Narrator: In 1791, President George Washington embarks on a three-month tour to assess the effect on the country of his government's policies.
George Washington (as portrayed by actor): I have just completed my visit to the southern states and was able to see, with my own eyes, the situation of the country. Tranquility reigns among the people, and the new government is popular. Our public credit stands on a ground which three years ago only a madman would have thought possible.
The United States now enjoys a scene of prosperity and tranquility, where every man may sit under his own vine with none to molest him or make him afraid.
Narrator: George Washington knows that much of this prosperity is due to the economic policies of Alexander Hamilton. With Washington's backing, Hamilton now seems to be single-handedly running most of the Federal government. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson has fewer than a dozen employees, and Vice President John Adams has no power in Washington's administration. Hamilton controls the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, and appoints a vast network of men to collect import duties and taxes.
Ron Chernow, Biographer: Washington is allowing, indeed encouraging, Hamilton to function as something more like a prime minister. So that when you say to people that Hamilton was the first treasury secretary, it doesn't quite capture the magnitude of his power -- or why Hamilton was so controversial.
Narrator: The controversy began with the assumption of the debt, which has vastly expanded the power of the federal government. For Hamilton though, this was just the beginning. He sees America as an undeveloped land with enormous potential. He sets out to reshape the country, to transform it into one that can hold its head high among the great nations of the world.
In a very short time, he puts a series of monumental proposals before Congress -- instituting a national currency, the dollar; establishing a national bank, the forerunner of the Federal Reserve. Hamilton's vision spurs the growth of the stock market, the engine of the country's future prosperity. He then proposes the radical idea that the government get directly involved in the development of large-scale industry. To his detractors, Hamilton seems unstoppable.
Joanne B. Freeman, Historian: The very markers of Hamilton's success -- the fact that he's proposing things, one at a time, and they're being enacted -- ironically enough, those are the very things that begin to spark opposition. Because people like Jefferson begin to see a pattern, that Hamilton in some way or another is trying to create a monarchy.
Thomas Jefferson (as portrayed by actor): Yes, I disapprove of his actions as secretary of the treasury. With his bank and funding system, he is recreating here the rottenness and corruption of England.
Alexander Hamilton (as portrayed by actor): I have now become convinced of several facts. Mr. Jefferson is at the head of a faction hostile to me and my administration. He attacks the funding of the debt, the bank. I know that he has instituted a whispering campaign bent on subverting my projects.
Narrator: Hamilton is convinced that the United States must develop industry and commerce if it is ever to become a great nation. Jefferson has a very different vision for the country. He wants America to remain primarily rural -- independent farmers working the land with little interference from government. Jefferson and his allies see Hamilton's powerful central government as a potent threat to individual liberty.
Gordon S. Wood, Historian: They wanted a different kind of country. They don't want a bureaucracy. They don't want a standing army. They don't want any of the attributes of a European state. They don't want any of the things that Hamilton wants for the United States.
Carol Berkin, Historian: Urbanization, industrialization, finance capital -- they don't want this. They want agriculture, independent farmers. Jefferson, you know, believes that the only honest profit is made by the man who tills the soil. And everything that Hamilton wanted must have seemed like a nightmare to them.
Narrator: The two most powerful men in Washington's Cabinet have become locked in bitter combat.
Alexander Hamilton (as portrayed by actor): It's the fanatical politics waged by Jefferson that threaten to disturb the tranquility and order of our government. He is the real enemy of republicanism.
Thomas Jefferson (as portrayed by actor): I am not the enemy of the republic. I am not part of that debased squadron plotting to change our republic back into a monarchy. I am not a pimp whose stock dealers have corrupted Congress.
Alexander Hamilton (as portrayed by actor): I now consider it my duty to lift the curtain and show the world that it is he who is determined to destroy the credit and honor of the nation.
Thomas Jefferson (as portrayed by actor): I will not have my reputation slandered by a man whose history -- from the moment that history stooped to notice him -- is a fabric of machinations against the liberty of this country. A country, which not only received him as a penniless immigrant and gave him food, but now heaps honors on his head.
George Washington (as portrayed by actor): There must be some harmony in my Cabinet. Differences of opinion are unavoidable of course, and to a certain extent, they may even be a good thing -- but can't we discuss these differences without each of you attacking the motives of the other? You are both men of discernment, tried patriots, and yet, without more charity for each other's views, I cannot manage the reins of government and we shall, inevitably, be torn asunder.
I don't see how the union of the states can be preserved.
Joanne B. Freeman, Historian: It's so hard for us to be in that moment and to say to ourselves, this is a government that many people thought would never make it. They sincerely don't know if it's going to persist. And that's part of why this ends up being a period of such passion and anxiety and fear -- and in many cases, dirty, nasty politics. I mean, if you feel that you know the right thing to do and you're sitting across from someone who is doing the exact opposite of what you think is the right thing to do, how can you not -- as a good citizen and a good leader and a good American -- stand up and try to crush that person for your country.
Narrator: Jefferson and his allies focus all of their energies on opposing Hamilton and his plans. They band together in a loose political alliance, calling themselves "Republicans." Hamilton and supporters of Washington's administration are called "Federalists."
This split is the first sign of what will become America's two-party system.
Carol Berkin, Historian: The men who believed that they were the continuation of the Constitutional Convention called themselves Federalists. The opposition party, Mr. Jefferson's party, they take on the name the Republican Party, which is very confusing because in fact the Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson has nothing to do with the Republican Party of today.
