Good evening, fellow Americans. The last time we left off, we were discussing various constitutional principles. So yeah, by 1788, we had a working constitution.
The only problem was that nobody knew exactly how it was going to work. To get the new Republican government off to as good a start as possible, the Electoral College, more about that later, chose as president the only man who at that time could unify the nation. I'm of course talking about George Washington.
In many respects, George Washington was our most important president because he was the first. A lot of what Washington would do as president was going to set an example or precedent for the nation and for the government. One of the first traditions that Washington established was to decide on how the president should be addressed. He decided that the term Mr. President was most appropriate. More importantly, upon taking office, Washington began to build his presidential cabinet.
This type of cabinet is not a piece of storage furniture. A presidential cabinet is a group of advisors and heads of executive departments, like the Treasury Department or the Department of State. Cabinet officers help the president develop and execute government policies regarding certain issues.
For example, the Agricultural Department helps develop and carry out policies related to agriculture. Washington only started with a few of these departments, but over the years many more have been added. The Constitution says that Congress can create executive departments, but it does not specify which ones. This is an example of something constitutional scholars call the unwritten Constitution. The unwritten Constitution means that there are political practices which are not written into the Constitution by law, yet are considered standard features of our government.
They developed over time and tradition. The development and activities of the Constitution are not written into the Constitution by law, political parties is another good example of the unwritten Constitution. The presidential cabinet is referred to as the president's administration. Washington's administration included Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State, Henry Knox as Secretary of War, and most importantly Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury.
Another precedent that Washington established was that federal law was going to be carried out. The first great test of federal authority came in 1794 in the form of the Whiskey Rebellion. This rebellion, which centered around a proposed tax on whiskey, was a direct challenge to the new government. Washington personally led a group of soldiers to put down the rebellion, and in doing so, he sent the clear message that the federal government's laws were going to be enforced.
Perhaps the precedent that Washington is most well known for is that he limited himself to two terms. There is nothing in the original Constitution that said a president could only serve twice, but Washington felt that two was enough. After Washington, all presidents, with one exception, served a maximum of two terms. And in 1951, the 22nd Amendment was ratified, which limits the president to two terms by law. Before Washington left office, he delivered his farewell address to the young nation and offered some advice going forward.
He wanted to advise the nation that we should always remain neutral in foreign affairs. We were too young to get drawn into foreign conflicts, especially between Britain and France. The other piece of advice he gave was to warn the country of the destructive and divisive effects of political parties. Formal political parties did not exist when the Constitution was written, but during his administration, Washington witnessed the development of two rival political factions within the government.
As these factions began to develop into organized political parties, they began to work more and more against each other rather than for the country. We will focus on those parties in the next video lecture. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane.