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The Experiment Undertaken, 1789-1800
Overview
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Most Americans believed that the success of the republic depended on the political virtue of its citizens and the essential characteristics of good republican citizens. They believed that people who were either too wealthy or too poor were potentially dangerous. They wanted an economic life that supported a middle course. They wanted to find a way to strike a balance between personal ambition and maintaining the common good because they believed this was the only way to insure the success of the republic. Concerns about the nation’s political economy centered on the character and operation of state and federal governments. Addressing the age-old conflict between property and non-property owners, James Madison argued in Federalist Paper Number 10 that one of the benefits of a powerful national government would be its ability "to break and control" these provincial interests. Many worried that the opposite would be true: that a powerful national government would become a self-serving tool of the wealthy. The west posed one of the most serious challenges to the republic and to Washington’s administration. The authority of the federal government overlapped with that of state governments and both contended with Americans who saw that land from their perspectives. Washington’s domestic problems with Indians, settlers, and disgruntled tax payers were soon joined by a host of international problems. The U.S. found itself drawn into a new war on the Continent. Spain and France had declared war on Great Britain and Holland. For Americans this took on domestic political importance: Federalists supported the English; Republicans supported the American sister republic, France. Washington endorsed neutrality.
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