The Glenn Beck Program - Inside the First Presidency： Power, Fear, and the Bill of Rights ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 9

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00:00:30.000 George Washington sits alone in Mount Vernon.

00:00:38.940 He's staring into a misty morning, relishing the quiet.

00:00:43.340 Outside, the Potomac River rolls quietly past,

00:00:46.260 indifferent to the weight settling on Washington's shoulders.

00:00:50.080 It's 1788, and he is, at least for the moment,

00:00:53.960 a private man once again.

00:00:56.180 A soldier in retirement, a farmer,

00:00:58.100 A man who's already given everything he had to a country that just keeps asking for more.

00:01:04.640 And today, it's asking again.

00:01:08.400 Letters pile up on his desk like insistent knocks.

00:01:11.860 Friends, colleagues, respected officers from war, statesmen from every corner of the young

00:01:17.360 republic, and all of them are saying the same thing.

00:01:20.320 This fragile new experiment in self-government requires the best leadership.

00:01:25.380 You must be the president.

00:01:28.100 A heartfelt appeal arrives from France, written in the unmistakable hand of the Marquis de Lafayette, one of Washington's officers and good friends during the Revolution.

00:01:39.440 Washington reads it more than once, maybe because it says what no one else dares to say.

00:01:45.880 I beg you, my dear General, do not refuse the responsibility of the presidency during the first few years.

00:01:53.900 You alone can make this political machine operate successfully.

00:01:59.100 Washington exhales slowly. Responsibility. Expectation. Fear. Though he would never call

00:02:07.760 it that. The public must not think he wants the office. He can't seem ambitious, hungry for power,

00:02:15.520 king-like. He's against a king. The new constitution is barely ratified, the ink hardly dry.

00:02:23.560 Americans are anxious, suspicious, terrified of any single man becoming too powerful,

00:02:29.300 and Washington feels every bit of that weight. The pressure campaign is relentless on him. No

00:02:37.000 one is more insistent than Alexander Hamilton, Washington's former aide during the Revolutionary

00:02:42.200 War, now one of the most capable and ambitious political minds in America. Hamilton is very

00:02:49.040 aware that Washington and his administration would create opportunities, namely a very important

00:02:55.520 opportunity for himself. In August 1788, he writes, You will permit me to say that it is

00:03:01.680 indispensable you should lend yourself to the new government's first operations. It is to little

00:03:07.140 purpose to have introduced a system if the weightiest influence is not given to its firm

00:03:12.260 establishment in the outset. It was flattering, but the quiet life of Mount Vernon held a lot

00:03:17.920 more appeal to Washington. As he replied, on the delicate subject with which you conclude your

00:03:24.460 letter, I can say nothing. For you know me well enough, my good sir, to be persuaded that I am

00:03:32.420 not guilty of affectation when I tell you it is my great and sole desire to live and die in peace

00:03:42.140 and retirement on my own farm.

00:03:45.460 James Madison, Washington's quiet, brilliant,

00:03:48.420 somewhat bookish neighbor from Virginia, adds his voice.

00:03:52.520 He warns that if Washington refuses the whole project,

00:03:55.640 the Constitution, the new government,

00:03:57.260 everything they built, everything they fought for,

00:04:00.440 could fail before it even begins.

00:04:03.280 And Washington admits to Madison.

00:04:05.260 To be shipwrecked in sight of the port

00:04:07.940 would be the severest of all possible aggravations

00:04:11.640 to our misery. So, Washington sits, holding these letters, knowing that if he accepts the

00:04:19.720 presidency, he's stepping into a storm no one has ever faced before. A government with no road map,

00:04:26.160 a people on the alert for signs of a monarchy, a world waiting to pounce on failure.

00:04:32.400 he looks out over his farm

00:04:38.360 it's the place he loves more than any battlefield

00:04:41.360 any council chamber

00:04:42.860 any capital city

00:04:44.060 and he understands

00:04:45.860 if he says yes

00:04:48.140 his life will once again

00:04:49.980 no longer be his own

00:04:51.280 Washington closes his eyes

00:04:54.180 and in that moment

00:04:55.860 he knows

00:04:57.420 he's under no illusion

00:04:59.800 about how difficult it will be

00:05:01.760 I should consider myself as entering upon an unexplored field, enveloped on every side with clouds and darkness.

00:05:11.920 America is about to choose its first president.

00:05:16.180 But before the election, before the inauguration, before the fireworks, the parades, the prayers, there is this moment.

00:05:24.020 One man, alone at his desk, accustomed to wrestling with difficult decisions,

00:05:30.720 now faced with one of the hardest choices of his life.

00:05:37.360 This is the American story, The Beginnings,

00:05:41.620 adapted from the book of the same title by David Barton and Tim Barton.

00:05:46.180 Episode 9, Inside the First Presidency, Power, Fear, and the Bill of Rights.

00:05:57.880 It's hard for Americans today to imagine just how fragile things felt in 1788.

00:06:03.500 The new Constitution had been ratified, barely.

