exceptional energy. The challenge of a large work for the future inspired
creative efforts of the highest order. Washington was well equipped for the
work of building an administrative structure. His success arose largely
from his ability to blend planning and action for the attainment of a
desired result. First, he acquired the necessary facts, which he weighed
carefully. Once he had reached a decision, he carried it out with vigor and
tenacity. Always averse to indolence and procrastination, he acted promptly
and decisively. In everything he was thorough, systematic, accurate, and
attentive to detail. From subordinates he expected standards like his own.
In financial matters he insisted on exactitude and integrity.
The Federalist Program
From 1790 to 1792 the elements of Washington's financial policies were
expounded by Hamilton in five historic reports. Hamilton was a highly
useful assistant who devised plans, worked out details, and furnished
cogent arguments. The Federalist program consisted of seven laws. Together
they provided for the payment, in specie, of debts incurred during the
Revolution; created a sound, uniform currency based on coin; and aimed to
foster home industries in order to lessen the country's dependence on
European goods.
The Tariff Act (1789), the Tonnage Act (1789), and the Excise Act (1791)
levied taxes, payable in coin, that gave the government ample revenues. The
Funding Act (1790) made provision for paying, dollar for dollar, the old
debts of both the Union and the states. The Bank Act (1791) set up a
nationwide banking structure owned mainly by private citizens, which was
authorized to issue paper currency that could be used for tax payments as
long as it was redeemed in coin on demand. A Coinage Act (1792) directed
the government to mint both gold and silver coins, and a Patent Law (1791)
gave inventors exclusive rights to their inventions for 14 years.
The Funding Act, the Excise Act, and the Bank Act aroused an accelerating
hostility so bitter as to bring into being an opposition group. These
opponents, the Republicans, precursors of the later Democratic party, were
led by Jefferson and Madison. The Funding Act enabled many holders of
government certificates of debt, which had been bought at a discount, to
profit as the Treasury redeemed them, in effect, at their face values in
coin. Washington undoubtedly deplored this form of private gain, but he
regarded it as unavoidable if the Union was to have a stable currency and a
sound public credit. The Bank Act gave private citizens the sole privilege
of issuing federal paper currency, which they could lend at a profit. The
Excise Act, levying duties on whiskey distilled in the country, taxed a
commodity that was commonly produced by farmers, especially on the
frontier. The act provoked armed resistance--the Whiskey Rebellion--in
western Pennsylvania, which Washington suppressed with troops, but without
bloodshed or reprisals, in 1794.
The Republicans charged that the Federalist acts tended to create an all-
powerful central government that would devour the states. A protective
tariff that raised the prices of imported goods, a centralized banking
system operated by moneyed men of the cities, national taxes that benefited
the public creditors, a restricted currency, and federal securities (as
good as gold) that could be used to buy foreign machines and tools needed
by manufacturers--all these features of Washington's program, so necessary
to industrial progress, repelled debtors, the poorer farmers, and the most
zealous defenders of the states.
The Judiciary System
Under Washington's guidance a federal court system was established by the
Judiciary Act of Sept. 24, 1789. The Constitution provided for its basic
features. Because the president is the chief enforcer of federal laws, it
is his duty to prosecute cases before the federal courts. In this work his
agent is the attorney general. To guard against domination of judges, even
by the president, the Constitution endowed them with tenure during good
behavior.
The Judiciary Act of 1789 was so well designed that its most essential
features have survived. It provided for 13 judicial districts, each with a
district court of federal judges. The districts were grouped into three
circuits in which circuit courts were to hear appeals from district courts.
The act also created a supreme court consisting of a chief justice and five
associate justices to serve as the final arbiter in judicial matters,
excepting cases of impeachment. Washington's selection of John Jay as the
first chief justice was probably the best choice possible for the work of
establishing the federal judiciary on a sound and enduring basis.
