00:02:45.840The reign of terror sweeps across France like a wildfire with no windbreak.
00:02:52.360It's an environment where paranoia rules and death is a daily spectacle.
00:02:57.260In Paris alone, 3,000 men and women are marched to the guillotine.
00:03:02.320In the city of Nantes, revolutionaries herd 2,000 prisoners onto barges.
00:03:07.420They rope them together and drown them in the middle of a river.
00:03:10.860Across the country, prisons overflow with the accused.
00:03:13.140neighbors turn on neighbors in a whirlwind of suspicion. Under the radical Jacobin government,
00:03:18.500more than 17,000 people, 17,000 are executed in just 10 horrifying months. A revolution born
00:03:26.360from cries of liberty, equality, and fraternity spirals into a bloodbath that makes the old
00:03:33.200monarchy look tame. Heads on pikes paraded through the streets of Paris, it becomes a common sight,
00:03:39.980and every wave of violence sends ripples across the Atlantic
00:03:44.260directly to the desk of President George Washington.
00:03:48.640He tracks the French Revolution with growing dread.
00:03:52.560What began as a hopeful echo of liberty in common with America
00:03:56.500has transformed into chaos that threatens to swamp the young United States.
00:04:02.640Every dispatch from Paris brings new complications,
00:04:05.520new dangers, new political battles at home.
00:04:07.860and soon the French Revolution will become the single biggest headache of Washington's
00:04:13.500presidency. It is a crisis that will expose the fractures inside his cabinet, ignite street
00:04:21.240mobs in American cities, and nearly drag the country into a war it's nowhere near prepared
00:04:27.540to fight. This is the American story, The Beginnings, adapted from the book of the same0.98
00:04:37.980title by David Barton and Tim Barton. Episode 10, The Reluctant President, Washington's
00:04:46.620Leadership and Legacy. Before George Washington was first elected president, he didn't anticipate
00:04:56.700finishing his first term, much less a second. He was 57 at the time of his inauguration, gray,
00:05:03.020aching from decades of war and travel, and ready to settle down at Mount Vernon again.
00:05:07.980Long before the cabinet fights, the newspaper wars, and the non-stop political trench warfare began,
00:05:14.400Washington confided to Alexander Hamilton his quiet hope, that at a convenient and an early
00:05:20.300period, my services might be dispensed with, and that I might be permitted once more to retire.
00:05:27.820But retirement continued to elude him. Despite the constant demands and overall strain of the
00:05:33.740presidency, Washington still led with the same granite, steady temperament and integrity that
00:05:39.360had carried him through the Revolutionary War and the Constitutional Convention.
00:05:43.700Thomas Jefferson, who spent countless hours debating Washington and Hamilton, admitted,
00:05:48.360Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed.
00:05:57.480Refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose whatever obstacles opposed.
00:06:04.100To the people who served closest to him, Washington's character was not merely admirable, it bordered on myth.
00:06:12.360Tobias Lear, a 30-year-old head of Washington's five-man staff,
00:06:16.360lived in the presidential mansion as almost a member of the extended family. And Lear observed,
00:06:22.200I have never found a single thing that could lessen my respect for him.
00:06:25.560A complete knowledge of his honesty, uprightness, and candor in all his private transactions
00:06:30.840has sometimes led me to think him more than a man.
00:06:34.200But none of Washington's virtues could prevent the political squabbles within his cabinet.
00:06:40.320After Congress passed Hamilton's National Bank Bill in 1791,
00:06:44.460Jefferson and James Madison feared they were losing the war
00:06:47.840to prevent what they saw as America's slow slide towards a monarchy.
00:06:52.340Their solution? Bring in reinforcements.
00:06:55.020They recruited Madison's old Princeton classmate, Philip Fruneau.
00:07:00.160He was a writer and a fierce critic of centralized power.
