Understanding the 1790s

Democratic-Republican party	Federalist party
led by Jefferson and Madison	led by Hamilton, Washington and Adams
accept that the new, stronger federal government is necessary, but it should be small, limited, and responsible to the people	believe that a much stronger Federal government is necessary
the Constitution should be constructed (read) strictly, so as to limit the central government's powers: it can do only that which it is explicitly allowed to do. So no national bank, no authority for government to pay for things like roads and bridges, since the Constitution never says that the government can do these things. Ironically, Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana from Napoleon violates these strictures.	use various parts of the Constitution ("general welfare" clause in the Preamble; commerce clause and "necessary and proper" clause in I.8) to construct it loosely, meaning that the federal government can do anything it is not explicitly barred from doing, such as create a national bank, build roads, bridges, and canals, and regulate interstate commerce. Attacks on this use of the clause underlie the contemporary Tea Party movement, some of whose leaders essentially argue for a return to the 18th century, since they claim that the commerce clause has been distorted and exploited to create a "tyrannical" federal government
the President should be like everyone else. Jefferson famously walks to the newly-built White House through muddy streets from his rooms when elected in 1800. (Which, by the way, pretty much anybody could do throughout the 19th century.) He was "accompanied by an Alexandria, Virginia company of riflemen, friends, and 'fellow citizens.' After his second Inauguration in 1805, a procession formed at the navy yard made up of members of Congress and citizens—including navy yard mechanics—which then escorted President Jefferson from the Capitol to the White House after the Inauguration, accompanied by military music performed by the Marine Band." Ironically, he was a rich slaveowner and did not actually work in the fields.	the President should not be like everyone else. Hamilton and Adams thought that he should be called "your Highness" or "your majesty" or something commensurate with the dignity of his office. Ironically, Hamilton, born out of wedlock in the West Indies, was a self-made man.
pro-French Revolution; Jefferson refuses to turn from it even when it grows bloody (he famously says that he adores the principle of popular rule: "I would rather have newspapers without government than government without newspapers"; also: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.") Jefferson said a lot of things, or is credited with saying things he didn't actually say, that contemporary militia/gun-rights advocates really like.	pro-British. They offer commercial protection, a great navy, and a model of society that should, aside from the King, mostly be copied. The French Revolution proves what can happen when there is too much democracy: anarchy and murder
envision a large, decentralized agrarian nation (Jefferson idealizes the yeoman farmer)  with people living in small communities and little to no hierarchy (though they tend not to talk very much about slavery, which would contradict this). This helps explain the Louisiana Purchase, which will allow enormous numbers of citizens to migrate westward and farm, far from the direction of government, in his mind.	envision a smaller, commercialized nation with business elites and big cities. Some Federalists opposed slavery as contrary to more modern ways of life, though this was not central to their platform
This is called the "First Party System," and it lasted from about 1794-1816. Slavery, women's rights, and moral issues were NOT discussed, but would become major issues in the Second Party System (Democrats/Whigs; c. 1832-1856). That system's inability to handle slavery led in part to the Civil War. Since 1856, we have been in the Third Party System (Democrats/Republicans), though some have argued that the rise of third parties (John Anderson in 1980, Ross Perot in 1992, Ralph Nader in 2000) and independent voters who subscribe to neither major party suggests that this system is not working very well these days.	There is some compromise. The first major compromise between the parties is in 1790, when national capital is moved to DC in exchange for formation of the first national bank (1791-1811), intended to centralize control of finances and allow the country to become a financial powerhouse. Second National Bank Chartered 1816, after the government runs out of money during the War of 1812.

But issues of the late 1780s/early 1790s cause further splits:
1789-1791: Hamilton's financial program: federal government will assume state debts, whether or not the state has paid all of its war bills; impose tariff and whiskey tax; redeem Revolutionary-War era obligations at par; once all of this debt has been sucked up and removed from the economy, get the rich to invest in the new, more stable US by buying bonds. They will then have an interest and a stake in the country's future. Use this money, and this increased security and centralized power, to invest in infrastructure and build a commercial future. This is a pressing problem because the US government had stopped paying both interest and principal on its debts to the French and the Dutch from the Revolution, so it was an extremely bad credit risk.	The redemption plan is particularly controversial: in 1782, the Confederation Congress sends teams of commissioners around the country to verify claims from the war on the Congress and the Army. (Most claimholders are veterans, farmers, or merchants.) This Commission issues certificates to legitimate claimants verifying their claims, which are unfortunately not payable given the lack of revenues available to the Confederation Congress. This issue is so important that the Treasury Dept. has 39 employees, the State Dept. only 5.
	In 1790, Hamilton decides that he will pay off current certificate-holders at par, whether or not they are the original issuees: "The case of those who parted with their securities from necessity, is a hard one," but "a breach in the public faith cannot be made on a certain number of subjects without seeming to be made on all." Therefore, "discrimination between the different classes of creditors of the United States cannot, with propriety, be made." In other words, the government must reward speculators for taking a risk by buying possibly valueless paper, and it cannot distinguish between those who sold paper as speculation and those who sold out of need.
	It is not always a "risk": news of the redemption plan circulated in some areas before others, with the result that speculators could buy old paper at anywhere from 10-25% of its value. (At its cheapest, such paper traded at 500:1, though the government paid out only at 100:1.) James Madison's proposal to find and repay original holders at par, and present holders at what they'd paid, fails 36-13 in House. (A later historian calls this idea "hopelessly impractical.") Rep. James Jackson of Ga. on Hamilton's redemption plan: "My soul arises indignant at the avaricious and immoral turpitude which so vile a conduct displays." Jefferson: "immense sums were thus filched from the poor & Ignorant, and fortunes accumulated by those who had themselves been poor enough before."
