ABSTRACT
After the election of George Washington as the first president in January 1789, his supporters and political allies called themselves Federalists. The Federalists won successive elections in 1792 and 1796 and they did not lose the presidency until the election of 1800. A major area of contention between the Federalists and their adversaries, who came to be known as Republicans, was political economy. Economic instability was, perhaps, the biggest problem facing the new government. Washington’s Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, developed a comprehensive economic program under the terms of which the federal government would assume the public debts of the states and promote manufacturing (document 1). Hamilton believed that the United States should emulate Britain’s economic model. Opposition to Hamilton’s program coalesced in and out of Congress (document 2). The Republicans opposed state-supported manufacturing and sought to maintain the United States as an agricultural nation of independent small farmers. The leading exponent of this view was Thomas Jefferson who served as Secretary of State under Washington and as Vice President to John Adams. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson articulated a vision of republican political economy which eschewed manufacturing in favor of agriculture (document 3).
