted after the 1777 battle of Princeton, this portrait reveals the inner confidence of a man who lived dangerously. General George Washington won America’s independence by repeatedly out-thinking the British army as well as out-fighting it in a grueling eight-year war.

  This is the youthful Thomas Jefferson who drafted the Declaration of Independence, failed disastrously as wartime Governor of Virginia, and became America’s ambassador to France. There, another revolution became his “polar star”—immensely complicating his life as President Washington’s secretary of state.

  James Madison committed his brilliant intellect to creating a Constitution in response to his friend George Washington’s call for a strong federal government. But Madison’s much closer friendship with Thomas Jefferson eventually made him Washington’s enemy.

  West Indian born Alexander Hamilton went from General Washington’s valued aide to President Washington’s controversial Secretary of the Treasury. Washington shared Hamilton’s vision of an industrialized America—a future Thomas Jefferson loathed.

  James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wrote almost all The Federalist essays—a brilliant defense of the new Constitution. George Washington predicted the essays would “merit the notice of posterity.”

  Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamphlet, Common Sense, inspired Americans to fight for independence. The French Revolution was a different story. Paine narrowly escaped the guillotine. Convinced that Washington should have rescued him, the pamphleteer compared the President to the French mass executioner Maximilian Robespierre.

  Unanimously elected in 1789, George Washington took the oath of office as first president on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York. He promise
d to bring “honest zeal” to the new office. The phrase underscores Washington’s view of the presidency’s crucial importance.

  Ambassador Edmond-Charles Genet came to America certain he could convert the United States into a French satellite. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson eagerly cooperated with him. But when Genet threatened to appeal to the American people to get rid of “Old Man Washington,” Jefferson was forced to abandon the arrogant envoy.

  In 1794 angry mobs in western Pennsylvania tarred and feathered federal agents trying to collect the tax on whiskey—and talked of seceding from the union. President Washington summoned 13,000 militia and smashed the proto-rebellion. Thomas Jefferson sneered that “an insurrection was proclaimed but could never be found.”

  President Washington asked Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Jay to negotiate a treaty with Britain to avert a war. Jefferson and Madison denounced the document. Jay was burned in effigy everywhere. Washington persuaded Alexander Hamilton to defend the treaty in a series of newspaper articles that convinced most people peace was preferable to war.

  An aging President Washington remained a masterful politician. In his Farewell Address, he underscored the vital importance of the federal union and deplored Americans who favored foreign countries above their own. Everyone realized he was stating fundamental principles—and also criticizing Thomas Jefferson.

  With Washington’s covert backing, John Adams defeated Thomas Jefferson to become the second president of the United States. Confronted by a hostile France and an even more hostile pro-French American press, Adams fell into a depression and stayed home in Massachusetts for seven months, governing the country by mail.

  When President Adams appointed erratic Elbridge Gerry to negotiate peace with France, ex-President Washington—and many other people—feared the worst.

  Vermont Congressman Matthew Lyon, a volatile Jeffersonian, spit in Connecticut Congressman Roger Griswold’s face for calling him a coward. The next day the Jefferson-hating Griswold assaulted Lyon with his cane. The Vermont firebrand defended himself with a poker.

  Thomas Jefferson called his presidency “The Revolution of 1800.” He tried to do almost everything differently from President George Washington. When he mentioned Washington in speeches or letters, he referred to him as “our greatest revolutionary character” or “the General.” His presidency was largely ignored.

  New York Senator Aaron Burr ran as Jefferson’s vice president in 1800. When both men received the same number of electoral votes, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives. Jefferson became convinced Burr was conniving to elbow him aside and become president.

  President Jefferson refused to endorse Aaron Burr’s run for governor of New York and encouraged local newspapers to destroy him. Alexander Hamilton claimed to be neutral but said damaging things about Burr’s character. Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel and killed him with his first shot on July 11, 1804.

  As First Consul for Life, Napoleon Bonaparte made it clear that France’s 1789 revolution had become a cynical dictatorship. Nevertheless, President Jefferson approved Napoleon’s desire to send an army to Santo Domingo—a move George Washington would almost certainly have opposed as menacing America’s security.

  When yellow fever destroyed the French army in Santo Domingo, Napoleon abandoned his plan to restore France’s empire in America and sold the Louisiana Territory to an astonished Thomas Jefferson. Here troops raise the American flag in New Orleans’ Place D’Armes making Jefferson’s popularity immense.

  President Washington dismissed James Monroe as a biased ambassador to France. With Jefferson’s help, Monroe wrote a 400-page book attacking the President. When Monroe helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase, he gave President Jefferson all the credit for it.

