America Past; D11; The New Government

[snatch of music] [George Washington Actor Voice] "My public avocations will not, at any rate, admit of more than a flying trip to Mount Vernon for a few days this summer. This, not suiting Mrs. Washington, I have taken a house in Germantown to avoid the heat of this city in the months of July and August." In one of Washington's many letters we find the line: I have taken a house in Germantown. But when he said a

house in Germantown, he meant this house: the Deshler-Morris house. Germantown is a few miles north of Philadelphia. In 1793, and in the summer 1794, Washington moved out here with his family; because there was yellow fever in Philadelphia. And he conducted of the affairs of government from this house. He had a study in this room. The typical 18th century desk, the quill pen, and apparently writing with one of these is a real skill, a real art. You have to dip it in here, get ink down in there and get an air bubble. So when you turn it up it just doesn't all gush right out on your paper. And you'n go about four or five lines of that before you have to re-dip. If you get too much ink, then there's sand in the little container and you sprinkle that along and it absorbs the extra ink. He might've had a taper jack, kind of a perpetual

candle that wound around, burned and keep pulling that thing up. And wouldn't have to change it as much as a regular candle. But what's he doin' out here? Last time we saw him he was at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Well, from there he went back to Mount Vernon and he will be there when he finds out that he's been elected president. The old government under the Articles, well it just died away the Constitution has been adopted. It's employees, all 70 of them, were unpaid. It had an army of 670 men, no navy and debts of, oh, 60 million dollars. The new government, under the Constitution, was to go into operation on March the 4th, 1789. On that day, most of the members of Congress hadn't even shown up yet. They were supposed to be in New York City, New York City is the first capitol.

By April the 1st, they're all there. But it just didn't seem right to start a new government out on April Fools Day. So they waited until the middle of April, sent word to Mt. Vernon to tell Washington that he had been elected president by the Electoral College, unanimously. He is the only president to get all of the votes from the electoral college. [triumphant music] For his trip from Mount Vernon was kind of one grand procession. People coming out to see him as the best-known man in America. When he shows up at the Hudson River, there's a special boat to take him across to the New York. And a 13-gun salute. One for each of the 13 states. [musket fire] He was sworn in at Broad and Wall Street in New York City, at the federal building. Later the Sub-Treasury was put there. The only real remains today would be a statue of Washington in front of the building.

He was sworn in on the porch of the federal building, at that spot. Now, what was Washington [clears throat] like? You hear about so much about him, you don't really take time to look at him a great deal, you just take it for granted. Clinton Rossiter, a political scientist, says that if you ask a Ph.D. at Harvard and a grade school child in Wichita, Kansas, who are the two greatest presidents, that they would both reply "Lincoln and Washington". Well, why? Washington did not, he was not a great intellect. Obviously he would not have done what he did if he hadn't been above average in intelligence, but he's not considered intellectually the equal of Alexander Hamilton or, or Thomas Jefferson. He doesn't have Jefferson's broad feel for humanity and Jefferson's philosophical insights either. What does he have? Well, his is a strength of character rather than intellect, you could trust him.

You just knew that he was going to do what he was supposed to do and what was right. No possibility of anything else. No one ever doubted his honesty or his motives. Maybe his decisions, but not his honesty or motives. And that's unusual for pol-politicians of any period really. During the revolution, the British were looking for generals to bribe and they 'course got Benedict Arnold. They couldn't find anybody to offer the bribe to Washington. It never occurred to anybody that he would accept such a thing, he simply was above that. And that's a key characteristic. [music stops] He also was a good judge of character in others. I mean, you can't make every decision yourself. You're going to have to trust others and you better surround yourself with people who are trustworthy. Some presidents have been personally honest. It's just that all their friends are crooks. Warren Harding once said "I don't worry about my enemies, it's my friends that cause me trouble!" Well, Washington knew how to surround himself with good people. He didn't care if they always agreed with him

he had Jefferson and Hamilton, who quarreled all the time, and he disagreed at times with them. Oh, he had his his critics, John Adams called him a 'muttonhead'. One writer said there were two fools in America, Franklin and Washington. Franklin was a fool by age, Washington was just a fool by nature. I suppose the thing that's done the greatest damage to his reputation has been some of the myths, because, you see, when people decided these myths weren't true, they just decided; well nothing about him is true. That's ridiculous. The myths, started by Parson Weems. Parson Weems decided that America needed a hero and he wrote an early biography of Washington. And it's there that you get the famous story of Washington chopping down the cherry tree with his little hatchet and "I cannot tell a lie". And Weems just made that up, I guess, I don't know, maybe he did chop down a cherry tree, but Weems popularised that story. Looked this

