The Glenn Beck Program - The Reluctant President： Washington’s Leadership and Legacy ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 10

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00:00:30.000 It's January 21st, 1793, and the city of Paris pulsates with vinyls.

00:00:43.660 The revolutionary square is packed.

00:00:46.280 20,000 people press shoulder to shoulder, shouting, jeering, climbing onto the rooftops

00:00:51.040 for a better view.

00:00:53.660 A gray winter sky hangs low over the city, and a wooden scaffold rises like something

00:00:58.660 out of a nightmare.

00:01:00.000 At its center sits a contraption that has become the defining sound of the French Revolution,

00:01:07.920 the guillotine.

00:01:10.680 At the foot of the scaffold stands King Louis XVI, the same king who just a decade earlier

00:01:17.680 bankrolled the American Revolution, funneling money, weapons, and ships to George Washington's

00:01:23.400 struggling army.

00:01:24.120 It was his support that helped the United States become a nation.

00:01:29.140 But here today, none of that matters. He's just another victim in the chaos that he unwittingly

00:01:36.500 helped unleash. The crowd craves royal blood. Louis looks out at the sea of faces, some furious, 0.97

00:01:44.260 some triumphant, some simply curious. And then he's strapped in place. The drum roll begins

00:01:51.780 and the executioner pulls the lever.

00:01:55.900 The blade drops

00:01:56.760 and the king's head tumbles into a basket.

00:02:02.000 A roar explodes across Paris,

00:02:04.920 wild, primal,

00:02:06.420 as if the crowd is finally tasting revenge

00:02:08.980 after years of starvation and oppression.

00:02:11.720 But the horror doesn't stop there.

00:02:14.640 Nine months later,

00:02:15.840 King Louis' wife, Marie Antoinette,

00:02:17.900 the queen infamous for her let-them-eat-cake line faces the same fate.

00:02:24.760 She's dragged through the streets, her hair shorn, her spirit broken. 0.91

00:02:29.020 She's made to climb the same wooden steps,

00:02:31.960 her once lavish gown replaced with a plain white dress.

00:02:36.060 She too will face the crowd and fall beneath the blade.

00:02:42.860 The massacre is only the beginning.

00:02:45.840 The reign of terror sweeps across France like a wildfire with no windbreak.

00:02:52.360 It's an environment where paranoia rules and death is a daily spectacle.

00:02:57.260 In Paris alone, 3,000 men and women are marched to the guillotine.

00:03:02.320 In the city of Nantes, revolutionaries herd 2,000 prisoners onto barges.

00:03:07.420 They rope them together and drown them in the middle of a river.

00:03:10.860 Across the country, prisons overflow with the accused.

00:03:13.140 neighbors turn on neighbors in a whirlwind of suspicion. Under the radical Jacobin government,

00:03:18.500 more than 17,000 people, 17,000 are executed in just 10 horrifying months. A revolution born

00:03:26.360 from cries of liberty, equality, and fraternity spirals into a bloodbath that makes the old

00:03:33.200 monarchy look tame. Heads on pikes paraded through the streets of Paris, it becomes a common sight,

00:03:39.980 and every wave of violence sends ripples across the Atlantic

00:03:44.260 directly to the desk of President George Washington.

00:03:48.640 He tracks the French Revolution with growing dread.

00:03:52.560 What began as a hopeful echo of liberty in common with America

00:03:56.500 has transformed into chaos that threatens to swamp the young United States.

00:04:02.640 Every dispatch from Paris brings new complications,

00:04:05.520 new dangers, new political battles at home.

00:04:07.860 and soon the French Revolution will become the single biggest headache of Washington's

00:04:13.500 presidency. It is a crisis that will expose the fractures inside his cabinet, ignite street

00:04:21.240 mobs in American cities, and nearly drag the country into a war it's nowhere near prepared

00:04:27.540 to fight. This is the American story, The Beginnings, adapted from the book of the same 0.98

00:04:37.980 title by David Barton and Tim Barton. Episode 10, The Reluctant President, Washington's

00:04:46.620 Leadership and Legacy. Before George Washington was first elected president, he didn't anticipate

00:04:56.700 finishing his first term, much less a second. He was 57 at the time of his inauguration, gray,

00:05:03.020 aching from decades of war and travel, and ready to settle down at Mount Vernon again.

00:05:07.980 Long before the cabinet fights, the newspaper wars, and the non-stop political trench warfare began,

00:05:14.400 Washington confided to Alexander Hamilton his quiet hope, that at a convenient and an early

00:05:20.300 period, my services might be dispensed with, and that I might be permitted once more to retire.