00:07:04.020Jefferson offered Fruneau a State Department job as a translator,
00:07:07.580but it was really just a window dressing job to get Freneau to Philadelphia. Once there,
00:07:13.280Freneau launched the National Gazette, an explicitly anti-federalist newspaper
00:07:18.840dedicated to shredding Hamilton's policies. This press war didn't erupt out of nowhere.
00:07:26.140Hamilton and Jefferson had been circling each other like prize fighters since the
00:07:29.580administration began. Jefferson didn't like the politics and despised bureaucracy. Hamilton
00:07:35.400embraced them. Hamilton believed in a strong federal government and executive power.
00:07:41.740Jefferson believed in limited federal power and the supremacy of Congress and in state rights.
00:07:48.220They disagreed about almost everything, human nature, economics, constitutional interpretation,
00:07:53.660the future of the republic, even which foreign government posed the greatest danger. Hamilton
00:07:58.740believed France was unpredictable and dangerous, while Britain was America's most valuable
00:08:03.800commercial partner. Jefferson believed the British Empire was the threat to liberty and the French
00:08:09.280Revolution was simply Act II of the universal struggle for human freedom. Hamilton's allies
00:08:15.540became known as the Federalists. Jefferson's circle coalesced into the Democratic-Republicans,
00:08:22.380or often just Republican. Soon, the two camps could hardly stand to breathe the same air.
00:08:28.940President Washington tended to favor Hamilton's policies, especially on economic matters,
00:08:33.800but he refused to call himself a Federalist.
00:08:36.600He was determined, almost stubbornly, to maintain an image of non-partisanship
00:08:42.100even as the country around him split into angry factions.
00:08:46.600That polarization played out most viciously in the newspapers.
00:08:52.100Hamilton supported both financially and with his own anonymous essays,
00:08:58.300Frouinot's National Gazette became the home base for Jefferson and Madison's attacks.
00:09:03.300During the last year of Washington's first term, Madison blasted the administration and the Federalist agenda
00:09:09.100through a barrage of 18 essays in the National Gazette.
00:09:13.660Hamilton responded with private fury, saying he was certain
00:09:17.480that Mr. Madison cooperating with Mr. Jefferson is at the head of a faction decidedly hostile to me and my administration
00:09:24.740and actuated by views, in my judgment, subversive of the principles of good government
00:09:30.580and dangerous to the Union, peace, and happiness of the country.
00:09:35.380Jefferson, meanwhile, confided to France that he was exhausted with his job of Secretary of State.
00:09:40.820He said he was only sticking with it because he was afraid Hamilton would be around for years.
00:09:45.960He described his constant battles with Hamilton as going
00:09:49.100daily into the arena like a gladiator to suffer martyrdom in every conflict.
00:09:55.200Washington, now 60, felt the weight of every disagreement.
00:10:00.020He complained of memory lapses, worsening eyesight, and fading hearing.
00:10:04.600He only had one original tooth left, making his oversized dentures a constant, painful irritation.
00:10:11.740Martha always worried about his health with good reason.
00:10:14.400In addition to the flu and pneumonia that nearly killed him in 1790,
00:10:18.160he had suffered two separate tumors in the same area on his left thigh.
00:10:23.600They had to be surgically removed without anesthesia, and that sidelined him for weeks.
00:10:29.260And yet, almost everyone else just assumed Washington would remain president indefinitely.
00:10:35.100So when he quietly informed Hamilton, Jefferson, Henry Knox, and Madison that he planned to retire at the end of his first term, all four urged him to stay.
00:10:45.340Even Jefferson and Madison, despite their opposition to many of his policies, begged him not to leave.
00:10:51.380Their problem wasn't him. Their problem was Hamilton.
00:10:56.200They believed Hamilton manipulated Washington to accomplish his agenda.
00:11:00.600That belief, Washington thought, was nothing but a paranoid fantasy.
00:11:05.340While Washington debated whether to stick around for a second term,
00:11:08.480Hamilton charged that the National Gazette had really been started by Jefferson and Madison
00:11:30.380At a meeting with Jefferson in Mount Vernon, an exasperated Washington told them he just didn't believe that there was some cabal working to install a British-style monarchy in America.