picture up, there you see the cherry tree and little George standing there. And look at his face. The body is that of a child. The face is the same thing as is on the dollar bill. This picture was very common [choir music] in the early, er 19th century; Washington ascending into heaven. We don't buy this sort of thing today. Angels welcoming a president into heaven. Once [music stops] you set these myths aside and get down to how Washington did in office, historians have decided that he deserves his reputation. But it was hard! You see, you didn't have a soul to copy. Most offices that you will ever hold, or positions you have, you look back and say, to the person "oh how did you do this?" Or what do you do in this situation, how do you handle yourself? He had no-one to look at. He couldn't hardly say "well, I'm going to be just like George III". That would not be designed to

make you popular. One of our recent presidents said that he read the biography of every president before he took office himself. Well, that sure did him a whole lot of good, but at least you had those people to study. Washington didn't, but he knew that others would copy him. And that worried him. What if I do something wrong? I'd better act this way otherwise people are gonna say, well, they're going to do it that way because I did. If you thought that every teenager in the United States for the next 200 years was going to pattern their behavior after yours, you might clean your act up a little bit. You might decide, well, I'd better set a good example. This worried Washington, they couldn't even decide what to call him! Some wanted to call him 'His Elected Majesty', couldn't get away from that idea of the King, or 'His Patriotic Majesty' or 'His Excellency'. Many governors were called His Excellency,

I believe the governor of Massachusetts still is, at least on paper. Someone suggested 'His Patriotic Highness and the Protector of Our Liberties'. Really awkward, inconvenient titles; they decide 'Mr. President' will do. The two terms of office is an example of a precedent set by Washington. The Constitution says you can be elected president, and re-elected and re-elected as often as people'll do it. Washington decided that two terms was enough. That if a person were around longer than that, people might get to looking upon him as a king, he would have too much power. So every president since Washington has limited himself to two terms. In some cases he didn't get the opportunity to serve the two terms or the people decided to limit him to one term. Until Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. And in 1940 there was a great clamor about that. Wash-, uh Roosevelt breaking this tradition. But it was not illegal, it was

just a tradition set by Washington. The business of having a cabinet, a president's cabinet, his advisors. The Constitution doesn't say you have to have a cabinet, but if you didn't have one today people would think you were trying to be a dictator. You want to be secretary of treasury and agri- culture and interior and state all in one person? No, we all have advisors. They all have advisors in the cabinet. That's a precedence set by Washington. Now he met with that cabinet, during the, his second administration, while he was living at this house. They met in the parlor downstairs. Now, Washington and his cabinet might recognize this house, probably would. Even this room, the street outside might be a different story. Trolley cars going up and down it, trucks. They would wonder what had happened to their relatively peaceful village. That cabinet, by the way,

had 4 people in it. You had Edmund Randolph, he was the attorney general, that means he was in charge of legal affairs. Henry Knox, fat and jolly Henry Knox, had been commander of artillery in the revolution. He was the secretary of war. Thomas Jefferson was secretary of state. Means he was charge of foreign affairs and the secretary of the treasury was Alexander Hamilton. [clears throat] The big conflicts would come between Hamilton and Jefferson. They will have different philosophies about most major issues. Now, the major issue right off the top, was financial. That means it was Hamilton's responsibility. Hamilton's great contribution to America is getting the United States established on a firm financial basis. They had several ideas in mind as to how to do this.

First of all, he was going to pay the national debt. If we didn't pay that, in Hamilton's mind, nobody would ever loan us money again. You would never buy a bond from the government, a government bond, if you thought they might just decide not to pay it off. That's a sign of a stable government, that it can pay its debts. So he decides to pay it off, not much argument about that. The question w- concerned you'd paid off with good, new money, or with the old, worthless money? You have a $20 bond. You expect the government to pay you that back with interest. But the money now that was worth, that was not very good money that you bought it with, it's worth, say, $5 in good money. Do I give you 5 good dollars? Or 20? You only paid 20 worthless ones, that's equal to 5. I'll just give you the 5, you come out even. But if you own the bond: No! It says on here $20, I want $20.

