He did not actively participate in cabinet meetings, leaving debate to his ministers, whose opinions he occasionally requested in writing.

"). almost Knox always slavishly sided with the treasury secretary, Jefferson usually disagreed with both

, a large debt, worthless paper money, and, in effect, a bankrupt and weak Union. Major problems, old and new, urgently required solutions.

Great Britain continued to refuse to relinquish its posts in the American West; and there was only a minuscule army and no navy at all. Virtually every effort of the administration to settle these difficulties constituted a precedent

In the process of establishing precedents, Washington proved to be an uncommonly able executive. "In his daily administrative tasks," Leonard D. White, a distinguished authority on American public administration, commented, "he was systematic, orderly, energetic, solicitous of the opinion of others but decisive, intent upon general goals and the consistency of particular actions with them." Washington, in sum, demonstrated his mastery of administrative detail and reserved for himself the final say in major affairs of state.

During his first administration, Washington's department heads also played an active role in advising Congress on legislative policy. This was particularly true of the secretary of the treasury. Although the House was unwilling to allow Hamilton to appear before it in person, he nevertheless exercised instrumental legislative leadership. This included the submission of written reports and the use of influence over members of congressional committees. But the trend toward executive leadership of Congressespecially as exercised by Hamiltondrastically changed during Washington's second administration. The alteration was not due to revised views of Washington or his ministers on presidential leadership but rather to

Congress' less friendly response, which was, in turn, tied in with the gradual development of political parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans.

the provision of a bill of rights; and the enactment of tariff legislation. In one conspicuous instance, Congress also enhanced the powers of the presidency.

James Madison of Virginia, one of the ablest and most influential members of the House of Representatives, sought to deprive the Senate of any claim to veto executive dismissals, by moving that department heads could be removed by the president solely on his own authority. The House approved Madison's motion, but the Senate was less easily persuaded. The vote on the resolution was a that was broken by its presiding officer, Vice President John Adams, in favor of exclusive executive authority. An important source of presidential power was thus established, although the silence of the Constitution on the subject led to a century and a half of sporadic controversy concerning it.

during his eight years in office, Washington, adhering to his resolve that the separation of powers required him to pursue a hands-off policy toward Congress, vetoed only two comparatively minor pieces of legislation.

. In appointing Hamilton, Washington, on whose staff the young New Yorker had served during the Revolution, realized that he was tapping the best financial talent the country could offer. The president's satisfaction was the greater because he properly perceived that the Treasury Department would be the nerve center of the new government. Fiscal ineptitude had been chiefly responsible for the series of events that had toppled the

Confederation and led to the adoption of the Constitution. Among the most important provisions of that document was the pledge that "all debts contracted and engagements entered into before the adoption of the Constitution shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution as under the Confederation." The most pressing problem of the new government was the fulfillment of this pledge, and it fell to Hamilton to propose the ways and means.

On 25 February, Washington signed the bill chartering the Bank of the United States.

sectional conflict between slaveholders and other agrarians of the South versus mercantile and related commercially oriented interests of the North.

Washington supported Hamilton's program because he believed that it would benefit all sections by promoting national prosperity and a more closely knit union. The restoration and firm establishment of public credit, moreover, was a means to the same goal. (which horrified Jefferson) administration was actually run by Hamilton

As article after article appeared, Hamilton's attack on the secretary of state became increasingly shrill.

both, pleading with them to subordinate personal antagonism to the national interest.

