1796

__________ 

“And it is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” 

President Washington

__________ 

 

WASHINGTON leaves office with a warning for the American people: 

Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have no, or a very remote, relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concern. Hence therefore it would be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations of her friendships and enmities. And it is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world. (124/260)

 

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NOTE TO TEACHERS: I don’t know if any of this will be useful to you today, but I wanted students to know that John Adams was, whatever his faults may have been, a man of principle. He defended the British soldiers accused of murder in Boston in 1770. This was an unpopular position, but he insisted every individual deserved a fair trial. 

I made up the following list of questions for my classes:

 

In the early days of the republic: 

1. Which political party sided more with England?

2. Which political party sided more with France?

3. Who were the biggest names in both political parties?

4. How were immigrants affected by the Alien Acts?

 

5. Why was the Sedition Act a grave threat to the freedoms of all Americans? Try to answer in some detail.

6. What evidence is there that politics was actually worse in the “good old days” than it is today?

 

7. Why is any attack on, or curtailment of, the free press a threat to all Americans in the end?

8. The Sedition Act made it illegal to criticize ____ and ____, but not the ____.

 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: It was illegal to criticize the president and members of Congress, but not the vice president. 

Students found it interesting that one man was fined for, essentially, saying Adams had a fat posterior.

 

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June 1: Tennessee becomes the sixteenth state.

 

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“The seats of punishment.”

THE GEOGRAPHICAL CATECHISM is published by Rev. Henry Pattillo, a Presbyterian minister of North Carolina, for the use of the university students. Pattillo gives this explanation of comets: “Their uses are mere conjecture. Some judge them the seats of punishment where sinners suffer the extremes of heat and cold. Mr. Whiston says a comet approaching the sun brushed the earth with its tail and caused the deluge, and that another will cause the conflagration.” (Earle 42/148)

 

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April 30: A separate post for the position of secretary of the navy is created.

 

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November 4-December 7: It certainly took time to tally all the votes for president in 1796. Under the rules then in place, each electoral voter cast two votes, without specifying which was for president and which vice president. 

The Founding Fathers had failed to foresee the following outcome: If two parties picked candidates for president, as did the Federalists for Adams, and the Democratic-Republicans, for Thomas Jefferson, and then candidates for vice president, you could end up with the two top offices held by members of different parties and philosophies. 

Adams secured 71 electoral votes, one more than needed in that era, and Jefferson had 68. The electoral vote was divided in four states. Mr. Adams gained single votes in Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina, which otherwise went solidly for Mr. Jefferson. The electoral vote of Maryland was split, four for Jefferson, three for Adams. 

At the same time, the Federalist choice for vice president, Thomas Pinckney, garnered only 59 votes, so he got nothing. Aaron Burr, for the Democratic-Republicans, limped along in fourth place, with 30 votes.