Federalist Party
...ial office in 1789, the major problem faced by the new federal government was that of raising money. At first, Alexander Hamilton and Congress agreed on implementing a small tax on imports, but soon realized that one tax was not enough to raise money. The federal government needed to raise money in order to maintain itself and begin to repay the national debt, which totaled more than 50 million dollars. Unfortunatley, the members of Congress could not come up with a acceptable solution to the debt dilemma, so they turned to Federalist leader Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton proceded to come up with an idea, and composed the “Report on Public Credit.” In his report, Hamilton’s basic stated: “To be able to borrow upon good terms, it is essential that the credit of a nation should be well established…by good faith, by a punctual performance of contracts.” Therefore, in order for this new government to establish good credit it was imperitive to be honest with its creditors - because in many cases these would be the people/countries to which the government must look to for future loans. Although this proposition was strongly opposed by the soon to be Republicans, the “Report on Public Credit” was passed and implemented. However, there were some significant loopholes to the so-called debt solution, which Hamilton soon patched up with his design of a central banking system in the United States. Appropriatly enough, the bank was to be called The Bank of the United States. Its purpose was to serve as the primary depository for governmental funds, and The National Bank was given the power of regulating the circulation of money so that a dollar one state is the same as a dollar from any other state. This greatly promoted the ease of interstate trade, elevating it to a plateau never before seen in the United States, because it put all of the states on the same level. Once again, the soon to be Republicans mostly all disapproved of Hamilton’s suggestions, but yet his plans were implemented into society. This in turn caused the central government to become more self sufficient and less dependent upon the individual states, which was a main goal of the Federalist party. More problems awaited the Federalists and their founding fathers. The French-Revolution and the French-British war in 1793 once again divided the nation. Hamilton and the Federalists were supportive of the British, while Thomas Jefferson and the Republican/Democratic party were in full support of the French. Jefferson wanted to obey and honor the treaty that was signed with France in 1788 and defend them; he believed it was the right and only thing to do. Hamilton believed by supporting Great Britian, the United States would gain economic ties and prosper in creating a better relationship with the country. President Washington agreed that the United States would benefit by creating friendly ties to Great Britian. He also saw that supporting France would be suicide, although at the same time did not want his country to be considered unfaithful to their treaties. President Washington recognized that neither option would be of the best interest to his country, and therefore proclaimed that the United States would remain neutral. The Federalists views on becoming buddy-buddy with Great Brittain were important in keeping America out of a war that was unnessacary for them to fight in the first place. John Adams, George Washington's Vice President, succeeded the first president as an well-known Federalist, thus becoming the first person to become President with official partisainship. Adams was inaugurated into officeon March 4th, 1797. His elected Vice President was Thomas Jefferson, who strongly opposed the Federalistic views on politics. While during John Adams’ tenure as President the Federalist policies continued to build a strong economy for our new nation, there were also several laws passed that made the party unpopular in the eyes of the American public. In fact, some of the Federalist decisions were disliked so much that the public chose not to re-elect many of the Federalist Congress members to an additional term. One of the events that caused this turmoil for the Federalists was the X Y Z Affair of 1798. This inci...