00:05:27.820 But retirement continued to elude him. Despite the constant demands and overall strain of the

00:05:33.740 presidency, Washington still led with the same granite, steady temperament and integrity that

00:05:39.360 had carried him through the Revolutionary War and the Constitutional Convention.

00:05:43.700 Thomas Jefferson, who spent countless hours debating Washington and Hamilton, admitted,

00:05:48.360 Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed.

00:05:57.480 Refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose whatever obstacles opposed.

00:06:04.100 To the people who served closest to him, Washington's character was not merely admirable, it bordered on myth.

00:06:12.360 Tobias Lear, a 30-year-old head of Washington's five-man staff,

00:06:16.360 lived in the presidential mansion as almost a member of the extended family. And Lear observed,

00:06:22.200 I have never found a single thing that could lessen my respect for him.

00:06:25.560 A complete knowledge of his honesty, uprightness, and candor in all his private transactions

00:06:30.840 has sometimes led me to think him more than a man.

00:06:34.200 But none of Washington's virtues could prevent the political squabbles within his cabinet.

00:06:40.320 After Congress passed Hamilton's National Bank Bill in 1791,

00:06:44.460 Jefferson and James Madison feared they were losing the war

00:06:47.840 to prevent what they saw as America's slow slide towards a monarchy.

00:06:52.340 Their solution? Bring in reinforcements.

00:06:55.020 They recruited Madison's old Princeton classmate, Philip Fruneau.

00:07:00.160 He was a writer and a fierce critic of centralized power.

00:07:04.020 Jefferson offered Fruneau a State Department job as a translator,

00:07:07.580 but it was really just a window dressing job to get Freneau to Philadelphia. Once there,

00:07:13.280 Freneau launched the National Gazette, an explicitly anti-federalist newspaper

00:07:18.840 dedicated to shredding Hamilton's policies. This press war didn't erupt out of nowhere.

00:07:26.140 Hamilton and Jefferson had been circling each other like prize fighters since the

00:07:29.580 administration began. Jefferson didn't like the politics and despised bureaucracy. Hamilton

00:07:35.400 embraced them. Hamilton believed in a strong federal government and executive power.

00:07:41.740 Jefferson believed in limited federal power and the supremacy of Congress and in state rights.

00:07:48.220 They disagreed about almost everything, human nature, economics, constitutional interpretation,

00:07:53.660 the future of the republic, even which foreign government posed the greatest danger. Hamilton

00:07:58.740 believed France was unpredictable and dangerous, while Britain was America's most valuable

00:08:03.800 commercial partner. Jefferson believed the British Empire was the threat to liberty and the French

00:08:09.280 Revolution was simply Act II of the universal struggle for human freedom. Hamilton's allies

00:08:15.540 became known as the Federalists. Jefferson's circle coalesced into the Democratic-Republicans,

00:08:22.380 or often just Republican. Soon, the two camps could hardly stand to breathe the same air.

00:08:28.940 President Washington tended to favor Hamilton's policies, especially on economic matters,

00:08:33.800 but he refused to call himself a Federalist.

00:08:36.600 He was determined, almost stubbornly, to maintain an image of non-partisanship

00:08:42.100 even as the country around him split into angry factions.

00:08:46.600 That polarization played out most viciously in the newspapers.

00:08:52.100 Hamilton supported both financially and with his own anonymous essays,

00:08:56.300 the Gazette of the United States.

00:08:58.300 Frouinot's National Gazette became the home base for Jefferson and Madison's attacks.

00:09:03.300 During the last year of Washington's first term, Madison blasted the administration and the Federalist agenda

00:09:09.100 through a barrage of 18 essays in the National Gazette.

00:09:13.660 Hamilton responded with private fury, saying he was certain

00:09:17.480 that Mr. Madison cooperating with Mr. Jefferson is at the head of a faction decidedly hostile to me and my administration

00:09:24.740 and actuated by views, in my judgment, subversive of the principles of good government

00:09:30.580 and dangerous to the Union, peace, and happiness of the country.

00:09:35.380 Jefferson, meanwhile, confided to France that he was exhausted with his job of Secretary of State.

00:09:40.820 He said he was only sticking with it because he was afraid Hamilton would be around for years.

00:09:45.960 He described his constant battles with Hamilton as going

00:09:49.100 daily into the arena like a gladiator to suffer martyrdom in every conflict.

00:09:55.200 Washington, now 60, felt the weight of every disagreement.

00:10:00.020 He complained of memory lapses, worsening eyesight, and fading hearing.

00:10:04.600 He only had one original tooth left, making his oversized dentures a constant, painful irritation.

00:10:11.740 Martha always worried about his health with good reason.

00:10:14.400 In addition to the flu and pneumonia that nearly killed him in 1790,

00:10:18.160 he had suffered two separate tumors in the same area on his left thigh.

00:10:23.600 They had to be surgically removed without anesthesia, and that sidelined him for weeks.

00:10:29.260 And yet, almost everyone else just assumed Washington would remain president indefinitely.

00:10:35.100 So 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.

00:10:45.340 Even Jefferson and Madison, despite their opposition to many of his policies, begged him not to leave.

00:10:51.380 Their problem wasn't him. Their problem was Hamilton.

00:10:56.200 They believed Hamilton manipulated Washington to accomplish his agenda.

00:11:00.600 That belief, Washington thought, was nothing but a paranoid fantasy.

00:11:05.340 While Washington debated whether to stick around for a second term,

00:11:08.480 Hamilton charged that the National Gazette had really been started by Jefferson and Madison

00:11:13.700 to publish their own views.

00:11:15.420 He also alleged that Frouinot was paid by the State Department as a front for his real work at the Gazette.

00:11:23.400 Washington summoned Jefferson and Hamilton, urging them to reconcile.

00:11:27.920 Instead, they just blamed each other.

00:11:30.380 At 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.

00:11:40.680 Jefferson insisted there was, and that Hamilton was heading up the effort.

00:11:45.880 They would clearly never be on the same page about the issue,

00:11:49.000 and the disagreement cooled their relationship in a way that really never fully recovered.

00:11:56.840 By November 1792, after months of agonizing, Washington finally agreed to run for a second term,

00:12:04.000 in part because he feared that Hamilton and Jefferson's feud would collapse the young government.

00:12:09.280 The Electoral College delivered another unanimous victory for Washington.

00:12:14.280 John Adams was re-elected vice president.

00:12:16.960 Adams leaned federalist on policy, but like Washington, he refused the label.

00:12:22.200 He continued his constitutional duty of breaking Senate ties 31 times, always siding with Washington.

00:12:28.420 No vice president in U.S. history has ever cast more deciding votes.

00:12:33.740 Still, Washington wasn't exactly celebrating his own re-election, writing to a friend.

00:12:38.540 To say I feel pleasure from the prospect of commencing another tour of duty would be a departure from truth.

00:12:46.340 He had no idea that the biggest crisis of his presidency had only just begun.

00:12:55.120 And that it was sailing toward Philadelphia from across the Atlantic.

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00:14:23.040 France had once been Washington's salvation. During the darkest days of the Revolutionary

00:14:34.360 War, the alliance with King Louis XVI had supplied American troops with money and ships

00:14:39.420 and gunpowder and hope. But by the early months of Washington's second term, the same France

00:14:45.100 that had helped secure American independence had collapsed into chaos, and that chaos was

00:14:49.940 spilling over into American politics. The Federalists were horrified by the French Revolution's

00:14:56.140 violence. Republicans, including Jefferson and Madison, insisted the stories of bloodshed

00:15:01.800 were just exaggerated. They chalked it up to British propaganda or fear-mongering by

00:15:06.820 the Federalists. They viewed the French Revolution as a sibling of the American one, a continuation

00:15:13.000 of the human rights struggle against monarchy. But the two revolutions could not have been

00:15:19.520 more different. The American Revolution had been gradual and cautious, the political equivalent of

00:15:27.060 a carefully boiled stew. The French Revolution was a lightning strike that set the whole kitchen on

00:15:34.160 fire, and keeping America out of that fire became one of Washington's greatest challenges as 0.83

00:15:39.340 President. Shortly after Washington began his second term, the news arrived in Philadelphia

00:15:44.000 that France and Britain were officially at war.

00:15:47.080 If America wasn't careful,

00:15:48.660 it would be dragged right into the middle of that conflict.

00:15:51.840 The young republic was nowhere near ready for another war

00:15:54.400 with the world's greatest naval power.

00:15:57.080 Washington rushed this instruction to Jefferson.

00:15:59.240 War having actually commenced between France and Great Britain,

00:16:04.100 it behooves the government of this country

00:16:06.260 to use every means in its power

00:16:08.500 to prevent the citizens thereof

00:16:10.600 from embroiling us with either of those powers,

00:16:13.280 by endeavoring to maintain a strict neutrality.

00:16:17.620 A fiery cabinet debate broke out.

00:16:20.840 Hamilton was aggressively in favor of neutrality.

00:16:24.020 Jefferson resisted.

00:16:25.300 The United States had a treaty with France, he argued.

00:16:27.940 France had bled for American independence.

00:16:29.980 Didn't the U.S. owe France loyalty because of their previous help?