00:11:40.680Jefferson insisted there was, and that Hamilton was heading up the effort.
00:11:45.880They would clearly never be on the same page about the issue,
00:11:49.000and the disagreement cooled their relationship in a way that really never fully recovered.
00:11:56.840By November 1792, after months of agonizing, Washington finally agreed to run for a second term,
00:12:04.000in part because he feared that Hamilton and Jefferson's feud would collapse the young government.
00:12:09.280The Electoral College delivered another unanimous victory for Washington.
00:12:14.280John Adams was re-elected vice president.
00:12:16.960Adams leaned federalist on policy, but like Washington, he refused the label.
00:12:22.200He continued his constitutional duty of breaking Senate ties 31 times, always siding with Washington.
00:12:28.420No vice president in U.S. history has ever cast more deciding votes.
00:12:33.740Still, Washington wasn't exactly celebrating his own re-election, writing to a friend.
00:12:38.540To say I feel pleasure from the prospect of commencing another tour of duty would be a departure from truth.
00:12:46.340He had no idea that the biggest crisis of his presidency had only just begun.
00:12:55.120And that it was sailing toward Philadelphia from across the Atlantic.
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00:14:23.040France had once been Washington's salvation. During the darkest days of the Revolutionary
00:14:34.360War, the alliance with King Louis XVI had supplied American troops with money and ships
00:14:39.420and gunpowder and hope. But by the early months of Washington's second term, the same France
00:14:45.100that had helped secure American independence had collapsed into chaos, and that chaos was
00:14:49.940spilling over into American politics. The Federalists were horrified by the French Revolution's
00:14:56.140violence. Republicans, including Jefferson and Madison, insisted the stories of bloodshed
00:15:01.800were just exaggerated. They chalked it up to British propaganda or fear-mongering by
00:15:06.820the Federalists. They viewed the French Revolution as a sibling of the American one, a continuation
00:15:13.000of the human rights struggle against monarchy. But the two revolutions could not have been
00:15:19.520more different. The American Revolution had been gradual and cautious, the political equivalent of
00:15:27.060a carefully boiled stew. The French Revolution was a lightning strike that set the whole kitchen on
00:15:34.160fire, and keeping America out of that fire became one of Washington's greatest challenges as0.83
00:15:39.340President. Shortly after Washington began his second term, the news arrived in Philadelphia
00:15:44.000that France and Britain were officially at war.
00:18:56.080Hot-headed, all imagination, no judgment, passionate, disrespectful, and even indecent toward the president.
00:19:03.900The situation spiraled quickly as Jeunet stirred up pro-French sentiment.
00:19:10.640Philadelphia's political climate came to a boil.
00:19:13.700Mobs even marched to the presidential mansion.0.63
00:19:18.060John Adams later described it like this.
00:19:20.020The terrorism excited by Jeunet in 1793 when 10,000 people in the streets of Philadelphia day after day threatened to drag Washington out of his house and effect a revolution in the government or compel it to declare war in favor of the French Revolution and against England.
00:19:38.240Everyone in Washington's administration was exhausted by the political drama swirling around Jeunet.
00:19:44.380By late July, Jefferson told Washington he would resign in September.
00:19:50.020Washington went to visit Jefferson at his house in Philadelphia to try to convince him to stay.
00:19:55.400According to Jefferson's own account, Washington said he understood the Republicans' fear of monarchy
00:20:00.560and insisted no man in the United States opposed monarchy more than he did.
00:20:06.400Washington's driving force was buying America time to let this new system of government work.
00:20:12.820According to Jefferson, Washington told him,
00:20:15.280The Constitution we have is an excellent one, if we can keep it where it is.
00:20:21.400Surprisingly, Jefferson agreed to remain in office a while longer.
00:20:26.960Eventually, Washington's cabinet agreed to demand Jeunet's recall.
00:20:31.500But before their letter even sailed towards France,
00:20:34.160news arrived that the radical Jacobin government had already sent someone to replace Jeunet.
