Hello and welcome to a history of the United States, episode 179, Jefferson and Madison, Best Friends Forever.

So far, in our coverage of the Washington administration, we've been through the creation of the basic infrastructure of the federal government, the Whiskey Rebellion and Westwood Expansion.

Today, I want to bring a fourth theme to the forefront of the narrative, something which has

been bubbling away constantly, and that is the fracturing of the political leadership of

the Young Republic, into the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans.

Among the Federalists would be George Washington,

Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams, while the Democratic Republicans would include Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The important thing to understand about this period of American history

is that political parties were

regarded as a bad thing.

Political parties are of course a common part of the modern political landscape, and it's

difficult to imagine how we would work without them.

One perspective on that is that people have honest disagreements and that a democratic society

should be having arguments to solve the problems of the day. The counterpoint is that this is only

useful if it leads to statemanship, otherwise arguments are only theatre. And that second point is how they were viewed in the 18th century.

Political parties were viewed as a sign of disease within the body politic, that people were

prioritising their own interests over the general good. With that in mind, it's very difficult to assert that you yourself are a political

party, because that implies that you are not properly dedicated to the republic. But it was much

easier to assert that somebody else was forming a political party, particularly if that person

disagreed with you. This gave the early

advantage in policymaking to the Federalists. In 1789, fresh off the ratification of the Constitution,

Americans felt they had only a choice between the federal national government and the chaos of the confederation period.

This allowed those in power, particularly Hamilton, to design the system as they wanted.

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