00:16:34.980 Washington listened, as he always did,

00:16:37.640 weighing each argument with a kind of stillness that unnerved the rest of the room.

00:16:42.840 Days later, he announced his decision.

00:16:45.480 The U.S. would issue a proclamation of neutrality.

00:16:50.380 It created a political firestorm in Philadelphia.

00:16:56.040 Republicans argued that Congress, not the president, held the constitutional authority to declare war,

00:17:01.240 and therefore only Congress could declare neutrality.

00:17:04.060 For many Republicans, including Madison, they saw what they had always saw in any action influenced by Hamilton.

00:17:11.420 A deference toward England.

00:17:13.800 Hamilton and Madison duked it out in the press using pen names like the old days

00:17:18.020 when they were writing the Federalist Papers, except back then they were on the same political team.

00:17:23.480 Now into this frenzy swaggered one of the most disruptive, obnoxious characters Washington had ever had to deal with.

00:17:32.320 Edmond Charles Jeunet, the new French ambassador.

00:17:36.020 He arrived first, not in Philadelphia, but in Charleston, South Carolina, and from the second

00:17:42.580 his boots touched the dock, he began undermining Washington's neutrality. Genet went by

00:17:48.460 Citizen Genet because French radicals were trying to rid their culture of bourgeoisie-sounding titles

00:17:55.440 like Monsieur and Madame. He threw himself into rallying public support for France. He recruited

00:18:03.280 American ships as privateers, had them fitted out with cannons, and sent them to hunt British

00:18:08.240 merchant vessels. He gave speeches, he toasted liberty, waved the French flags, and stirred

00:18:13.680 American crowds into passionate pro-French support. For an entire month before he reached

00:18:19.720 Philadelphia, Jeunet behaved as though France, not Washington, commanded American policy.

00:18:26.100 And when he finally arrived in the capital, he brought that chaos with him. As a French ship

00:18:31.640 sailed into Philadelphia's harbor, was towing two captured British merchant vessels.

00:18:37.280 Thousands of Philadelphians poured into the docks, cheering.

00:18:41.000 Jefferson, privately horrified, warned Jeannet to stop violating U.S. neutrality.

00:18:47.020 Jeannet dismissed the warning and told Jefferson that France had a right to recruit American privateer ships to fight Britain.

00:18:54.060 Jefferson described Jeannet as

00:18:56.080 Hot-headed, all imagination, no judgment, passionate, disrespectful, and even indecent toward the president.

00:19:03.900 The situation spiraled quickly as Jeunet stirred up pro-French sentiment.

00:19:10.640 Philadelphia's political climate came to a boil.

00:19:13.700 Mobs even marched to the presidential mansion. 0.63

00:19:18.060 John Adams later described it like this.

00:19:20.020 The 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.

00:19:38.240 Everyone in Washington's administration was exhausted by the political drama swirling around Jeunet.

00:19:44.380 By late July, Jefferson told Washington he would resign in September.

00:19:50.020 Washington went to visit Jefferson at his house in Philadelphia to try to convince him to stay.

00:19:55.400 According to Jefferson's own account, Washington said he understood the Republicans' fear of monarchy

00:20:00.560 and insisted no man in the United States opposed monarchy more than he did.

00:20:06.400 Washington's driving force was buying America time to let this new system of government work.

00:20:12.820 According to Jefferson, Washington told him,

00:20:15.280 The Constitution we have is an excellent one, if we can keep it where it is.

00:20:21.400 Surprisingly, Jefferson agreed to remain in office a while longer.

00:20:26.960 Eventually, Washington's cabinet agreed to demand Jeunet's recall.

00:20:31.500 But before their letter even sailed towards France,

00:20:34.160 news arrived that the radical Jacobin government had already sent someone to replace Jeunet.

00:20:39.660 In fact, they ordered Jeunet back to France to stand trial for supposed crimes against the revolution.

00:20:45.400 That meant certain death sentence.

00:20:48.080 Jeunet begged Washington for mercy, and Washington granted him asylum.

00:20:52.540 The troublesome ambassador moved to New York, where he eventually married the governor's daughter.

00:20:59.760 But Jeunet left behind wreckage.

00:21:02.120 His influence gave rise to Democrat-Republican societies.

00:21:05.920 Members of these political clubs considered themselves new versions of the Sons of Liberty.

00:21:10.860 But Federalists thought they were modeled after the French Jacobin clubs.

00:21:14.060 They found it, quite honestly, terrifying, seeing in these clubs the seeds of mob rule.

00:21:21.400 Washington was dismayed that these Democrat-Republican societies ushered in a new, more aggressive style of American party politics.

