The Relative Importance of Domestic and Foreign Affairs on American Politics in 1790

Since the birth of the American democracy, indeed since the birth of political philosophy, theories regarding the importance of a cohesive and centralized government have been in direct opposition to theories concerning the preservation of individual liberty. The question of the size and the accountability of the central government has been an intellectual undercurrent defining American politics since its beginnings. In 1789, when the Constitution was ratified, serious economic and social problems plagued the nation; problems polarizing the intellectual elite and engendering fundamentally different concepts about the future of the nation. All throughout the 1790s, these domestic issues divided the young nation. It was because of these divisions, borne most importantly out of domestic concerns, yet illuminated by foreign affairs, that political parties crystallized from within the abstract philosophic framework of conservatism and liberalism — of Hamilton’s large centralized government and Jefferson’s defense of populism — into the important and powerful institutions they are today.

Though political parties as specific electioneering institutions came about in the 1790s, the philosophic backbone on which they laid their ideologies preceded the ratification of the Constitution. The most important embodiment of these different beliefs on government can be found in public debate between the Federalists and the Antifederalists during the course of the ratification of the Constitution. From the fall of 1787 to the spring of 1788, eighty five essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay enumerated the federalists beliefs imbedded within the Constitution. Antifederalist viewpoints were printed under the pseudonym “Brutus” in the New York Journal, in order to combat the federalist principles.

The philosophic opposition of the federalists and antifederalist helped develop principles which would form the basis of American politics in the 1790s. The ideas most central to their difference in political philosophy, were the scale and representation of the government. For example, antifederalists contended that representatives must be “a true picture of the people,…[possessing] the knowledge of their circumstances and wants” (Smith 17). The federalists, on the other hand, believed that precisely the virtue of a strong republic is selection of representatives based on merit and ability, that, as Madison asserted in Federalist No. 10, “No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause; because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity” (2). Furthermore, federalists and antifederalists differed in their fear of tyranny. The antifederalists believed that the greatest danger facing a government the scale of the United States was the continued trend towards aristocracy, the capacity of a few to tyrannized the many. As such, they vehemently opposed the supremacy and elastic clause within the Constitution, endowing the central government with substantial power. The Federalists, in contrast, believed that it was these very features within the Constitution that protected the government from what they believed to be a far greater danger: the oppressive power of the masses over the individual, the tyranny of the majority to stifle the voice of the minority. Madison comments that, “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens,” the majority would “trample on the rules of justice” (3).

Soon after the Constitution was passed, with these fundamentally elitist principles in mind, federalist thinkers of the Revolutionary War began tackling the economic woes that plagued the nation under the Articles of Confederation. Though some contend that different world views about the perpetuation of democracy were important issues of distinction between thinker in late 18^th century America; instead, it was these economic concerns that played the most important role in shaping 1790s political structure. Most prominently involved in the nation’s finances was Alexander Hamilton, the Treasury Secretary under George Washington, who paralleled his federalist beliefs within the political sphere with his federalist beliefs within the economic sphere. Fundamentally distrusting in the virtue of populism, Hamilton believed that, “mankind in general,” is “vicious…Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by? Their passions. There may be in every government a few choice sprits, who may act from more worthy motives,” but that, “one great error is that we suppose mankind more honest than they are” (Bailey 176). From this elitist political belief, he designed an economic system around affluent land owners, believing that tying capital to the wellbeing of the government would causes prosperity to trickle down to the masses. Within this economic system, he believed that by paying off the incurred 54 million dollars national debt at face value, the government would tie wealth to the success of the nation. “A national debt,” he commented, “if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing” (Bailey 178). To Hamilton, the national debt was in fact a cohesive force for colonial unity and prosperity, not a burden on the wellbeing of the young nation. Additionally, Hamilton believed that the national government should assume the 21.5 million dollars of state debt, on top of the national debt. This, he believed, was necessary in order to strengthen the union between the states, and to distribute the economic costs of a war which, he argued, was fought for the common good of the whole, not the good of the states which incurred the greatest debt. To pay this debt, Hamilton urged that tariffs, rendered important through vigorous manufacturing and trade efforts, be instilled and that internal revenue be collected through the imposition of excise taxes on domestic products such as (most notably) whiskey. Whiskey, the economic lifeblood of many backcountry distillers and settlers, was very valuable; when a small scuffle between the distillers and local authorities ensued over the tax, Washington, demonstrating the awesome power of the federal government, marched 13,000 troops through the land to quell the rebellions which, in reality, barely even existed. The national government, clearly, had grown tremendously by the hands of Alexander Hamilton.

The keystone of the Hamilton’s pervasive federal strengthening was the creation of a national bank. A bank of this sort would be a private institution in which the federal government would be the major shareholder; a place to deposit surplus money, an institution to help the circulation of wealth remain within the United States, and a means in which to stabilize the economy.

