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The Constitution as the Law of the Land
In the wake of the many failures of the Articles of Confederation, the Constitutional Convention had met in Philadelphia in 1787 and determined that it was in the nation’s best interest to create an entirely new framework of government. For nearly four months, the delegates at the convention deliberated on how best to accomplish this rebuilding effort. The Constitution, the result of these proceedings, sets out the tripartite system of government that is still in place in the US today. It created a bicameral legislature consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate, an executive branch headed by the president and staffed by the cabinet, and provided for the establishment of a judicial branch, consisting of a federal-court system headed by the Supreme Court.
Washington and the First Congress Face Many Challenges
Although the Constitution established the basic framework of government, its wording was vague in regard to the details. Thus, the first Congress under the Constitution and the first President, George Washington, were responsible for working out the details of governance. In the first years of the new United States, Washington and the Congress created, among other things, the now accepted traditions of the cabinet and the judicial system. The precedents they set established the standard operating procedure of the national government for years to come.
Strict versus Loose Constructionism
The Electoral College had unanimously chose George Washington to be the first president, with John Adams as vice president. Soon after, the new secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, wanted to repair the national credit and revive the economy by having the federal government assume all the debts of the individual states. He also wanted to establish a national Bank of the United States. The Constitution said nothing about a national bank, but Hamilton believed that the Constitution allowed many unwritten actions that it did not expressly forbid. Thomas Jefferson, the secretary of state and a strict constructionist, believed that the Constitution forbade everything it did not allow. These ideological differences within Washington’s cabinet formed the basis of what later became full-fledged political parties—the Hamiltonian Federalists and the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans.
Domestic Unrest in the 1790s
Despite the passage of the Indian Intercourse Acts, beginning in 1790, Native Americans frequently raided American settlements west of the Appalachians until federal troops crushed several tribes in the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. Later, when farmers in western Pennsylvania threatened to march on Philadelphia to protest the excise tax on liquor in 1794, Washington dispatched 13,000 federal troops to crush the insurgents. The Whiskey Rebellion, however, ended without bloodshed.
Washington and Neutrality
Events in Europe also impacted the United States. The French Revolution of 1789 and France’s subsequent war with Britain split American public opinion: some wanted to support republican France, while others wanted to help England. However, under the Franco-American alliance of 1778, the United States was obligated to assist France.
Unprepared for another war, Washington issued the Neutrality Proclamation of 1793. Citizen Genêt, the French ambassador to the United States, ignored the proclamation and, immediately upon his arrival in the United States, began commissioning privateers and planning to use U.S. ports in the French campaign against Britain. Outraged over the Citizen Genêt affair, Washington requested Genet’s recall.
Competition Over the American West
Washington and the United States was at threat of war with Britain, Spain, and the Native Americans over the control of the American West—which at this point was the area west of Pennsylvania. Spain threatened to block Americans’ access to the vital Mississippi River, while Britain still refused to withdraw from American territory in the Ohio Valley. On the brink of war with all three parties, Washington sent successful diplomatic missions to achieve peace, resulting in Jay’s Treaty with Britain in 1794 and Pinckney’s Treaty in 1795.
Washington’s Farewell Address and Legacy
When Washington left office after two terms as president, he pleaded for an end to political division and embroilment in foreign affairs. Despite his best efforts, the American public was far more sharply divided in than it had been at the outset of his presidency. Finally, in his famous Farewell Address in 1796, Washington warned against entangling alliances with European powers and potential political factions in the United States.
Even so, upon Washington's departure from office, America itself was a far more powerfully established nation. Many challenges lay ahead for the new government, but in spite of the bitter disagreements that raged, the nation had held together through its first eight years under the new Constitution. This reflected Washington and his skills as well as of the strength and resilience of the new Constitution itself.
