The Birth of American Politics: Federalists vs. Republicans Explained

Hi, I'm John Green. This is Crash Course US History. And now that we have a Constitution, it's actually United

States history. Today, we're going to look at the birth of America's past. No, Stan. Not baseball, not football, not

eating. I mean politics, which in America has been adversarial since its very beginnings, despite what the

founders wanted. [Music] We looked at the first big conflict in

American politics last week, Constitution or Articles of Confederation. I hope that I convinced

you that we made the correct choice, but regardless, we made it. The Constitution passed. But immediately following the

passage of the Constitution, a pretty fundamental conflict came up. What kind of country should we be? Mr. Green, Mr.

Green, the US is supposed to be the policeman of the world and keep all the people in the green parts of not America

from hurting themselves. Oh, me from the past. We don't get into that stuff until 1823. So, one vision of America was put

forward by Alexander Hamilton, who'd served in the war as Washington's top aid and would go on to be his first

secretary of the Treasury and probably would have been president himself had he not been born in the British West

Indies. Hamilton had a strong personality and as you can see, the beautiful wavy hair of a Caribbean god.

And he had very definite ideas about what he wanted the future of America to look like. First, Hamilton wanted the

country to be mercantile, which means that he believed that we should be deeply involved in world trade. Second,

he wanted the US to be a manufacturing powerhouse. We wouldn't just buy and sell stuff, we would make it, too. He

even invested in a plan to make Patterson, New Jersey a manufacturing hub, which of course ultimately failed

because New Jersey. But to make a manufacturing giant, he needed a strong government that could build

infrastructure and protect patents. But you already knew that he was in favor of a strong government because, of course,

he wrote so many of the federalist papers. Hamilton also envisioned an America that was governed primarily by

the elite. His party, which came to be known as the Federalist Party, would be the one of the rich, the able, and the

well-born. I mean, just think, if the Federalist Party had survived, we might have had a bunch of like Bushes and

Kennedys as president. Hamilton also wanted America to be firmly affiliated with Great Britain, which isn't

surprising given his passion for elitism and trade. But there was an opposing view of what America should look like,

and it's most associated with Thomas Jefferson. Let's go to the thought bubble. Jefferson wanted an America that

was predominantly agrarian with most people being smallcale subsistence level farmers. Maybe they would produce a

little surplus for local markets, but certainly not for international consumers. There would be no

international trade. And he didn't want manufacturing either. This small-cale local economy could best be served by a

small-scale local government. It's not a surprise to find that Jefferson's sympathies lay with the

anti-federalists, even though he benefited from the new constitution a little bit since, you know, he

eventually got to be president and everything. Unlike the elitist Hamilton, Jefferson was an avowed democrat, which

meant that he distrusted concentrated power and privilege and believed that the masses could basically govern

themselves. To him, government and concentrated economic power were greater threats to liberty than a tyrannical

majority. Jefferson was a big fan of the French and not only because he spent a fair amount of time in Paris as our

ambassador there, he also liked the French because they fought with us in the War of Independence against the

British. And because after 1789, he liked the way the French treated their aristocrats, that is brutally. In

general, Jefferson and his partisans, who called themselves Republicans, although some current textbooks call

them Democratic Republicans just to make things incredibly confusing, preferred France just as the Hamiltonians

preferred Britain. And this was a bit of a problem because France and England were pretty much constantly at war

between 1740 and 1815. Thanks, thought bubble. So linked to these imagined Americas were the questions of how

democratic we should be and how much free speech we should have. Jefferson and the Republicans wanted more

democracy and more free speech. Well, sort of. I mean, during Washington's presidency, Democratic Republican

societies sprang up, the first opposition political parties. And in 1794, the Democratic Republican Society

of Pennsylvania published an address which made the point that quote, "Freedom of thought and a free

communication of opinions by speech or through the medium of the press are the safeguards of our liberties." The

Federalists, on the other hand, saw too much free speech and democracy as a threat. And from this, it sounds like

the Republicans were better Democrats. But it's a lot more complicated than that. I mean, for one thing, many

Republicans, including Thomas Jefferson, were slaveholders. And slavery is kind of the opposite of democracy. And for

another, many were supporters of the French Revolution. And supporting the French Revolution after 1793 is pretty

problematic because, as you'll remember from Crash Course World History, Robes Pierre was guillotining everyone up

until the point where he himself was guillotined. Okay, so in the first real American presidential election, there

weren't any political parties. There wasn't even a campaign. The election was uncontested, and George Washington won.

