Download US Washington to Jefferson

Emergence of Political Parties &
Foreign Policy: 1796-1803
From Washington’s
Farewell to Jefferson
Inaugural Address
Domestic Recap….
• Hamilton’s fiscal plan
– Pay off national debt
– Assume state debt
– Pay with tariffs and Excise tax on Whiskey
• Whiskey tax sparks Rebellion; suppressed by
newly empowered federal army
– This last is one factor that leads to creating an
enduring features of American Republic: the two
political party system)
p181
p188
French Revolution Summary
• French Monarchy is overthrown because….
Enlightenment ideas embraced by the middle class
Gross imbalance of wealth in society
• American reactions varies because……
In declaring a republic Americans were enthusiastic
because they were embracing America ideals
However the Revolution soon turns bloody and
unstable as different groups vie for power
The British (and other European monarchies)
consider this a threat and another war ensues
How America should respond becomes a central issue
in the emergence of the federalist and anti-federalists
Table 10-3 p198
The Democratic –Republican Position
• French-American alliance of 1778:
– Bound the United States to help the French
defend their West Indies
– Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans favoring
honoring the alliance
– America owed France its freedom, and now was
the time to pay the debt of gratitude
• George Washington’s response????
X. Washington’s Neutrality
Proclamation (cont.)
• In 1793 Washington issued his Neutrality
Proclamation shortly before war broke out
between England and France.
• Washington:
• Believed that war had to be avoided at all costs
• The strategy of playing for time while the birthrate
fought America’s battles was a cardinal policy of the
Foundling Fathers
X. Washington’s Neutrality
Proclamation (cont.)
• Neutrality Proclamation:
• Proclaimed the government’s official neutrality in the
widening conflict
• Sternly warned American citizens to be impartial
toward both armed camps
– America’s first formal declaration proved to be a
major prop of spreading isolationist tradition
• It proved to be enormously controversial
• The pro-French Jeffersonians were enraged
• The British Federalists were heartened.
X. Washington’s Neutrality
Proclamation (cont.)
• Debate intensified:
– Citizen Edmond Genet, representative of the
French Republic, landed at Charleston, S. Car.
• Was swept away by his enthusiastic reception by the
Jeffersonian Republicans
• He came to believe that the Neutrality Proclamation
did not reflect the American people’s wishes
• Thus embarking on non-neutral activity not
authorized by the French alliance
• Washington demanded Genet’s withdrawal.
XI. Embroilments with Britain
• President Washington’s policy of neutrality
was sorely tried by the British:
• For ten years they maintained a chain of northern
frontier posts on U.S. soil in defiance of the peace
treaty of 1783 (see Map 10.1)
• London was reluctant to abandon her lucrative fur
trade
• London also hoped to build an Indian buffer state
• They openly sold firearms and firewater to the Indians
of the Miami Confederacy
Map 10-1 p191
XI. Embroilments with Britain
• Battle of Fallen Timbers, 1794:
– General “Mad Anthony” Wayne routed the
Miamis
– British refused to shelter the Indians fleeing the
battle; the Indians offered Wayne the peace pipe
– In the Treaty of Greenville, August 1795, they
gave up vast tracts of the Old Northwest
– They hoped for recognition of their sovereign
status. . (They were wrong!)
– The Indians felt it put some limits on the ability
of the United States to decide the fate of Indian
peoples. (They were wrong again!)
XI. Embroilments with the British
• The British seized 300 American merchant
ships, impressed scores of seamen into
British service and threw hundreds into foul
dungeons.
• Impressment incensed patriotic Americans
• War with the world’s mightiest commercial
empire would pierce the heart of the
Hamiltonian financial system.
Jay’s Treaty and Washington’s Farewell
• Jay’s Treaty:
– Washington decided to send Chief Justice John
Jay to London in 1794
• In London, Jay routinely kissed the queen’s hand,
must to the dismay of the Jeffersonians
• Jay entered the negotiations with weakness, which
was further sabotaged by Hamilton
• Jay won few concessions
Jay’s Treaty and Washington’s Farewell
• British concessions:
– They promised to evacuate the chain of posts on
U.S. soil
– Consented to pay damages for the seizure of
American ships
– But the British stopped short of pledging:
• Anything about future maritime seizures and
impressments
• Or about supplying arms to the Indians.
