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157 While Peggy dealt with her predicament, James was sworn in immediately and discovered that political tensions in the capital were more extreme than he could have anticipated. Anxiety over foreign affairs infected both the administration and Congress. The war between England and France helped to sunder the new country’s early unity, widening the fissure dividing the Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans. Washington had hoped to negotiate separate peace treaties with each country, keeping the United States out of war with either, but the terms of Jay’s treaty with England were now disseminated, and the fury over it had only increased . Many Americans despised the fact that, as had been leaked, the Jay Treaty accepted the British Rule of 1756, which denied freedom of the seas to American trade with France as long as England was at war with them. The concessions Britain gave—promising to leave America’s northwest posts within two years, and granting Americans limited trading rights in the West Indies—felt relatively insignificant. Americans split bitterly over the Jay Treaty, and France, indignant that the country whose revolution she had assisted had made a separate peace with her enemy, now angrily attacked American shipping just as Britain had done for years. Earlier divisions over Hamilton’s economic plans now combined with this hostility over foreign affairs, leading McHenry to observe as early as February 9 that “[t]he spirit of party has presided too much. There [is] . . . enmity to some at least of the executive, enmity to the funding system, enmity to our government , and a wild immoderate enthusiasm for French politicks.”1 Ironically the Jay Treaty might keep the republic out of war with England only to push it into war with France. McHenry’s job as secretary of war was to prepare for conflict with twelve “A Prudent, Firm, Frugal Officer” Hugh Williamson 158 chapter twelve either country, and the possibility of hostilities was too strong to take matters lightly. There was no time for a slow and easy transition while Timothy Pickering, who had temporarily held the office, showed McHenry the ropes. And there were a lot of ropes to learn, for McHenry entered one of the two largest departments then in existence. Gordon S. Wood has recently stated that the Treasury Department was the largest, with thirty-one clerks and “over two thousand customs officials, revenue agents and postmasters scattered around the country.” However, while the War Department had only five clerks, it had to oversee the construction of ships at three different locations, manage an army that included 3,000 officers and enlisted men around the country and in the far-flung frontier posts in 1796, and try to manage relations with the Native Americans. In addition, the budget for the War Department outstripped that of the State Department by about six and a half times. In 1795 it had comprised 38 percent of the federal budget. Perhaps for that reason it was, as Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott described it, a “difficult and unpopular department,” requiring an excess of work. In fact, Pickering’s brother-in-law, Judge Paine Wingate, could not decide in which office he thought his relative should serve. He liked Pickering ’s economy as secretary of war, but understood that the State Department would be “least laborious.”2 In fact, this general desire for a frugal secretary of war had been made known to McHenry. Among the first to make this clear was Hugh Williamson , who had served at the Constitutional Convention and urged McHenry to accept the position. “Terror has seized the public mind from the apprehension that we should be reduced to a State of insolvency” by men who could not be budget-conscious. “Nothing is so fervently desired,” he penned, “as that in our War Department, the Channel through [which] the great Part of our Treasure goes, we may have a prudent, firm, frugal Officer who in private Life having shown that he knows the Value of money may be expected to be equally attentive to the national Property.”3 Immediately , then, McHenry discovered the fundamental tension between a generally desired frugality and a strong defense. But even as he was coming to this realization, Congress made it clear that it hoped to reduce the military. McHenry had barely entered office when Congress asked, “Ought the military force of the United States to be diminished?” But McHenry’s job was defense, not frugality, so he presented four principles that argued against...

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