Топик: George Washington

The Judiciary Act of 1789 was so well designed that its most essential features have survived. It provided for 13 judicial districts, each with a district court of federal judges. The districts were grouped into three circuits in which circuit courts were to hear appeals from district courts. The act also created a supreme court consisting of a chief justice and five associate justices to serve as the final arbiter in judicial matters, excepting cases of impeachment. Washington's selection of John Jay as the first chief justice was probably the best choice possible for the work of establishing the federal judiciary on a sound and enduring basis.

Foreign Affairs

In foreign affairs, Washington aimed to keep the country at peace, lest involvement in a great European war should shatter the new government before it could acquire strength. He also sought to gain concessions from Britain and Spain that would promote the growth of pioneer settlements in the Ohio Valley. In addition, he desired to keep up the import trade of the Union, which yielded revenue from tariff duties that enabled the government to sustain the public credit and to meet its current expenses.

The British and French

The foreign policy of Washington took shape under the pressure of a war between Britain and revolutionary France. At the war's inception Washington had to decide whether two treaties of the French-American alliance of 1778 were still in force. Hamilton held that they were not, because they had been made with the now-defunct government of Louis XVI. Washington, however, accepted Jefferson's opinion that they were still valid because they had been made by an enduring nation--a principle that has since prevailed in American diplomacy.

Fearing that involvement in the European war would blight the infant government, Washington issued a proclamation of neutrality on April 22, 1793. This proclamation urged American citizens to be impartial and warned them against aiding or sending war materials to either belligerent.

Because Britain was the dominant sea power, France championed the doctrine of neutral rights that was asserted in the French-American alliance. The doctrine held that neutrals--the United States in this case--might lawfully trade with belligerents in articles not contraband of war. Britain acted on a contrary theory respecting wartime trade and seized American ships, thereby violating rights generally claimed by neutrals. Such seizures goaded the Republican followers of Jefferson to urge measures that might have led to a British-American war. Washington then sent John Jay on a treaty-making mission to London.

Jay's Treaty of Nov. 19, 1794, outraged France because it did not uphold the French-American alliance and because it conferred benefits on Britain. Although Washington disliked some of its features, he signed it (the Senate had ratified it by a two-thirds vote). One reason was that keeping open the import trade from Britain continued to provide the Treasury with urgently needed revenues from tariff duties.

Unable to match Britain on the sea, the French indulged in a campaign to replace Washington with their presumed partisans, in order to vitiate the treaty. They also waged war on the shipping of the United States, and relations between the two countries went from bad to worse.

The Western Frontier

Washington's diplomacy also had to deal with events in the West that involved Britain and Spain. Pioneers in Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Ohio country, who were producers of grain, lumber, and meats, sought good titles to farmlands, protection against Indians, and outlets for their products via the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and New Orleans.

In the northern area, Britain held, within the United States, seven trading posts of which the most important were Niagara, Detroit, and Mackinac. The determination of the Indians to preserve their hunting lands against the inroads of pioneers seeking farms encouraged the British in Canada in their efforts to maintain their hold on the fur trade and their influence on the Indians of the area north of the Ohio River.

The focus of the strife was the land south of present-day Toledo. The most active Indian tribes engaged were the Ottawa, the Pottawatomi, the Chippewa, and the Shawnee. Two American commanders suffered defeats that moved Washington to wrath. British officials in Canada then backed the Indians in their efforts to expel the Americans from the country north of the Ohio River. A third U.S. force, under Gen. Anthony Wayne, defeated the Indians so decisively in 1794 in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, at the site of present-day Toledo, that they lost heart and the English withdrew their support. Wayne then imposed a victor's peace. By the Treaty of Greenville (1795) the tribes gave up nearly all their lands in Ohio, thereby clearing the way for pioneers to move in and form a new state.

In 1796 the British evacuated the seven posts that they had held within the United States. Because Jay's Treaty had called for the withdrawal, it registered another victory for Washington's diplomacy.