00:20:39.660In fact, they ordered Jeunet back to France to stand trial for supposed crimes against the revolution.
00:30:19.820After trial, two were sentenced to death.
00:30:22.340But Washington used his presidential pardon power for the first time and pardoned them both.
00:30:29.000After all the dust settled from the Whiskey Rebellion,
00:30:32.100Alexander Hamilton announced his resignation as Secretary of the Treasury.
00:30:37.300Like Jefferson, he was exhausted and eager to return to private life.
00:30:41.640He was also deeply in debt and needed the better pay he could earn as a New York City lawyer.
00:30:47.560Henry Knox, the Secretary of War, one of Washington's oldest friends, also resigned,
00:30:52.580although his departure was less amicable.
00:30:55.480He had requested a six-week leave of absence to take care of personal business,
00:30:59.320but he overstayed his leave and failed to keep Washington updated.
00:31:03.400Knox's absence coincided with the Whiskey Rebellion, which really irritated Washington.
00:31:08.720Now barely into his second term, Washington had lost Jefferson, Hamilton, and Knox,
00:31:14.340the three men who had helped shaped his administration, and he felt drained.
00:31:18.980In a rare moment of candor, Washington wrote,
00:31:21.800Although I have no cause to complain of the want of health,
00:31:26.020I can religiously aver that no man was ever more tired of public life
00:31:31.280or more devoutly wished for retirement than I do.
00:31:36.140From a modern perspective, it is tempting to view the early presidential administrations as simpler,
00:31:42.220perhaps less taxing on those in office.
00:31:44.580After all, the federal government was smaller, Congress was smaller, the whole nation was smaller.
00:31:48.700But the presidency from the very beginning has always been incredibly demanding.
00:31:54.920In March 1795, Jay's treaty landed on Washington's desk.
00:32:00.080It was favorable to Britain in many respects, which concerned Republicans and even some Federalists, but it did secure two huge concessions.
00:32:09.560Britain would finally abandon its forts in the Northwest Territory, and it would compensate American merchants for those goods that had been seized.
00:32:18.460Most importantly of all, for the vulnerable young America, it avoided war.
00:32:24.720The treaty passed the Senate, and while Washington was deciding whether to sign the final version,
00:32:29.300newspapers printed the complete text of the treaty.
00:32:32.260Republicans had a field day raking John Jay over the coals for caving to Britain.
00:32:36.920There were riots in Boston and New York protesting the new treaty.
00:32:41.060Jay was burned in effigy all across the nation.
00:32:43.760He said he could have traveled the length of the country by the glow of his burning effigies.
00:32:49.200Washington was again dismayed by the intense criticism.
00:32:52.180He didn't love the treaty, but it avoided war and it seemed to be the best they could get in the circumstance, so he signed it.
00:33:00.180The political battle then moved to the House of Representatives.
00:33:03.500Republicans moved to prevent funding for the provisions in the treaty.
00:33:07.440They introduced a resolution demanding that Washington turn over all instructions and correspondence related to the treaty negotiations.
00:33:15.120It was a direct challenge to the presidential authority.
00:33:18.920Washington consulted his cabinet as usual.
00:33:22.180He sought advice from Hamilton, who had returned to private law practice.
00:33:25.980He even invited John Adams to dinner to talk it over.
00:36:36.900For more of the history that inspired this podcast series, be sure to read The American Story, The Beginnings, by David Barton and Tim Barton, available now at wallbuilders.com.
00:36:49.080Before the end of Washington's first term,
00:37:00.880back when he still believed he might escape just after four years or less,
00:37:04.000he asked Madison to draft a potential farewell address.
00:37:08.060He didn't end up needing that one, of course.
00:37:10.000The political storms of the early 1790s kept pulling him back into duty.