00:06:06.960 But the fear of monarchy still hovered like a shadow over every conversation about the presidency.

00:06:13.260 Americans had just fought a brutal war to escape the rule of a king.

00:06:16.460 They didn't want to accidentally create a new one.

00:06:19.840 That fear shaped how people viewed George Washington.

00:06:22.840 His reputation towered over everyone else's.

00:06:26.360 But surprisingly, one of his greatest political advantages was something deeply personal.

00:06:31.680 He had no children of his own.

00:06:34.120 In a world where hereditary power was the norm, and in an environment terrified of that power,

00:06:41.040 a leader with no heir seemed safer.

00:06:45.620 John Adams put it bluntly.

00:06:47.240 If General Washington had a daughter, 0.94

00:06:49.580 I firmly believe she would be demanded in marriage

00:06:52.300 by one of the royal families of France or England,

00:06:55.660 perhaps by both.

00:06:57.340 Or if he had a son,

00:06:59.460 he would be invited to come according to Europe.

00:07:02.460 For the very first presidential election in U.S. history,

00:07:06.320 things worked a little differently.

00:07:09.080 States either held popular votes to pick electors or, in many cases, state legislators appointed electors directly.

00:07:16.100 Then each elector cast two ballots, one for president, one for vice president.

00:07:20.340 There were no campaigns, no debates, no rallies.

00:07:24.900 And yet, when the electors voted on February 1789, George Washington received all 69 votes.

00:07:33.780 John Adams won vice presidency.

00:07:36.620 Behind the scenes, Alexander Hamilton had quietly pressured many northern electors not to vote for Adams.

00:07:43.200 Hamilton feared that a closer margin might embarrass George Washington,

00:07:47.200 or even worse, create confusion about who should lead the new government.

00:07:51.360 Hamilton was playing a political game while claiming not to be playing a political game,

00:07:56.140 a theme that would recur often with him.

00:07:59.940 When the new Congress assembled in April in New York City, they set salaries.

00:08:04.740 $25,000 a year for the president and $5,000 a year for the vice president.

00:08:10.860 Washington didn't want a salary.

00:08:13.200 He had refused pay as the general of the Continental Army, but this time he couldn't avoid it.

00:08:19.120 He was land rich, but cash poor.

00:08:22.260 Years of crop failures at Mount Vernon combined with a bad national economy

00:08:26.380 and his inability to sell Western land holdings left him short on money.

00:08:30.360 He actually had to take out a loan to travel to his own inauguration.

00:08:35.400 On April 16th, 1789, Washington stepped into his carriage and left Mount Vernon.

00:08:42.520 He wrote,

00:08:43.200 About ten o'clock I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life and to domestic felicity,

00:08:51.880 and, with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations than I have words to express,

00:09:00.360 Set out for New York with the best dispositions to render service to my country in obedience to its call

00:09:09.360 But with less hope of answering its expectations

00:09:13.440 He was already a national celebrity, but his journey north turned into a full-blown spectacle

00:09:19.860 Town after town erupted in spontaneous celebrations as he passed through in Philadelphia

00:09:25.640 citizens presented him with a white horse so he could make a dramatic entrance into the city

00:09:30.520 in trenton new jersey a massive floral arch stretched across the road with a banner honoring

00:09:35.960 him 13 young girls dressed in white scattered flower petals in his path by the time he reached

00:09:42.680 new york city the city was overflowing with people washington could barely move through the crowds

00:09:47.720 pressing in from every direction outside the three-story mansion that congress rented for him

00:09:53.800 on Cherry Street. The Constitution said nothing about delivering an inaugural address,

00:10:00.020 but Washington established this tradition. His draft, written in collaboration with an aide,

00:10:05.540 was absurdly long and full of policy proposals. Washington sent it to James Madison, now a member

00:10:12.160 of the House of Representatives, who tactfully advised him to ditch it. Beside being too long,

00:10:18.080 Madison thought the policy proposals would be stepping on the toes of Congress.

00:10:22.380 Madison then wrote a much, much shorter, tighter version.

00:10:26.740 He also wrote Congress's official reply, as well as Washington's response to Congress.

00:10:32.740 Madison was apparently concerned about Washington crossing separation of power boundaries,

00:10:38.140 while having absolutely no qualms about crossing them himself.

00:10:41.800 At that time, New York's City Hall had been remodeled into Federal Hall by a French engineer.

00:10:48.260 The House of Representatives met on the first floor in a room with a public gallery.

00:10:52.900 The Senate met on the second floor behind closed doors.

00:10:56.120 Secret sessions, no press, no public.

00:10:58.560 In fact, the Senate's first hire was a doorkeeper

00:11:01.460 whose job was to keep members of the public and the House of Representatives out of the room.

00:11:07.340 Washington privately disliked the secrecy, but he never publicly condemned it.

00:11:11.980 The Senate didn't open its doors to the public until 1794.