Jay’s Treaty and Washington’s Farewell
• Jay’s unpopular pact:
• Energized the newborn Democratic-Republican party
• It was seen as a betrayal of the Jeffersonian South
• Even Washington’s huge popularity was compromised
by the controversy over the treaty.
– BUT ……
• Fearing an Anglo-American alliance, Spain moved to
strike a deal with the United States in the Pinckney’s
Treaty of 1795.
Jay’s Treaty and Washington’s Farewell
• Pinckney’s Treaty:
• Granted the Americans virtually everything they
wanted from Spain:
– Including free navigation of the Mississippi
– The right of deposit (warehouse rights) at New Orleans
– The large disputed territory of western Florida
p193
XIII. John Adams Becomes President
• John Adams, with the support of New
England, won with the narrow margin of 71
to 68 votes in the Electoral College:
– Jefferson, as runner up, became vice-president
– Adams was a man of stern principles, who did his duty with
stubborn devotion
– He was a tactless and prickly intellectual aristocrat
– Had no appeal to the masses
– He was regarded with “respectful irritation.”
Unofficial Fighting with France
• The French were infuriated by Jay’s Treaty:
• Condemned it as the initial step toward an alliance
with Britain, their perpetual foe
• Assailed it as a flagrant violation of the FrancoAmerican Treaty of 1778
• French warships, in retaliation, began to seize
defenseless American merchant vessels, three
hundred by mid-1797
Unofficial Fighting with France
• Adams tried to reach an agreement with the
French:
• Appointed a diplomatic commission of three men,
including John Marshall, the future chief justice
• Adam’s envoy reached Paris in 1797 where they
hoped to meet with Charles Maurice de Talleyrand,
the crafty French foreign minister
• They were secretly approached by three gobetweens, later referred to as X, Y, and Z
• They demanded a loan of 32 million florins.
Unofficial Fighting with France
• Plus a bribe of $250,000 for the privilege of merely
talking with Talleyrand
• Terms were intolerable and negotiations quickly broke
down
• John Marshall, on reaching New York in 1798, was
hailed as a conquering hero for his steadfastness.
• The XYZ Affair sent a wave of hysteria
sweeping through the United States.
Unofficial Fighting with France
• War itself:
• War was confined to the sea, mainly West Indies
• 2 1/5 years of undeclared hostilities (1798-1800)
• American privateers and men-of-war captured over
80 armed French vessels
• Several hundred Yankee merchant ships were lost to
the enemy
– Only a slight push, it seemed, might plunge both
nations into a full-dress war.
Adams Puts Patriotism Above Party
• Embattled France wanted no war:
• Talleyrand realized there was no use in fighting the
United States
• The British were driven closer to their wayward
cousins
– American envoys found things better when they
reached Paris early in 1800
– The Corsican Napoleon Bonaparte had recently
seized dictatorial power
– The Convention of 1800 treaty was signed in
Paris.
XV. Adams Puts Patriotism Above
Party (cont.)
• The Convention of 1800:
• France agreed to annul the 22-year-old marriage of
(in)convenience
• As a kind of alimony the United States agreed to pay
the damage claims of American shippers
• John Adams deserves immense credit for his belated
push for peace
– He smoothed the path for the peaceful purchase of
Louisiana three years later
– His suggestion for his tombstone: “Here lies John Adams,
who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with
France in the year 1800.”
XVI. The Federalist Witch Hunt
• Federalist actions to muffle the Jeffersonian
foes:
• First, aimed at pro-Jeffersonian “aliens”
– Raised the residence requirement from 5 years to 14
– This law violated traditional American policy of open-door
hospitality and speedy assimilation
• Second, Alien Laws—
– President could deport dangerous foreigners in time of
peace and defensible as a war measure
– This was an arbitrary grant of executive power contrary to
American tradition/Constitution. Never enforced.
XVI. The Federalist Witch Hunt
(cont.)
• Third, Sedition Act—slap at two priceless freedoms
guaranteed in the Constitution by the Bill of Rights:
– Freedom of speech and freedom of the press (First
Amendment)
– This law provided that anyone who impeded the policies of
the government, or falsely defamed its officials, would be
liable to a heavy fine and imprisonment
– Federalists believe it was justified
• Many outspoken Jeffersonian editors were indicted
under the Sedition Act and ten were brought to trial.