00:37:14.700But as he entered the final year of his second term,
00:37:17.140he knew it was time to step down. This time, instead of Madison, he turned to the man who
00:37:23.120had become one of his closest allies and political lightning rod for half the nation,
00:37:28.400Alexander Hamilton. Washington sent Hamilton the unused Madison draft along with several pages of
00:37:34.780his own handwritten notes, editions, and reflections. Hamilton, always the overachiever,
00:37:40.800responded by producing two different versions, one reworking Madison's draft and the other
00:37:46.360a completely new address. For four months, the two men traded comments and edits. Washington
00:37:52.340provided the guiding principles. Hamilton shaped them into eloquent prose. By late summer of 1796,
00:37:59.600the final version was complete. In mid-September, Washington's head secretary, Tobias Lear,
00:38:06.180summoned the printer, David Claypool, to the president's house. Claypool was the publisher
00:38:11.820of the American Daily Advertiser, one of Philadelphia's major newspapers. He arrived
00:38:17.500uncertain why the president wanted to see him privately. Washington met him in a side room,
00:38:23.580alone. He told Claypool that he was retiring. Then he offered him first access to publish
00:38:30.660his farewell address. Claypool set the type from the final copy that was handwritten by Washington
00:38:36.620himself. On September 19, 1796, the American Daily Advertiser published what the public would soon
00:38:44.620call Washington's Farewell Address. Washington never delivered it as a speech. He never stood
00:38:50.580before Congress to read it. Instead, the document spread quickly through the newspapers and through
00:38:55.320pamphlets to every corner of the nation. One of the most famous lines radiated with the patriotism
00:39:01.940Washington hoped Americans would never abandon. The name of American, which belongs to you in
00:39:08.480your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation
00:39:16.240derived from local discriminations. Washington had much more of a continental perspective since
00:39:22.540he had traveled more of the nation than almost anyone alive. From the backwoods of the Ohio
00:39:27.920Valley as a young surveyor to the battlefields of the Revolutionary War, to his tour of every
00:39:33.460state during his first term as president, he saw the nation as a whole long before most Americans
00:39:39.720did. A major theme of his farewell address and one Washington pushed Hamilton to emphasize was
00:39:45.640a warning about the danger of political parties. He believed that partisan ambition would become
00:39:51.260a parasite feeding on the republic rather than strengthening it. He warned that political parties
00:39:57.500were likely to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will
00:40:05.360be enabled to subvert the power of the people.
00:40:08.300Another warning focused on foreign relations.
00:40:11.460Washington understood that the United States could not afford to be dragged into Europe's
00:40:24.300Commercial relationships were essential, but binding political alliances?
00:40:29.600Those would destroy the republic before it reached adulthood.
00:40:33.880Washington's farewell address is still read annually in the U.S. Senate, a tradition dating back to the Civil War.
00:40:41.440Hamilton kept secret how much of the address he had drafted.
00:40:45.120He never published his own involvement, he never sought credit.
00:40:47.860But not long after the farewell address appeared in print, Hamilton and his wife were walking down a New York street when they passed a Revolutionary War veteran selling pamphlet copies of Washington's message.
00:41:00.840Hamilton bought one, then said to his wife,
00:41:04.440That man does not know he has asked me to purchase my own work.
00:41:10.100Washington's decision to step away after eight years created one of the most powerful unwritten rules in American history.
00:41:16.600The two-term limit. Remarkably, no president broke that tradition for nearly a century and a half
00:41:24.080until Franklin Delano Roosevelt won a third term in 1940. The irony was thick. For years,
00:41:32.640Jeffersonian newspapers had accused Washington of secretly wanting to be king. Now Washington
00:41:38.080was voluntarily stepping away from the power, something no monarch would have ever dreamt of.
00:41:43.780The election to replace him was the first contested presidential race in American history.
00:41:49.020Two titans of the American Revolution, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, they ran against each other.
00:41:57.380Adams won with 71 electoral votes to Jefferson's 68.
00:42:01.780Under the election system of the time, that meant Jefferson became Adams' vice president.
00:42:06.900On February 22nd, 1797, Washington's 65th birthday, Philadelphia hosted a massive dinner
00:42:16.100and ball with 1,200 guests. Washington was visibly emotional throughout the evening.