Washington's Government

Description

Washington’s Government shows how George Washington’s administration—the subject of remarkably little previous study—was both more dynamic and more uncertain than previously thought. Rather than simply following a blueprint laid out by the Constitution, Washington and his advisors constructed over time a series of possible mechanisms for doing the nation’s business. The results were successful in some cases, disastrous in others. Yet at the end of Washington’s second term, there was no denying that the federal government had achieved remarkable results. As Americans debate the nature of good national governance two and a half centuries after the founding, this volume’s insights appear timelier than ever.

ContributorsLindsay M. Chervinsky, Iona College * Gautham Rao, American University * Kate Elizabeth Brown, Huntington University * Stephen J. Rockwell, St. Joseph’s College * Andrew J. B. Fagal, Princeton University, * Daniel Hulsebosch, New York University * Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Creating the Federal Government
1. George Washington and the Cabinet: The Unlikely Development of an Unintended Institution
2. Washington’s Workforce: Reconstructing the Federal Government at the Moment of Its Creation
3. The Theory and Practice of Federalist Political Economy
4. Creating Interdepartmental Collaboration: Federal Judges, the Remitting Act, and Cooperative State Building
5. Indian Affairs and the Relentless American State
6. "The Next Great Work to Be Accomplished": American Armament Policy
7. From Constitution Making to State Building: The Washington Administration and the Law of Nations
8. The Legislative Output of Congress
Afterword: Reflections on the Political History of the Early Republic
Notes on Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Revolutionary Periode
• Histoire
• United States
• History

Informations

• Publié par: University of Virginia Press
• Date de parution: 07 juillet 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780813946146
• Langue: English

Extrait

Washington’s Government
Early American Histories
Douglas Bradburn, John C. Coombs, and S. Max Edelson, Editors
Washington’s Government
Charting the Origins of the Federal Administration
Edited by Max M. Edling and Peter J. Kastor
University of Virginia Press
Charlottesville and London
University of Virginia Press
© 2021 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
First published 2021
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Edling, Max M., editor. | Kastor, Peter J., editor.
Title: Washington’s government : charting the origins of the federal administration / edited by Max M. Edling and Peter J. Kastor.
Description: Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2021. | Series: Early American histories | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021000461 (print) | LCCN 2021000462 (ebook) | ISBN 9780813946139 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780813946146 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: United States—Politics and government—1789–1797. | Federal government—United States—History—18th century.
Classification: LCC E311 .W374 2021 (print) | LCC E311 (ebook) | DDC 973.2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000461
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000462
Cover art: Sacred to Patriotism, Cornelius Tiebout, engraving after Charles Buxton, 1798. (Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association)
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Creating the Federal Government
George Washington and the Cabinet: The Unlikely Development of an Unintended Institution
Lindsay M. Chervinsky
Washington’s Workforce: Reconstructing the Federal Government at the Moment of Its Creation
Peter J. Kastor
The Theory and Practice of Federalist Political Economy
Gautham Rao
Creating Interdepartmental Collaboration: Federal Judges, the Remitting Act, and Cooperative State Building
Kate Elizabeth Brown
Indian Affairs and the Relentless American State
Stephen J. Rockwell
“The Next Great Work to Be Accomplished”: American Armament Policy
Andrew J. B. Fagal
From Constitution Making to State Building: The Washington Administration and the Law of Nations
Daniel J. Hulsebosch
The Legislative Output of Congress
Max M. Edling
Afterword: Reflections on the Political History of the Early Republic
Rosemarie Zagarri
Notes on Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
One of the most rewarding features of an edited volume is its collaborative quality. That was even more so in this case because the collaboration was both interpersonal and institutional.
As editors, we remain profoundly grateful for the intellectual energy, constructive outlook, and patience that our contributors demonstrated throughout the process. Those qualities were abundantly on display at the April 2016 workshop where we gathered to discuss drafts, and it has remained through the revision and editing process that followed.
That workshop proved so fruitful through the participation of a number of other scholars who joined us to comment on the papers. Brian Balogh, Doug Bradburn, Johann Neem, and Rosemarie Zagarri participated, and the essays are all better as a result of their feedback. Rosemarie also generously agreed to write the afterword to this volume.
All of us owe a particular debt to George Washington’s Mount Vernon, the institution that includes but is hardly limited to the plantation home of George and Martha Washington. Indeed, Mount Vernon has become a model of how best to support both public and academic history. The Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington hosted the workshop. Stephen Mcleod and other members of the library staff provided crucial logistical support. The library was a magnificent site for this academic meeting, just as it excels in hosting public talks, teacher training, and other activities, all the while serving as home to researchers pursuing a variety of projects on George Washington and his time.
We especially want to thank Doug Bradburn. At the time of the workshop, he was serving as the founding executive director of the library. Since then, he has become president and CEO of Mount Vernon and as such supervises the entire operation of the estate on behalf of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. Kevin Butterfield, his successor as executive director at the library, has helped see this volume through to completion.
We are also grateful for the financial support we have received from our own institutions. The irony was not lost on us that we come from one university named for George Washington (Washington University in St. Louis) and another named for the title (King’s College London) that Washington considered so inappropriate for the United States.
Finally, we want to thank the University of Virginia Press for publishing this volume. Dick Holway and Nadine Zimmerli served as editors for this volume. Dick is a legend among historians of the early American republic, having guided a generation of scholars through the publication process at UVA Press. While nobody can replace Dick, Nadine has succeeded him quite admirably.
Washington’s Government
Introduction
Creating the Federal Government
In July 1792, George Washington was at a crossroads. Uncertain whether to pursue a second term as president, detecting strong disagreements within the nation’s political class, he found that even a visit to his plantation, Mount Vernon, was no escape from public affairs. Writing to Alexander Hamilton, Washington explained that having met with local Virginians, “I have endeavoured to learn from sensible & moderate men—known friends to the Government—the sentiments which are entertained of public measures.” Washington took pleasure in the fact that “these all agree that the Country is prosperous & happy; but they seem to be alarmed at that system of policy, and those interpretations of the Constitution which have taken place in Congress.” Yet Washington was forced to acknowledge that “others, less friendly perhaps to the Government, and more disposed to arraign the conduct of its Officers . . . go further, & enumerate a variety of matters.” 1
Washington understood that this response was in part a political matter of emerging factionalism. He also feared that it might reflect ideological problems in the fabric of American republicanism. But in the paragraphs that followed, Washington listed a series of discrete government actions that the “other,” “less friendly,” observers of the government had fastened on. These actions had to do with taxation and, above all, with the management of the public debt, which the critics argued were undermining the republican system of government. Washington asked Hamilton to provide his “ideas upon the discontents here enumerated” at his earliest convenience to help him determine whether the policy measures had been executed effectively and were bringing good or bad results. In other words, at the end of the day George Washington saw the problems facing his administration as a matter of governance. In modern parlance we would say that Washington worried about the institutional capacity of the federal government; that he wanted to reconsider his policy-making priorities; and that he hoped to pursue a system of state building that was appropriate to the nation’s needs and its resources.
This volume explores how those tasks of governance first came into being. Just how did the Washington administration go about converting the vague principles of the Constitution into viable institutions and effective policies? How did the government attempt to mobilize its resources—people, money, physical goods—to achieve its goals? And how did Americans respond to those actions? Answering these questions could not be more timely, as both George Washington’s presidency and the realities of governance in early America generate growing interest in both academic and popular circles.
In the course of that exploration, the prevailing accounts of the Washington presidency are restructured in several crucial ways. First, the essays interrogate some of the most basic assumptions about Washington and his administration, revealing a new series of periodization schemes and constructing a new set of processes. Second, the essays do so by shifting the focus from the realm of electoral and constitutional concerns to a focus on administrative and institutional concerns. Thirdly, several of the essays try to approach the political history of the period by employing new methods based on quantitative rather than qualitative data.
What emerges from this analysis is a Washington administration that appears both more dynamic and more uncertain than was previously apparent. The administration appears remarkably experimental. Rather than creating in a straightforward manner a system promulgated by the Constitution, Washington, his advisors, and their cadre of subordinates constructed over time a series of possible mechanisms for doing the nation’s business. The results were successful in some cases, disastrous in others. Yet at the end of Washington’s second term, there was no denying that the federal government had achieved some remarkable results. Despite stumbles, false starts, and a growing opposition, the federal government had staked out its territory and was actively pursuing important policies in several key areas of governance thanks to an administrative organization that, while far from perfect, was reasonably efficient in implementing the goals formulated by Congress and the administration. In co