WASHINGTON, George. Autograph letter signed (“G:o Washington”), as President, to Edward Carrington, Philadelphia, 1 May 1796. 3 pages, bi-folium, small paper losses at edges, catching portions of a few letters; creases expertly repaired; show-through. Matted. Marked “Private.
WASHINGTON, George. Autograph letter signed (“G:o Washington”), as President, to Edward Carrington, Philadelphia, 1 May 1796. 3 pages, bi-folium, small paper losses at edges, catching portions of a few letters; creases expertly repaired; show-through. Matted. Marked “Private.” WASHINGTON REJECTS AN ATTEMPT TO STRIKE “AT THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSTITUTION” Washington defends the “framers” of the Constitution against a challenge of the House of Representatives to withhold funding for the implementation of the recently ratified Jay’s Treaty. Carrington wrote to him on the 22 of April, denouncing the “demagogic machinations of a faction” and reporting that public meetings would soon convene in Virginia to denounce the House’s action and support the Treaty, which went into effect with Senate ratification on the 29th of February. Washington is willing to entertain such a public debate about this momentous issue, telling Carrington “it always has been, and will continue to be, my earnest desire to learn, and to comply, as far as is consistent, with the public sentiment; but it is on great occasions only, and after time has been given for cool and deliberate reflection, that the real voice of the people can be known.” This is one of those “great occasions,” Washington continues. For the effort by the House strikes “at once, and boldly too, at the fundamental principles of the Constitution; and if it were established, would render the Treaty making power not only a nullity, but such an absolute absurdity as to reflect disgrace on the framers of it: for will any one suppose, that they who framed, or those who adopted the Instrument, ever intended to give the power to the President and Senate to make treaties (and declaring that when made and ratified, they should be the supreme law of the land) and in the same breath place it in the powers of the House of Representatives to fix their veto on them?... Every unbiased mind will answer in the negative.” Jay’s Treaty, concluded in 1794, occasioned bitter partisan rancor in the new United States and brought into being the first two-party system in American history, with Federalists and Anti-Federalists (sometimes called Jeffersonian Republicans) attacking each other on the floor of Congress and (especially and vituperatively) in the pages of the partisan press. Jeffersonians saw the Treaty as too favorable to Britain, and a symbol of a disturbing tendency within the Washington administration to favor the British monarchy over revolutionary and republican France. Since the Treaty affected interstate commerce Madison tried to argue that it fell within the Constitutional scope of the House’s powers. The Anti-Federalists lost the vote on funding but made the Treaty the central issue in the 1796 presidential election between Jefferson and Adams. In closing, Washington hints darkly at the motives of his soon to be former friends, Madison and Jefferson: “Charity would lead one to hope” that their motives were patriotic and “pure,” he writes. “Suspicions, however, speak a different language, and my tongue for the present will be silent.” A fascinating example of an early battle over the meaning and intention of the Framers, and an equally fascinating insight on the bitter partisan warfare of the 1790s. Published in Fitzpatrick 35:31-33.
WASHINGTON, George. Autograph letter signed (“G:o Washington”), as President, to Edward Carrington, Philadelphia, 1 May 1796. 3 pages, bi-folium, small paper losses at edges, catching portions of a few letters; creases expertly repaired; show-through. Matted. Marked “Private.
WASHINGTON, George. Autograph letter signed (“G:o Washington”), as President, to Edward Carrington, Philadelphia, 1 May 1796. 3 pages, bi-folium, small paper losses at edges, catching portions of a few letters; creases expertly repaired; show-through. Matted. Marked “Private.” WASHINGTON REJECTS AN ATTEMPT TO STRIKE “AT THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSTITUTION” Washington defends the “framers” of the Constitution against a challenge of the House of Representatives to withhold funding for the implementation of the recently ratified Jay’s Treaty. Carrington wrote to him on the 22 of April, denouncing the “demagogic machinations of a faction” and reporting that public meetings would soon convene in Virginia to denounce the House’s action and support the Treaty, which went into effect with Senate ratification on the 29th of February. Washington is willing to entertain such a public debate about this momentous issue, telling Carrington “it always has been, and will continue to be, my earnest desire to learn, and to comply, as far as is consistent, with the public sentiment; but it is on great occasions only, and after time has been given for cool and deliberate reflection, that the real voice of the people can be known.” This is one of those “great occasions,” Washington continues. For the effort by the House strikes “at once, and boldly too, at the fundamental principles of the Constitution; and if it were established, would render the Treaty making power not only a nullity, but such an absolute absurdity as to reflect disgrace on the framers of it: for will any one suppose, that they who framed, or those who adopted the Instrument, ever intended to give the power to the President and Senate to make treaties (and declaring that when made and ratified, they should be the supreme law of the land) and in the same breath place it in the powers of the House of Representatives to fix their veto on them?... Every unbiased mind will answer in the negative.” Jay’s Treaty, concluded in 1794, occasioned bitter partisan rancor in the new United States and brought into being the first two-party system in American history, with Federalists and Anti-Federalists (sometimes called Jeffersonian Republicans) attacking each other on the floor of Congress and (especially and vituperatively) in the pages of the partisan press. Jeffersonians saw the Treaty as too favorable to Britain, and a symbol of a disturbing tendency within the Washington administration to favor the British monarchy over revolutionary and republican France. Since the Treaty affected interstate commerce Madison tried to argue that it fell within the Constitutional scope of the House’s powers. The Anti-Federalists lost the vote on funding but made the Treaty the central issue in the 1796 presidential election between Jefferson and Adams. In closing, Washington hints darkly at the motives of his soon to be former friends, Madison and Jefferson: “Charity would lead one to hope” that their motives were patriotic and “pure,” he writes. “Suspicions, however, speak a different language, and my tongue for the present will be silent.” A fascinating example of an early battle over the meaning and intention of the Framers, and an equally fascinating insight on the bitter partisan warfare of the 1790s. Published in Fitzpatrick 35:31-33.
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