Chapter X
President Washington
The states had to accept the constitution before it could become the supreme law of the land. The proposed constitution was printed in many newspapers. Everywhere people read it and discussed it. Many people complained that the constitution left out things that they wanted. Many people wanted freedom of speech. They wanted to have the right to criticize the government and the president. They wanted freedom of the press. They did not want censors at the newspapers. But the constitution did not have one word about it. They wanted freedom of assembly. People wanted freedom of religion, but because there were so many different religions, they did not want an official religion, and they wanted the government to treat all religions as equal. They wanted the right to remain silent if arrested. They did not want police to use torture to obtain a confession. People wanted the right to keep guns in their houses.
They wanted the right to have a trial by jury. If a person is accused of a crime, he can ask to be tried by a jury. In a jury trial, the judge does not decide if the person is guilty or innocent. That decision is made by a jury. The jury has twelve ordinary people in it. It is chosen from the list of people who live in the area. Both the prosecution and the defense can remove names from the list. To be convicted, all twelve have to say the person is guilty. If all twelve say he is innocent, he is released and cannot be tried again. If the jury cannot agree, then they can have a new trial.
The proposed constitution did not talk about many things that people wanted. So many people began to plan to vote against it. But somebody suggested that they write ten amendments that included the things that people wanted. These ten amendments were called the Bill of Rights. Now people were happy because they could vote for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights at the same time. By the spring of 1788, the people of the United States accepted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
The political system of the United States is based on the constitution. All American laws must conform to the constitution.
Early in November of 1788, they held the first elections under the new Constitution. Because the telephone and telegraph had not been invented yet, it took a long time to find out who had won the election. The winner was George Washington. He became the first president of the United States. At that time, the capital of the United States was New York. Washington lived far away in Virginia. He traveled in a carriage pulled by eight horses. This was before they had trains or automobiles. He could only travel about thirty kilometers a day. In every village and city along the way, people wanted to have a banquet in his honor. It took him a long time to get to New York. It was the middle of March before he took the oath of office to become President of the United States.
Washington liked to get advice from other people before he did anything as president. There were two men whose opinion he asked most often. One was Alexander Hamilton and the other was Thomas Jefferson. However, the opinions of these two men were very different and they almost never agreed.
Hamilton believed that what the United States needed was order and stability. The new constitution said that only the central government could print money. Hamilton thought that in order to have stability, it was necessary to end the inflation. Washington made Hamilton the Secretary of the Treasury and put him in charge of the money supply. Hamilton ended the continentals and his new money was called the dollar. Today, Hamilton's picture appears on the ten-dollar bill. Hamilton believed that if you have inflation, you cannot have stability. When the government did not have enough money, Hamilton did not print more money. Instead, he went to rich people to borrow money at a high rate of interest. Of course, the money had to be paid back. Hamilton got money to pay them back by having Congress put a big tax on whiskey. Hamilton also got money by taking land from the Indians and selling it to farmers. Hamilton also wanted the government to get money by putting a high tariff on goods brought from England. At that time, British goods had a much higher quality than American goods. Hamilton liked American businessmen and wanted them to become rich. People were buying British goods because of their high quality. Hamilton wanted a high tariff so that British goods would be expensive and people would buy American goods. In addition, he knew that if Americans bought American goods, then American factory owners would become richer. Hamilton thought the farmers should pay a tax on their land to the state governments. Hamilton also wanted the president to have a great deal of power.
In the British tradition of that period, only rich people could vote. Poor people were not allowed to vote. Hamilton liked this tradition. He did not trust poor people. He believed that only property owners could be trusted to elect good leaders for the country.
Jefferson's ideas were very different. He had been the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and he was a strong believer in democracy. Jefferson was a farmer and he liked farmers. At that time, 90% of the American people were farmers. Jefferson thought that if farmers were educated, they would always elect good people to be their leaders. He wanted all male citizens to have the right to vote. Indians and slaves were not citizens. Jefferson thought that farmers were the best people, and he wanted to keep America as a farm nation forever. Jefferson did not like factories, and he did not want factories in America. Hamilton wanted stability and order, but Jefferson thought that individual freedom was more important.
A revolution began in France. The king and queen of France had their heads cut off. Hamilton was against the French revolution. Jefferson supported it.
When the constitution was written, there were no political parties. But after a while, the people who agreed with Hamilton grouped around him and formed the Federalist Party. The people who agreed with Jefferson grouped around him and formed the Republican-Democratic Party. This was the beginning of political parties in America.
In 1792, Washington was elected for a second term.