The Spanish Frontier

On the southwestern frontier the United States faced Spain, then the possessor of the land south of the 31st parallel, from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River. Intent upon checking the growth of settlement south of the Ohio River, the Spaniards used their control of the mouth of the Mississippi at New Orleans to obstruct the export of American products to foreign markets. The two countries each claimed a large area, known as the Yazoo Strip, north of the 31st parallel.

In dealing with Spain, Washington sought both to gain for the western settlers the right to export their products, duty free, by way of New Orleans, and to make good the claim of the United States to the territory in dispute. The land held by Spain domiciled some 25,000 people of European stocks, who were generally preferred by the resident Indians (Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw, with 14,000 warriors), to the 150,000 frontiersmen who had pushed into Kentucky, Tennessee, and western Georgia.

The selection of Jefferson as the first secretary of state reflected the purpose of Washington to aid the West. But before 1795 he failed to attain that goal. His task was complicated by a tangle of frontier plots, grandiose land-speculation schemes, Indian wars, and preparations for war that involved Spanish officials, European fur traders, and the Indian tribes, along with settlers, adventurers, military chieftains, and speculators from the United States.

Conditions in Europe forced Washington to neglect the Southwest until 1795, when a series of misfortunes moved Spain to yield and agree to the Treaty of San Lorenzo. The treaty recognized the 31st parallel as the southern boundary of the United States and granted to Americans the right to navigate the whole of the Mississippi, as well as a three-year privilege of landing goods at New Orleans for shipment abroad.

When Washington left office the objectives of his foreign policy had been attained. By avoiding war he had enabled the new government to take root, he had prepared the way for the growth of the West, and by maintaining the import trade he had safeguarded the national revenues and the public credit.

Washington Steps Down

By the end of 1795, Washington's creative work had been done. Thereafter he and his collaborators devoted their efforts largely to defending what they had accomplished. A conservative spirit became dominant and an era of "High Federalism" dawned. As his health declined, Washington became saddened by attacks made by his Republican opponents, who alleged that Hamilton had seized control of the administration, that a once-faithful ally, France, had been cast aside, that the Federalists were plotting to create a monarchy on the British model, and that they had corrupted Congress in order to effect their program. The attack reached its high (or low) point when Washington's foes reprinted forged letters that had been published to impugn his loyalty during the Revolution. He made no reply to his detractors.

Washington had been reelected unanimously in 1792. His decision not to seek a third term established a tradition that has been broken only once and is now embedded in the 22d Amendment of the Constitution. In his Farewell Address of Sept. 17, 1796, he summarized the results of his varied experience, offering a guide both for that time and for the future. He urged his countrymen to cherish the Union, to support the public credit, to be alert to "the insidious wiles of foreign influence," to respect the Constitution and the nation's laws, to abide by the results of elections, and to eschew political parties of a sectional cast. Asserting that America and Europe had different interests, he declared that it "is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world," trusting to temporary alliances for emergencies. He also warned against indulging in either habitual favoritism or habitual hostility toward particular nations, lest such attitudes should provoke or involve the country in needless wars.

Last Years

Washington's retirement at Mount Vernon was interrupted in 1798 when he assumed nominal command of a projected army intended to fight against France in an anticipated war. Early in 1799 he became convinced that France desired peace and that Americans were unwilling to enlist in the proposed army. He successfully encouraged President John Adams to break with the war party, headed by Hamilton, and to end the quarrel.

Washington's last public efforts were devoted to opposing the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, which challenged his conviction that the Constitution decreed that federal acts should be the supreme law of the land. Continuing to work at his plantation, he contracted a cold and died on Dec. 14, 1799, after an illness of two days.

Among Americans, Washington is unusual in that he combined in one career many outstanding achievements in business, warfare, and government. He took the leading part in three great historic events that extended over a period of 20 years. After 1775 he was animated by the purpose of creating a new nation dedicated to the rights of man. His success in fulfilling that purpose places him in the first rank among the figures of world history.

Curtis P. Nettels
Cornell University

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