00:11:15.780 And then on April 30th, the official procession formed outside of Washington's residence and

00:11:22.080 he entered Federal Hall. He walked to the Senate chamber, vowed to both houses of Congress and

00:11:27.900 took his seat. Then John Adams rose and proclaimed, Sir, the Senate and House of Representatives are

00:11:34.920 ready to attend you to take the oath required by the Constitution. Washington then replied,

00:11:40.640 I am ready to proceed.

00:11:43.420 He stepped onto the balcony overlooking Wall Street.

00:11:46.640 Thousands packed the streets and surrounding rooftops.

00:11:50.380 For the president's swearing in, the Constitution required only the oath of office.

00:11:55.100 But that morning, a congressional committee decided that Washington should lay his hand on a Bible as he took the oath.

00:12:01.660 That was the frantic last-minute search for a suitable Bible.

00:12:06.160 A local Masonic lodge came up with a large, leather-bound Bible.

00:12:10.640 it was placed on a table draped in red cloth.

00:12:13.600 The same Bible would later be used

00:12:15.380 for the inauguration of Presidents Harding, Eisenhower,

00:12:17.940 Carter, and George H.W. Bush.

00:12:20.960 The New York Chancellor, Robert Livingston,

00:12:23.200 administered the oath.

00:12:24.880 At the conclusion, Washington picked up the Bible

00:12:27.040 and kissed it.

00:12:28.240 Then Livingston turned to the crowd and shouted,

00:12:30.780 It is done.

00:12:32.240 Long live George Washington,

00:12:34.080 President of the United States.

00:12:36.980 The crowd roared.

00:12:39.140 Returning to the Senate chamber,

00:12:40.420 Washington delivered his inaugural address. He was visibly nervous.

00:12:44.740 Congressman Fisher Ames of Massachusetts described the scene.

00:12:47.780 His aspect grave, almost to sadness, his modesty actually shaking,

00:12:54.340 his voice deep, a little tremulous, and so low as to call for close attention.

00:13:00.940 Early in his address, Washington said,

00:13:03.560 No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand,

00:13:08.740 which conducts the affairs of men

00:13:11.380 more than the people of the United States.

00:13:15.720 When the address concluded,

00:13:17.140 a grand procession escorted Washington up Broadway

00:13:20.220 to St. Paul's Chapel for a prayer service.

00:13:23.780 That evening, New York erupted with celebrations and fireworks.

00:13:28.120 The inaugural ball was delayed several weeks

00:13:30.120 until Martha Washington arrived. 0.81

00:13:32.220 When Martha finally did arrive,

00:13:34.100 the city quickly embraced her.

00:13:35.900 Abigail Adams admired her warmth and dignity

00:13:38.600 But Martha soon lamented that future First Families would come to know life in a fishbowl.

00:13:45.880 She wrote,

00:14:08.600 In the Senate, an early debate erupted.

00:14:14.180 What should the president officially be called?

00:14:17.060 John Adams, ever drawn to formality, preferred something grand.

00:14:21.880 The Senate proposed, quote,

00:14:23.400 James Madison urged a little more restraint.

00:14:32.060 The more simple, the more Republican we are in our manners,

00:14:36.060 the more national dignity we shall acquire.

00:14:39.320 Fortunately, the House recommended and the Senate finally settled on just the President of the United States.

00:14:46.200 Washington began working tirelessly to establish the new executive departments.

00:14:50.780 No patronage, no backroom dealing, and he refused to appoint anyone who had openly opposed the Constitution.

00:14:58.060 That summer, Congress created three departments, State, War, and Treasury.

00:15:03.240 The Constitution says nothing about a presidential cabinet.

00:15:07.020 Washington invented it.

00:15:08.800 Thomas Jefferson became the Secretary of State,

00:15:11.060 Henry Knox, the Secretary of War,

00:15:12.960 and Alexander Hamilton was the Secretary of Treasury.

00:15:17.060 Though the Senate confirmed Washington's picks,

00:15:20.000 not everybody celebrated Hamilton's new influence.

00:15:23.680 An anonymous critic wrote Washington,

00:15:26.020 Beware of the artful designs and machinations of your late aide-de-camp, Alexander Hamilton,

00:15:31.580 who, like Judas Iscariot, would, for the gratification of his boundless ambition, betray his lord and master.

00:15:42.120 This uneasy tension between Washington's trust in Hamilton and the country's suspicion of him

00:15:47.960 would eventually explode into one of the greatest political battles in American history.

00:15:53.900 When an unexpected pregnancy happens, the focus is almost always on the mother and the dads.

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00:16:13.100 That's exactly how John felt. John wrote to me and he said, me, dad, that didn't even feel possible.

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00:17:10.180 Near the Jefferson Memorial in Washington today,

00:17:14.060 tucked away from the crowds beneath the curved trellis

00:17:16.940 is a life-size bronze figure

00:17:18.880 of a man unfamiliar to most Americans,

00:17:22.420 George Mason.

00:17:23.900 His statue sits on a bench.

