By Brenda June Temple

FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

Soon after returning from France, Jefferson accepted President Washington’s invitation to serve as Secretary of State. Pressing issues at this time were the national debt and the permanent location of the capital. He opposed a national debt, preferring that each state retire its own, in contrast to Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who desired consolidation of states’ debts by the federal government. Hamilton also had bold plans to establish the national credit and a national bank, but Jefferson strenuously opposed this and attempted to undermine his agenda, which nearly led Washington to dismiss him from cabinet. He later left the cabinet voluntarily.

The second major issue was the capital’s permanent location. Hamilton favored a capital close to the major commercial centers of the Northeast, while Washington, Jefferson, and other agrarians wanted it further south. After lengthy deadlock, the Compromise of 1790 was struck, permanently locating the capital on the Potomac River, and the federal government assumed the war debts of all original 13 states.

Jefferson’s goals were to decrease American dependence on British commerce and to expand commercial trade with France. He sought to weaken Spanish colonialism of the trans-Appalachian West and British control in the North, believing this would aid in the pacification of Native Americans.

Jefferson and political protegé Congressman James Madison founded the National Gazette in 1791, along with author Phillip Freneau, in an effort to counter Hamilton’s Federalist policies, which Hamilton was promoting through the influential Federalist newspaper the Gazette of the United States. The National Gazette made particular criticism of the policies promoted by Hamilton, often through anonymous essays signed by the pen name Brutus at Jefferson’s urging, which were actually written by Madison. In Spring 1791, Jefferson and Madison took a vacation to Vermont; Jefferson had been suffering from migraines and was tiring of the in-fighting with Hamilton.

In May 1792, Jefferson became alarmed at the political rivalries taking shape; he wrote to Washington, imploring him to run for reelection that year as a unifying influence. He urged the president to rally the citizenry to a party that would defend democracy against the corrupting influence of banks and monied interests, as espoused by the Federalists. Historians recognize this letter as the earliest delineation of Democratic-Republican Party principles. Jefferson, Madison, and other Democratic-Republican organizers favored states’ rights and local control and opposed federal concentration of power, whereas Hamilton sought more power for the federal government.

Jefferson supported France against Britain when the two nations fought in 1793, though his arguments in the Cabinet were undercut by French Revolutionary envoy Edmond-Charles Genêt‘s open scorn for Washington. In his discussions with British Minister George Hammond, he tried in vain to persuade the British to vacate their posts in the Northwest and to compensate the U.S. for slaves whom the British had freed at the end of the war. Jefferson sought a return to private life, and resigned the cabinet position in December 1793; he may also have wanted to bolster his political influence from outside the administration.

After the Washington administration negotiated the Jay Treaty with Britain in 1794, Jefferson saw a cause around which to rally his party and organized a national opposition from Monticello. The treaty, designed by Hamilton, aimed to reduce tensions and increase trade. Jefferson warned that it would increase British influence and subvert republicanism, calling it “the boldest act [Hamilton and Jay] ever ventured on to undermine the government”. The Treaty passed, but it expired in 1805 during Jefferson’s presidential administration and was not renewed. Jefferson continued his pro-France stance; during the violence of the Reign of Terror, he declined to disavow the revolution: “To back away from France would be to undermine the cause of republicanism in America.”

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