• The Sedition Act seemed to be in direct conflict with
the Constitution.
p197
XVII. The Virginia (Madison) and
Kentucky (Jefferson) Resolutions
– Jefferson secretly penned a series of resolutions:
• Approved by the Kentucky legislature in 1798, 1799
• Madison drafted a similar but less extreme statement
adopted by the Virginia legislature in 1798
• Both stressed the compacts theory—
– A theory popular among English political philosophers
– This concept meant that the thirteen sovereign states, in
creating the federal government, had entered into a
“compact,” or contract, regarding its jurisdiction
– The nation was consequently the agent or creation of the
states.
XVII. The Virginia (Madison) and
Kentucky (Jefferson) Resolutions
– The individual states were the final judges of whether their
agent had broken the “compact” by overstepping the
authority originally granted
– Jefferson’s Kentucky resolutions concluded that the federal
regime had exceeded its constitutional powers and that
with regard to the Alien and Sedition Acts, “nullification”
—a refusal to accept them—was the “rightful remedy.”
• No other state legislatures fell into line:
– The Federalist states added ringing condemnations
– They argued that the people, not the states, had made the
original compact, therefore it was up to the Supreme Court—not the states—to nullify unconstitutional legislation
passed by Congress.
XVII. The Virginia (Madison) and
Kentucky (Jefferson) Resolutions
• The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions:
• Brilliant formulation of the extreme states’ rights view
regarding the union
• More sweeping in their implications than their
authors had intended
• Later used by southerners to support nullification—
ultimately secession
• Neither Jefferson nor Madison had any intention of
breaking the union; they wanted to preserve it.
Acrimonious Election of 1800
– As the presidential contest of 1800 approached:
• Conflicts over domestic politics and foreign policy
undermined the unity of the Revolutionary era
• Could the fragile and battered American ship of state
founder on the rocks of controversy?
• Why would the United States expect to enjoy a
happier fate?
Federalist Problems leads to….
– In fighting for survival, the Federalists labored
under heavy handicaps:
• Alien and Sedition Acts aroused a host of enemies
• The refusal of Adams to give them a rousing fight with
France
• Their feverish war preparations had swelled the
federal debt and required new taxes including a
stamp tax
I. Federalist Mudslinging at
Republican
– The Federalists concentrated their fire on
Jefferson himself:
• He became the victim of rumors:
– Robbing a widow and her children of a trust fund
– Fathering numerous mulatto children by his slave women
– Long intimacy with Sally Hemings.
– A liberal in religion, supported separation of
church and state in his native Virginia
– He did believe in God, but preachers throughout
New England thundered against his atheism.
p205
Jefferson and Adams: The end of a friendship
Jefferson wins… Barely
– Jefferson won by a majority of 73 electoral votes
to 65 (see Map 11.1)
– Jefferson’s victory was dampened by an
unexpected Democratic- Republican deadlock:
• Jefferson, the presidential candidate, and Burr, the
vice-presidential candidate, received the same
number of electoral votes for the presidency
• Under the Constitution the tie could be broken only
by the House of Representatives (see Art. II, Sec. I.
para. 2)
The Jeffersonian “Revolution of 1800”
– It was no revolution in the sense of the word
– Jefferson narrowly squeaked to victory
– What was “revolutionary” was the peaceful and
orderly transfer of power despite the acromony
• This was a remarkable achievement for a raw young
nation
– Jefferson’s mission:
• to restore the republican experience
• To check the growth of government power
• To halt the decay of virtue
Jefferson as the 1st Democratic
Republican President
• At the outset Jefferson was determined to
undo the Federalist abuses:
– The hated Alien and Sedition Acts had expired
– Pardoned the “martyrs” who were serving
sentences under the Sedition Act
• and the government remitted many fines
– Jeffersonians enacted the new naturalization law
of 1802:
– It reduced the requirement of 14 years of residence back to
the requirement of 5 years.
Jefferson as the 1st Democratic
Republican President
– Washington lent itself admirably to the simplicity
and frugality of the Jeffersonian Republicans:
• Contrasted to the elegant atmosphere of Federalist
Philadelphia, the former temporary capital
• He spurned a horse-drawn coach and strode by foot
to the Capitol from his boardinghouse
• He extended democratic principles to etiquette
– Established the rule of pell-mell at official dinners—that is,
seating without regard to rank.
