Did you know those stately, revered founding fathers Jefferson and Hamilton hated each other?

There's been some political roughhousing this week, eh?  If you've gotten into it, reading the headlines or watching network or cable news, you've probably taken sides and feel some passion against the other side.  What seems normal to one seems outrageous and irresponsible to the other.  I've gotten into it and I feel it. 

And the last few days are also when I've been in the chapter "First in Peace" in "His Excellency: George Washington" by Joseph P. Ellis.  I thought partisan mentalities grew over generations as America developed.  Nope.  Within the first 3 years of George Washington's Presidency, partisanship busted out all over everything.  It had to.  Because people have beliefs they are passionate about, and people disagree and get mad at each other.  Not everybody, but most.

In America, politics was all romantic after the Revolution -- the founders were all on the same team.  Then the governing had to start, and with it the partisanship.

There will never be a President who goes into office with the reputation and respect that George Washington had.  And even he couldn't stop the partisanship.  It got even worse his second term.  By the end of his Presidency, the Father of our Country and hero of the Revolution had been insulted and trashed, by both enemies and friends, as badly as any politician since.

In America, the partisanship started with Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.  Washington wanted to retire after his first term as President, but changed his mind:

The immediate reason for his decision (to run for a second term), reached with great reluctance, became obvious in several spirited conversations with Jefferson and Hamilton...

Jefferson accused Hamilton of plotting to commandeer the government after Washington's departure...(with) himself as king, emperor, or dictator...Hamilton charged Jefferson with working behind the scenes...to capture the federal government for its slave-owning supporters.

The hatred between the two men became palpable, mutual, and personal...

Although no one knew it at the time -- indeed no one yet possessed the vocabulary to talk or think about it sensibly -- political parties were in the process of being born.  The split between Jefferson and Hamilton was destined to foster the creation of the two-party system and a central feature in the American political universe. 

In other words, our political parties began as an effort to try to add a layer of depersonalization to passionate human disagreements.  To keep us from strangling each other.  It worked.  But the replacement for the strangling can still get pretty ugly.

Comments

[Jen]

I have enjoyed popping in periodically from Emily/My's blog links. I know them both through Westover. Being heavily engaged in all the political speeches the last few days, I am going to have my boys read this one. Can I count it as one of my home school lessons? ;)
And yes, my hubby got me a GPS for Christmas. I was frustrated at first with the "thought," now I don't know how I ever lived with out it.