Despite the intentions of Hamilton, it was the proposal for a national bank which initiated large-scale resistance to the expanding power of the central government, and the diminishing rights of the states. A strong force of opposition coalesced in order to counter the incumbent Federalist’s superior political institutions—in order to oppose the philosophic stronghold the Federalists had on the future of the country. With Thomas Jefferson as their leader, and the boisterous newspapers of the day as a catalyst, the first political party, The Democratic Republicans (the Jeffersonians), was formed to combat not just the Federalist’s treatment of the national economy, but of their interpretation of the constitution.

The Jeffersonians opposed the expanding power of the national government as unconstitutional and as a threat to the limited sovereignty of the states. Jefferson pioneered a strict constructionist view of the constitution: whatever is not explicitly enumerated within the constitution is reserved for the states or the people (essentially a reiteration of the Tenth Amendment). From this, he makes the case against Hamilton’s bank, claiming that because, “the incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by [the bank], have not…been delegated to the United States by the Constitution” (Bailey 177) it is unconstitutional to endow the federal government with this power.

Beyond the question of a national bank, Jefferson’s opposition to a colossal federal government was imbedded within the philosophic framework of the debates between the federalists and antifederalist during the ratification of the constitution. Jeffersonians believed that the only safeguard against a tyranny of the central government was the survival of state sovereignty, where “by compact…[the states] constituted a general government for special purposes delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each state to itself, the residuary mass of rights to their own self-government” (Ford 679). In effect, Jefferson placed much faith in the intimacy of specialized state politics, and the ultimate accountability of the central government to those partially sovereign mini-governments. “If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one the most extensive corruption” (Bailey 176). Even beyond accountability to the states, Jeffersonians believed that the government should be ultimately constructed not just for the people, but by the people; that “every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers…alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories” (Bailey 176). Just as the Federalist Party did not fear the tyranny of the central government, the Jeffersonians placed little value on the idea of “tyranny of the majority”. As such, universal education and freedom of speech were two hallmarks of the Jeffersonian epochal cry for populist politics. Jefferson is quoted as saying, “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter” (Bailey 176). Elections themselves, because of Jeffersonians, for the first time, were brought directly to the people. As historical scientist David Fischer notes, “During the 1790s the Jeffersonians revolutionized electioneering…Their opponents complained bitterly of the endless ‘dinings’ ‘drinkings’ and celebrations; of handbills ‘industriously posted along every road’ of convoys of vehicles which brought voters to the polls by the carload’ of candidates ‘in perpetual motion.’”

Since the divisive domestic affairs of the 1790s, political parties have functioned within our democracy as bulwarks of liberty. When the Federalists in 1798 passed the Alien and Sedition Act through congress, stripping the nation of its cherished freedom of dissent, it was not the courts or the Constitution which defended the rights of the individual—it was the presence of a coherent and well defined party of opposition, it was the Democratic-Republicans.

The principles concerning fundamental Constitutional law that arose from the debate between the federalists and antifederalists, essentially, were crystallized into political parties during the 1790s—the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans—due to the domestic issue of national economy; however, the divisions between these parties were only truly illuminated as they reaction to the French Revolution. Though in 1789 both parties supported the French in their early efforts to shackle the power of the king through constitutional democracy, by 1792, when the Robespierre was using the guillotine to perpetuate the Revolution, to behead the Louis XVI, and to abolish Christianity, the political parties divided. It was the pious Federalist conservatives who feared the wrath of the masses, while it was the Jeffersonians who claimed that they had “such reliance on the good sense of the body of the people and the honesty of the leaders that [they are] not afraid of their letting things go wrong to any length in any cause” (Bailey 176). Though neutrality was finally decided, affirming the United State’s detachment from the struggles of the Old World, the French Revolution, perhaps more so than any foreign affair of the time, illuminated the fundamental ideological differences of the two American political parties.

Within the very concept of republicanism, contradiction is imbedded: complete electorate participation is irreconcilable with governmental effectiveness. Our problem, in a nation of power divided within the central government, is particularly acute and our electorate particularly detached. In the 1790s, domestic concerns over the national economy, coupled with the philosophic concerns of the accountability of the government and the question of foreign perpetuation of liberty, gave rise to distinct political parties which have functioned as partial antidotes to the fundamental republican contradiction. The national divisions of the 1790s facilitated the formation of political parties which not only have protected the rights of citizens to dissent, but have enabled governments to facilitate both political participation of the people, and governmental effectiveness over the people, have acted as a check on our nation’s liberty, equality, and democracy.

Works Cited

Bailey, Thomas, and David Kennedy. The American Spirit. 9th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.

Fischer, David. The Revolution of American Conservatism. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. 93.

Ford, Paul. The Federalist: A Commentary on the Constitution of the United States. New York: Henry Holt, 1898. 679-683.

Madison, James. "The Federalist #10." The Federalist #10. 1787. 24 Oct. 2005 .

Smith, Melancton. What the Anti-Federalists Were For. Chicago: University of Chicago P, 1981. 17.