After carefully going through all of the materials from the Module, post your Historical Analysis Essay (HAE) and reply to at least two of your classmates. You will be evaluated according to the Discu

HIST 1301 Module 8

Topic: Federalists and the First Political Party System

Student Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of this lesson, students will be able to:

Describe the development of political parties in the United States.

Explain the significance of the Election of 1800.

Introductory Essay by Downs

Washington as Precedent

George Washington became the first president of the United States in March of 1789. Some of the anti-federalists were happy to ratify the Constitution because everyone understood that Washington was going to be the president, such was his popularity throughout the land. Washington had a difficult task as the first president because he had no examples of past presidents to draw upon. He was very conscious of the fact that he was setting the precedent that future leaders would look back upon as a guide to dealing with problems and issues. Washington helped establish the tradition of electing war heroes to the presidency and there will be several future presidents that began their careers in the military. Americans refer to the president as “Mr. President” because Washington wanted to make sure that common people could identify with the person. “Mr. So and So” was how most men were referred to, especially gentlemen. Perhaps the most significant precedent established by Washington was that rebellions and revolutions were not going to be tolerated for any reason. In 1796, Washington personally led an army into Pennsylvania to put down what became known as the Whiskey Rebellion. When a nation is born out of rebellion, it should come as no surprise that more and more of them might occur. Washington asserted that the United States cannot be a nation of rebellion after rebellion. If a person disagreed with a policy or a law, like an excise tax on whiskey, then that person should work within the system to change the law. The ability to levy a national tax and raise an army with the funds demonstrated clearly the effectiveness and power of the new Constitution. Remember that Shays’s Rebellion was not so easily suppressed due to the weakness of the Articles of Confederation. Now that weakness was remedied with a new powerful national Constitution.

Washington was actually elected, although he never campaigned for a single vote. Asking for a person’s vote was undignified and beneath the ruling elite. While Washington received the vast majority of the votes, John Adams did receive a few, as well, and was thus the vice-president. The person who received the most votes was the president and the person who received the second most votes was the vice-president. What does that say about the political thinking behind elections at the time? Quite simply, it meant that political parties did not exist.

The Origins of the First Political Party System

If a person followed Washington’s advice, then how does one work within the system to change policies or laws without an organized opposition to the government that created those very policies or laws? Because they had all been federalists (from the federalist/anti-federalist debate over the Constitution), that name was applied to Washington and his administration, even though Washington never would have admitted to being part of a political party. The Federalist Party did not signify much until an opposition party was created by James Madison known as the Democratic - Republican Party. Madison was frustrated with the policies of the administration and of Alexander Hamilton, who was the real power behind Washington, particularly Jay’s Treaty. So Madison created an opposition party to challenge the policies of the government. He worked within the system and in 1796 a real election occurred between John Adams (federalist) and Thomas Jefferson (democratic republican). Adams won the election, but who was the vice-president? You guessed it, Jefferson who was Adams’s political opponent. This reminds us today that these people did not have a textbook in front of them to tell them how the story should go. They had to make it up and adjust over time. Clearly with the development of political parties, the election process would have to be amended.

The Election of 1800 and Loyal Opposition

I have argued that to understand the revolutionary aspect of the American Revolution one must look at the events from the 1770s to the election of 1800. The idea of an opposition political party that was determined to take control of a government historically only happened as a result of violence and conflict, usually an assassination, a coup d’état or civil war or uprising. What resulted in the election of 1800 was a peaceful transition of power from one government (Adams’s administration) to its opposition government, that of Thomas Jefferson. This was unprecedented in world history and is arguably the most revolutionary aspect of the entire American Revolution. Can a person oppose the government and still be loyal to the nation? Absolutely, but in the early years of the United States, the concept of loyal opposition simply did not exist. This is why political parties were viewed with suspicion because often the result was violence and conflict. Jefferson was no radical and the federalist knew that. When Jefferson was inaugurated, he understood that he had to be president for all Americans, even those who did not support him. And besides, politicians, once elected, all have the same goal: to be re-elected. That means that they tend to gravitate to the center of American politics.

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Chapter Outline

8.1 Competing Visions: Federalists and Democratic-Republicans

8.2 The New American Republic

8.3 Partisan Politics

8.4 The United States Goes Back to War

The partisan political cartoon above (Figure 8.1) lampoons Thomas Jefferson’s 1807 Embargo Act, a move that had a devastating effect on American commerce. American farmers and merchants complain to President Jefferson, while the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte whispers to him, “You shall be King hereafter.” This image illustrates one of many political struggles in the years after the fight for ratification of the Constitution. In the nation’s first few years, no organized political parties existed. This began to change as U.S. citizens argued bitterly about the proper size and scope of the new national government. As a result, the 1790s witnessed the rise of opposing political parties: the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. Federalists saw unchecked democracy as a dire threat to the republic, and they pointed to the excesses of the French Revolution as proof of what awaited. Democratic-Republicans opposed the Federalists’ notion that only the wellborn and well educated were able to oversee the republic; they saw it as a pathway to oppression by an aristocracy.