President Jay’s Cabinet
VP: Aaron Burr
State: Gouverneur Morris
Treasury: Oliver Wolcott Jr.
War: Henry Brockholst Livingston
Attorney General: John Marshall
Secretary of the Navy: Benjamin Stoddert
While a continuation of Hamilton’s economic policies; modest tariffs, industrial bounties, and central banking, proceeded smoothly, the majority of Jay's first two years in office have concerned foreign and military policy.
President Jay sent Charles Lee, Timothy Pickering, and John Quincy Adams to France to try to settle the matter of ship seizures. There, they were met with French Ministers who demanded bribes before negotiations could get under way. These Minister’s identities were cloaked in official documentation released to the public, who were much outraged. The aliases given to these officials provided for the naming of the event as the ABC Affair. Totally incensed, Pickering and Lee broke off negotiations and returned home, Adams went back to his diplomatic post in Portugal. An undeclared, quasi, war at sea breaks out in the Atlantic and Caribbean, with Congress voting overwhelmingly to authorise military action against French ships, commissioning six new Navy Frigates, and a 20,000 man strong Provisional Army, led by Alexander Hamilton, to supplement the “Old” (Regular) Army. Republicans decry the heightening of tensions and seek to reopen negotiations with France.
To finance this new force, the Federalist Congfess has raised a new 1% land value tax, leading to unrest in Pennsylvania and much grumbling across the country.
In August 1798, Anthony Wayne was dispatched to Haiti at the head of a military mission of 3,000 men to help defend Haiti from reconquest attempts by France. Republicans and Adamites deprecate this as encouraging open war with the French, but the Federalists defend their man in the White House as a tough response to French bullying, protecting a nation of similar ideals to the US, and protecting the Americas from Old World influence. In response, the French Directory has sent General Napoleon Bonaparte, fresh from an astounding victory in Italy, to reaffirm Haiti's relationship to France. It remains to be seen if open warfare will break out, dragging Haiti out of its muddled semi-independent situation.
Domestically, the Federalist controlled Congress has passed the so-called ‘Alien and Sedition Acts’. Which have given the President substantial power to detain and deport dangerous citizens of foreign nations residing in the US, censor press, and personal speech that contained malicious or false information about the government. This package of laws also extends the required residential time for US citizenship from 5 to 14 years.
Thus, we come to the midterm elections. While economic issues were the crux of the 1796 presidential election, the 1798 midterms revolve around far different policies. The Republicans disparage an authoritarian, oligarchical government that represses speech and deports immigrants, while the Federalists insist that these measures are necessary for national security. The Federalists seek close ties with Britain to protect commerce, some even advocating outright war with France, while the Republicans seek to make amends with France to avoid war and ally one of few Republics in the modern world. Lately, the Republicans, led chiefly by Vice President Aaron Burr, have begun to press for an expansion to suffrage laws, abolishing property and tax requirements, though the Party mainstream has hesitated to endorse a Constitutional Amendment on the manner. The Federalists see “mob rule” as a dangerous corruption of democracy.