American Dialogue: The Founders and Us

by Joseph J. Ellis

Washington was insisting that the relationship between individuals, which could often be conducted on the basis of mutual trust, did not apply to nations. All nations, including the United States, could never depend upon trust but must behave solely on the basis of interest.47 In the context of his own time, this was a defense of the Jay Treaty, which repudiated the Franco-American alliance and aligned America’s commercial interests with British markets as well as with the protection of the all-powerful British fleet. It was also a repudiation of Jefferson’s love affair with the French Revolution as a sentimental attachment rooted in some combination of nostalgia and seductive ideals (i.e., Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity) that floated dreamily in Jefferson’s fertile imagination. For Jefferson, such ideals were the supreme reality. Washington regarded them as dangerous illusions that deflected attention from the long-term interests of the American people.