Whаt wаs Ñn thе Ñlаssifiеd dоÑuments?... [The Classy Investors]( At times, our affiliate partners reach out to the Editors at The Classy Investors with special opportunities for our readers. The message below is one we think you should take a close, serious look at. Whаt wаs Ñn ÐÑdеnâs ÑlаssÑfÑеd dоÑumеnts? To his disappointment, two parties were developing by the end of his first term. Wearied of politics, feeling old, he retired at the end of his second. In his Farewell Address, he urged his countrymen to forswear excessive party spirit and geographical distinctions. In foreign affairs, he warned against long-term alliances. Washington enjoyed less than three years of retirement at Mount Vernon, for he died of a throat infection December 14, 1799. For months the Nation mourned him. John Adams, a remarkable political philosopher, served as the second President of the United States (1797-1801), after serving as the first Vice President under President George Washington. Learned and thoughtful, John Adams was more remarkable as a political philosopher than as a politician. âPeople and nations are forged in the fires of adversity,â he said, doubtless thinking of his own as well as the American experience. Frаnkly, it dоеsnât mаttеr. [ТhÑs Ñs thе RÐÐL sÑаndаl](. On April 30, 1789, George Washington, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in Nw York, took his oath of office as the first President of the United States. âAs the first of every thing, in our situation will serve to establish a Precedent,â he wrote James Madison, âit is devoutly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles.â Born in 1732 into a Virginia planter family, he learned the morals, manners, and body of knowledge requisite for an 18th century Virginia gentleman. He pursued two intertwined interests: military arts and western expansion. At 16 he helped survey Shenandoah lands for Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Commissioned a lieutenant colonel in 1754, he fought the first skirmishes of what grew into the French and Indian War. The next year, as an aide to Gen. Edward Braddock, he escaped injury although four bullets ripped his coat and two horses were shot from under him. From 1759 to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Washington managed his lands around Mount Vernon and served in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Married to a widow, Martha Dandridge Custis, he devoted himself to a busy and happy ife. But like his fellow planters, Washington felt himself exploited by British merchants and hampered by British regulations. As the quarrel with the mother country grew acute, he moderately but firmly voiced his resistance to the restrictions. His administration focused on France, where the Directory, the ruling group, had refused to receive the American envoy and had suspended commercial relations. Adams sent three commissioners to France, but in the spring of 1798 word arrived that the French Foreign Minister Talleyrand and the Directory had refused to negotiate with them unless they would first pay a substantial bribe. Adams reported the insult to Congress, and the Senate printed the correspondence, in which the Frenchmen were referred to oly as âX, Y, and Z.â The Nation broke out into what Jefferson called âthe X. Y. Z. fever,â increased in intensity by Adamsâs exhortations. The populace cheered itself hoarse wherever the President appeared. Nver had the Federalists been so popular. Congress appropriated moey to complete three nw frigates and to build additional ships, and authorized the raising of a provisional army. It also passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, intended to frighten foreign agents out of the country and to stifle the attacks of Republican editors. [Image]( [Image]( When the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in May 1775, Washington, one of the Virginia delegates, was elected Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. On July 3, 1775, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, he took command of his ill-trained troops and embarked upon a war that was to last six grueling years. He realized early that the bst strategy was to harass the British. He reported to Congress, âwe should on ll Occasions avid a general Acion, or put anything to the Risque, unless compelled by a necessity, into which we ought neer to be drawn.