behavior of Congress.  There was from the first a disposition to find fault and to antagonize, and as time went on this disposition was aggravated by the great scope allowed to misunderstanding and calumny from the lack of direct contact between Congress and the Administration.  In founding a new party, Jefferson only organized forces that were demanding leadership.  He consolidated the existing opposition, and gave it the name “Republican Party,” implying that its purpose was to resist the rise of monarchy and the growth of royal prerogative in the system of government which was introduced by the adoption of the Constitution.  It is clear enough now that the implication was mere calumny; the notion that Washington was either aiming at monarchy or was conniving at it through ignorance was a grotesque travesty of the shameful situation that actually existed; but fictions, pretenses, slanders, and calumnies that would never have been allowed utterance if the Administration and Congress had stood face to face now had opportunity to spread and infect public opinion.  Hence the tone of extreme rage that dishonors the political contention of the period and the malice that stains the correspondence of the faction chiefs.

Although a distinct party opposition appeared and assumed a name during the Second Congress, it disavowed as yet any opposition to Washington and represented its actual attempts to thwart the measures of the Administration as efforts to counteract Washington’s evil advisers.  The old constitutional tradition that the king can do no wrong, which still lingered in American politics, tended to an analogous elevation of the presidential office above the field of party strife, while leaving the President’s Cabinet advisers fully exposed to it, just as in the case of the ministers of the Crown in England.  Allowance must be made for the effect of this tradition when judgment is passed on the political activities of the period.  Considered with regard to present standards of political behavior, the course of Jefferson in fomenting opposition to the Administration of which he was a part wears the appearance of despicable intrigue.  There was nothing mean or low about it, however, in the opinion of himself and his friends, and even his enemies would have allowed it to be within the rules of the game.  Jefferson did his best to defeat in Congress measures adopted by Washington on the advice of Hamilton, and he also did his best to undermine Washington’s confidence in Hamilton.  In his personal dealings with Washington, Jefferson had every advantage, for he had Washington’s ear and could, more readily than Hamilton, direct the currents of unconscious influence that produce the will to believe.  But Jefferson’s animosity kept tempting him to overplay his hand in a way that was fatal in the face of an antagonist so keen and so dexterous as Hamilton.