Amid all this uproar which proceeded from his cabinet, only Washington
remained calm. No other American at that day nor since could have
remained neutral and guided the ship of state through such breakers of
discontent. He was the safe middle water between the dangerous reefs of
concentration and State sovereignty.
Had not the Federal party been the victim of many unfortunate
circumstances, it would certainly in time have become popular in the
nation. It was beyond question Washington's party, and, notwithstanding
the false charges of monarchism and British sovereignty, it was
patriotic. Had it existed forty or fifty years longer, until that
incubus which haunted Jefferson's brain had passed away, and the
republic become so firmly established that people would no longer fear
British dependency, the Federal party would have been a firmly fixed
institution. Had Federal ideas been fully inculcated instead of
Jeffersonianism and Calhounism, the rebellion of 1861 would not have
occurred; but Aaron Burr murdered Hamilton, the friend of Washington,
the bright genius of American politics and the hope of the Federal
party, and the Federalists were left without any great leader. When the
war of 1812 came, the Federalists were so embittered against the
Democrats, then in power, that they became lukewarm and threw so many
obstacles in the way of the patriots who were making the second fight
for freedom, as to almost confirm the suspicion that they were the
friends of Great Britain rather than America.
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