When the first president, George Washington, was sworn in as president in April of 1789, no political parties existed.
About 3 years later, bankers and businessmen in the North, supportive of the policies of the then Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, would start the Federalist Party. The Federalists believed in a sound fiscal policy and nationalism and really reflected the interests of the commercial North.
In 1793, Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, formed the Democratic-Republican Party. Jefferson was against the centralizing policies of the Federalists. He wanted “states rights” for the agrarian South.
Even though Washington didn’t belong to either party, he tended to be sympathetic to the Federalist positions.
Over time, a deep animosity developed between the two parties based on ideology. This animosity really reared it’s head during the French revolution (1789 – 1799) and in Washington’s second term.
The French revolution ultimately led to a war between France and Great Britain. Hamilton wanted the US to support the Great Britain while Jefferson supported the French revolutionaries. Washington stayed out of the fray, keeping the US neutral. However, when Britain captured US ships trading with France, Washington was forced to negotiate with Britain. This galled the Democratic-Republicans.
The rancor that ensued forever tainted the view Washington had about political parties.Even though he was asked to lead the nation for a third term, he refused. He wanted to escape the hate in the capital to the solace of his farm in Virginia.
In early 1796, with the help of Hamilton, Washington started working on his Farewell Address. It was published in the Daily American Advertiser, a Philadelphia newspaper, in September, 1796.
In it, he advised American citizens to view themselves as a cohesive unit and avoid political parties and issued a special warning to be wary of attachments and entanglements with other nations.
These words from the address are quite poignant even today, even prophetic:
“They (political parties) serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.
However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
I wonder what the first president would say if he was to come alive in 2017 America. Probably he would utter these words that the writer Gore Vidal said are the four most beautiful words in the English language: “I told you so!”