Washington's Cabinet
“ The President, who errs as other men do, but errs with integrity.”
Citizen Genet: The undiplomatic diplomacy of French Ambassador Edmound Charles Genet caused the major diplomatic crisis of Jefferson's term as Secretary of State.
The Patent Office was part of the State Department in Jefferson's time and he found it the most time-consuming of his duties.
Weights and Measures: Secretary of State Jefferson devoted countless hours preparing a report to Congress that established the U.S. Mint and currency and coinage standards in use today.
Alexander Hamilton
"Hamilton was indeed a singular character. of acute understanding, disinterested, honest, and honorable in all private transactions, amiable in society, and duly valuing virtue in private life, yet so bewitched & perverted by the British example, as to be under thoro’ conviction that corruption was essential to the government of a nation."
Jefferson and Hamilton notoriously disagreed, holding competing views and visions of the future of the United States.
Hamilton versus Jefferson: Opposed in death as they were in life.
The Room Where It Happens: Jefferson and Hamilton agree to make Washington, D.C. the capital in exchange for Federal assumption of state Revolutionary War debt.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison collaborated to create the Democratic-Republican Party, opposed to the Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton.
Madison and Jefferson embarked on a "botanizing excursion" of New England in 1791, raising Federalist suspicions that the real purpose was party politics.
Creating a Partisan Press: Jefferson backed a newspaper to oppose the Federalist Gazette of the United States.
Washington & Jefferson: A Revolutionary Friendship
Jefferson recalls a contentious Cabinet meeting and a controversial cartoon.
Relaxing retreat? Working vacation? An invented lens through which we view U.S. history? Historian Frank Cogliano and our George Mason University colleagues discuss a Washington Fish Tale
Recorded Livestreams
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First-person Jefferson interpreter Bill Barker and first-person Washington interpreter Dean Malissa delve into their views on politics, the problem of slavery, leadership styles, and Jefferson and Washington's impact on America's founding.
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Thomas Jefferson, as portrayed by Bill Barker, discusses his time in Philadelphia during the 1790s, including his contentious membership in Washington's Cabinet.
Available from The Shop at Monticello
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Historian Lindsay M. Chervinsky reveals the far-reaching consequences of Washington’s decision to create a Cabinet modeled on a military council of war as a private advisory body to summon as needed, greatly expanding the role of the president and the executive branch.
The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution
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Offering a portrait of one of the most fascinating and influential periods in US history, Making the Presidency is a must-read for anyone interested in the evolution of the presidency and the creation of political norms and customs at the heart of the American republic.
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A Revolutionary Friendship brilliantly captures the dramatic, challenging, and poignant reality that there was no single founding ideal—only compromise between friends and sometime rivals, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
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Both men were visionaries, but their visions of what the United States should be were diametrically opposed. Jefferson, a true revolutionary, believed passionately in individual liberty and a more egalitarian society, with a weak central government and greater powers for the states. Hamilton, a brilliant organizer and tactician, feared chaos and social disorder. He sought to build a powerful national government that could ensure the young nation's security and drive it toward economic greatness.
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