the Indians. Indian discontent and
even lawlessness had been going on for years, with only a desultory
and ineffectual show of vigor on the part of the whites. Washington,
who detested whatever was ineffectual and lacking in purpose,
determined to beat down the Indians into submission. He sent out a
first army under General St. Clair, but it was taken in ambush by the
Indians and nearly wiped out--a disaster which caused almost a panic
throughout the Western country. Washington felt the losses deeply, but
he had no intention of being beaten there. He organized a second army,
gave it to General Wayne to command, who finally brought the Six
Nations to terms. The Indians in the South still remained unpacified
and lawless.

Washington made another prolonged trip, this time through the Southern
States, which greatly improved his health and gave an opportunity of
seeing many of the public men, and enabled the population to greet for
the first time their President. Meanwhile the seeds of partisan feuds
grew apace, as they could not fail to do where two of the ablest
politicians ever known in the United States sat in the same Cabinet
and pursued with unremitting energy ideas that were mutually
uncompromising. Thomas Jefferson, although born of the old
aristocratic stock of Virginia, had early announced himself a
Democrat, and had led that faction throughout the Revolution. His
facile and fiery mind gave to the Declaration of Independence an
irresistible appeal, and it still remains after nearly one hundred and
fifty years one of the most contagious documents ever drawn up. Going
to France at the outbreak of the French Revolution, he found the
French nation about to put into practice the principles on which he
had long fed his imagination--principles which he accepted without
qualification and without scruple. Returning to America after the
organization of the Government, he accepted with evident reluctance
the position of Secretary of State which Washington offered to him. In
the Cabinet his chief adversary or competitor was Alexander Hamilton,
his junior by fourteen years, a man equally versatile and equally
facile--and still more enthralling as an orator. Hamilton harbored the
anxiety that the United States under their new Constitution would be
too loosely held together. He promoted, therefore, every measure
that tended to strengthen the Central Government and to save it
from dissolution either by the collapse of its unifyi