Foreign Affairs
In foreign affairs, Washington aimed to keep the country at peace, lest
involvement in a great European war should shatter the new government
before it could acquire strength. He also sought to gain concessions from
Britain and Spain that would promote the growth of pioneer settlements in
the Ohio Valley. In addition, he desired to keep up the import trade of the
Union, which yielded revenue from tariff duties that enabled the government
to sustain the public credit and to meet its current expenses.
The British and French
The foreign policy of Washington took shape under the pressure of a war
between Britain and revolutionary France. At the war's inception Washington
had to decide whether two treaties of the French-American alliance of 1778
were still in force. Hamilton held that they were not, because they had
been made with the now-defunct government of Louis XVI. Washington,
however, accepted Jefferson's opinion that they were still valid because
they had been made by an enduring nation--a principle that has since
prevailed in American diplomacy.
Fearing that involvement in the European war would blight the infant
government, Washington issued a proclamation of neutrality on April 22,
1793. This proclamation urged American citizens to be impartial and warned
them against aiding or sending war materials to either belligerent.
Because Britain was the dominant sea power, France championed the doctrine
of neutral rights that was asserted in the French-American alliance. The
doctrine held that neutrals--the United States in this case--might lawfully
trade with belligerents in articles not contraband of war. Britain acted on
a contrary theory respecting wartime trade and seized American ships,
thereby violating rights generally claimed by neutrals. Such seizures
goaded the Republican followers of Jefferson to urge measures that might
have led to a British-American war. Washington then sent John Jay on a
treaty-making mission to London.
Jay's Treaty of Nov. 19, 1794, outraged France because it did not uphold
the French-American alliance and because it conferred benefits on Britain.
Although Washington disliked some of its features, he signed it (the Senate
had ratified it by a two-thirds vote). One reason was that keeping open the
import trade from Britain continued to provide the Treasury with urgently
needed revenues from tariff duties.
Unable to match Britain on the sea, the French indulged in a campaign to
replace Washington with their presumed partisans, in order to vitiate the
treaty. They also waged war on the shipping of the United States, and
relations between the two countries went from bad to worse.
The Western Frontier
Washington's diplomacy also had to deal with events in the West that
involved Britain and Spain. Pioneers in Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Ohio
country, who were producers of grain, lumber, and meats, sought good titles
to farmlands, protection against Indians, and outlets for their products
via the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and New Orleans.
In the northern area, Britain held, within the United States, seven trading
posts of which the most important were Niagara, Detroit, and Mackinac. The
determination of the Indians to preserve their hunting lands against the
inroads of pioneers seeking farms encouraged the British in Canada in their
efforts to maintain their hold on the fur trade and their influence on the
Indians of the area north of the Ohio River.
The focus of the strife was the land south of present-day Toledo. The most
active Indian tribes engaged were the Ottawa, the Pottawatomi, the
Chippewa, and the Shawnee. Two American commanders suffered defeats that
moved Washington to wrath. British officials in Canada then backed the
Indians in their efforts to expel the Americans from the country north of
the Ohio River. A third U.S. force, under Gen. Anthony Wayne, defeated the
Indians so decisively in 1794 in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, at the site
of present-day Toledo, that they lost heart and the English withdrew their
support. Wayne then imposed a victor's peace. By the Treaty of Greenville
(1795) the tribes gave up nearly all their lands in Ohio, thereby clearing
the way for pioneers to move in and form a new state.
In 1796 the British evacuated the seven posts that they had held within the
United States. Because Jay's Treaty had called for the withdrawal, it
registered another victory for Washington's diplomacy.
The Spanish Frontier
On the southwestern frontier the United States faced Spain, then the
possessor of the land south of the 31st parallel, from the Atlantic coast
to the Mississippi River. Intent upon checking the growth of settlement
south of the Ohio River, the Spaniards used their control of the mouth of
the Mississippi at New Orleans to obstruct the export of American products
to foreign markets. The two countries each claimed a large area, known as
the Yazoo Strip, north of the 31st parallel.
