Washington [461]
Before long the two factions took on revealing names. The Hamiltonian party called itself Federalists, implying that it alone supported the Constitution and national unity. It took a robust view of federal power and a strong executive branch, and it favored banks and manufacturing as well as agriculture. Elitist in its politics, it tended to doubt the wisdom of the common people, but it also included a large number of northerners opposed to slavery. The Jeffersonians called themselves Republicans to suggest that they alone could save the Constitution from monarchical encroachments. They believed in limited federal power, a dominant Congress, states’ rights, and an agrarian nation free of the corrupting influence of banks, federal debt, and manufacturing. While led by slaveholders such as Jefferson and Madison, the Republicans credited the wisdom of the common people. Washington and Hamilton believed wholeheartedly in an energetic federal government, whereas Jefferson and Madison feared concentrated power.
By 1792 Washington’s cabinet was split down the middle; Knox typically leaned toward Hamilton, and Randolph toward Jefferson. Washington never openly identified with the Federalists and steadfastly hewed to his nonpartisan self-image, though he sided more often with Hamilton and Knox. Jefferson never doubted Washington’s integrity or patriotism and could hardly claim that the man who had resigned his commission at the end of the war and rejected pleas to become a king harbored royal ambitions. So he ended up explaining Washington’s support for Hamilton’s policies by suggesting that the treasury secretary, a cunning master-mind, had duped the credulous president into supporting programs he did not fully comprehend.
ON DECEMBER 5, 1791, Hamilton aroused the darkest fears of his opponents when he submitted to Congress another major state paper, the Report on Manufactures . At a time when the country was overwhelmingly agricultural, Hamilton devised a visionary blueprint of ways that the federal government, through selective bounties and import duties, could galvanize manufacturing. He and Washington recalled how reliance on foreign manufactures had crippled America in wartime; the report was driven partly by the desire for strategic self-sufficiency. As an adjunct to this report, Hamilton fostered the growth of an organization, the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures (SEUM), to demonstrate the feasibility of American manufacturing. At the Great Falls of the Passaic River in New Jersey, the society planned to set up the town of Paterson as a model for American manufacturing.
Far from being Hamilton’s willing dupe, Washington understood his programs thoroughly. Though he knew America would remain agricultural, he wanted to augment its manufacturing capacity. Starting with his inauguration, he had delighted in wearing clothes of American manufacture to stimulate the textile industry. At Mount Vernon he refused to drink porter or eat cheese that was not produced in America. In his discarded first inaugural address, he had endorsed government action to open canals, improve roads, and stimulate internal improvements. It was Washington who encouraged Hamilton to assist the growth of cotton and hemp through government bounties. Though a planter, Washington was receptive to labor-saving gadgetry, even if it meant using female and child labor. In January 1790 he viewed the operation of a new threshing machine and came away enthusiastic. “Women or boys of 12 or 14 years of age are fully adequate to the management of the mill or threshing machine,” he wrote in his diary. “Upon the whole, it appears to be an easier, more expeditious, and much cleaner way of getting out grain than by the usual mode of threshing.”7 When he toured a Philadelphia cotton factory, one newspaper reported that the president “attentively viewed the machinery and saw the business performed in its different branches, which met with his warmest approbation.” 8 Congress failed to act on