The Constitution designated the president as the only official charged with the duty of enforcing all the federal laws. In consequence, Washington's first concern was to establish and develop the executive departments. In a sense such agencies were arms of the president--the instruments by which he could perform his primary duty of executing the laws. At the outset, Washington and his co-workers established two rules that became enduring precedents: the president has the power to select and nominate executive officers and the power to remove them if they are unworthy.
Congress did its first important work in 1789, when it made provision for five executive departments. The men heading these departments formed the president's cabinet. One act established the war department, which Washington entrusted to Gen. Henry Knox. Then came the creation of the treasury department, its beginnings celebrated by the brilliant achievements of its first secretary, Alexander Hamilton. The department of state was provided for, and Thomas Jefferson took office as its first secretary in March 1790. The office of postmaster general came into being next, and the appointment went to Samuel Osgood. Washington's first attorney general, Edmund Randolph, was selected after his office had been created.
In forming his CABINET Washington chose two liberals--Jefferson and Randolph--and two conservatives--Hamilton and Knox. The liberals looked to the South and West, the conservatives to the Northeast. On subjects in dispute, Washington could secure advice from each side and so make informed decisions.
In constructing the new government, Washington and his advisers acted with 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.
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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.
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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.
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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. https://gi.grolier.com/presidents/ea/prescont.html