In 1791 the capital of the country was removed to Philadelphia, to remain there until it should be permanently fixed on the Potomac. President Washington lived in Philadelphia, and there Congress held its sessions.

Washington was elected by the unanimous vote of the country, and he was re-elected in 1792 without opposition. He kept himself aloof from political parties, and tried to be impartial. But his preference for a strong central government attached him rather to the party called Federalist than to its opponents.

The Federalist party had first taken its name in the struggle to secure the adoption of the Constitution which that party favored. Federalists were generally in favor of strengthening the central government. They also liked to see the government conducted with some pomp and ceremony, after the English way. The Federalist party was strong in the cities, and among people of wealth and those devoted to commerce. Such people in that day were generally aristocratic in their feelings, and leaned to English ways. In the war between England and France the sympathies of the Federalists were in favor of England and against France.

The party opposed to the Federalists was called at first the Republican and afterward the Democratic party. (It is not to be confounded with the Republican party of our time.) The members of this party were afraid that the central government would grow too strong, and perhaps overthrow the liberties of the people. They wished to increase the power of the States and diminish that of the United States. They cherished ideas of individual liberty and equality, and were afraid of an aristocracy. The old Republican or Democratic party of that day sympathized with France, which had, in the great Revolution of 1789, overthrown the monarchy and set up a republic, and the Republicans disliked England. Many of them at one time showed their partisanship by wearing the tricolored cockade worn by republicans in France. The Republican party in America wished to bring in republican manners and simple tastes, and they objected to the stately ceremonies which Washington and the Federalists liked.

The great leader of the Federalists was General Alexander Hamilton, who did everything in his power to strengthen the government of the United States. The Republicans were led by Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence. Hamilton was Secretary of the Treasury and Jefferson was Secretary of State in Washington's first cabinet, so that both parties were represented in the cabinet at the same time, a state of things never seen nowadays.

During Washington's administration there began additional troubles with the frontiers and the American Indian tribes. The English government refused to surrender forts which it held among the American Indian tribes in what is now Ohio, and encouraged the American Indians to hostilities. There arose in consequence a most deadly and cruel war between the settlers in Kentucky and the tribes living on the north side of the river. Many people were killed over seven years, and very many settlers were carried away into captivity. The horrible slaughters of men, women, and children in Kentucky gave that State the name of "the Dark and Bloody Ground."

General Harmer was sent against the American Indians in 1790, but the colonist soldiers were cut to pieces by the American Indians under Little Turtle. General St. Clair was sent against these same American Indians in the following year. He allowed himself to be surprised by Little Turtle and a strong force of American Indians, who routed and almost ruined his army.

Washington was greatly distressed at this defeat. He now selected General Wayne, who had gained distinction in the Revolution, and whose courage was such that he was called "Mad Anthony Wayne." But he was as prudent as he was brave. The American Indians called him "The Black Snake," and they also called him "The Chief Who Never Sleeps." Wayne led his soldiers to a decisive victory. This battle was fought in 1794, on the banks of the Maumee River, in northern Ohio. It brought peace to the frontier for a while.

There was about this time a rebellion in western Pennsylvania, known as "the Whisky Insurrection." The people of western Pennsylvania raised Indian corn. The roads over the mountains were such that they could not well haul this corn to market, so they fell to making it into whisky, in which shape it was less bulky and more easily carried. The new United States tax on whisky interfered with this business, and the people rose against the revenue officers. Washington sent troops to enforce the law, and the people submitted after the ringleaders of the rebellion had fled.

Washington declined to be a candidate for the third time, and in September, 1796, the "Father of his Country" issued a farewell address, full of good advice. At the end of his term, in March, 1797, he retired to Mount Vernon, where he spent his closing years in peace. He died December 14, 1799, in the last month of the eighteenth century. Of the many great men of that century, he was, though not the most gifted, probably the most illustrious. The whole United States paid honor to his memory, and to this time his is the only American birthday honored as a public holiday.



ANTHONY WAYNE

General Wayne was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1745. He early showed a fondness for military life. He received a good education for the time, and became a land-surveyor. During the troublous times of 1774 and 1775 Wayne devoted himself to drilling military companies in his own county. He entered the army as colonel in 1776, and distinguished himself in many actions. His most notable exploit, perhaps, was the storming of Stony Point, on the Hudson. This formidable work he carried at midnight by a bayonet charge, the soldiers' guns being empty. He afterward handled a small force in Georgia in such a way as to hold in check a much larger body of British troops. It was his careful organization and bold execution of various enterprises during the Revolution which caused his selection by Washington to retrieve the fortunes of the Indian war after St. Clair's defeat. When he returned from his successful expedition against the American Indians he was received in Philadelphia in triumph. He was sent in 1796 to receive the surrender of the Western forts, and died in December of that year on the shore of Lake Erie.



ALEXANDER HAMILTON

This great man was born in the Island of Nevis, in the West Indies, in January, 1757. His father was poor, and he was put into a counting-house. At fifteen years of age he wrote for the "St. Christopher's Gazette" an account of a hurricane that had just desolated the Leeward West India Islands. The remarkable ability of this description attracted the attention of the chief men of the place, and the boy was sent to the America continent to be educated. In 1774, when but seventeen years of age, while a student in King's College (now Columbia College), in New York, he made a speech on the Revolutionary side at a great meeting in the fields, which at once stamped him as a wonderful youth. He also wrote several anonymous pamphlets that attracted great attention, and were attributed to the leading men of the party. In 1776, when he was but nineteen, he took command of an artillery company, and so distinguished himself at the battle of White Plains and in the retreat across New Jersey that Washington put him on his own staff. He was employed by Washington in many delicate and confidential missions, and he distinguished himself in more than one battle. He led the assault on one of the British outworks at Yorktown. His great work lay in his efforts to persuade the American people to adopt the Federal Constitution, by which the national existence was firmly established. As the first Secretary of the Treasury, he held Congress firmly to the duty of paying every dollar of the national debt at its face. He also prevailed on Congress to adopt the debts incurred by the States in carrying on the war, and he thus established the credit of the nation. He retired from office on account of poverty, but his law practice was afterward very profitable. He was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr in 1804.