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0 pointsjaybrendansmith1y ago0 comments

That's an interesting take. Washington did not support the federalists in all things, in fact he likely prevented most of their extremist actions while he was in power. The citizen Genet affair had concerned him greatly, because Jefferson had invited the French in against the wishes of the state department. Sort of like Trump cozying up to dictators like Putin now, he worried about people putting faction over country, or putting themselves over the constitution. Your disapproval of Washington does explain a lot to me about how we've gotten to our current point, and tells me that he was not wrong to worry.

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Amezarak1y ago

It was a coalition and Washington was certainly one of them. The Jay treaty was a defining moment in party identification.

If you read the letters I linked, I think you’ll find that my comment was fairly apropos - as in the Rush letter, you’re leveraging an idea of Washington they deliberately falsified. And of course a lot of the controversy was over the Constitution! (see the Paine letter I linked in the thread). Washington was a nakedly political animal and anyone that disagreed with him got labeled a factionalist, and anti federalist, etc. complaining about political parties was just his dressed up language for complaining about dissent.

jaybrendansmithOP1y ago

Yes, politics was a blood sport back then for sure. Both sides absolutely hated each other, the Federalists were trying to rebuild the British federalist system (sneak peek: they were proven correct by history) and the Democratic-Republicans wanted to maintain the southern slave economy. Washington was attempting to maintain the coalition in any way possible ... a hoop for 13 staves. He recognized how Adams and Hamilton were just as bad as Jefferson and Madison, but he sided with them because he recognized they were ultimately correct. (And have been proven by 250 years of history to have been correct. Without federalism we have no modern banking, we have no strong federal government. We have no industrial economy. Fun fact, without it, we lose to the Axis powers! Why we continue to debate this is completely beyond me.) Yes, Washington was sometimes imperfect, because he had to make tough choices, like keeping us out of the French revolution. And remember that ultimately Hamilton supported Jefferson over Aaron Burr, that villain.

Amezarak1y ago

> He recognized how Adams and Hamilton were just as bad as Jefferson and Madison, but he sided with them because he recognized they were ultimately correct.

This would be a stronger argument if you had letters or direct quotes by him making statements like this. Meanwhile, Adams was shilling for Washington to be addressed as "His Majesty", not the kind of argument you make for someone you're not strongly backing.

> Fun fact, without it, we lose to the Axis powers!

This is a bizarre argument, as if the justification for the federalist side is a war happening one hundred years later, and which the US had no particular national-interest reason to involve itself in. (The Japanese would have not attacked Pearl Harbor without American interventionism in the Asian-Pacific.) It's impossible to say what US politics would have looked like if the antifederalists had won sooner (the federalist party totally collapsed after Jefferson was elected) so I have no idea what the basis for this counterfactual is anyway.

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Amezarak1y ago

It was a coalition and Washington was certainly one of them. The Jay treaty was a defining moment in party identification.

jaybrendansmithOP1y ago

Amezarak1y ago

> He recognized how Adams and Hamilton were just as bad as Jefferson and Madison, but he sided with them because he recognized they were ultimately correct.

> Fun fact, without it, we lose to the Axis powers!

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