00:21:29.680 As if the political turmoil in keeping the U.S. out of war wasn't enough to deal with,

00:21:34.980 the summer of 1793 brought an invisible enemy, yellow fever.

00:21:40.980 Within weeks, panic over the outbreak gripped the Capitol.

00:21:44.700 The disease claimed the life of Polly Lear, the young wife of Washington's head secretary, Tobias Lear.

00:21:51.080 The Lears actually lived with the Washingtons in the presidential mansion, and Polly was practically family.

00:21:57.240 President Washington led the funeral procession for Polly, with his cabinet as pallbearers.

00:22:01.860 It was the only time Washington attended a funeral as president.

00:22:05.380 The federal government essentially was shut down, and the officials fled the city.

00:22:10.480 Washington stayed longer than most, but even he and Martha eventually left for Mount Vernon.

00:22:15.840 By November 1793, 5,000 people had died.

00:22:19.440 That was 10% of the Philadelphia population.

00:22:25.880 Finally, in December, after two months away from the Capitol, the outbreak dissipated.

00:22:31.200 Washington's cabinet, Congress, and executive branch employees returned to a changed city.

00:22:37.160 People didn't know at the time that yellow fever was carried by mosquitoes.

00:22:41.700 The outbreak was over because the cold weather had returned.

00:22:46.600 On the last day of 1793, Jefferson resigned as Secretary of State.

00:22:51.920 He supposedly had had enough of his political war with Hamilton.

00:22:55.600 Jefferson wrote,

00:22:56.360 I hope to spend the remainder of my days in occupations infinitely more pleasing than those

00:23:01.080 to which I have sacrificed 18 years of the prime of my life. Hamilton didn't buy it. He wrote,

00:23:08.300 Tis evident beyond a question from every movement that Mr. Jefferson aims with ardent desire at the

00:23:14.100 presidential chair. With Jefferson gone, American partisanship surging, and Washington increasingly

00:23:20.780 battered by criticism, the United States was stumbling towards one of the most dramatic

00:23:25.160 domestic crises of his presidency. One that would push Washington back onto the military stage.

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00:25:43.660 save over $200. For a brief moment in 1794, Washington found a glimmer of optimism,

00:25:52.060 something rare in a second term marked by political fires that seemed impossible to put out.

00:25:57.540 In March, Congress finally approved a proposal that he had supported for years,

00:26:01.720 the construction of six warships to protect American merchants from the Barbary pirates

00:26:06.780 in North Africa. It was the birth of the United States Navy.

00:26:13.660 But while Washington celebrated the new navy, the seas were already churning with more dark storms.

00:26:22.080 Britain, still at war with the revolutionary France, had been seizing American cargo ships

00:26:26.800 suspected of trading with the French. Worse, the British navy had resumed the old practice of

00:26:33.280 impressment, stopping American vessels, searching their crews, and dragging off

00:26:38.260 alleged British deserters. In practice, that meant capturing many American sailors as well.

00:26:44.820 American merchants fumed. Federalists feared another war. Republicans argued that the British

00:26:50.480 were humiliating the young United States, and Hamilton was secretly encouraging it.

00:26:56.020 Across the country, newspapers blazed with outrage. The situation was so explosive that

00:27:00.640 even Washington feared the nation was only one misstep away from another violent clash with the

00:27:05.700 British Empire. Federalists insisted the U.S. needed to send a special envoy to London to

00:27:11.500 negotiate trade and demand reparation for the seized ships. They also wanted to pressure Britain

00:27:16.900 into abandoning the forts in the Northwest Territory. Britain had promised to vacate them

00:27:22.400 after the Revolutionary War, but they were still there. Hamilton recommended one man above all to 0.67

00:27:28.520 be the envoy, John Jay, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Appointing a sitting justice

00:27:35.920 to negotiate a treaty was politically risky, perhaps even unconstitutional since it crossed

00:27:41.800 the line between the executive and the judicial branches. But Washington trusted Jay's calm

00:27:47.220 judgment, so in April 1794, Jay set sail to London. Washington, meanwhile, stayed behind

00:27:54.220 to face a crisis of his own. Three years earlier, Congress had approved Hamilton's excise tax on

00:28:02.220 distilled spirits, the infamous whiskey tax. It was part of his plan to help pay down the national

00:28:08.400 debt. In western Pennsylvania, farmers routinely turned grain into whiskey because it was easier

00:28:14.500 to ship and trade. They viewed the whiskey tax as government oppression. These farmers especially

00:28:21.400 resented the new federal government inspectors who showed up to inspect their facilities.