00:17:26.440 Legs crossed, looking contemplative, almost lonely.

00:17:31.000 His position slightly off to the side of the national spotlight.

00:17:34.820 Man, it's fitting.

00:17:36.100 Mason is the founding father who doesn't get many headlines in our history books.

00:17:40.300 But without his influence, we might not have the Bill of Rights.

00:17:45.220 Etched beside Mason's statue is one of his quotes.

00:17:48.740 I recommend it to my sons never to let the motives of private interest or ambition to induce them to betray.

00:17:56.440 nor the terrors of poverty and disgrace or the fear of danger or of death deter them from

00:18:02.920 asserting the liberty of their country and endeavoring to transmit to their posterity

00:18:07.760 those sacred rights to which themselves were born. Mason had been obsessed with individual rights

00:18:15.720 long before independence. In 1776, he wrote most of the Virginia Declaration of Rights,

00:18:21.740 which later became a blueprint for several key protections in the U.S. Bill of Rights.

00:18:26.860 But in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention, when the time came to sign the new Constitution,

00:18:32.940 Mason refused. His objection was simple and unwavering. There was no Bill of Rights.

00:18:41.820 Mason's vision eventually fell to someone who, ironically, had been skeptical of the

00:18:46.700 idea at first. James Madison. Madison, reserved, cerebral, chronically frail, but stubbornly

00:18:55.740 determined, found himself in an unusual position. As a Virginian, as a Washington trusted ally,

00:19:02.780 and as one of the principal architects of the Constitution, he had to navigate political

00:19:08.060 currents that shifted daily. Early on, Madison thought of the Bill of Rights as unnecessary

00:19:14.540 because, as he argued, the federal government could only exercise powers the Constitution

00:19:19.580 explicitly granted. How quaint. But in 1788, while running for a seat in the first U.S. House

00:19:26.420 of Representatives, Madison encountered a political reality. Many voters, especially

00:19:32.460 anti-federalists, were furious that the Constitution had no Bill of Rights. Madison realized that if

00:19:38.460 he wanted the public to trust the new government, compromise was essential. Even if he believed a

00:19:43.680 of Rights was unnecessary, he came to see that it was politically necessary to gain

00:19:48.240 wider support for the new Constitution. Once elected to Congress, Madison made the Bill of

00:19:54.480 Rights his top priority. In June 1789, he stood before the House and delivered a landmark speech

00:20:02.880 proposing 20 amendments. Madison drew heavily from George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights,

00:20:09.200 but Congress seemed uninterested. Members were preoccupied with setting up a functioning

00:20:15.580 government, establishing the revenue system, and organizing the executive departments.

00:20:20.480 The amendments kind of felt secondary, but Madison refused to let it all go.

00:20:26.860 He hounded colleagues relentlessly, pulled them aside in the hallways, pressed them after sessions,

00:20:31.860 and then sent them copies of his proposals. He asked President Washington to support the

00:20:37.460 amendments, knowing Washington's approval carried enormous weight. Washington then wrote a letter

00:20:44.320 endorsing them, which helped soften congressional resistance. Gradually, momentum began to build.

00:20:50.860 A month later, Madison gave another speech to push the amendments forward. This time,

00:20:56.200 the House formed a select committee, one member from each state, to review and refine the proposals.

00:21:02.560 After the debate, the committee approved the draft containing 17 amendments.

00:21:07.340 They were sent to the Senate, which revised them and reduced them to the number of 12.

00:21:12.500 Then, on September 25, 1789, Congress approved all 12 amendments and sent them to the states for ratification.

00:21:20.900 Only 10 were ratified, what we now know as the Bill of Rights.

00:21:25.920 though formal ratification didn't occur until december 1791 the passage of the amendments

00:21:34.380 was enough to convince the last holdouts north carolina and rhode island to finally ratify the

00:21:39.720 constitution and join the new nation the bill of rights itself is short but monumental because it

00:21:47.340 sets constitutional boundaries that leaders are not permitted to cross it would have been actually

00:21:53.040 more accurate to call it the Bill of Limits, since it places direct restraints on federal

00:21:58.680 authority. The First Amendment protects what are known as the five freedoms, religion, speech,

00:22:05.300 press, peaceful assembly, and to petition the government. Now, over the past century,

00:22:11.320 no clause has been more misinterpreted than the First Amendment's Establishment Clause,

00:22:16.220 which declares, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

00:22:21.940 or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

00:22:25.920 As a young man traveling through Culpeper County, Virginia,

00:22:29.260 James Madison passed a jail where several Baptist preachers were imprisoned.

00:22:34.320 Their crime? Preaching without a license and publishing their views.

00:22:39.640 Virginia's state-sanctioned Anglican Church had them prosecuted.

00:22:44.700 Madison never forgot the injustice.

00:22:46.400 It left a permanent mark on his understanding of liberty

00:22:50.000 and his suspicion of government power over conscience.

00:22:54.500 This memory shaped his drafting of the First Amendment.