Narrator: The battle between the parties spills out onto the streets. In this new political culture, the opinions of ordinary people are increasing in importance. Their passions are inflamed by the appearance of highly partisan newspapers, each side out to damn the opposition.
James Callender (as portrayed by actor): The alarming progress of robbery, bribery, oppression and injustice in this country can all be traced to Colonel Alexander Hamilton. This monarchist toadeater has defrauded the public with his corrupt maze of banking and stock speculation.
Willard Sterne Randall, Writer: Both Hamilton and Jefferson hire journalists and pay them to attack the ideas of their opponents.
Peter Fenner (as portrayed by actor): Mr. Jefferson's press propagates nothing but lies and liars, like a swamp breeds maggots and mosquitoes.
Narrator: With unrestrained ferocity, these party organs attack not only the policies, but the very character and reputation of their opponents.
Ron Chernow, Biographer: There were all sorts of nasty insinuations about Hamilton's illegitimacy. There were occasionally insinuations that he was actually, you know, part black. I mean there was insinuations about almost everything.
Joanne B. Freeman, Historian: The favorite tactic in the newspapers was, during an election, to announce that the other candidate -- the opposing candidate -- had died, and it took awhile to disprove something like that because the mail is slow. You know how do you disprove ... how do you prove that someone's alive?
Ron Chernow, Biographer: This was really the golden age of literary and political assassination. And so that ... a lot of our own founders ended up really not just disliking each other, but hating each other.
David Hosack (as portrayed by actor): There was a time when gentlemen of different politics could separate the business of government from that of society. It is not so now.
Narrator: The rational debate among gentlemen anticipated by the founders has turned into a boisterous free-for-all. Butchers, bakers and even common laborers now feel they can have a say in politics.
Gordon S. Wood, Historian: I think for the founders originally, the public was quite a narrow group of men -- men like themselves. But by the 1790s, the growth of the press was just enormous. The public had expanded, ballooned out. The Founders are sensing a shaking beneath their feet that their own revolution is having democratic consequences that they hadn't quite anticipated.
Narrator: Their fears are amplified by cataclysmic events across the ocean.
Narrator: In 1793, Louis the Sixteenth is executed. Many Americans rejoice. Jefferson and the Republicans take up the French cause and organize celebrations in the streets. Another revolution is overthrowing a king, and the people are taking control of their government.
Thomas Jefferson (as portrayed by actor): They have been awakened by our revolution. They feel their strength, their lights are spreading.
Alexander Hamilton (as portrayed by actor): How can our people embrace the most cruel, bloody, and violent event that ever stained the annals of mankind? It is a monster born with teeth!
Narrator: The French Revolution widens the gulf between the two parties, pointing to a deep-seated difference in their attitude towards popular politics. The Republicans present themselves as the party of the common man.
Gordon S. Wood, Historian: Jeffersonian Republicans understood the power of public opinion, and Jefferson has his utter faith in the people. And that's simply not true of Hamilton.
Alexander Hamilton (as portrayed by actor): Men may be reasoning animals, but they are rarely reasonable. They are frequently governed by impulse and passion. This truth is well understood by our adversaries who use it to their benefit.
Narrator: Hamilton has always been fearful of mobs and anarchy. Now, he is appalled by the fact that Republican politicians are stirring up the passions of the population. He sees them as demagogues -- men who will do anything to grab power.
Joanne B. Freeman, Historian: Jefferson, in his mind, is a demagogue. Jefferson will say whatever he has to say so that the public will be happy with him. That, in Hamilton's mind, is ... that's corrupt, that's inappropriate, that's what you never do. You don't try to appeal to the public. You do what you feel is right, and if the public doesn't like you, they vote you and your friends out of office and vote somebody else in -- and that's the Hamiltonian view of how things should operate.
Alexander Hamilton (as portrayed by actor): I see it as my duty to show things as they are, not as they ought to be. I always speak the plain, naked truth. If men won't listen, that's their own fault, and they'll have to live with the consequences.
Narrator: Hamilton believes as fervently as Jefferson in the ideals of representative government, but he has contempt for the game of popular politics.
In the coming years, Hamilton will be cast as an elitist, while Jefferson, born into the Virginia gentry, will become the man of the people.
Thomas Fleming, Biographer: I think one of the ironies of Hamilton's duel with Jefferson, his struggle for power, was the fact that here was Jefferson -- owner of a hundred or two hundred slaves, living on his plantation, getting wealthy on their unsalaried labor -- and he became the man of the people. And Hamilton -- working for a living and like the average American -- has been painted as the patron of the rich and so forth, and it's ... history is full of ironies and this is one of the cruelest ironies in many ways.
Richard J. Payne, Historian: Hamilton, in a way, is the quintessential American. He's a self-made man. He's a guy who comes here as an immigrant with very little and he, through luck and brainpower, builds this huge reputation for himself. Hamilton believes if you work hard, you should rise to the top without any regard for your aristocratic backgrounds.
Narrator: Hamilton wants to transform the United States into a true meritocracy. A country where men of talent and ability -- men like himself -- can prosper.
Carol Berkin, Historian: All the values that we honor maybe in the breach, about -- it's not who your parents were or where you came from or how you started out, but what you can do, what you can achieve -- this was, I think, very much Hamilton's credo for himself and I think really for his country. He was interested in what would be good for the nation, including the working classes, including the poor.
Alexander Hamilton (as portrayed by actor): There are strong minds in every walk of life that will overcome the disadvantages of their birth, and will command tribute due to their merit.