An imagined gathering
1790 · Mount Vernon, Virginia
Washington gathers the men building his administration around a Virginia table and lets them disagree about the nation's finances.
Washington has brought his secretaries and their allies down to Mount Vernon for a few days away from the capital. The house is full, the farms are in order, and the talk turns, as it always does, to money: whether the federal government should take on the states' war debts and what kind of bank the country needs.
Hamilton makes the case for assumption and a national bank; Jefferson and Madison object that it will concentrate power in the north and enrich speculators. Adams, who has little patience for either faction, reminds them that the republic is young and its credit fragile. Washington says little and listens to all of them. The table is set with glazed ham, a pot roast, cornbread, succotash, chess pie, and mulled cider, and the argument is carried on long after the plates are cleared.
Host: George Washington
John Adams — Vice president, and no friend to the emerging party quarrels.
Thomas Jefferson — Secretary of state, alarmed by Hamilton's financial program.
Alexander Hamilton — Secretary of the treasury, pressing his plan for the debt and a bank.
James Madison — Leader in the House and Jefferson's ally against the bank.
a period dish
George Washington
How Washington's two terms, cabinet, and farewell address defined an office the Constitution had described only in outline.
George Washington
The Virginia plantation Washington managed for most of his life, and the private world to which he returned after the presidency.
Alexander Hamilton
Hamilton's financial program: federal payment of state war debts, a national bank, and a mint, built to give the new government credit and a stake in commerce.
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.