The Feuding Fathers
Americans lament the partisan venom of today's politics, but for sheer verbal savagery, the country's founders were in a league of their own. Author Ron Chernow on the Revolutionary origins of divisive discourse.
An outstanding historical read.
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Editor's Note: We are reposting this story in light of tonight's State of the Union.
Excerpt from The Feuding Fathers
In choosing his stellar first cabinet, President Washington applied no political litmus test and was guided purely by the candidates' merits. With implicit faith that honorable gentlemen could debate in good faith, he named Alexander Hamilton as treasury secretary and Jefferson as secretary of state, little suspecting that they would soon become fierce political adversaries. Reviving his Revolutionary War practice, Washington canvassed the opinions of his cabinet members, mulled them over at length, then arrived at firm conclusions. As Hamilton characterized this consultative style, the president "consulted much, pondered much; resolved slowly, resolved surely." Far from fearing dissent within his cabinet, Washington welcomed the vigorous interplay of ideas and was masterful, at least initially, at orchestrating his prima donnas. As Gouverneur Morris phrased it, Washington knew "how best to use the rays" of intellect emitted by the personalities at his command.
During eight strenuous years of war, Washington had embodied national unity and labored mightily to hold the fractious states together; hence, all his instincts as president leaned toward harmony. Unfortunately, the political conflicts that soon arose often seemed intractable: states' rights versus federal power; an agrarian economy versus one intermixed with finance and manufacturing; partiality for France versus England when they waged war against each other. Anything even vaguely reminiscent of British precedent aroused deep anxieties in the electorate.
As two parties took shape, they coalesced around the outsize personalities of Hamilton and Jefferson, despite their joint membership in Washington's cabinet. Extroverted and pugnacious, Hamilton embraced this role far more openly than Jefferson, who preferred to operate in the shadows. Although not parties in the modern sense, these embryonic factions—Hamiltonian Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans—generated intense loyalty among adherents. Both sides trafficked in a conspiratorial view of politics, with Federalists accusing the Republicans of trying to import the French Revolution into America, while Republicans tarred the Federalists as plotting to restore the British monarchy. Each side saw the other as perverting the true spirit of the American Revolution.
As Jefferson recoiled from Hamilton's ambitious financial schemes, which included a funded debt, a central bank, and an excise tax on distilled spirits, he teamed up with James Madison to mount a full-scale assault on these programs. As a result, a major critique of administration policy originated partly within the administration itself. Relations between Hamilton and Jefferson deteriorated to the point that Jefferson recalled that at cabinet meetings he descended "daily into the arena like a gladiator to suffer martyrdom in every conflict."
The two men also traded blows in the press, with Jefferson drafting surrogates to attack Hamilton, while the latter responded with his own anonymous essays. When Hamilton published a vigorous defense of Washington's neutrality proclamation in 1793, Jefferson urged Madison to thrash the treasury secretary in the press. "For God's sake, my dear Sir, take up your pen, select the most striking heresies, and cut him to pieces in the face of the public." When Madison rose to the challenge, he sneered in print that the only people who could read Hamilton's essays with pleasure were "foreigners and degenerate citizens among us."
Slow to grasp the deep-seated divisions within the country, Washington also found it hard to comprehend the bitterness festering between Hamilton and Jefferson. Siding more frequently with Hamilton, the president was branded a Federalist by detractors, but he tried to rise above petty dogma and clung to the ideal of nonpartisan governance.
Afraid that sparring between his two brilliant cabinet members might sink the republican experiment, Washington conferred with Jefferson at Mount Vernon in October 1792 and expressed amazement at the hostility between him and Hamilton. As the beleaguered president confided, "he had never suspected [the conflict] had gone so far in producing a personal difference, and he wished he could be the mediator to put an end to it," as Jefferson recorded in a subsequent memo. To Hamilton, Washington likewise issued pleas for an end to "wounding suspicions and irritating charges." Both Hamilton and Jefferson found it hard to back down from this bruising rivalry. To his credit, Washington never sought to oust Jefferson from his cabinet, despite their policy differences, and urged him to remain in the administration to avoid a monolithic uniformity of opinion.