00:28:26.520 They were met with jeers and threats and violence. One inspector's house was burned

00:28:31.240 down, another one was shot by local rebels. As the rebellion grew in numbers and in angry

00:28:38.280 rhetoric, Washington's first instinct was diplomacy. He sent a three-man commission

00:28:43.480 to western Pennsylvania to negotiate. But the rebels refused to budge. They declared they

00:28:49.160 would resist the attacks no matter what. The reports Washington received were sobering. This

00:28:54.520 was no small protest. Between six and seven thousand rebels were gathering, armed, organized,

00:29:00.920 and deeply resentful of the federal government. Washington feared the republic itself might be at

00:29:07.400 stake. Reluctantly, Washington approved a militia call-up of 13,000 troops. It was a force larger

00:29:16.040 than many Revolutionary War campaigns. He and Hamilton rode west to command them,

00:29:21.560 making Washington the only sitting president in American history to personally lead troops

00:29:26.680 into the field. Federalists admired the show of force, but the critics pounced immediately.

00:29:33.320 Republicans accused Washington of trying to justify a standing army, something they believed

00:29:37.880 would be a major step towards a monarchy. But for the soldiers who watched him ride along

00:29:42.680 the lines of troops, Washington was not a would-be king. He was their commander once again.

00:29:48.200 One observer wrote in his diary,

00:30:08.360 Washington's presence had the desired effect.

00:30:11.640 The rebels backed down without a fight, and order returned to western Pennsylvania.

00:30:17.160 About 150 insurgents were arrested.

00:30:19.820 After trial, two were sentenced to death.

00:30:22.340 But Washington used his presidential pardon power for the first time and pardoned them both.

00:30:29.000 After all the dust settled from the Whiskey Rebellion,

00:30:32.100 Alexander Hamilton announced his resignation as Secretary of the Treasury.

00:30:37.300 Like Jefferson, he was exhausted and eager to return to private life.

00:30:41.640 He was also deeply in debt and needed the better pay he could earn as a New York City lawyer.

00:30:47.560 Henry Knox, the Secretary of War, one of Washington's oldest friends, also resigned,

00:30:52.580 although his departure was less amicable.

00:30:55.480 He had requested a six-week leave of absence to take care of personal business,

00:30:59.320 but he overstayed his leave and failed to keep Washington updated.

00:31:03.400 Knox's absence coincided with the Whiskey Rebellion, which really irritated Washington.

00:31:08.720 Now barely into his second term, Washington had lost Jefferson, Hamilton, and Knox,

00:31:14.340 the three men who had helped shaped his administration, and he felt drained.

00:31:18.980 In a rare moment of candor, Washington wrote,

00:31:21.800 Although I have no cause to complain of the want of health,

00:31:26.020 I can religiously aver that no man was ever more tired of public life

00:31:31.280 or more devoutly wished for retirement than I do.

00:31:36.140 From a modern perspective, it is tempting to view the early presidential administrations as simpler,

00:31:42.220 perhaps less taxing on those in office.

00:31:44.580 After all, the federal government was smaller, Congress was smaller, the whole nation was smaller.

00:31:48.700 But the presidency from the very beginning has always been incredibly demanding.

00:31:54.920 In March 1795, Jay's treaty landed on Washington's desk.

00:32:00.080 It was favorable to Britain in many respects, which concerned Republicans and even some Federalists, but it did secure two huge concessions.

00:32:09.560 Britain would finally abandon its forts in the Northwest Territory, and it would compensate American merchants for those goods that had been seized.

00:32:18.460 Most importantly of all, for the vulnerable young America, it avoided war.

00:32:24.720 The treaty passed the Senate, and while Washington was deciding whether to sign the final version,

00:32:29.300 newspapers printed the complete text of the treaty.

00:32:32.260 Republicans had a field day raking John Jay over the coals for caving to Britain.

00:32:36.920 There were riots in Boston and New York protesting the new treaty.

00:32:41.060 Jay was burned in effigy all across the nation.

00:32:43.760 He said he could have traveled the length of the country by the glow of his burning effigies.

00:32:49.200 Washington was again dismayed by the intense criticism.

00:32:52.180 He 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.

00:33:00.180 The political battle then moved to the House of Representatives.

00:33:03.500 Republicans moved to prevent funding for the provisions in the treaty.

00:33:07.440 They introduced a resolution demanding that Washington turn over all instructions and correspondence related to the treaty negotiations.

00:33:15.120 It was a direct challenge to the presidential authority.

00:33:18.920 Washington consulted his cabinet as usual.

00:33:22.180 He sought advice from Hamilton, who had returned to private law practice.

00:33:25.980 He even invited John Adams to dinner to talk it over.

00:33:29.340 John Adams wrote,

00:33:30.200 He detained me there till nine o'clock and was never more frank and open about politics.