00:22:59.520 The Establishment Clause is straightforward and very clear,

00:23:03.800 but in legal circles it has become muddled by the phrase

00:23:06.700 that appears nowhere in the Constitution or Bill of Rights,

00:23:10.460 separation of church and state.

00:23:13.740 Now that phrase, that came from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson

00:23:16.720 after he became president in 1801.

00:23:19.360 Modern courts have leaned heavily on that phrase,

00:23:22.360 but Jefferson didn't mean it in the way too many Americans now assume.

00:23:26.620 Jefferson's record was unmistakably pro-religious liberty.

00:23:31.380 He wrote Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom,

00:23:34.180 a broad protection against compelled belief and state imposition of religion.

00:23:39.540 His views made him very popular with Baptist congregations around the country

00:23:43.720 who saw him as a defender of minority faiths.

00:23:46.160 faiths. In 1801, a group of pastors from Danbury, Connecticut wrote Jefferson expressing concern

00:23:52.480 that religious liberty existed only as a favor granted by the state, not as a natural right.

00:23:58.780 Jefferson replied with a reassuring letter. Believing with you that religion is a matter

00:24:03.460 which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or

00:24:08.700 his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only and not opinions,

00:24:13.840 I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that

00:24:19.620 their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the

00:24:25.380 free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.

00:24:31.300 Jefferson's wall was not meant to prevent religious expression in public life. It was

00:24:36.760 meant to reinforce the founders' understanding of two important religious clauses in the First

00:24:42.680 Amendment. First, that the federal government may not create an official state church. Second,

00:24:49.800 the government may not restrict religious beliefs and expression. What gets lost in the separation

00:24:56.400 of church and state rhetoric is that Jefferson had no role in drafting the First Amendment.

00:25:01.920 He was in Paris at the time, serving as the U.S. minister to France. Jefferson's own conduct as

00:25:07.460 president, proved he did not believe the public square should be secularized. Two days after

00:25:13.120 writing that letter, Jefferson attended church services held inside the U.S. Capitol. In fact,

00:25:19.240 he attended there almost every week during his presidency and even had a reserve seat.

00:25:25.240 When asked why, he wrote,

00:25:27.020 No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion, nor can be. The Christian 0.52

00:25:33.320 religion is the best religion that has been given to man, and I, as chief magistrate of this nation,

00:25:39.140 am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Under Jefferson, Sunday church services were also

00:25:46.480 held at the War Department, the Treasury Department, government buildings under his

00:25:51.320 direct control as part of the executive branch. Clearly, he did not consider this unconstitutional.

00:25:58.440 He went even further. As president, Jefferson authored the original plan for public education

00:26:05.020 in Washington, D.C., and his chosen primary reading text? The Bible, hymnal. He also signed

00:26:14.080 federal acts supporting Christian education among Native American tribes. None of this,

00:26:19.440 in Jefferson's mind, violated the First Amendment. Jefferson and Madison's views were not hostile to

00:26:25.860 religion. They were hostile to state-mandated religion. Just as the Bill of Rights became the

00:26:33.620 law of the land, another drama unfolded inside President Washington's administration,

00:26:39.240 one that would erupt into the fiercest political rivalry of the era. Two men placed in the same

00:26:46.040 cabinet, both brilliant, both indispensable, yet absolutely incapable of agreeing on anything.

00:26:52.680 The coming clash not only shaped the early republic, but defined the American political landscape for the next two centuries.

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00:29:07.000 alexander hamilton's improbable life story unfolded like a dickens novel he was born out

00:29:15.860 of wedlock in the caribbean on the island of nevis his father abandoned the family his mother died

00:29:21.460 when he was about 12 he then worked as a clerk in the virgin islands keeping books for a shipping

00:29:27.080 company when he was 17 he wrote an eloquent letter describing his experience surviving a

00:29:32.860 hurricane that was published in the local newspaper. Noting his talent, benefactors

00:29:37.700 raised money to send him to the mainland for an education. There he went to King's College in

00:29:42.760 New York City, which later became Columbia University. From there, Hamilton rose with

00:29:48.020 the force of a man who realized early that genius alone was not enough. Ambition had to do the rest.

00:29:56.080 He joined the Patriot cause. He became George Washington's indispensable aide-de-camp in the

00:30:01.420 army. He married into the wealthy Schuyler family, and by 1789, when Washington became

00:30:09.040 president, Hamilton was 34. He was intelligent, intense, and completely certain he understood

00:30:15.960 the economic blueprint that America needed. That certainty energized some people. It scared the

00:30:24.140 rest of them. In one of the starkest differences between Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson appeared

00:30:29.060 immediately in how they responded to Washington's appointments. Hamilton, named Secretary of the

00:30:34.840 Treasury, accepted instantly and plunged into work before the ink was even dry in his commission.

00:30:40.660 He saw the moment, the birth of a new national government as a rare window into dramatic action

00:30:46.420 that could shape the country permanently. His instinct was urgency. Jefferson, meanwhile,

00:30:53.280 was on his way home from Paris, where he had spent the last five years as the minister to France.

