Yahoo Web Search

Although Washington disdained factions and disclaimed party adherence, he is generally taken to have been, by policy and inclination, a Federalist, and thus its greatest figure. Influential public leaders who accepted the Federalist label included John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Rufus King, John Marshall, Timothy Pickering and Charles Cot...

Originally a coalition of like-minded men, the party became publicly well defined only in 1795. After Washington’s inauguration in 1789, Congress and members of the president’s cabinet debated proposals of Alexander Hamilton (first secretary of the treasury) that the national government assume the debts of the states, repay the national debt at par...

John Adams, Washington’s vice president, succeeded the first president as an avowed Federalist, thus becoming the first person to attain the chief magistracy under partisan colors. Inaugurated in 1797, Adams tried to maintain his predecessor’s cabinet and policies. He engaged the nation in an undeclared naval war with France, and after the Federali...

In the minority, Federalists at last accepted the necessity of creating a system of organized, disciplined state party organizations and adopting democratic electoral tactics. Because their greatest strength lay in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware, the Federalists also assumed the aspects of a regional minority. Ignoring ideological consiste...

Although it lingered on in these states, the party never regained its national following, and by the end of the War of 1812, it was dead. Its inability to accommodate early enough a rising, popular democratic spirit, often strongest in towns and cities, was its undoing. Its emphasis upon banking, commerce and national institutions, although fitting...

The Federalist and the Republican Party. PBS: American Experience. Federalists. The First Amendment Encyclopedia. Middle Tennessee State University. Timeline of the Federalist Party. Michigan State University.