He didn't even have to run for office. He stood for it. Washington's presidency is important for a number of precedents

that he said, including the notion that a president should only serve two terms and the idea that even if he was a

general, the president should wear civilian clothing. But he wasn't the real policy brains Hamilton was.

Washington probably wouldn't have called himself a federalist, but he backed Hamilton's plan for a stronger nation.

And to that end, Hamilton began the great American tradition of having a five-point plan. Point one, establish

the nation's creditworthiness. Hamilton realized that if the new nation wanted to be taken seriously, it had to pay off

its debts, most of which had come during the war. And to do this, Hamilton proposed that the US government assumed

the debts that the states had amassed. Point two, create a national debt. That's something you don't hear

politicians say these days. Hamilton wanted to create new interestbearing bonds, hoping to give the rich people a

stake in our nation's success. Point three, create a bank of the United States. This bank would be private and

it would turn a profit for its shareholders. But it would hold public funds and issue notes that would

circulate as currency. And the bank would definitely be needed to house all the money that was expected to be raised

from point 4, a whiskey tax. Then as now, Americans like to drink and one sure way to raise money was to set an

excise tax on whiskey, which might reduce drinking on the margins or cause people to switch to beer. But what it

would definitely do is hurt small farmers who found the most profitable use of their grain was to distill it

into sweet, sweet whiskey. So the whiskey tax really upsets small farmers as we will see in a moment. Point five,

encourage domestic industrial manufacturing by imposing a tariff. For those of you who think the US was

founded on free trade principles, think again. Now, you'll remember that the Republicans wanted an agrarian republic

with freer trade. So they disliked pretty much all of Hamilton's plan. They also argued that none of this was in the

Constitution, and they were right. This position of expecting government to be limited by the text of the Constitution

came to be known as strict construction. But the Republicans lacked a five-point plan of their own. So their only hope of

success was to shave Hamilton's five-point plan down to four points, which is what they did. In 1790,

Republicans, many of whom were Southerners like Jefferson, struck a bargain. They agreed to points one

through four of Hamilton's plan in exchange for a permanent capital on the PTOAC in the south as opposed to the

first two temporary capitals of the US in New York and Philadelphia. So the Hamiltonian economy won out for a while.

Probably the most immediately controversial aspect of Hamilton's plan was the whiskey tax and not just because

people loved to drink, but also because farmers love to turn their rye into whiskey into profits. In 1794, Western

Pennsylvania farmers even took up arms to protest the tax. and that clearly could not stand. Washington actually

led, at least for part of the way, a force of 13,000 men to put down this whiskey rebellion, becoming the only

sitting president to lead troops in the field, and America continued to tax booze as it does to this day. On the

subject of foreign affairs, there was much more agreement. Just kidding. Hamilton wanted the US to have close

ties to Britain for commercial reasons, but Britain was perpetually at war with France, with whom the US technically had

a perpetual alliance. you know, because they helped us win the American Revolution. They gave us the Statue of

Liberty and Marian Kotiard, etc. And the French Revolution made things even more complicated because Republicans liked

it, but Federalists, being somewhat conservative and elitist, were afraid of it. This was especially true when French

emissary citizen Jane showed up in 1793 and started hiring American ships to attack British ones. Britain, in

response, began impressing American sailors, which sounds fun, but it isn't. It doesn't mean the British sailors

wowed Americans with their awesome mermaid tattoos. It means they kidnapped them and forced them to serve in the

British Navy. Washington dispatched Secretary of State John Jay to deal with the impressment issue and he negotiated

the boringly named J treaty which improved trade relations between the US and Britain and said absolutely nothing

about impressment or American shipping rights. For the rest of his term, Washington just tried to ignore the

problem, thereby inaugurating another presidential tradition, kicking big foreign policy problems down the line

for future presidents. By the end of his presidency, George Washington was somewhat disillusioned by politics. His

famous call for unity said that with slight shades of difference, you Americans have the same religion,

manners, habits, and political principles. Washington warned against the baneful effects of the spirit of

party generally, saying that it agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the

animosity of one part against another, faments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to

foreign influence and corruption. Still, by the time the dimminionive John Adams took over as the second president,

Americans had already divided themselves into two groups. Elitist Federalists and Republicans who stood for freedom and

equality. And oh, it's time for the mystery document. The rules here are simple. I guess the author of the

mystery document. If I am right, I do not get shocked. If I am wrong, I do get shocked. All right, let's give it a go.

Yes, ye lordy, ye hotty sex, our souls are by nature equal to yours. The same breath of God animates, enliven, and

invigorates us. Were we to grant that animal strength proved anything? Taking into consideration the accustomed

impartiality of nature, we should be induced to imagine that she had invested the female mind with superior strength

as an equivalent for the bodily powers of man. But waving this, however, palpable advantage for equality only, we

wish to contend. So, the author of the mystery document is a badass woman. So, we have here an argument and a bit of a

snarky one for equality between men and women. All right, I can do this. Elizabeth Katie Stanton is too young.

Also, probably not funny enough. [Music] Ah, Stan, my official guess

is Sarah Grimkey. Dang it. Judith Sergeant Murray.

Aw, you know, as part of the patriarchy, I probably deserve this anyway. So, Judith Sergeant Murray reminds us that

once unleashed, ideas like liberty and equality spread to places where neither the male federalists nor the male

Republicans wanted them to go. But back to Adams, his election in 1796 exposed a big flaw in our electoral system.

Because the vice presidency went to whomever had the second highest total number of electoral votes and that

person happened to be Thomas Jefferson. We ended up in a situation where the president and the vice president were on

opposite sides of the political spectrum which was not good. So they changed the constitution but not until after the

next election which featured another screw-up. We are awesome at this. Side note, the electoral college system would

continue to misrepresent the will of the American voters. Most notably in 1876, 1888, and 2000, but also in every

election. Domestically, Adams continued Hamilton's policy. But Adam's presidency is best known for foreign problems,

especially the way Adams administration totally overreacted to problems with France. Because we were trying to

maintain good commercial relationships with England, and England was perpetually at war with France. France

ended up in a quasi war with the United States despite our eternal alliance. They disrupted our shipping. We felt

nervous about their increasingly violent revolution. And then after three French emissaries tried to extort a bribe from

the US government as part of negotiations, the so-called XYZ affair because we didn't want to give the names

of these bribeeking French scoundrels. The American public turned against France somewhat hysterically as it will.

Taking advantage of the hysteria, Adams pushed through the Alien and Sedition Act. The Alien Act lengthened the period

of time it took to become a citizen, and the Sedition Act made it a crime to criticize the government. Among the more

famous people prosecuted under the Sedition Act was Matthew Lion, a congressman from Vermont who was jailed

for saying that John Adams was maybe not the best president ever. And while in jail, Lion won re-election to Congress,

which might indicate just how popular this law wasn't. It was so unpopular that Virginia and Kucky's legislators

passed resolutions against it, claiming that it violated Americans liberties and that state legislators had the power to

overturn or nullify any federal law that they found to violate the Constitution. This whole business of nullification and

states rights, it will return. The alien incision acts were allowed to laughs under Jefferson and they didn't lead to

widespread arrests of everyone who called Adams a tyrant or expressed admiration for the French Revolution.

And even though they weren't popular, they didn't doom the Federalist party either, even though no Federalist was

elected president after Adams. But the Alien Incision Acts and the response to them from Virginia and Kentucky are

important because they show us how unsettled American politics were in the first decade of this country's

existence. Even something as basic as freedom of speech was up for grabs as America tried to figure out what kind of

country it was going to be. That's important to think about when studying American history. But it's also

important to think about when looking at new democracies. You might think that Thomas Jefferson winning the

presidential election of 1800 settled all this stuff, but it wasn't so simple. It never is really. Thanks for watching.

I'll see you next week. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Mueller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Denko.

The associate producer is Danica Johnson. The show is written by my high school history teacher, Raul Meyer, and

myself. and our graphics team is Thought Cafe. If you have questions about today's video, particularly if they're

actual questions and not passive aggressive attempts to impose your ideology upon other people, leave them

in comments where they will be answered by our team of historians. We're also accepting your submissions for libertage

captions. Thanks for watching Crash Course and as we say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome.