US History - Presidency of George Washington Pt 3
EQ: What did George Washington warn Americans about? Do Now: What is a precedent?
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| ____ | Mini Lesson | _________/ 15-20 Min | (Individual / Think-Pair-Share / Pair / Group #____) | |||||
| ____ | Activity | _________ / 20-30 Min | (Individual / Think-Pair-Share / Pair / Group #_____) | |||||
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| ____ | Assessment | _________ / 10-40 Min | (Individual / Think-Pair-Share / Pair / Group #____) | |||||
| ____ | Conferencing | _________ Min | (Individual / Pair / Group #____ / Throughout Class Period) | |||||
Hamilton's Financial Plan
A major problem facing the first federal government was how to deal with the financial chaos created by the American Revolution. States had huge war debts. There was runaway inflation. Almost all areas of the economy looked dismal throughout the 1780s. Economic hard times were a major factor creating the sense of crisis that produced the stronger central government under the new Constitution.
George Washington chose the talented Alexander Hamilton, who had served with him throughout the Revolutionary War, to take on the challenge of directing federal economic policy as the treasury secretary. Hamilton is a fascinating character whose ambition fueled tremendous success as a self-made man. Born in the West Indies to a single mother who was a shopkeeper, he learned his first economic principles from her and went on to apprentice for a large mercantile firm. From these modest origins, Hamilton would become the foremost advocate for a modern capitalist economy in the early national United States.
Hamilton's influential connections were not just with Washington, but included a network of leading New York merchants and financiers. His 1780 marriage to Elizabeth Schuyler, from a wealthy Hudson River valley land holding family, deepened his ties to rich and powerful leaders in New York. His innovative financial policies helped overcome the fiscal problems of the Confederacy, and also benefited an economic elite with which he had close ties. First Bank of the United States Alexander Hamilton conceived of the First Bank of the United States as a way to standardize American currency and cope with national Revolutionary War debt. The Bank still stands today on Independence National Park in Philadelphia.
The first issue that Hamilton tackled as Washington's secretary of the treasury concerned the problem of public credit. Governments at all levels had taken on so much debt during the Revolution. The commitment to pay them back was not taken very seriously. By the late 1780s, the value of such public securities had plunged to a small fraction of their face value. In other words, state IOU's — the money borrowed to finance the Revolution — were viewed as nearly worthless.
Hamilton issued a bold proposal. The federal government should pay off all Confederation (state) debts at full value. Such action would dramatically enhance the legitimacy of the new central government. To raise money to pay off the debts, Hamilton would issue new securities bonds). Investors who had purchased these public securities could make enormous profits when the time came for the United States to pay off these new debts. Spinning jenny The spinning jenny was one of several major technological innovations that made British textiles such an economic force.
Hamilton's vision for reshaping the American economy included a federal charter for a national financial institution. He proposed a Bank of the United States. Modeled along the lines of the Bank of England, a central bank would help make the new nation's economy dynamic through a more stable paper currency.
The central bank faced significant opposition. Many feared it would fall under the influence of wealthy, urban north-easterners and speculators from overseas. In the end, with the support of George Washington, the bank was chartered with its first headquarters in Philadelphia.
The third major area of Hamilton's economic plan aimed to make American manufacturers self-sufficient. The American economy had traditionally rested upon large-scale agricultural exports to pay for the import of British manufactured goods. Hamilton rightly thought that this dependence on expensive foreign goods kept the American economy at a limited level, especially when compared to the rapid growth of early industrialization in Great Britain.
Rather than accept this condition, Hamilton wanted the United States to adopt a mercantilist economic policy. This would protect American manufacturers through direct government subsidies (handouts to business) and tariffs (taxes on imported goods). This protectionist policy would help fledgling American producers to compete with inexpensive European imports.
Hamilton possessed a remarkably acute economic vision. His aggressive support for manufacturing, banks, and strong public credit all became central aspects of the modern capitalist economy that would develop in the United States in the century after his death. Nevertheless, his policies were deeply controversial in their day.
