Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (152 page)

98
. Schwartz,
Washington: The Making of an American Symbol
, 62–63.

99
. Abraham Flexner,
George Washington and the New Nation, 1783–1793
(Boston, 1970), 3: 201.

100
. White,
Federalists
, 108 n; JA to GW, 17 May 1789,
Papers of Washington: Presidential Ser
., 2: 314.

101
. John Ferling,
John Adams: A Life
(New York, 1992), 304.

102
. Page Smith,
John Adams
(Garden City, NY, 1962), 2: 755.

103
. Wood,
Creation of the American Republic
, 586.

104
. Ralph Ketcham,
James Madison: A Biography
(New York, 1971), 285; Smith,
John Adams
, 2: 755.

105
. We know what went on in the Senate only because of the remarkable journal that Adams’s nemesis, the straitlaced agrarian republican from western Pennsylvania, Senator William Maclay, kept of the Senate’s debates during the first two years of the Congress. For the modern edition, see
The Diary of William Maclay and Other Notes on Senate Debates
, ed. Kenneth R. Bowling and Helen E. Veit (Baltimore, 1988).

106
.
Diary of Maclay
, 16–17.

107
. Smith,
John Adams
, 2: 755.

108
. Max Farrand,
The Framing of the Constitution of the United States
(New Haven, 1913), 163.

109
.
Diary of Maclay
, 29.

110
. TJ to JM, 29 July 1789,
Papers of Jefferson
, 15: 316.

111
. JM to TJ, 23 May 1789,
Republic of Letters
, 612.

112
. David P. Currie,
The Constitution in Congress: The Federalist Period, 1789–1801
(Chicago, 1997), 35.

113
. JM to TJ, 9 May 1789,
Republic of Letters
, 607.

114
.
Annals of Congress
, 1st Congress, 1st session, 1: 363.

115
. Glenn A. Phelps,
George Washington and American Constitutionalism
(Lawrence, KS, 1993), 128.

116
. GW to Lafayette, 29 Jan. 1789,
Papers of Washington: Presidential Ser
., 1: 263.

117
. Forrest McDonald,
The American Presidency: An Intellectual History
(Lawrence, KS, 1994), 226.

118
. Robert P. Williams, ed.,
The First Congress, March 4, 1789–March 3, 1791: A Compilation of Significant Debates
(New York, 1970), 193.

119
. James Hart,
The American Presidency in Action, 1789: A Study in Constitutional History
(New York, 1948), 178–84.

120
. White,
Federalists
, 20–25;
Diary of Maclay
, 111, 113–14.

121
. Williams, ed.,
First Congress
, 216–17.

122
. On the history and significance of the president’s removal power, see Steven G. Calabresi and Christopher S. Yoo,
The Unitary Executive: Presidential Power from Washington to Bush
(New Haven, 2008).

123
. GW to JM, 5 May 1789, GW to JA, 10 May 1789,
Papers of Washington
, 2: 216–17, 246–47.

124
. Phelps,
Washington and American Constitutionalis
m, 122, 169.

125
.
Diary of Maclay
, 130; Phelps,
Washington and American Constitutionalism
, 170; Editorial Note,
Papers of Washington: Presidential Ser
., 3: 526–27.

126
. Hamilton was born in 1755, but he apparently believed that he was born in 1757, which would have made him think he was even more precocious than he was.

127
. Hugh Knox to AH, 28 July 1784,
Papers of Hamilton
, 3: 573.

128
. Robert Middlekauff,
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789
(New York, 1982; rev. ed., New York, 2005), 587.

129
. AH, Speech in New York Ratifying Convention, 28 June 1788,
Papers of Hamilton
, 5: 118.

130
. White,
Federalists
, 117; Jacob E. Cooke,
Alexander Hamilton
(New York, 1982), 73; AH to Edward Carrington, 26 May 1792,
Papers of Hamilton
, 11: 442.

131
. Freeman W. Meyer, “A Note on the Origins of the ‘Hamiltonian’ System,”
WMQ
, 21 (1964), 579–88.

132
.
Diary of Maclay
, 377.

133
. Rose,
Prologue to Democracy
, 29; White,
Federalists
, 123.

134
. Roberts and Roberts, eds.,
Moreau de St. Méry’s American Journey
, 135–36.

135
. Notes from Gouverneur Morris’s Diary, 11 July 1804,
Papers of Hamilton
, 26: 324 n.

136
. Farrand, ed.,
Records of the Federal Convention
, 1: 288.

137
. John Brewer,
The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783
(New York, 1989), xix.

138
. The fullest description of these “Country-opposition” ideas can be found in Bernard Bailyn,
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
(Cambridge, MA, 1967).

139
. Debate in the New York Ratifying Convention, 17 June–26 July 1788, in Bernard Bailyn, ed.,
The Debate on the Constitution
(New York, 1993), 2: 768.

140
. On Hamilton’s “financial revolution,” see Richard Sylla, “The Transition to a Monetary Union in the United States, 1787–1795,”
Financial History Review
, 13 (2006), 73–95.

1
. Jacob E. Cooke,
Alexander Hamilton
(New York, 1982), 75.

2
. Edwin J. Perkins,
American Public Finance and Financial Services, 1700–1815
(Columbus, OH, 1994), 221.

3
. Herbert J. Storing, ed.,
The Complete Anti-Federalist
(Chicago, 1981), 5: 84–85.

4
. Max M. Edling and Mark D. Kaplanoff, “Alexander Hamilton’s Fiscal Reform: Transforming the Structure of Taxation in the Early Republic,”
WMQ
, 61 (2004), 712–44.