â Ensuing battles saw him fall back slowly, then strike unexpectedly. Finally in 1781 with the aid of French alliesâhe forced the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. Washington longed to retire to his fields at Mount Vernon. But he son realized that the Nation under its Articles of Confederation was not functioning well, so he became a prime mover in the steps leading to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. When the nw Constitution was ratified, the Electoral College unanimously elected Washington President. He did not infringe upon the policy making powers that he felt the Constitution gave Congress. But the determination of foreign policy became preponderantly a Presidential concern. When the French Revolution led to a major war between France and England, Washington refused to accept entirely the recommendations of either his Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who was pro-French, or his Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who was pro-British. Rather, he insisted upon a neutral course until the United States could grow stronger. Adams was born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1735. A Harvard-educated lawyer, he early became identified with the patriot cause; a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, he led in the movement for independence. During the Revolutionary War he served in France and Holland in diplomatic roles, and helped negotiate the treaty of peace. From 1785 to 1788 he was minister to the Court of St. Jamesâs, returning to be elected Vice President under George Washington. Adamsâ two trms as Vice President were frustrating experiences for a man of his vigor, intellect, and vanity. He complained to his wfe Abigail, âMy country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.â When Adams became President, the war between the French and British was causing reat difficulties for the United States on the high seas and intense partisanship among contending factions within the Nation. Роrtеr Stаnsbеrry In the thick of party conflict in 1800, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a private letter, âI have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every fom of tyranny over the mind of man.â This powerful advocate of liberty was born in 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia, inheriting from his father, a planter and surveyor, some 5,000 acres of land, and from his mother, a Randolph, high social standing. He studied at the College of William and Mary, then read law. In 1772 he married Martha Wayles Skelton, a widow, and took her to live in his partly constructed mountaintop hme, Monticello. Freckled and sandy-haired, rather tall and awkward, Jefferson was eloquent as a correspondent, but he was no public speaker. In the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, he contributed his pen rather than his voice to the patriot cause. As the âsilent memerâ of the Congress, Jefferson, at 33, drafted the Declaration of Independence. In years following he labored to make its words a reality in Virginia. Most notably, he wrote a bill establishing religious fredom, enacted in 1786. Jefferson succeeded Benjamin Franklin as minister to France in 1785. His sympathy for the French Revolution led him into conflict with Alexander Hamilton when Jefferson was Secretary of State in President Washingtonâs Cabinet. He resigned in 1793. Sharp political conflict developed, and two separate parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, began to orm. Jefferson gradually assumed leadership of the Republicans, who sympathized with the revolutionary cause in France. Attacking Federalist policies, he opposed a strong centralized Government and championed the rights of states. During the first year of Madisonâs Administration, the United States prohibited trade with both Britain and France; then in May, 1810, Congress authorized trade with both, directing the President, if either would accept Americaâs view of neutral rights, to forbid trade with the other nation. Napoleon pretended to comply. Late in 1810, Madison proclaimed non-intercourse with Grat Britain. In Congress a young group including Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, the âWar Hawks,â pressed the President for a more militant policy. The British impressment of American seamen and the seizure of cargoes impelled Madison to give in to the pressure. On June 1, 1812, he asked Congress to declare war. As a reluctant candidate for President in 1796, Jefferson came within three votes of election. Through a flaw in the Constitution, he became Vice President, although an opponent of President Adams. In 1800 the defect caused a more serius prolem. Republican electors, attempting to nme both a President and a Vice President from their own party, cast a tie vote between Jefferson and Aaron Burr. The House of Representatives settled the tie. Hamilton, disliking both Jefferson and Burr, nevertheless urged Jeffersonâs election. When Jefferson assumed the Presidency, the crisis in France had passed. He slashed Army and Navy expenditures, cut the budget, eliminated the tax on whiskey so unpopular in the West, yet reduced the national ebt by a third. He also sent a naval squadron to fight the Barbary pirates, who were harassing American commerce in the Mediterranean. Further, although the Constitution made no provision for the acquisition of nw land, Jefferson suppressed his qualms over constitutionality when he had the oportunity to acquire the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803. During Jeffersonâs second term, he was increasingly preoccupied with keeping the Nation from involvement in the Napoleonic wars, though both England and France interfered with the neutral rights of American merchantmen. Jeffersonâs attempted slution, an embargo upon American shipping, worked badly and was unpopular. Jefferson retired to Monticello to ponder such projects as his grand designs for the University of Virginia. A French nobleman observed that he had placed his house and his mind âon an elevated situation, from which he might contemplate the universe.