Page 192 - American Stories, A History of the United States

an honest Man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his
senses.” When the senators learned that their efforts embarrassed Washington, they dropped 7.1
the topic. The leader of the new republic would be called president of the United States. One
wag, however, dubbed the portly Adams “His Rotundity.”
The comic-opera quality of the debate about how to address Washington should not 7.2
obscure the participants’ concern about setting government policy. The members of the first
congress could not take the survival of republican government for granted. All of them, of course,
wanted to secure the Revolution. The recently ratified constitution transferred sovereignty from 7.3
the states to the people, a bold and unprecedented decision that many Americans feared would
generate chronic instability. Translating constitutional abstractions into practical legislation
would have been difficult, even under the most favorable conditions. but these were trying times.
britain and France, rivals again in a century of war, put nearly unbearable pressures on the leaders 7.4
of the new republic and, in the process, made foreign policy a bitterly divisive issue.
Although no one welcomed them, political parties gradually took shape. Neither the
Jeffersonians (also called the Republicans) nor the Federalists—as the two major groups were 7.5
called—doubted that the United States would one day become a great commercial power. They
differed, however, on how best to manage the transition from an agrarian household economy to
an international system of trade and industry. The Federalists encouraged rapid integration of the
United States into a world economy, but however enthusiastic they were about capitalism, they
did not trust the people or local government to do the job effectively. A modern economy, they
insisted, required strong national institutions that would be directed by a social elite who under-
stood the financial challenge and would work in the best interests of the people.
Such claims frightened persons who came to identify themselves as Jeffersonians. Strong
financial institutions, they thought, had corrupted the government of britain from which they
had just separated themselves. They searched for alternative ways to accommodate the needs
of commerce and industry. Unlike the Federalists, the Jeffersonians put their faith in the people,
defined for the most part politically as white yeoman farmers. The Jeffersonians insisted that
ordinary entrepreneurs, if they could be freed from intrusive government regulations, could be
trusted to resist greed and crass materialism and to sustain the virtue of the republic.
During the 1790s, former allies were surprised to discover themselves at odds over such
basic issues. One person—Hamilton, for example—would stake out a position. Another, such as
Jefferson or Madison, would respond, perhaps speaking a little more extravagantly than a specific
issue demanded, goaded by the rhetorical nature of public debate. The first would then rebut the
new position passionately. by the mid-1790s, this dialectic had almost spun out of control, taking
the young republic to the brink of political violence.
Leaders of every persuasion had to learn to live with “public opinion.” The revolutionary elite
had invited the people to participate in government, but the gentlemen assumed that ordinary
voters would automatically defer to their social betters. instead, the Founders discovered they
had created a rough-and-tumble political culture, a robust public sphere of cheap newspapers
and street demonstrations. The newly empowered “public” followed the great debates of the
period through articles they read in hundreds of highly partisan journals and magazines.

Principle and Pragmatism: Establishing

A New Government

7.1 Why was George Washington unable to overcome division within the new government?
i n 1788, George Washington enjoyed great popularity. The people remembered him

as the selfless leader of the Continental Army. Even before the states had ratified
the Constitution, everyone assumed he would be chosen president of the United
States. He received the unanimous support of the electoral college, an achievement
that no subsequent president has duplicated. John Adams, a respected Massachusetts
lawyer who had championed independence in 1776, was elected vice president.
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