THE SUMMER OF 1792. . .

It was the summer of 1792.  It was near the end of Washington’s first term as President.  The young Union was being torn by the English-incited Indians in the North and by the Spanish-incited Indians in the South.  Internally, divisions were tearing at the Union’s heart and soul.

Jefferson, the Secretary of State, was on holiday.  Washington sent him an urgent missive and the excerpt from this letter is, it seems to me, appropriate for us today.  Washington wrote:

How unfortunate, and how much it is to be regretted then, that whilst we are encompassed on all sides with avowed enemies and insidious friends, that internal dissensions should be harrowing and tearing our vitals.  The last, to me, is the most serious, the most alarming, and the most afflicting of the two.  And without more charity for the opinions and acts of one another in governmental matters; or some infallible criterion by which the truth of speculative opinions, before they have undergone the test of experience, are to be forejudged than has yet fallen to the lot of fallibility, I believe it will be difficult, if not impracticable, to manage the reins of government or to keep the parts of it together.  For, if instead of laying our shoulders to the machine after measures are decided on, one pulls this way and another that, before the utility of the thing is fairly tried, it must inevitably, be torn asunder.  And ,in my opinion, the fairest prospect of happiness and prosperity that ever was presented to man will be lost, perhaps forever!

My earnest wish and my fondest hope therefore is that, instead of wounding suspicions and irritable charges, there may be liberal allowances, mutual forbearances, and temporizing yieldings on all sides.   Under the exercise of these, matters will go on smoothly and, if possible, more prosperously.  Without them, everything must rub; the wheels of government will clog, our enemies will triumph, and, by throwing their weight into the disaffected scale, may accomplish the ruin of the goodly fabric we have been erecting.

Then he wrote that differences of political opinion are as unavoidable as, to a certain point, they may, perhaps, be necessary.  Yet subjects should be discussed with good temper and without impugning motives.  Regret borders on chagrin when we find that men of abilities, zealous patriots, have the same general objects in view and the same upright intentions could not exercise charity towards one another.  When matters get to such lengths, the natural inference is that both sides have strained the cords beyond their bearing, and that a middle course would be found the best, until experience shall have decided on the right way.

. . .I cannot prevail on myself to believe that these measures are as yet the deliberate acts of a determined party.