1793: French Revolution, particularly after 1793, when beheadings become broader and wider and more frequent.
1794: Whiskey Rebellion	Western Pa. farmers rise up against government "tyranny," invoking 1776. Said tyranny is a direct tax on whiskey, levied 1790, which Hamilton and Madison agree is economically necessary (the federal deficit, after assumption, is $830,000; whiskey tax will return $975,000, easily covering the debt): whiskey serves as currency in western parts of some states, as farmers there cannot get their grain to market and so turn it into the easier-to-carry and less perishable form of alcohol. (Drinking for home use is not taxed, but sale of whiskey is.) Hamilton argues that land taxes should be reserved for emergencies, and raising the tariff would harm merchants; also, this is a public-health measure, as it will stop people from overindulging in alcohol: he presents a letter from the Philadephia College of Physicians that calls whiskey-drinking "a plague" on the working classes, and he terms whiskey "a source of national extravagance and impoverishment."
	Collection districts are organized without looking at state lines and are administered federally rather than through the states, encouraging fears in some quarters that the federal government is conspiring to eliminate the states altogether. Whiskey producers must pay in coin or paper at their stills or face a trip to Federal Court in Philadelphia, a ten-day trip all the way across the state. The tax helps large commercial producers: you can pay either a flat fee based on your still's capacity, which incentivizes mass production ("using great diligence," as Hamilton puts it, this tax can be as low as 6 cents/gallon), or by the actual gallons you produce, which hits small producers harder (average about 9 cents/gallon, plus, since whiskey trades for much less in the west, the tax feels especially regressive). Was this on purpose? Historians differ--one calls it, "perhaps not consciously in intent...a severe handicap more in the West...[but] it would probably not be accurate, however, to jump...to the conclusion that Hamilton and his eastern friends engaged in a conscious conspiracy." For instance, Hamilton specifically rejected the suggestion of levying the tax solely on stills' capacity.
	In the fall of 1791, a tax collector named Robert Johnson runs into a musket-toting crowd of 15-20, many with faces darkened, some wearing women's clothes in rural Western Pennsylvania. (This was not as weird then as it may seem now: symbolic disguise was a common means of protest in the pre-modern world; it was so common in England for poachers to blacken their faces when hunting on rich people's land that Parliament passed a law banning the mere act of blackening your face. It began executing people for this in 1723, a year after its passage.) When he refuses to give up on his mission, they tar and feather him, shave his head, strip him of his clothes, horse, and supplies and leave "him stranded twenty miles in the forest to walk his way back to civilization in shame." Unsurprisingly, Johnson writes in the Pennsylvania Gazette that, "finding the opposition to the revenue law more violent than I expected...I think it my duty and do resign my commission." After a number of such incidents as well as political protests, the tax is first reduced by one cent, and then no whiskey tax is collected, 1791-92. 6000 men mass at Pittsburgh (which they call "Sodom") to protest the tax, August 1794, and threaten to march on Philadelphia; they also raise their own flag, set up mock guillotines, create their own courts, and talk about marching to seize weapons.
	The government does not take this lying down. Revolt, or "revolt," is put down by 12-15,000 US Army troops (more than had defeated the British at Yorktown), including Washington, in the interests of public order. He requires, he says, "unequivocal proof of absolute submission" before he will disband the militia. Though no army materializes to fight, cavalry officers seize suspects, tie them back-to-back, and throw them into an unfinshed cellar without food or heat for two days in early winter. 150 suspects are forced into a snowstorm in their nightshirts, then locked in an open pen with no protection or fire, though they are fed raw meat and raw dough. The government forces all local men over the age of 18 to sign loyalty oaths and arrests people without evidence, warrant, or trial, then makes them march nearly 400 miles across the mountains to Philadelphia, where they are paraded in the streets as proof that the rebellion is over; it is, in essence, invoking martial law without ever asking for the authority to do so, which the Constitution requires. Herman Husband, age 72, the same guy from the Regulator movement, is the first agitator arrested. He is held for more than 3 years, then acquitted of sedition and released. He dies less than a month later, in June 1795. The actual rebels melt into the mountains. Eventually, two leaders are convicted of treason, but both pardoned by the President. The whiskey tax is repealed in 1802.
So what's the point? This strikes some as the kind of tyranny the American Revolution was supposed to end, others as a warning of French-style dissolution and terror if the central government is not sufficiently authoritative. John Yoo, controversial Boalt (UC Berkeley) law professor and author of the notorious 2002 torture memos authorizing pretty much anything we wanted to do to terrorism suspects as long as we didn't intend to harm them, looks back on these actions as justification (see pp. 13-15 of this article, if you're curious) for his (since withdrawn) legal advice to the Bush White House. The author of a book on the Whiskey Rebellion responds here; he pretty much agrees with Yoo, though he thinks this is a really bad precedent.
1796: Washington's Farewell Address  Attempts to resolve escalating tensions. Washington warns against party division and against foreign entanglements. The speech attempts to steer US politics from its course of aggression, distrust, and accusations. Not successful.	See excerpts from political press, 1790s. Sedition Act, passed by Federalist party, 1798, criminalizes opposition to the President, sometimes to absurd lengths. The famous attacks on Jefferson's affair with Sally Hemings come from this period as well. (This is also the root of the Key & Peele bit.) Then extended during Adams' term as president, when Jefferson essentially runs Dem-Rep opposition from inside the White House.