The Presidency of George Washington
... With Madison’s help, the major appointments to Washington’s cabinet was completed: Thomas Jefferson was to be the secretary of state, Henry Knox still held his position as secretary of war, Alexander Hamilton would be the secretary of the treasury at Madison’s urging, Edmund Randolph became attorney general, and, to round it off, Samuel Osgood became the postmaster general (McDonald 38). A major issue that Washington needed to solve when he was elected into office was the financial problems caused by the American Revolution several years earlier. The financial obligations at the war’s end was complex, which is surprising because the states were expected to pay the funds on an equal basis and the Continental Congress was supposed to see to the disbursement of these payments. Things did not exactly work out as planned. Alexander Hamilton was the one who inherited this problem (McDonald 48). Alexander Hamilton happened to be a financial genius and Washington was thankful for that. He proposed a plan to reduce the debt by forming an excellent strategy. First of all, the foreign and domestic debts had to be centralized and combined, which went along with the proposal of funding the federal debt at par, taking control of the debts of every state, and then forming a National Bank to manage every investment and payment at the federal level. These proposals were adopted on the fact that they worked great for they had improved the credit rating of the United States in foreign banks. Hamilton almost single-handedly created the national economic policy that acknowledged the sovereign power of the United States government (Ellis 204). Washington soon became torn apart in foreign relations as a Revolution in France was beginning to break out. The biggest problem for Washington was that since the French helped America in their Revolution, then America should be obligated to help France in theirs. But on the other hand, America was also bound to Britain by heritage and commerce, and Britain joined the coalition against France (McDonald 113). Washington came up with an idea towards this problem. Though, he knew that his sentiments lie with France for helping America gain independence, he knew that it was in the best interest of the United States to declare neutrality and stay out of the conflict (McDonald 114). This act of neutrality by Washington was not taken seriously by neither Britain or France. French ships landed in American ports, primarily in South Carolina, and commissioned American ships to attack unarmed British merchant ships (McDonald 124). For this undiplomatic conduct, Washington had to put an end to this. Washington passed laws on the forbidding of Americans breaking the country’s neutral state, which primarily put an end to most of it (McDonald 127). While this was going on, Britain blockaded France (McDonald 135). Also violating America’s neutrality, Britain still had forts in the American Northwest. To rid this problem, Washington sent Chief Justice John Jay to negotiate a settlement between the United States and Britain. This treaty called for compensation for recent maritime seizures, evacuation of the northwestern posts, a guarantee of American boundaries as fixed by the treaty of 1783, admittance of American vessels of up to one hundred tons to the British West Indies, and mutual trading concessions to be agreed upon. The British agreed to leave the Northwest forts, but still wanted the right to trade with Indians in the American territory. Washington accepted this treaty as it was the best at the time (McDonald 151-152). Washington, while trying to keep peace with Great Britain, had another problem in 1794 in Western Pennsylvania. The Whiskey Rebellion became a challenge to the power of the Federal government to enforce its laws. This rebellion was caused by a movement against the first Federal excise tax. To solve this problem, Washington used militia to crush the rebellion. The resistance quickly subsided (McDonald 145). Another foreign policy problem was the federal government’s relations with the Native American tribes. This problem was to be handled by the secretary of war, Henry Knox, who assumed the role of negotiator of several treaties approved by the Congress of the old Confederation. Washington wanted to join Knox and have the opportunity to use his own judgment in these matters (Ellis 211). Washington was one of the American’s who dreamed that America’s future was to extend west, but there were about 76,000 Native Americans who lived in the region from the Alleghenies and the Mississippi (Ellis 211-212). He also needed to play a role in this for the purposes of the Indian inhabitants being an important piece to the future and should not be allowed to end in a tragedy (Ellis 211). Unlike most Americans, Washington had witnessed Indian power firsthand. He recognized the fact that Indians were not savages, but very tough and formidable adversaries and should be respected. To hopefully avoid any problems, he produced a policy to create several sovereign Indian “homelands.” Washington viewed the Native Americans as separate foreign nations, just like Britain and France, and should be treated as such. Treaties with the Indians should be sanctioned by Congress just the same (Ellis 212). Washington absolutely did not want to cause the Indian removal that happened forty years later under Andrew Jackson. To do this, he hoped that the multiple sanctuaries that would be created under tribal control would be avoided and left alone by the ongoing movement west by white settlers and sometime in the next century would be assimilated into the American culture and become citizens (Ellis 212). His dreams eventually came to an end as the hatred between the Americans and Native Americans grew. Washington was forced to use the military to put down Indian uprisings in the Ohio Valley by the Miami, Wyandot, and Shawnee tribes. Washington believed the causes of these uprisings were because of white vigilantes that were determined to cause hostilities between the two sides (Ellis 214). Washington soon knew that his dream of the Indian sanctuaries could not be enforced. Knox also came to realize this and had known that the federal control of the land would take a series of forts built across it to protect the white settlers and needed no fewer than 50,000 troops. The creation of these forts and the men needed to run them was an impossibility and could not be formed. Washington’s vision of a peaceful coexistence between the whites and Indians could not be realized and it had to be up to federal jurisdiction to make sure that the treaties with the Indian be recognized. This proved that Washington was very passionate about the treaties, but it also proved that it could never happen. The fact that most of his first term was occ...