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Washington and other founders entertained the fanciful hope that America would be spared the bane of political parties, which they called “factions” and associated with parochial self-interest. The first president did not see that parties might someday clarify choices for the electorate, organize opinion, and enlist people in the political process;

Before long the two factions took on revealing names. The Hamiltonian party called itself Federalists, implying that it alone supported the Constitution and national unity. It took a robust view of federal power and a strong executive branch, and it favored banks and manufacturing as well as agriculture. Elitist in its politics, it tended to doubt

But when asked whether Washington was “governed by British influence,” Jefferson supposedly replied, facetiously, that no danger existed so long as Washington “was influenced by the wise advisers or advice, which [he] at present had.”12 When Governor Henry Lee told him about this patent gibe that he was biased toward Britain and hoodwinked by Hamil

During his presidency, many newspapers had gone from being staid and neutral to being organs of party politics and propaganda. In May he asked Jefferson to dismiss Freneau from his State Department job after the editor made the nonsensical statement that Washington had issued the neutrality statement only after “Anglomen” had threatened to chop off

Although he held his tongue during the debates, Washington was never a neutral party, and the interminable squabbling only reinforced his view that the country needed a potent central government to override the selfish ambitions of local politicians.