In dealing with Spain, Washington sought both to gain for the western
settlers the right to export their products, duty free, by way of New
Orleans, and to make good the claim of the United States to the territory
in dispute. The land held by Spain domiciled some 25,000 people of European
stocks, who were generally preferred by the resident Indians (Cherokee,
Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw, with 14,000 warriors), to the 150,000
frontiersmen who had pushed into Kentucky, Tennessee, and western Georgia.
The selection of Jefferson as the first secretary of state reflected the
purpose of Washington to aid the West. But before 1795 he failed to attain
that goal. His task was complicated by a tangle of frontier plots,
grandiose land-speculation schemes, Indian wars, and preparations for war
that involved Spanish officials, European fur traders, and the Indian
tribes, along with settlers, adventurers, military chieftains, and
speculators from the United States.
Conditions in Europe forced Washington to neglect the Southwest until 1795,
when a series of misfortunes moved Spain to yield and agree to the Treaty
of San Lorenzo. The treaty recognized the 31st parallel as the southern
boundary of the United States and granted to Americans the right to
navigate the whole of the Mississippi, as well as a three-year privilege of
landing goods at New Orleans for shipment abroad.
When Washington left office the objectives of his foreign policy had been
attained. By avoiding war he had enabled the new government to take root,
he had prepared the way for the growth of the West, and by maintaining the
import trade he had safeguarded the national revenues and the public
credit.
Washington Steps Down
By the end of 1795, Washington's creative work had been done. Thereafter he
and his collaborators devoted their efforts largely to defending what they
had accomplished. A conservative spirit became dominant and an era of "High
Federalism" dawned. As his health declined, Washington became saddened by
attacks made by his Republican opponents, who alleged that Hamilton had
seized control of the administration, that a once-faithful ally, France,
had been cast aside, that the Federalists were plotting to create a
monarchy on the British model, and that they had corrupted Congress in
order to effect their program. The attack reached its high (or low) point
when Washington's foes reprinted forged letters that had been published to
impugn his loyalty during the Revolution. He made no reply to his
detractors.
Washington had been reelected unanimously in 1792. His decision not to seek
a third term established a tradition that has been broken only once and is
now embedded in the 22d Amendment of the Constitution. In his Farewell
Address of Sept. 17, 1796, he summarized the results of his varied
experience, offering a guide both for that time and for the future. He
urged his countrymen to cherish the Union, to support the public credit, to
be alert to "the insidious wiles of foreign influence," to respect the
Constitution and the nation's laws, to abide by the results of elections,
and to eschew political parties of a sectional cast. Asserting that America
and Europe had different interests, he declared that it "is our true policy
to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign
world," trusting to temporary alliances for emergencies. He also warned
against indulging in either habitual favoritism or habitual hostility
toward particular nations, lest such attitudes should provoke or involve
the country in needless wars.
Last Years
Washington's retirement at Mount Vernon was interrupted in 1798 when he
assumed nominal command of a projected army intended to fight against
France in an anticipated war. Early in 1799 he became convinced that France
desired peace and that Americans were unwilling to enlist in the proposed
army. He successfully encouraged President John Adams to break with the war
party, headed by Hamilton, and to end the quarrel.
Washington's last public efforts were devoted to opposing the Virginia and
Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, which challenged his conviction that the
Constitution decreed that federal acts should be the supreme law of the
land. Continuing to work at his plantation, he contracted a cold and died
on Dec. 14, 1799, after an illness of two days.
Among Americans, Washington is unusual in that he combined in one career
many outstanding achievements in business, warfare, and government. He took
the leading part in three great historic events that extended over a period
of 20 years. After 1775 he was animated by the purpose of creating a new
nation dedicated to the rights of man. His success in fulfilling that
purpose places him in the first rank among the figures of world history.
Curtis P. Nettels
Cornell University
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Source
1.www.yahoo.com
2. http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/ea/prescont.html
