Capital In Crisis 1793 Summary
Capital in crisis 1793
In the summer of 1793, Philadelphia was in midst of a political crisis. Great Britain had declared war against revolutionary France, instantly polarizing American public opinion. Many favored France, whose political ideals seemed akin to our own. Other disagreed, pointing out the bloody massacres and other outrages that had recently convulsed Paris.
President George Washington’s own cabinet split along party lines. Secretary of State Tomas Jefferson and his Republican Party were passionately in favor of France, while Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and many other Federalists felt Britain was a bulwark of civilization against the rising tide of revolutionary anarchy. Nominally a Federalist, Washing …show more content…
Philadelphia was the largest and most cosmopolitan city in the United States, boasting a population of more than 40,000 people. It was a city of monuments, many of them associated with the nation’s beginnings. Congress met in Congress Hall, in the shadow of the Old State House, where the Declarations of independence were signed and the Constitution was drafted. Philadelphia’s streets were paved with cobblestones and laid out on a grid plan that some visitors found unsettling. Used to the medieval jumble of avenues back home, a foreign traveler considered the right Angled streets “a mathematical infringement on the rights of individual eccentricity.” The cities Architecture injected a note of egalitarianism in an otherwise class-conscious age. Most homes were built of red brick in a colonial Georgian or the newly emerging “federal” style. Bolley Payne Todd lived in a house on Walnut and Fourth streets. She was charming, vivacious and Beautiful, and her charismatic personality could not be contained by the straightjacket of Quaker Convention. Her husband John Todd was a solidly middle-class lawyer whose sturdy, three-story red Brick home was typical of the
In the summer of 1793, Philadelphia was in midst of a political crisis. Great Britain had declared war against revolutionary France, instantly polarizing American public opinion. Many favored France, whose political ideals seemed akin to our own. Other disagreed, pointing out the bloody massacres and other outrages that had recently convulsed Paris.
President George Washington’s own cabinet split along party lines. Secretary of State Tomas Jefferson and his Republican Party were passionately in favor of France, while Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and many other Federalists felt Britain was a bulwark of civilization against the rising tide of revolutionary anarchy. Nominally a Federalist, Washing …show more content…
Philadelphia was the largest and most cosmopolitan city in the United States, boasting a population of more than 40,000 people. It was a city of monuments, many of them associated with the nation’s beginnings. Congress met in Congress Hall, in the shadow of the Old State House, where the Declarations of independence were signed and the Constitution was drafted. Philadelphia’s streets were paved with cobblestones and laid out on a grid plan that some visitors found unsettling. Used to the medieval jumble of avenues back home, a foreign traveler considered the right Angled streets “a mathematical infringement on the rights of individual eccentricity.” The cities Architecture injected a note of egalitarianism in an otherwise class-conscious age. Most homes were built of red brick in a colonial Georgian or the newly emerging “federal” style. Bolley Payne Todd lived in a house on Walnut and Fourth streets. She was charming, vivacious and Beautiful, and her charismatic personality could not be contained by the straightjacket of Quaker Convention. Her husband John Todd was a solidly middle-class lawyer whose sturdy, three-story red Brick home was typical of the