Many Americans neither like Hamilton's elitist attitude nor his commitment to a British model of economic development. His pro-British foreign policy was potentially explosive in the wake of the Revolution. Hamilton favored an even stronger central government than the Constitution had created and often linked democratic impulses with potential anarchy. Finally, because the beneficiaries of his innovative economic policies were concentrated in the northeast, they threatened to stimulate divisive geographic differences in the new nation.
Regardless, Hamilton's economic philosophies became touchstones of the modern American capitalist economy.
Bet you $10 you now see why he's on the $10 bill.
Neutrality Act
The Proclamation of Neutrality was a formal announcement issued by United States President George Washington on April 22, 1793, declaring the nation neutral in the conflict between France and Great Britain. It threatened legal proceedings against any American providing assistance to any country at war. The Proclamation led to the Neutrality Act of 1794.
Washington's cabinet members agreed that neutrality was essential; the nation was too young and its military was too small to risk any sort of engagement with either France or Britain. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson in particular, saw in this question, as well as in the other twelve, the influence of the Federalists, his political rivals; yet he too agreed a proclamation was in order, though perhaps not an official one.
In a cabinet meeting of January 14 Thomas Jefferson argued that while neutrality was a sine qua non, there was no real need to make a Proclamation of Neutrality either immediately, or even officially; perhaps there might be no need for an official declaration at all. The United States could declare its neutrality for a price, Jefferson intimated, "Why not stall and make countries bid for [American] neutrality?"[1] In response, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton declared that American neutrality was not negotiable.
On April 22, 1793 President Washington formally issued the Neutrality Proclamation. Washington appeased Jefferson's insistence by removing the word "neutrality" from the document itself and replaced with the word "impartial". That action had no effect on its meaning or intent, nor on its destiny to be known as the Proclamation of Neutrality".
John Jay Treaty
Was a treaty between the United States and Great Britain that is credited with averting war, resolving issues remaining since the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the American Revolution, and facilitated ten years of peaceful trade between the United States and Britain in the midst of the French Revolutionary Wars, which had begun in 1792.
The terms of Jay's Treaty were designed primarily by the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, strongly supported by the chief negotiator John Jay; and support from President George Washington. Jay's Treaty gained the primary American goals, which included the withdrawal of units of the British Army from pre-Revolutionary forts that it had failed to relinquish in the Northwest Territory of the United States (the area west of Pennsylvania and north of the Ohio River). (The British had recognized this area as US territory in the Treaty of Paris of 1783.) The parties agree that disputes over wartime debts and the American-Canadian boundary were to be sent to arbitration—one of the first major uses of arbitration in diplomatic history. The Americans were granted limited rights to trade with British possessions in India and colonies in the Caribbean in exchange for some limits on the American export of cotton.
Whiskey Rebellion
In 1791, Congress levied a federal tax on corn liquor. In frontier Pennsylvania, farmers distilled whiskey to use up surplus corn, and the product became for them a form of currency. Farmers protested and often refused to pay the tax.
In 1794, President Washington sent collectors, who were met by armed resistance in what constituted the first serious test of the new U.S. government's ability to enforce a federal law. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton advised the president to call out the militia. In a bold exercise of federal authority, Washington did just that, and the Whiskey Rebellion collapsed.
Farewell Address
Washington's Farewell Address to the Nation appears in its entirety in this issue of the Independent Chronicle. Although it is by all accounts the most famous and best-known of Washington's speeches, it was never actually delivered orally by Washington. By his own arrangement it first appeared in a newspaper at Philadelphia. It was published seven days later in The Independent Chronicle.
When George Washington delivered his Farewell Address in March 1797, the United States was recognized by the world's powers as a nation. That single fact was, in large part, his greatest accomplishment. In his speech, the outgoing president advised his fellow Americans to avoid "foreign entanglements," to preserve the financial credit of the nation, and to beware of the dangers of political parties, which might fragment the nation.
Activities
Lesson PowerPoint: George Washington - Accomplishments