00:33:36.740 I find his opinions and sentiments are more like mine than I ever knew before,

00:33:41.520 respecting England and France and our American parties.

00:33:45.340 Washington decided to refuse the House request.

00:33:48.660 He determined that the Constitution placed treaty-making authority

00:33:51.640 solely in the hands of the President and the Senate.

00:33:54.960 His stance convinced enough representatives to fund the treaty by a vote of 51 to 48.

00:34:00.400 The narrow loss in the House stunned James Madison,

00:34:04.160 who saw the defeat as a fatal blow to the Republican cause.

00:34:07.800 The treaty fight ruined what was left of his relationships with Washington,

00:34:11.960 who never invited Madison to Mount Vernon again.

00:34:14.660 A different, easier treaty victory came later that year through Thomas Pinckney's deal with Spain.

00:34:21.540 It finally secured the free navigation of the Mississippi River.

00:34:25.480 It granted Americans the right to trade freely in New Orleans,

00:34:28.760 and it confirmed the Mississippi as the western boundary of the United States.

00:34:33.580 It was a great win.

00:34:35.360 But that type of victory wasn't enough to compensate for the mountain of criticism and stresses of the presidency.

00:34:41.800 The opposition press was more brutal than ever towards Washington.

00:34:45.800 Jefferson observed,

00:34:46.900 He is extremely affected by the attacks made on him in the public papers.

00:34:50.920 I think he feels these things more than any person I have ever met with.

00:34:54.540 I am sincerely sorry to see them.

00:34:56.760 From the wings, as Vice President John Adams observed the toll that the job had taken on Washington.

00:35:02.800 The times were critical, the labor fatiguing, many circumstances disgusting,

00:35:08.660 and he felt weary and longed for retirement.

00:35:11.240 Washington finally made up his mind.

00:35:14.120 He would not serve a third term.

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00:36:36.900 For 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.

00:36:49.080 Before the end of Washington's first term,

00:37:00.880 back when he still believed he might escape just after four years or less,

00:37:04.000 he asked Madison to draft a potential farewell address.

00:37:08.060 He didn't end up needing that one, of course.

00:37:10.000 The political storms of the early 1790s kept pulling him back into duty.

00:37:14.700 But as he entered the final year of his second term,

00:37:17.140 he knew it was time to step down. This time, instead of Madison, he turned to the man who

00:37:23.120 had become one of his closest allies and political lightning rod for half the nation,

00:37:28.400 Alexander Hamilton. Washington sent Hamilton the unused Madison draft along with several pages of

00:37:34.780 his own handwritten notes, editions, and reflections. Hamilton, always the overachiever,

00:37:40.800 responded by producing two different versions, one reworking Madison's draft and the other

00:37:46.360 a completely new address. For four months, the two men traded comments and edits. Washington

00:37:52.340 provided the guiding principles. Hamilton shaped them into eloquent prose. By late summer of 1796,

00:37:59.600 the final version was complete. In mid-September, Washington's head secretary, Tobias Lear,

00:38:06.180 summoned the printer, David Claypool, to the president's house. Claypool was the publisher

00:38:11.820 of the American Daily Advertiser, one of Philadelphia's major newspapers. He arrived

00:38:17.500 uncertain why the president wanted to see him privately. Washington met him in a side room,

00:38:23.580 alone. He told Claypool that he was retiring. Then he offered him first access to publish

00:38:30.660 his farewell address. Claypool set the type from the final copy that was handwritten by Washington

00:38:36.620 himself. On September 19, 1796, the American Daily Advertiser published what the public would soon

00:38:44.620 call Washington's Farewell Address. Washington never delivered it as a speech. He never stood

00:38:50.580 before Congress to read it. Instead, the document spread quickly through the newspapers and through

00:38:55.320 pamphlets to every corner of the nation. One of the most famous lines radiated with the patriotism

00:39:01.940 Washington hoped Americans would never abandon. The name of American, which belongs to you in

00:39:08.480 your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation

00:39:16.240 derived from local discriminations. Washington had much more of a continental perspective since

00:39:22.540 he had traveled more of the nation than almost anyone alive. From the backwoods of the Ohio

00:39:27.920 Valley as a young surveyor to the battlefields of the Revolutionary War, to his tour of every

00:39:33.460 state during his first term as president, he saw the nation as a whole long before most Americans

00:39:39.720 did. A major theme of his farewell address and one Washington pushed Hamilton to emphasize was

00:39:45.640 a warning about the danger of political parties. He believed that partisan ambition would become

00:39:51.260 a parasite feeding on the republic rather than strengthening it. He warned that political parties

00:39:57.500 were likely to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will

00:40:05.360 be enabled to subvert the power of the people.