  Convinced that the Louisiana Purchase meant Virginia would rule the nation, former Secretary of State Timothy Pickering launched a campaign to persuade New England to secede from the Union.

  General James Wilkinson was commander in chief of the American army during President Jefferson’s administration. The General secretly hated Jefferson and was a well-paid spy, known as Agent 13 in the Spanish secret service.

  Defeated President John Adams appointed John Marshall Chief Justice of the United States. He began issuing decisions that enlarged the powers of the Federal government—and enraged President Jefferson. Marshall also wrote a biography of George Washington, refuting Jefferson’s dismissive version of his presidency.

  CHAPTER 19

  The End of Three Friendships

  THE DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICANS WERE BEWILDERED by the President’s speech. A Virginia senator predicted it was a prelude to Washington’s resignation. Congressman William Branch Giles, still thirsting for someone’s blood, and having failed to spill Hamilton’s, told Jefferson the speech was a Washington retreat that virtually conceded the Democratic-Republicans were now in control of the country’s destiny.

  James Madison was too intelligent to indulge in such fantasies. But he was still hoping to torpedo the Jay Treaty. He opened his campaign by persuading the House to delete a sentence in their response to the President’s speech, in which they affirmed their “undiminished confidence” in his leadership. Madison thought it “squinted too favorably toward the [Jay] Treaty.”1

  Some still inflamed Democratic-Republicans, especially from New York, where they had lost the governorship to John Jay, wanted a more explicitly hostile stance. But Madison quailed at the thought of another confrontation with the President, which he was now sure his party would lose. What did these hotheads want him to do—declare himself opposed to the “state of national happiness” that Washington had affirmed? Everyone in a position to judge the matter knew the nation was more prosperous than anyone had imagined it could become in the days of the Continental Congress.

  Demonstrating again the flexibility of the presidency, Washington further paralyzed the Democratic-Republicans by outmaneuvering a French attempt to embarrass him. Taking their cue from Minister James Monroe’s gift of an American flag to hang in the chamber of the French National Convention, on January 1, 1796, the new French minister, Pierre-Auguste Adet, presented a handsome, gold-fringed tricolor to the President. He added an address that virtually proclaimed the identity of the two republics. Citizen Genet in his wildest moments could not have topped it.

  Washington was unfazed. He calmly informed Minister Adet that he would deposit the beautiful flag in the “National Archives” and inform Congress of its reception. (In other words, it would NOT hang in Congress.) Then he launched into a paean of praise for France and the two nations’ friendship. He himself, he noted, had been born in “a land of liberty” and had fought a “perilous conflict” to sustain it. His deepest and most sympathetic feelings had been aroused by France’s struggle for her liberty. It would be a grievous understatement “to call your nation brave.” He hoped “the friendship of the two republics” would endure forever.2

  Once more, the Democratic-Republicans were reduced to baffled silence. All James Madison could do was tell Monroe that the “pro-British party” must be mortified to hear this presidential praise of France. Unfortunately, the Federalists were “cunning enough” to remain silent. He wished he could persuade inflamed Democratic-Republicans such as Congressman Edward Livingston of New York and Philadelphia newsman Benjamin Franklin Bache to also hold their tongues—and discard their pens.

  Madison—and the retired Secretary of State in Virginia—would have been even more astonished—and perhaps mortified—if they had seen a letter that the President wrote to Gouverneur Morris around this time. The wealthy Morris had moved to London, where he was operating as a private businessman. But his connections inside the British government were strong. He sent a letter to Washington reporting that Prime Minister William Pitt’s government was angry about the hostile tone of American newspapers. Washington sensed the behind-the-scenes touch of someone high in the London establishment.

  Depending on Morris’
s discretion and friendship, the President wrote a reply that he hoped Morris would forward to some appropriate high-level official—perhaps Prime Minister Pitt or the foreign minister, Lord Grenville. The letter was nothing less than a compact history of British-American antagonism. Washington did not hesitate to mention his own anger and hostility in 1776—feelings that were shared by the vast majority of Americans at that time. Ever since, the British had done nothing to ameliorate these emotions. On the contrary, they had worsened them by sending as ministers, consuls, and other spokesmen nothing but the most “ungracious and obnoxious characters.” They had incited the Indians to murder hundreds of Americans on the frontier and were now trying to block the treaty that General Wayne had negotiated.

  Britain’s conduct on the ocean was even worse. They blockaded American ports, kidnapped American seamen, and allowed “pirates” on the island of Bermuda to prey on American ships. The idea behind the ill-defined contraband policy remained in place, even though the latest version of it had been withdrawn. Why couldn’t the British see that a liberal approach might win America’s friendship? Why did she persist in virtually pushing her into the arms of France?