Our Early Presidents*--Professor Ralph

KetchamRome Free Academy

October 27, 2010

*Based on Professor Ketcham’s Presidents Above Party: The First American Presidency, 1789-1829

George Washington 1789—1797

John Adams1797—1801

Thomas Jefferson 1801—1809

James Madison 1809—1817

President George Washington 1789--1797

“To take measures for promoting the general welfare…To use your best endeavors to improve the education and manners of a people; to accelerate the arts and sciences; to patronize works of genius; to confer rewards for inventions of utility; and to cherish institutions favorable to humanity.”

--from Washington’s discarded first inaugural address

The First National Bank of 1791

Washington; Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State; Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of Treasury; Henry Knox, Secretary of War; and Edmund Randolph, Attorney General. Washington was frustrated by the partisanship quarrels between Jefferson and Hamilton in 1792.

The Jay Treaty of 1794

Jeffersonians opposed the Jay Treaty

Washington’s most famous speech, his farewell address, was never delivered orally. The speech was published in Philadelphia’s American Daily Advertiser on Sept. 19, 1796.

From Washington’s Farewell Address Sept. 19, 1796“The alternate domination of one faction over another…has perpetuated the most horrid enormities, and is itself a frightful despotism.”

A fight in Congress between Roger Griswold of Connecticut and Matthew Lyon of Vermont. Unknown artist, 1798 Public domain.

President John Adams 1797--1801

“…wish to patronize every rational effort to encourage schools, colleges, universities...for propagating knowledge, virtue and religion among all classes of the people...as the only means of preserving the Constitution from its natural enemies, the spirit of sophistry, the spirit of party, the spirit of intrigue, the profligacy of corruption, and the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the angel of destruction to elective governments.” –Inaugural Address

The XYZ Affair, 1797Three French agents;

X, Y and Z, demanded

U.S. pay bribes for

France to continue

peace talks. France

seized 300 U.S. ships

and Adams’ diplomacy

avoided a formal

declaration of war.

Alien & Sedition Acts, 1798

“The calumnies of the factious

and discontented may not poison

the minds of the majority of the

citizens, yet they will affect a

very considerable number, and

prompt them to deeds destructive

of the peace, and dangerous to the

general safety. This the people

have a right to prevent.”--John Adams on the Alien & Sedition Acts

President John Adams and…

The Quasi War with France, 1799

Negotiations with France, 1800

President Thomas Jefferson 1801--1809

First Inaugural Address“But every difference of

opinion is not a difference of

principle. We have called by

different names brethren of

the same principle. We are all

Republicans, we are all

Federalists.”-- Thomas Jefferson, March 4, 1801

But in 1796 Jefferson had denounced…

“The monarchical party seeking to bring the U.S.

…the forms of the British government and

castigated men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot England.”

--From a letter from Jefferson to Philipp Mazzei, 1796

The Louisiana Purchase, 1803

Louis and Clark Expedition, 1803

Merriwether Lewis and William Clark

The Embargo Act, 1807

A Year after the End of Jefferson’s Presidency…

“In a government like ours, it is the duty of the Chief Magistrate, in order to enable himself to do all the good which his station requires,…to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people. This alone…can produce a union for the powers of the whole…”--Thomas Jefferson, 1810

President James Madison 1809--1817

The Napoleonic Wars “

The War of 1812

The Hartford Convention, 1814

National Program of 1816

The Tariff of 1816

A national bank

Federal Subsidies for roads & canals

James MadisonAnd Henry Clay

President James Madison “The aim of every political

constitution is or ought to be first to obtain for rulers, men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to discern, and most virtue to pursue the common good of society…and to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous; whilst they continue to hold their public trust.”

Reflecting on the Four Presidents

“Notwithstanding a thousand Faults and blunders, (Madison’s) administration has acquired more glory, and established more Union than all his three Predecessors, Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, put together.”--A letter from Adams to Jefferson, Feb. 2, 1817

John Adams