A Year With George Washington
On February 13, 1793, President Washington, having acquiesced to the desperate pleas of both Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton to serve a second term, was unanimously confirmed in the presidential electoral vote once more.
By the end of his first term, the inter-cabinet feud between Jefferson and Hamilton had become so rancorous that President Washington longed for his retirement to his beloved Mount Vernon.
Just as Washington had done in his role as the first president of the new republic, his cabinet members set enduring precedents. The difference is that, unlike his cabinet secretaries, Washington was thoughtful, measured, and deliberate in his actions, well aware of the long-term import.
The rift between Jefferson and Hamilton in Washington’s administration has reverberated for more than two centuries. Their disagreements over the high-stakes direction of the new nation inadvertently created the two-party system, which endures to this day. Washington abhorred “factions,” as he called them, and sought to extinguish their emergence, to no avail. His problem was that the two cabinet members he relied on most were every bit as passionate as they were brilliant.
Though Washington and Jefferson were both born and bred Virginians and thus cut more or less from the same bolt of fabric, Washington had relied on Hamilton’s counsel and approbation since the early days of the Revolutionary War. Hamilton had been Washington’s aide-de-camp and co-drafted the better part of his voluminous correspondence. In short, he knew how Washington thought, even directing it, and the two had grown familiar with each other’s idiosyncratic manner.
Jefferson did not occupy such close quarters with Washington as he had served as governor of Virginia during the war and had been in the service of his country abroad after the war had been won. The two had few common experiences beyond their home state. In truth, however, Washington valued both Hamilton and Jefferson’s counsel. He tended to trust Hamilton’s opinions on domestic issues and Jefferson’s on foreign matters. While he hewed to Hamilton’s approach to managing the public debt, for instance, he heeded Jefferson’s advice to steer clear of any foreign entanglements.
The row between the two brilliant men could be understood on the surface by their favoring of one country over another. Hamilton, though he had stormed redoubt number ten at Yorktown and helped bring about American Independence from Great Britain, admired the English form of government administered by a select elite. Jefferson, having served as Minister to France and borne witness to the early attempt at Monarchical reform, tended to support France. It should be noted that Jefferson’s friendly view of France was likely fueled more by his disdain and distrust of Great Britain than by his love of France.
Even the casual observer of the two men’s lives cannot help but be struck by the irony of Hamilton being born a pauper, before growing to believe that the machinations of government were better controlled by an educated few. This is contrasted with Jefferson, born an aristocrat, who later developed a near-religious belief that government should be subject to the will of the common man.
Jefferson and Hamilton were so firm in their respective philosophies that each cultivated a following of acolytes who worked openly and covertly to do their bidding. The environment in the administration became so unweildy that Washington sought to retire. Unfortunately for him, the political discord had become so enlarged that the two main instigators, Hamilton and Jefferson, impressed upon him that the young nation would be torn asunder if he were to leave.
They were right, and he knew it. As had been the case in all the seminal events in the nation from the start, he was the only man who could hold the fragile American experiment together.
Washington would be elected a second time unanimously, as he had been the first. Jefferson, realizing he could not control his impulse to undermine the cabinet’s effectiveness, resigned as Secretary of State not long into Washington’s second term.
Washington would be the first and last president not beholden to any political party.