00:40:08.300 Another warning focused on foreign relations.

00:40:11.460 Washington understood that the United States could not afford to be dragged into Europe's

00:40:16.460 endless rivalries.

00:40:18.080 Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign

00:40:23.760 world.

00:40:24.300 Commercial relationships were essential, but binding political alliances?

00:40:29.600 Those would destroy the republic before it reached adulthood.

00:40:33.880 Washington's farewell address is still read annually in the U.S. Senate, a tradition dating back to the Civil War.

00:40:41.440 Hamilton kept secret how much of the address he had drafted.

00:40:45.120 He never published his own involvement, he never sought credit.

00:40:47.860 But 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.

00:41:00.840 Hamilton bought one, then said to his wife,

00:41:04.440 That man does not know he has asked me to purchase my own work.

00:41:10.100 Washington's decision to step away after eight years created one of the most powerful unwritten rules in American history.

00:41:16.600 The two-term limit. Remarkably, no president broke that tradition for nearly a century and a half

00:41:24.080 until Franklin Delano Roosevelt won a third term in 1940. The irony was thick. For years,

00:41:32.640 Jeffersonian newspapers had accused Washington of secretly wanting to be king. Now Washington

00:41:38.080 was voluntarily stepping away from the power, something no monarch would have ever dreamt of.

00:41:43.780 The election to replace him was the first contested presidential race in American history.

00:41:49.020 Two titans of the American Revolution, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, they ran against each other.

00:41:57.380 Adams won with 71 electoral votes to Jefferson's 68.

00:42:01.780 Under the election system of the time, that meant Jefferson became Adams' vice president.

00:42:06.900 On February 22nd, 1797, Washington's 65th birthday, Philadelphia hosted a massive dinner

00:42:16.100 and ball with 1,200 guests. Washington was visibly emotional throughout the evening.

00:42:22.460 One witness wrote,

00:42:23.620 I never saw the president look better or in finer spirits, but his emotions were too powerful to be

00:42:29.580 concealed. He could sometimes scarcely speak. He had become the most admired man in the Western

00:42:36.060 world, and yet he was counting the hours until he could leave public life behind.

00:42:44.140 March 4th, 1797, Inauguration Day.

00:42:49.380 Washington, dressed in black, walked to Congress Hall.

00:42:52.860 The House chamber and the gallery were packed.

00:42:55.780 When he entered, the crowd erupted into thunderous applause.

00:43:00.560 Thomas Jefferson entered next, then John Adams followed.

00:43:04.180 Adams later wrote of the moment.

00:43:06.140 A solemn scene it was indeed, and it was made affecting to me by the presence of the general,

00:43:11.840 whose countenance was as serene and unclouded as the day.

00:43:16.140 He seemed to me to enjoy a triumph over me.

00:43:19.380 Methought I heard him think, I, I am fairly out and you fairly in.

00:43:24.840 See which of us will be the happiest.

00:43:28.140 Washington introduced Adams.

00:43:29.840 Adams.

00:43:30.840 Then he delivered a short farewell that brought audible sobs from the gallery.

00:43:35.960 Adams took the oath of office, becoming the second president in a nation that now had

00:43:39.440 grown to 16 states with the addition of Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

00:43:44.080 At the end of the inauguration ceremony, Washington had one more symbolic gesture with which to

00:43:49.300 step off the national stage.

00:43:52.640 He insisted that Adams and Jefferson leave the chamber ahead of him.

00:43:58.360 It was an ideal symbol of a unique American system, the peaceful transfer of power.

00:44:04.900 From the holder of the most powerful office in the land, back to the private citizen,

00:44:10.120 just like that.

00:44:15.180 A few days later, George and Martha Washington loaded their belongings into carriages and

00:44:19.160 began the six-day journey back to Mount Vernon.

00:44:22.600 the way, Washington made one last detour, like a proud parent checking on a child. He stopped at

00:44:29.100 the construction site of the new presidential mansion, the future White House, in the federal

00:44:35.000 district that already bore his name, Washington, D.C. John Adams would move into that house in

00:44:42.280 November 1800. On his second night in the White House, Adams wrote to Abigail words that would

00:44:47.940 later be engraved on the mantle in the state dining room. I pray heaven to bestow the best

00:44:53.000 of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and

00:44:59.220 wise men ever rule under this roof. It was a prayer for the ages, one that never expires in

00:45:06.560 the twisting, winding, perilous, and victorious story of liberty in the United States of America.

00:45:17.940 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast

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The Glenn Beck Program - June 13, 2026

The Reluctant President： Washington’s Leadership and Legacy ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 10

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