Feeding the venom of party strife was the unrestrained press. When the new government was formed in 1789, most newspapers still functioned as neutral publications, but they soon evolved into blatant party organs. Printing little spot news, with no pretense of journalistic objectivity, they specialized in strident essays. Authors often wrote behind the mask of Roman pseudonyms, enabling them to engage in undisguised savagery without fear of retribution. With few topics deemed taboo, the press lambasted the public positions as well as private morality of leading political figures. The ubiquitous James T. Callender typified the scandalmongers. From his poison-tipped pen flowed the expose of Hamilton's dalliance with the young Maria Reynolds, which had prompted Hamilton, while treasury secretary, to pay hush money to her husband. Those Jeffersonians who applauded Callender's tirades against Hamilton regretted their sponsorship several years later when he unmasked President Jefferson's carnal relations with his slave Sally Hemings.
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You didn't know that Jefferson rapped..?..
Looks can be deceiving, because this is outstanding.
Jan 26, 2011 at 12:41 AM
Reader Comments (8)
A Look Back At Failed Presidential Promises On The Economy
Alexander Hamilton was probably the strongest supporter of the trend towards aristocratic government. By early 1789 he was the treasurer of the U.S. and continually used all his influence to work toward a aristocracy. According to Hamilton, only the "well bred and rich" as he expressed it, were to be recognized in governmental circles. "Lower" people, as he called them, were to have little or no part in government and would be held in check by "coercion of laws and coercion of arms". Hamilton's party became known as the Federalists and attempted to install a more powerful federal government (aristocracy) as opposed to Thomas Jefferson's Antifederalist party which was pushing for state's rights.
Sound familiar?
http://www.bigeye.com/aristocracy.htm
[snip]
It suffices for us, if the moral and physical condition of our own citizens qualifies them to select the able and good for the direction of their government, with a recurrence of elections at such short periods as will enable them to displace an unfaithful servant before the mischief he meditates may be irremediable.
I have thus stated my opinion on a point on which we differ, not with a view to controversy, for we are both too old to change opinions which are the result of a long life of inquiry and reflection; but on the suggestion of a former letter of yours, that we ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.
We acted in perfect harmony through a long and perilous contest for our liberty and independence. A constitution has been acquired which, though neither of us think perfect, yet both consider as competent to render our fellow-citizens the happiest and the securest on whom the sun has ever shone. If we do not think exactly alike as to it's imperfections, it matters little to our country which, after devoting to it long lives of disinterested labor, we have delivered over to our successors in life, who will be able to take care of it, and of themselves.
Of the pamphlet on aristocracy which has been sent to you, or who may be it's author, I have heard nothing but through your letter. If the person you suspect it may be known from the quaint, mystical and hyperbolical ideas, involved in affected, new-fangled and pedantic terms, which stamp his writings. Whatever it be, I hope your quiet is not to be affected at this day by the rudeness of intemperance of scribblers; but that you may continue in tranquility to live and to rejoice in the prosperity of our country until it shall be your own wish to take your seat among the Aristoi who have gone before you.
Note: regarding the last paragraph, the mysterious author "scribblers" of the pamphlet was Alexander Hamilton.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel06.html
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Hamilton's Draft of Washington's Farewell Address
George Washington's Farewell Address was drafted by Alexander Hamilton who made a stronger case for the necessity of religious faith as a prop for popular government than Washington was willing to accept. Washington incorporated Hamilton's assertion that it was unreasonable to suppose that "national morality can be maintained in exclusion of religious principle," but declined to add Hamilton's next sentence, written in the left margin of this page: "does it [national morality] not require the aid of a generally received and divinely authoritative Religion?"
Draft of Washington's Farewell Address, [July] 1796
Alexander Hamilton
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (155)
http://www.alexanderhamiltonexhibition.org/timeline/timeline1.html
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Alexander Hamilton was born on Nevis and raised on St. Croix (Sta. Cruz on this map) in the Caribbean -- islands made rich by sugar and slaves.
Hamilton's youth was filled with anomalies. The future American was a native West Indian, born on the British island of Nevis and raised on the Danish island of St. Croix. His father, James Hamilton, was Scottish; his mother, Rachel Faucett, was of Huguenot ancestry. They were not married. The islands' sugar industry, worked by slaves, produced enormous wealth, which Hamilton viewed only at a distance, from his lowly position as a clerk. In 1773 benefactors sent him to New York to be educated. There, his life took a dramatic turn.
And this:
http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/21464