History Review 1 - George Washington's Presidency

Judiciary Act of 1789

• Represented an artful compromise that balanced the concerns of Antifederalists and states’ right advocates with the concerns of nationalists who opposed leaving matters of national law up to state courts 

• A hierarchical national judiciary with 13 federal district courts

  • Supreme Court with final say 

Washington’s Cabinet

• First executive departments: Foreign affairs, Treasury, and War Department

• Department heads would now be closely bound to the president 

Alexander Hamilton - Financial Plan

• Hamilton had to deal with humongous debt from the Revolution

• The federal government should fund the debt by exchanging any old debts with government bonds

  • The federal government should assume the state’s debt

• Give the nation’s creditors a stake in the government

• Excise task on whiskey

  • Raise revenue for interest payments for the debt and establish the fact that the government could tax

• Creation of the Bank of the United States

  • Patterned off the Bank of England

  • Jointly owned by the federal government and investors

• Recommended that that government try to promote industry (Diversify from farmland) 

Thomas Jefferson

• Virginian and the leader of the Republican party 

• 1st Secretary of State

Federalists

• Supporters of Hamilton’s bank

• Favored a strong central government and mostly rich northerners (New England)

Republicans

• Identified with individual liberties

• Wanted to impose a British style system of economic privilege and societal expectations 

• Committed to Agrarian America (Mostly Southerners)

Whiskey Rebellion

• Armed rebellion in 1794 by farmers in Pennsylvania who attempted to prevent the collection of the excise tax on whiskey 

• Washington was very reluctant to arrest them and pardoned the two men guilty of treason

  • Possible test question 

French Revolution

• Federalists drew back  in horror of the violence going on

• Republicans thought that the French remained that standard-bearers of the cause of liberty for all people 

• Edmond Genet

  • Started aggressively attacking other nations, which made Washington nervous

  • Washington, under pressure from Hamilton, issued that the U.S. would be neutral towards foreign nations 

• For the first time, Washington received threats, this time from Democratic Republicans

  • Believed that democracy and republicanism were one and the same

Pinckney’s Treaty

• Also known as the Treaty of San Lorenzo 

• Spain accepts the American position on the 31st parallel as the northern boundary of Spanish Florida and granted American farmers free transit through the port of New Orleans with the right of renewal after three years 

Farewell Address

• Denunciation of partisanship

• Warnings about any permanent foreign alliances and cautioned that the Union itself would be endangered if parties continued to be characterized “by geographical discriminations"