And Hamilton maintained it had to be paid off, the debt had to be paid off at full value. I'm not going to go out buying bonds if it says $20 and you'n just come up and say "I'll decide I give you $7.95 instead. Y'don't establish credit that way, it had to be paid at full value. Plus, there was a problem that some people didn't think that they would ever be paid, and then sold their bonds. You got a bunch of those things there, and I come out to you and I say "Hey you waited 10 years for this. You haven't been paid, I'll give you $10 for that. Say "OK, stupid. Give it to me." So, I give you 10, I take your bond. And I'll buy yours and yours and yours and yours. You think you've really taken me. Uh-uh. Along comes Hamilton and the government, and they pay those bonds off at full value. I get 20 good dollars for each one of those and I've only paid 10. But many people made some money on this deal. And Hamilton was accused of cooking up a scheme to benefit the

wealthy. Well in effect it did. But you can build a pretty good argument that it also benefited the whole country by establishing our credit. Hamilton definitely, in his heart, favored the upper classes, there's no doubt. He wanted them to be in debt to the government. He wanted the government to owe them money. That way they'll make sure that the government stays around. If it owes you a lot of money, you want to keep it going. You don't want it to suddenly collapse and you won't get paid. So paying off the national debt and paying it at full value, is the first part of Hamilton's plan. But he also wanted to pay the state's debts for them. Many of the individual states had gone into debt to fight the revolution. They fought it for the common good, therefore the national government should pay their debts for them. Does that sound alright to you? Sure, if you have a debt, we're going to tax all of you. And we're going to just pay the debts of people who owe money.

Well, if you owe money that sounds good if you don't owe money you say "No! I paid my debt, why should I help pay somebody else's?" So some states, mainly the date-, states in the south, objected to this. Finally, the scheme goes through because Jefferson was able to talk Hamilton into a deal, whereby they said "If the South supports this, then we'll put the capitol in the south. So the new capitol was located between Virginia and Maryland, as a result of the South going along with this idea of the national government paying for debt,. Now, if we're going to pay the debts, we're going to need money. That had been a chronic problem under the Articles of Confederation; they couldn't tax. The new government can tax, so we're going to use that power, and we're going to get some money. Well, what do you want to tax? You want to tax something people use a lot of,

but that they don't absolutely have to have. You don't want to look like a tyrant by taxing baby's milk or something for example, milk for babies. Well, Hamilton decides to put a tax on whiskey. Farmers in the West were turning their corn into corn liquor, and they were using that liquor to pay bills with, they used it like money. Hamilton decides to tax it and they object. They do more than object, they really get lathered up about it. [sounds of battle, musket fire and shouting] They have a rebellion called The Whiskey Rebellion.. Men, called the whiskey boys, led by Tom the Tinkers' rebellion. Hamilton sees it as a major threat. Are we, or are we not, going to use our new power to tax? If we are, we'd better put down this rebellion and show we intend to run this country. He convinces Washington of this. They send 15,000 men out in the

western Pennsylvania to crush the Whiskey Rebellion, which is a little like using the proverbial sledgehammer on a gnat. The Whiskey Rebellion just kind of evaporated. But it is important, because it shows that the federal government intended to use its new power to tax. OK, we paid the national debt. We paid the state debts. We've got taxes. Incidentally, that kind of tax is called an excise tax and an excise tax is a tax on goods made and sold inside the country. What do you call a tax on goods coming in from outside? Well that's a tariff, Hamilton favored that, too. He wanted a high tariff, so high that you wouldn't buy those foreign goods and be forced to buy American products. He doesn't get that he gets a low tariff but he doesn't get a- there's not really a high tariff until oh, 1816, um,

when you get the government going into that. Now, Hamilton also favored establishing a United States bank. Remember again, under the articles, that all of the states could each, they could each issue their own money. The national government issued money. We want to clear up that mess. We want to regulate the value of money. So he believes there should be a United States bank that does that. Now, the government would own stock, about 20 percent of the stock, in this bank. The rest would be owned by private individuals. So it's a private bank, but the government would keep its money in it. This means it's going to be a pretty profitable bank. You ought to buy some shares in it, as many of the wealthy did. This bank will regulate money and it will issue money; and it will clear up part of the problems from the articles. Well Jefferson didn't buy this idea of a bank at all. He claimed that it was