00:30:58.100 By the time he reached Virginia and learned that Washington had appointed him Secretary of State, two months had already passed.

00:31:08.300 Jefferson hesitated about taking the job.

00:31:11.240 Washington and James Madison urged him to accept, and Jefferson finally agreed, but he didn't arrive in New York until late March 1790.

00:31:20.780 From the first cabinet meeting forward, Hamilton and Jefferson seemed destined to collide.

00:31:26.040 Hamilton championed commercial growth, manufacturing, banking, and finance.

00:31:30.000 His aim was a strong national government that could stand shoulder to shoulder with global powers.

00:31:35.760 Jefferson championed the small farms, liberty, minimal government, an America rooted in local self-rule.

00:31:43.920 They represented two very different visions of what the United States should become.

00:31:49.040 Jefferson once summarized the balance that he wanted between national and state power in a letter to Madison.

00:31:54.080 To make us one nation as to foreign concerns and keep us distinct in domestic ones

00:31:59.220 gives the outline of the proper division of powers between the general and particular governments.

00:32:05.020 Hamilton got right to work designing a powerful treasury department.

00:32:08.820 He hired 39 employees, making treasury the largest department in the new federal government.

00:32:14.340 And he understood something crucial.

00:32:16.720 Controlling customs officials, the people who collect the tariffs at America's ports,

00:32:21.160 meant controlling the revenue stream that made government possible.

00:32:26.400 Influence would accumulate quickly.

00:32:29.980 Even before Washington's inauguration, Congress had passed tariffs to fund the new government.

00:32:34.520 To enforce them, Hamilton sought the approval to build 10 revenue cutters, boats,

00:32:39.640 that were intended to patrol the harbors, chase smugglers, and guard customs collections.

00:32:44.640 Washington approved these vessels would eventually evolve into the United States Coast Guard.

00:32:50.000 but Hamilton believed deeply in federal power. From day one, he pushed its boundaries,

00:32:55.040 sometimes softly, sometimes with an enthusiasm that made Jefferson and Madison really uneasy.

00:33:00.760 One unique aspect of Hamilton's office was that Congress required the Treasury Secretary

00:33:06.520 to submit periodic written reports directly to the legislature. Hamilton embraced this requirement

00:33:13.300 as an opportunity, and each report became not just financial guidance, but a blueprint for

00:33:18.380 building the nation. In his first report, Report on Public Credit, it was essentially a sweeping

00:33:24.520 economic manifesto. The United States owed more than $54 million in national debt and $25 million

00:33:32.340 in state debt from the Revolutionary War. Hamilton wanted the federal government to assume the state's

00:33:38.200 debt and to fund the national debt at full value, creating a unified financial system that tied

00:33:44.620 wealthy creditors to the success of the new government. Historian Ron Chernow put it this

00:33:50.560 way, quote, peerless in crafting policies embedded with a secret political agenda,

00:33:55.760 Hamilton knew how to dovetail one program right with another in a way that made them all difficult

00:34:01.700 to undo, end quote. Madison had been Hamilton's close ally at the Constitutional Convention, but

00:34:07.760 now he viewed the rise of a funded national debt and a bloated Treasury Department as far too

00:34:14.020 similar to the British system that they had fought so hard against. And Jefferson, well, he agreed.

00:34:22.660 In April 1790, Benjamin Franklin died at the age of 84. In his will, he left General George

00:34:30.440 Washington a deeply symbolic gift. My fine crabtree walking stick with a gold head curiously wrought

00:34:38.800 in the form of the cap of liberty, I give to my friend, and the friend of mankind, General

00:34:46.380 Washington. If it were a scepter, he has merited it and would become it. The gesture was poignant,

00:34:55.640 a cap of liberty, a reminder of the revolution's ideals, gifted to the man who now presided over

00:35:02.380 a government trying to be the anti-monarchy. But the gift came nearly too late for George Washington

00:35:09.440 because just a few weeks later, Washington contracted the flu and pneumonia. His throat

00:35:15.420 swelled, his breathing grew shallow, fever spiked. Those closest to him, including his doctors,

00:35:21.360 expected him to die. Abigail Adams captured the feeling many had when she wrote,

00:35:26.420 At this early day when neither our finances are arranged,

00:35:30.100 nor are governments sufficiently cemented to promise duration.

00:35:34.520 His death would, I fear, have had most disastrous consequences.

00:35:39.200 The Constitution gave no instructions for what to do if the president became incapacitated.

00:35:44.860 Hamilton and Jefferson eyed each other warily.

00:35:47.780 Neither trusted the other.

00:35:49.560 For weeks, Washington's life and national power hung in the balance.

00:35:54.760 Finally, thankfully, Washington recovered.

00:35:57.360 But when he returned to work, he stepped back in to a political firestorm.

00:36:04.660 Hamilton's plan to assume state debts was tearing Congress apart.