â He died on July 4, 1826. James Madison, Americaâs fourth President (1809-1817), made a major contribution to the ratification of the Constitution by writing The Federalist Papers, along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In later years, he was referred to as the âFather of the Constitution.â At his inauguration, James Madison, a small, wizened man, appeared old and worn; Washington Irving described him as âbut a withered little apple-John.â But whatever his deficiencies in charm, Madisonâs ⦠wfe Dolley compensated for them with her warmth and gaiety. She was the toast of Washington. Born in 1751, Madison was brought up in Orange County, Virginia, and attended Princeton (then called the College of Nw Jersey). A student of history and government, well-read in law, he participated in the framing of the Virginia Constitution in 1776, served in the Continental Congress, and was a leader in the Virginia Assembly. When delegates to the Constitutional Convention assembled at Philadelphia, the 36-year-old Madison took frequent and emphatic part in the debates. Madison made a major contribution to the ratification of the Constitution by writing, with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, the Federalist essays. In later years, when he was referred to as the âFather of the Constitution,â Madison protested that the document was not âthe of-spring of a single brain,â but âthe work of many heads and many hands.â [Image]( [Image]( In Congress, he helped frame the Bill of Rights and enact the first revenue legislation. Out of his leadership in opposition to Hamiltonâs finncial proposals, which he felt would unduly bestow wealth and power upon northern financiers, came the development of the Republican, or Jeffersonian, Party. As President Jeffersonâs Secretary of State, Madison protested to warring France and Britain that their seizure of American ships was contrary to international law. The protests, John Randolph acidly commented, had the effect of âa shilling pamphlet hurled against eight hundred ships of war.â Despite the unpopular Embargo Ac of 1807, which did not make the belligerent nations change their ways but did cause a depression in the United States, Madison was elected President in 1808. Before he took office the Embargo ct was repealed. The young Nation was not prepared to fight; its forces took a severe trouncing. The British entered Washington and set fire to the White House and the Capitol. But a few notable naval and military victories, climaxed by Gen. Andrew Jacksonâs triumph at Ne Orleans, convinced Americans that the War of 1812 had been gloriously successful. An upsurge of nationalism resulted. The Ne England Federalists who had opposed the warâand who had even talked secessionâwere so thoroughly repudiated that Federalism disappeared as a national party. In retirement at Montpelier, his estate in Orange County, Virginia, Madison spoke out against the disruptive statesâ rights influences that by the 1830âs threatened to shatter the Federal Union. In a note opened after his death in 1836, he stated, âThe advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated.â President Adams did not cll for a declaration of war, but hostilities began at sea. At first, American shipping was almost defenseless against French privateers, but by 1800 armed merchantmen and U.S. warships were clearing the sea-lanes. Despite several brilliant naval victories, war fever subsided. Word came to Adams that France also had no stomach for war and would receive an envoy with respect. Long negotiations ended the quasi war. Sending a peace mission to France brought the full fury of the Hamiltonians against Adams. In the campaign of 1800 the Republicans were united and effective, the Federalists badly divided. Nevertheless, Adams polled oly a few less electoral votes than Jefferson, who became President. On November 1, 1800, just before the election, Adams arrived in the ew Capital City to take up his residence in the White House. On his second evening in its damp, unfinished rooms, he wrote his ife, âBefore I end my letter, I pray Heaven to bestow th bst of Blessings on this House and ll that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof.â Adams retired to his farm in Quincy. ere he penned his elaborate letters to Thomas Jefferson. Hre on July 4, 1826, he whispered his last words: âThomas Jefferson survives.â But Jefferson had died at Monticello a few hours earlier. Thomas Jefferson, a spokesman for democracy, was an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and the third President of the United States (1801â1809). [The Classy Investors](
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