unconstitutional, that there was nothing in the Constitution that said that the government had the power to establish a bank. Now what you have here really, are two different ways of viewing the Constitution. One method, and the method that Jefferson favored, was called strict construction. Construction here means interpretation, Strict Construction. And according to that idea, the government cannot do anything unless the Constitution specifically says that it can't. The Constitution lists the powers of the government. Called the numerated powers, listed powers. They're just listed there, it can do this, it can raise an army, it can establish post offices and post roads, etc. There is nothing there that says it can establish a bank. So Jefferson said "you can't do it, it isn't listed there." Now, Hamilton took what is called a loose or a broad construction. Loose or

broad in- construction interpretation. And according to his thinking, the government can do anything unless the Constitution actually says it can't. It doesn't have to be listed there saying you can do it, as long as it doesn't - just so it doesn't say you can't do it. That would give the national government a great deal more power. I mean, how would you like to go out at night under a strict construction? You're going to go out for the evening and you can't do anything unless your parents actually tell you, you may do it. Or would you prefer to go out with a broad construction, in which you can do anything unless your parents actually tell you you cannot do it? Now, unless your parents have a very fertile imagination, they can't start to think of the things you might be up to. And if they do think of them, they don't want to think of them concerning their own child. So one is going to give you a great deal more freedom, and a broad construction would give the national

government a great deal more power. The part of the Constitution they liked was what is called 'the elastic clause'. The elastic clause allows you to stretch the Constitution. It says that the national government may pass any laws that are necessary and proper to carry out its powers. [vehicle passing] Any laws that are necessary and proper to carry out its powers. So the power of the Constitution gives the government the power to raise an army. That also gives you the power to draft men into it. They say that's implied even though it isn't said, that. Doesn't say that. The national government has the power to regulate money, so Hamilton said "Well, it's implied. It's necessary and proper to create the bank, so we'll do it." Jefferson didn't agree with that, but when he became president, he didn't do anything against the bank either. Washington will have some success in the west. He will have a successful treaty with the Indians of the Northwest

He did want to show the Westerner that he could do something besides tax them. So he sends Mad Anthony Wayne out there and they defeat the Indians in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, and negotiate one of a string of treaties with them. And foreign affairs, that's going to be a problem for a long time. The major problem in foreign affairs will grow out of the French Revolution. [French National Anthem] The French Revolution started the very year that Washington took office, 1789. Most Americans supported it. They were overthrowing their king, we had overthrown ours, they were fighting for freedom we had. Lafayette had come over there and helped us, the French had helped us. We liked Lafayette, even named his son George Washington Lafayette. We should go help them, some people were all for ?parading? around and helping them. Jefferson called the revolution 'the most sacred cause ever engaged in by man'. But the revolution got France involved in a war with England and with Austria.

And we begin to wonder, are we strong enough to get into a war helping France against these people? We didn't have to, we didn't have any treaty obligations to do that, unless they came over to the West Indies, then we were supposed to help France. So Washington decides that the safest thing is to issue a proclamation of neutrality. We were just too weak to get involved. We would stay out of it. It's one of the few times that both Hamilton and Jefferson agreed on something. So he issues a proclamation of neutrality to try to avoid this war. Some Frenchmen weren't all too pleased about that. They sent an agent over here, Citizen Genêt. If you're in the French Revolution they call each other citizen like the Russians did with comrade. Well, Edmond Genêt came over here to try to get Americans to play a bigger part, to arm ships and take them out to raid British shipping, for example. Or even raise what he called a revolutionary army of

America. He had the notion that most American people wanted in the war, and that Washington was keeping them out. And he went around, doing what we would call badmouthing the President. Sold little wooden models of the guillotine, with Washington's head in it, of all things. Quite a mob will gather in Philadelphia, uh demanding that Washington get involved in this war. He resisted all this. Some say that the poem by Kipling, 'If', where he said if you can keep your head all the while all those about you are losing theirs, that Washington's action in this case inspired that poem, because he resisted the temptation. Eventually, the French want Genêt back because the government has changed again and they have plans for him. He comes begging to stay. Washington lets him stay and he settles down and lives a genteel life over here, married the daughter of the governor of New York as a matter of fact.

Well, Washington has some more dealings to do with England and with Spain before his administration is over. But, by and large, things have gone pretty well. The debt is paid. The states debt is paid. The currency seems straightened out. Temporarily the northwest is cleared of the Indian problem, and at least for a while we're staying out of the war with France. Well, that problem continues to nag us, and we'll look at further foreign developments later.