5
. Leonard D. White,
The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History
(New York, 1948), 404n; GW, Plan of American Finance, c. Oct 1789, in Fitzpatrick, ed.,
Writings of Washington
, 30: 454.

6
. Bray Hammond,
Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War
(Princeton, 1957), 69.

7
. Hammond,
Banks and Politics
, 66.

8
. Hammond,
Banks and Politics,
126–27; Fisher Ames to AH, 31 July 1791, AH to William Seton, 25 Nov. 1791,
Papers of Hamilton
, 8: 590–91; 9: 538–39.

9
. Hammond,
Banks and Politics
, 126.

10
. Hammond,
Banks and Politics
, 188, 196, 189. On Hamilton’s vision, see Robert E. Wright,
The First Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the Birth of American Finance
(Chicago, 2005), 66–85.

11
. Cooke,
Hamilton
, 98.

12
. “A Citizen of the United States,”
Observations on the Agriculture, Manufactures and Commerce of the United States
(New York, 1789), 18–19. Although this pamphlet had long been attributed to Tench Coxe, his authoritative biographer, Jacob E. Cooke, says this is erroneous; he believes the author was a New Englander. Jacob E. Cooke,
Tench Coxe and the Early Republic
(Chapel Hill, 1978), 150n.

13
. GW, First Annual Message to Congress, 8 Jan. 1790,
Washington: Writings
, 750, 749.

14
. AH, Report on the Subject of Manufactures, 5 Dec. 1791,
Papers of Hamilton
, 10: 298.

15
. Edling and Kaplanoff, “Alexander Hamilton’s Fiscal Reform,” 740.

16
. John R. Nelson Jr.,
Liberty and Property: Political Economy and Policymaking in the New Nation, 1789–1812
(Baltimore, 1987), 37–48; John E. Crowley,
The Privileges of Independence: Neomercantilism and the American Revolution
(Baltimore, 1993), 146–55.

17
. Edling and Kaplanoff, “Alexander Hamilton’s Fiscal Reform,” 743–44.

18
. AH to GW, 15 Sept. 1790,
Papers of Hamilton
, 70: 50; GW to Henry Knox, 28 Feb. 1785, quoted in John Lauritz Larson, “‘Wisdom Enough to Improve Them’: Navigation Projects and the Rising American Empire,” in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds.,
Launching the ‘Extended Republic’: The Federalist Era
(Charlottesville, 1996), 235.

19
. AH,
Federalist
No. 35.

20
. James M. Banner Jr.,
To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789–1815
(New York, 1970), 57.

21
. Joyce Appleby,
Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s
(New York, 1984), 73; Perez Forbes, “An Election Sermon” (1795), in Charles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz, eds.,
American Political Writing During the Founding Era
(Indianapolis, 1983), 2: 993; Andrew Shankman,
Crucible of American Democracy: The Struggle to Fuse Egalitarianism and Capitalism in Jeffersonian Pennsylvania
(Lawrence, KS, 2004), 76.

22
. AH, New York Ratifying Convention, 25 June 1788,
Papers of Hamilton
, 5: 85; AH, “The Defence of the Funding System” (July 1795),
Papers of Hamilton
, 13: 349.

23
. Roger V. Gould, “Patron-Client Ties, State Centralization, and the Whiskey Rebellion,”
American Journal of Sociology
, 102 (1996), 401.

24
. AH, “Continentalist,” VI, 4 July 1782,
Papers of Hamilton
, 3: 105–6.

25
. White,
Federalists
, 117; Cooke,
Hamilton
, 73.

26
. Carl E. Prince,
The Federalists and the Origins of the U.S. Civil Service
(New York, 1977), 271.

27
. Andrew R. L. Cayton, “‘Separate Interests’ and the Nation-State: The Washington Administration and the Origins of Regionalism in the Trans-Appalachian West,”
JAH
, 79 (1992–1993), 50–51; Prince,
Origins of the Civil Service
, 269–70.

28
. GW to John Sullivan, 1 Sept. 1788, in Fitzpatrick, ed.
Writings of Washington
, 30: 86.

29
.
The Diary of William Maclay and Other Notes on Senate Debates
, ed. Kenneth R. Bowling and Helen E. Veit (Baltimore, 1988), 316, 200.

30
. GW to Edward Rutledge, 5 May 1789, in Washington:
Writings
, 735–36.

31
. Gould, “Patron-Client Ties,”
American Journal of Sociology
, 102 (1996), 400–429.

32
. Lisle A. Rose,
Prologue to Democracy: The Federalists in the South, 1789–1800
(Lexington, KY, 1968), 27.

33
. This Federalist use of patronage resembles but was very different from the later Jacksonian “Spoils system” that came to dominate political officeholding in mid-nineteenth-century America. Most of the Jacksonian officeholders were not socially visible and respectable men; indeed, most were precisely those sorts of ordinary middling men whom the Federalists had ignored. For the Jacksonians the criterion of appointment was not family, not social standing, not ability, not character, and not reputation, but connection to the Jacksonian Democratic Party. Nothing else was required. “The duties of all public offices,” said President Andrew Jackson in his first annual message, “are, or at least admit of being made, so plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance.” Political office was no longer to be a “species of property” belonging to prominent gentlemen simply because of their social rank or character. Jackson, First Annual Message, 8 Dec. 1829, in James D. Richardson, ed.,
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1897
(Washington, DC, 1900), 2: 449; Lynn Marshall, “The Strange Stillbirth of the Whig Party,”
AHR
, 72 (1972), 452.

34
. GW to Henry Lee, 31 Oct. 1786,
Washington: Writings
, 609.