Returning to America after the
organization of the Government, he accepted with evident reluctance
the position of Secretary of State which Washington offered to him. In
the Cabinet his chief adversary or competitor was Alexander Hamilton,
his junior by fourteen years, a man equally versatile and equally
facile--and still more enthralling as an orator. Hamilton harbored the
anxiety that the United States under their new Constitution would be
too loosely held together. He promoted, therefore, every measure
that tended to strengthen the Central Government and to save it
from dissolution either by the collapse of its unifying bonds or
by anarchy. In the work of the first two years of Washington's
administration, Hamilton was plainly victorious. The Tariff Law, the
Excise, the National Bank, the National Funding Bill, all centralizing
measures, were his. Washington approved them all, and we may believe
that he talked them over with Hamilton and gave them his approval
before they came under public discussion.
Thus, as Hamilton gained, Jefferson plainly lost. But Washington
did not abandon his sound position as a neutral between the two. He
requested Jefferson and Edmund Randolph to draw up objections to some
of Hamilton's schemes, so that he had in writing the arguments of very
strong opponents.
Meanwhile the French Revolution had broken all bounds, and Jefferson, as
the sponsor of the French over here, was kept busy in explaining and
defending the Gallic horrors.
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