nt, John Adams
vice-president. No one of Washington's original constitutional advisers
remained in his cabinet. Jefferson retired from the State Department at
the beginning of the first session of the third Congress. Edmund
Randolph, appointed in his place, resigned in a cloud of obloquy on
August 19, 1795, and the portfolio was temporarily in charge of Timothy
Pickering, secretary of war. Hamilton resigned the department of the
Treasury on January 31, 1795, and Oliver Wolcott, Jr., succeeded him in
that most important of the early offices of the government. General
Henry Knox, the first secretary of war, pressed by his own private
affairs and the interests of a large family, withdrew on December 28,
1794, and Timothy Pickering, the postmaster-general, had been appointed
in his stead January 2, 1795. The Navy Department was not as yet
established (the act creating it was passed April 30, 1798), but the
affairs which concerned this branch of the public service were under
the direction of the secretary of war. The administration of Washington
was drawing to a close. In the lately reconstructed cabinet, honest,
patriotic, and thorough in administration, there was no man of shining
mark. The Senate was still in the hands of the Federal party. The bare
majority which rejected Gallatin in the previous Congress had increased
to a sufficient strength for party purposes, but neither in the ranks of
the administration nor the opposition was there in this august
assemblage one commanding figure.

The House was nearly equally divided. The post of speaker was warmly
contested. Frederick A. Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, who had presided
over the House at the sessions of the first Congress, 1789-1791, and
again over the third, 1793-1795, was the candidate of the Federalists,
but was defeated by Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey, whose views in the
last session had drifted him into sympathy with the Republican
opposition. The House, when full, numbered one hundred and five members,
among whom were the ablest men in the country, veterans of debate versed
in parliamentary law and skilled in the niceties of party fence. In the
Federal ranks, active, conscious of their power, and proud of the great
party which gloried in Washington as their chief, were Robert Goodloe
Harper of South Carolina, Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts, Roger
Griswold and Uriah Tracy of Connecticut, who led the front and held the
wings of debate; while in reserve, broken