00:36:09.000 Then the location of the new U.S. Capitol became entangled with a debt issue.

00:36:14.100 The fight became so intense that some feared the union itself might fracture.

00:36:18.880 Jefferson despised Hamilton's debt plan, seeing it as a direct threat to the Republican liberty.

00:36:24.220 He joined Madison in resisting it, and in the middle of this turmoil, Jefferson encountered

00:36:29.800 Hamilton walking near the president's residence. Jefferson noted,

00:36:33.780 His look was somber, haggard, and dejected. Even his dress uncouth and neglected.

00:36:39.520 Hamilton poured out his frustrations. The government was disunited. Congress was fracturing.

00:36:47.840 Jefferson organized a dinner at his home for Hamilton and Madison the next evening,

00:36:51.900 and at the dinner, the three men forged a compromise with far-reaching implications for

00:36:57.120 the U.S. Jefferson and Madison would help secure the votes for Hamilton's Dead Assumption Plan.

00:37:03.820 Hamilton would persuade Pennsylvania's delegation to support a temporary capital in Philadelphia

00:37:09.240 and later a permanent U.S. capital on the Potomac River. Within weeks, Congress passed that exact

00:37:16.060 deal. But later, Jefferson lamented that dinner party compromise. Of all the errors of my

00:37:21.620 political life, this has occasioned me the deepest regret. He didn't regret the Capitol's location.

00:37:28.160 He regretted giving Hamilton the political leverage to expand federal power through the

00:37:32.380 national debt. But Hamilton was not done with his blueprint. In December 1790, just after the

00:37:39.620 Capitol relocated to Philadelphia, Hamilton submitted his next major proposal, the creation

00:37:45.620 of a national bank. Madison hated it. He argued passionately that Congress lacked the constitutional

00:37:54.060 authority to create such a bank. But the bill passed in the House and then the Senate. That

00:37:59.340 left the president, Washington, with a veto decision. As was his habit, Washington requested

00:38:04.840 written opinions from his cabinet. Jefferson's memo was scathing. He urged strict construction

00:38:12.700 of the Constitution, reading its power narrowly. He then went on to compare the bank to Europe's

00:38:18.640 monarchy system and warned that such federal power was dangerous. Madison went to see Washington and

00:38:25.320 found him wrestling with the decision. Madison later wrote, the constitutionality of the National

00:38:30.620 Bank was a question on which his mind was greatly perplexed. Hamilton, on the other hand, produced a

00:38:36.460 lengthy defense, arguing that the Constitution's necessary and proper clause permitted Congress

00:38:43.360 to exercise implied powers. If a national bank was necessary to carry out enumerated

00:38:49.680 financial responsibilities, then the bank was constitutional.

00:38:57.240 Finally, just before the veto deadline, Washington sided with Hamilton, and the National Bank

00:39:04.460 became law. With the bills for the assumption of the state's debts, the new U.S. capital,

00:39:10.320 and now the National Bank, Washington's long honeymoon period with the American people

00:39:15.280 was over. The nation was slowly dividing into camps, Hamiltons and Jeffersons. Two visions

00:39:23.040 for America, two philosophies of power, two future political parties starting to evolve.

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00:40:45.960 For more of the history that inspired this podcast series, be sure to read The American

00:40:53.360 Story, The Beginnings by David Barton and Tim Barton, available now at wallbuilders.com.

00:41:03.400 George Washington's decision to side with Hamilton on the National Bank does not mean

00:41:08.500 that he was a big government progressive in a modern sense.

00:41:11.600 In fact, far from it. Washington was deeply Federalist. He believed in a strong central

00:41:18.980 government, but the reasons were all practical, deeply rooted in his personal experience.

00:41:25.680 He was a military man. A clear chain of command wasn't a political philosophy,

00:41:30.480 it was simply how the world worked for him. And during the Revolutionary War,

00:41:34.440 he had watched the Articles of Confederation sabotage the war effort again and again.

00:41:40.260 Congress couldn't raise the money.

00:41:41.820 States dragged their feet, supplies ran out, and his soldiers starved and shivered without coats.

00:41:48.240 This is something Washington never forgot.

00:41:51.020 So a stronger central government wasn't ideological for him.

00:41:55.200 It was survival.

00:41:56.840 But Jefferson and Hamilton's growing feud created something Washington feared even more than a weak national government.

00:42:04.600 Political factions.

00:42:06.820 He saw them as corrosive.

00:42:09.380 Hamilton and Jefferson saw them as inevitabilities.

00:42:13.440 America's emerging political culture finally was beginning to take shape.

00:42:19.740 Hamiltonian versus Jeffersonian.

00:42:22.540 Federalist versus the Democratic Republicans.

00:42:26.100 Commerce versus agriculture.

00:42:28.360 Order versus liberty.

00:42:30.120 It was the beginning of the essential conflict that has fueled American politics for the past 250 years.

00:42:36.220 Conflict over the size and reach of the federal government.

00:42:38.660 And along the way, both major political parties have adopted Hamilton and Jefferson as their philosophical mascots.

00:42:46.080 In the Gilded Age in the 1800s, an era of rising industry, railroads, steel, finance, Republican leaders embraced Hamilton.

00:42:56.300 He was the founding father who championed commerce, banking, full credit, capitalism.

00:43:01.880 In that moment of industrial expansion, Hamilton was their man.

00:43:08.660 A statue of him was placed outside the Treasury Department in 1923 during Warren Harding's

00:43:18.360 Republican administration. A few years later, under Republican President Calvin Coolidge,

00:43:23.220 Hamilton was put on the $10 bill. At that time, American progressives and much of the political

00:43:29.980 left detested Hamilton. To them, he represented big business, concentrated wealth, centralized

00:43:36.360 power. He was exactly the kind of figure they believed had corrupted the Gilded Age.

00:43:43.840 Jefferson, meanwhile, somehow or another, had become the patron saint of the Democratic Party.

00:43:49.660 When the Great Depression struck and Franklin D. Roosevelt began his massive expansion of the

00:43:54.800 government, Jefferson's image, pro-farmer, pro-common man, became a convenient political

00:44:00.140 symbol. Jefferson had been on the little-used $2 bill since the 1860s. But in 1938, the Roosevelt

00:44:07.340 administration moved him onto the nickel, the everyday coin of ordinary Americans. That same

00:44:14.620 year, they also placed him on the three-cent stamp. And then they went further. In 1938,

00:44:19.460 construction began on the Jefferson Memorial, with FDR personally laying the cornerstone.

00:44:24.800 five years later he presided over its dedication jefferson had become the philosophical giant for

00:44:33.460 fdr's new deal democratic party conveniently ignoring of course that jefferson favored

00:44:40.340 limited federal government but political taste has a very short memory in recent decades jefferson

00:44:47.520 has fallen out of favor on the political left because of his record on slavery and hamilton

00:44:52.300 thanks largely to a certain Broadway musical, has undergone a renaissance.

00:44:58.240 In his book, How Alexander Hamilton's Screwed Up America, written by Brian McClanahan,

00:45:04.860 captured this shift.

00:45:06.020 Quote,

00:45:06.880 Alexander Hamilton, it seems, has been reinvented by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

00:45:12.300 He is the new hero for the left, a hipster who personified the immigrant experiment,

00:45:17.300 who pursued active central government and championed the notion of a diverse America.

00:45:22.300 end quote. Jefferson recounted a dinner party at his house where he showed Hamilton portraits of

00:45:29.420 his personal heroes, Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, and John Locke. Jefferson told Hamilton

00:45:35.860 how they were the three greatest men the world had ever produced. He said Hamilton paused for

00:45:41.740 a long moment. Then he told him the greatest man in history was Julius Caesar. Jefferson said that

00:45:49.220 pretty much summed up Hamilton's political philosophy.

00:45:52.500 Jefferson reflected,

00:45:53.960 Hamilton was honest as a man, but as a politician,

00:45:57.620 believing in the necessity of either force or corruption to govern men.

00:46:02.280 One historian described the difference between these founders like this.

00:46:06.600 Hamilton feared anarchy and loved order.

00:46:10.320 Jefferson feared tyranny and loved liberty.

00:46:13.640 Two visions, two temperaments,

00:46:15.580 two fundamentally different theories on human nature.

00:46:19.220 and in the middle, George Washington.

00:46:24.540 He had never wanted political parties.

00:46:26.840 He had never wanted ideological warfare.

00:46:29.380 He never wanted to referee a cabinet of men

00:46:32.340 who thought the other side threatened the future of the republic.

00:46:35.220 But by choosing Hamilton's financial system

00:46:37.500 and by relying on Jefferson as a diplomat and political counselor,

00:46:41.860 Washington unintentionally created the two poles

00:46:44.480 around which American politics would orbit for centuries,

00:46:47.920 and he was barely through his first term in office.

00:46:53.800 Coming up on the American story, The Beginnings.

00:46:58.240 At the foot of the scaffold stands King Louis XVI,

00:47:02.500 the same king who just a decade earlier bankrolled the American Revolution,

00:47:08.100 funneling money, weapons, and ships to George Washington's struggling army.

00:47:12.180 It was his support that helped the United States become a nation.

00:47:16.720 But here today, none of that matters. He's just another victim in the chaos that he unwittingly

00:47:24.080 helped unleash. The crowd craves royal blood. Louis looks out at the sea of faces, some furious, 0.97

00:47:31.840 some triumphant, some simply curious. And then he's strapped in place. The drum roll begins

00:47:39.360 and the executioner pulls the lever.

00:47:49.900 Just a reminder,

00:47:51.360 I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast

00:47:54.260 and pass this on to a friend

00:47:55.560 so it can be discovered by other people.

00:48:09.360 We'll be right back.

The Glenn Beck Program - June 06, 2026

Inside the First Presidency： Power, Fear, and the Bill of Rights ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 9

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