• He was shockingly unconventional in receiving guests
• He started the precedent of sending messages to
Congress to be read by a clerk
Jefferson faces realities office
• Jefferson was forced to reverse many of the
political principles he had so vigorously
championed:
– One was the scholarly private citizen, who
philosophized in his study
– The other was the harassed public official
– The open-minded Virginian was therefore
consistently inconsistent; it is easy to quote one
Jefferson to refute the other.
VI. Jefferson, a Reluctant Warrior
• First action of Jefferson was to reduce the
military establishment:
• To a mere police force of 25,000 officers and men
• He wanted to forgo the military and win friends
through “peaceful coercion”
• Pirates of the North African Barbary States (see Map
11.2) made a national industry of blackmailing and
plundering merchant ships that ventured into the
Mediterranean.
• War across the Atlantic was not part of Jefferson’s
vision.
VI. Jefferson, a Reluctant Warrior
(cont.)
• The showdown came in 1801-1805, the
Tripolitan War:
• He sent the infant army to the “shores of Tripoli”
• Four years of intermittent fighting
• He succeeded in extorting a treaty of peace from
Tripoli in 1805; bargain price of $60,000—a sum
representing ransom payment for captured
Americans
• He advocated a large number of little coastal craft
• Also 200 tiny gunboats were constructed
VII. The Louisiana Godsend
• 1800 a secret pact was signed:
• Napoleon Bonaparte induced the king of Spain to
cede to France the immense trans-Mississippi region
of Louisiana, including New Orleans area
• The Spaniards at New Orleans withdrew the right to
deposit guaranteed America by Pinckney’s Treaty of
1795 (see p. 193)
• Hoping to quiet the clamor of the West, Jefferson in
1803 sent James Monroe to Paris to join with Robert
R. Livingstone, the regular minister there
VII. The Louisiana Godsend
(cont.)
– They were instructed to buy New Orleans and as
much land as possible for $10 million
– Napoleon suddenly decided to sell all Louisiana
and abandon his dream of a New World empire
– He failed in his efforts to reconquer the sugar-rich island of
Santo Domingo (Haiti)
– Rebellious enslaved Africans had struck for their freedom in
1791. Their revolt was ultimately broken, but the island’s
second line of defense—mosquitoes carrying yellow fever—
had swept away thousands of crack French troops.
VII. The Louisiana Godsend
(cont.)
• After the Haitian Revolution Santo Domingo
could not be had, except at a staggering cost,
hence there was no need for Louisiana’s food
supplies
• To keep Louisiana from the British Napoleon decided
to sell it to the Americans and pocket the money for
his schemes nearer to home.
• Robert Livingston was busy negotiating , when the
French foreign minister asked him what he would give
for all of Louisiana.
VII. The Louisiana Godsend
(cont.)
• On April 30, 1803, treaties were signed
ceding Louisiana to the United States for
about $15 million
– Plus additional treaties for an immeasurable
tract entirely to the west—an area that would
more than double the size of the United States.
– Once again the two Jeffersons wrestled with
each other:
– The theorist and former strict constructionist versus the
democratic visionary. Jefferson submitted the treaties to
the Senate, while admitting the purchase unconstitutional.
VIII. Louisiana in the Long View
• Louisiana Purchase—
• America secured the western half of the richest river
valley in the world
• And laid the foundation of a future major power
• The transfer established valuable precedents for
future expansion on the basis of equal membership
• This was imperialism with a new and democratic face
• It also contributed to making operational the
isolationist principles of Washington’s Farewell
Address.
VIII. Louisiana in the Long View
(cont.)
• The Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery:
• 1804 Jefferson sent his personal secretary,
Meriwether Lewis, and army officer William Clark to
explore the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase
• The exploration took 2 ½ years and yielded a rich
harvest of scientific observation, maps, knowledge of
the Indians in the region, and hair-raising wilderness
adventure stories
• The explorers demonstrated the viability of an
overland trail to the Pacific
VIII. Louisiana in the Long View
(cont.)
• Thousands of missionaries, fur-traders, and
pioneering settlers made their way to claim the
Oregon Country
• Zebulon M. Pike trekked to the headwaters of the
Mississippi River in 1805-1806
• The next year Pike ventured into the southern portion
of Louisiana Territory, where he sighted the Colorado
peak that bears his name.