The Cabinet by Lindsay M. Chervinsky

Author:Lindsay M. Chervinsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

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In 1793, Washington’s cabinet established important executive and diplomatic precedents, but that year also witnessed the crystallization of the first two-party political system, helmed by Hamilton on one side and Jefferson on the other. The previous fall, Jefferson had warned Washington this breach was coming. On September 27, 1792, Jefferson had left his home in Charlottesville, Virginia, to return to his office in Philadelphia. Along the way, Jefferson made a minor detour from his route to visit Mount Vernon. Washington and Jefferson enjoyed breakfast together before turning to politics. During their conversation, Washington confessed his disappointment at “the difference which he found to subsist between the Sec. of the Treasury and [Jefferson].” He acknowledged the disagreement in their political positions, but “he had never suspected it had gone so far in producing a personal difference.”59 Washington’s efforts to serve as a mediator over the next several months failed, and by 1793, Hamilton and Jefferson loathed each other. The increasing animosity between the two festered during periods of crisis. Washington’s small private study exacerbated the existing tensions between Hamilton and Jefferson by confining them together in a small space. Furthermore, the summer that year was so hot and muggy that a severe yellow fever epidemic broke out in October. Washington’s second-story study would have been stifling in the Philadelphia heat, even on the coolest of summer days. Almost twenty years later, Jefferson described his interactions with Hamilton as “daily pitted in the cabinet like two cocks.”60 His word choice conveyed a violent, bloody spectacle and reveals a great deal about the nature of cabinet debates.

Jefferson and the Republicans believed that Hamilton and the Federalists sought to turn the government into a monarchy modeled after Britain. While Jefferson did not think the president agreed with this plan, he thought Washington oblivious to Hamilton’s machinations. On the other side, the Federalists were convinced Jefferson and the Republicans were blinded by their rabid love of all things French to the dangers of anarchy and the violence of the French Revolution.

Washington did his best to manage the conflict. He hosted the secretaries at regular family dinners, invited them to the theater, and included them at other social events. He hoped that social interactions would foster an esprit de corps and diminish political divisions, just as social occasions had cultivated bonds among his officers during the war. Washington invited the secretaries to dine with him after many cabinet meetings to smooth hurt feelings that developed during the debates. For example, on July 31, 1793, he welcomed the secretaries to one such dinner. The day before, he had written to Jefferson: “As the consideration of this business may require some time, I should be glad if you & the other Gentlemen would take a family dinner with me at 4 ’Oclock. No other company is, or will be envited.”61

Similarly, on November 18, 1793, Washington hoped that a family dinner would encourage the cabinet to reach a consensus. Earlier that month, the cabinet had met four times in five days, on each occasion gathering for several hours in Washington’s office.

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