During his first term in office, Washington's principal diplomatic difficulties concerned the Indian tribes, Great Britain, and Spain. The most immediate menace to national security came from Native Americans, who roamed and largely controlled the western frontier. Had they been able to effectively deploy their manpower and exploit their skill in guerrilla warfare, they would have presented an even graver danger, one that the sparsely manned American military forces could not have readily

parried. But individual Indian tribes often appeared more intent on fighting each other than the white man, on whom they also were hazardously dependent for guns and gunpowder. For their protection and security they acquired them by playing the three contending North American empires against each other. Of these, Native Americans most trusted Spanish Louisiana and British Canada and most distrusted the United States. The former two not only supplied them with munitions but were also less interested in seizing territory than in pursuing the mutually profitable fur trade; fellow Americans in the United States were less interested in trading with the natives than in acquiring their lands, often by treaties fraudulently obtained. Although the Spanish attempted to block U.S. expansion in the Southwest by negotiating profitable trade alliances with Indian tribes that served as a buffer against attempts of the United States to seize Louisiana and to open the Mississippi River to its commerce, the British posed the greater threat to the new nation's sovereignty. The northwestern frontier was the scene of seemingly endless warfare between Native Americans (aided and abetted by their British allies) and American frontiersmen (intent on retaliation against murderous assaults on U.S. settlements in the West). The crux of the problem, as the United States saw the matter, was that redcoats of His Majesty's Canadian regiments still occupied seven forts in the Old Northwest, posts that England had by the terms of the 1783 peace treaty ceded to the United States. England justified its refusal to abide by this provision of the treaty by pointing to stipulations that the United States had failed to honor: the repayment of revolutionary debts due to British merchants and the return of Tory property. Britain's true reason for holding on to the forts was to safeguard the route along which Indian furs were shipped to Canada.

Washington did not immediately perceive the nature and extent of British machinations in the West. When he belatedly did so, he swiftly asked Congress to enlarge the small regular army by one regiment. That
done, he decided in 1791 to restore peace to the area by sending a punitive expedition against the warring tribes. Commanded by General Arthur St. Clair, the army advanced from Fort Washington into present-day Indiana. On 4 November, St. Clair's forces were, despite Washington's warnings about such an eventuality, ambushed and humiliatingly defeated by a confederated Indian army. Although he was charitably

exonerated by Washington as well as by a committee of the House of Representatives, St. Clair resigned his commission. The United States Army, reorganized and enlarged, was now placed under the command of General Anthony Wayne, a leading Revolutionary War commander. During 1792 and 1793, Wayne postponed an active campaign while he patiently instructed his troops in the tactics of forest warfare. In the meantime, Washington took the initiative in another type of training

program by seeking to convince Congress and the state governments that the solution to the problem of Indian-American relations was not war but a change in attitude and the resultant adoption of policies that would assure justice to Native Americans. The murder of a Native American, for example, should be judged as the murder of a white person, measures should be taken to protect natives' property, and "such radical experiments . . . as may from time to time suit their condition" should be launched in order that Indians might gradually be integrated into U.S. culture. The period was not auspicious for the acceptance of such ideas, particularly in view of the persistence of Native Americans in conducting savage raids against U.S. settlers on the frontier.
For Washington, a more immediate and personal problem was the approaching presidential election of 1792. Early in his first administration he had made the decision to retire at the end of a single term, and wishing above all else "to return to the walks of private life," he balked at reversing it, the more so since for the moment the foreign scene appeared serene and domestic developments, particularly the success of Hamilton's economic program, gratifying. But would the rift in his official family oblige him to reconsider his earlier decision to retire? Pressure to do so crowded in from every quarter, from north and south, from private citizens and official colleagues. Among the latter, none were more importunate than the principal rivals of his cabinet, who suspended their acrimonious disagreement on everything else political to urge the president to stand for reelection. Neither Hamilton's nor Jefferson's pleas, nor those of many other prominent Americans, had any effect on the president's unwillingness to announce his candidacy for reelection. Nevertheless, over the months following his return to Philadelphia from Mount Vernon in October 1792, Washington continued to remain mute. Predictably no rival candidate presented himself, and there was not even a whisper

that one would. Aware that he was in a field of one, Washington certainly knew that the electorate would take his silence for assent, and it did. On 13 February 1793 the electoral college unanimously elected him to a second term. His running mate, John Adams, was also returned to office, although by a vote of only seventy-seven to fifty. To Washington, now past sixty and in poor health, what others saw as an electoral triumph was rather another four-year sentence to what he described to Jefferson as "the extreme wretchedness of his existence."