1790 - Political Events

Political Events

The Holy Roman Emperor Josef II dies at his native Vienna February 20 at age 48, 3 weeks after withdrawing all his reforms. He is succeeded by his 42-year-old brother, who will reign until 1792 as Leopold II.

Belgians revolt against the new emperor Leopold, who threatens to cede the Austrian Lowlands to France if Britain supports the revolution (see 1789). William Pitt yields to the pressure, he refuses to recognize Belgian independence, and the Austrian troops crush the revolt at Brussels (see 1830).

Scottish Jacobite heroine Flora Macdonald dies at Kingsburgh House, Skye, in the Inner Hebrides March 5 at age 67.

French nobleman Louis-Marie, vicomte de Noailles, proposes in June that all titles and liveries be abolished (see 1789). Noailles will soon emigrate to America as the Revolution becomes more violent (see 1804).

France's Louis XVI accepts the constitution drafted by revolutionists in the Festival of the Champs de Mars. Ideologue-poet Louis de Saint-Just attends the Fête de la Fédération at Paris July 14 as commander of a militia organized at Blérancourt in rural Picardy.

Corsican patriot Pasquale Paoli returns to his native island in July (see 1769); now 65, he will break with the French in 1793, gain support from the Royal Navy, expel the French in 1794, and offer suzerainty to Britain's George III, who will accept, but the king's viceroy Sir Gilbert Elliot will choose someone else as his chief adviser and Paoli will return to England in 1795 to live on another government pension.

Swedish forces gain a major victory over Russia at the Battle of Svenskund July 9 to 10, but the 2-year Russo-Swedish war ends in August with the signing of the Treaty of Värälä, which maintains the territorial borders that were arranged in 1743 and that will remain unchanged until 1809.

Austrian military commander Gideon von Loudon dies at Neutitschein July 14 at age 73 as the Austro-Turkish war continues.

The British make an alliance with the nizam of Hyderabad, and a third Anglo-Mysore War begins.

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace," says President Washington in an address to Congress at New York January 8. Washington moves into larger quarters in February, taking up residence at 39 Broadway with his wife, Martha, and a staff of 21, including seven slaves (the entire federal government has only five employees). Thomas Jefferson arrives at New York March 21 to take up his duties as the first U.S. secretary of state and finds to his dismay that monarchist sentiment is rampant in the federal capital, with Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton championing the idea of a strong central government in what Jefferson considers a betrayal of the democratic ideals for which the Revolution was fought. The Virginia planter locks horns with Hamilton's Federalists, pressing to make the rights of individual states paramount in the new republic.

Benjamin Franklin dies at Philadelphia April 17 at age 84, having been bedridden for a year and dependent on opium to ameliorate his intense pain. The city gives him the most splendid funeral thus far in its history; a freethinker, he has not belonged to any church, has poked fun at Puritan intolerance, helped raise funds to build a hall at Philadelphia "expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire to say something," contributed to the building fund of every sect in the city (including £5 for the Jewish congregation Mikveh Israel), and arranged to have all the city's clergymen accompany his casket, walking arm in arm with Philadelphia's rabbi. Europeans recall the words of the late economist Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, who said, "He snatched the lightning from the skies and the scepter from tyrants"; former Continental Army commander Israel Putnam dies on his Connecticut farm at Pomfret May 29 at age 72, having remained nearly illiterate all his life.

Rhode Island ratifies the Constitution May 29 by a margin of two votes and becomes the 13th state of the Union, having declined 13 times in 2 years to ratify because the document in three places implies acceptance of slavery and the colony's influential Quaker community has denounced it. While the other 12 states drew up new constitutions at the outbreak of the Revolution, Rhode Island retained her 1636 colonial constitution, which did not provide for amendment and left it up to the legislature to define voting qualifications (see Dorr, 1841).

The Resident Act passed by Congress at New York July 16 confirms Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton's choice of a new location for the federal government on the banks of the Potomac near the Maryland town of Georgetown, thus resolving a dispute between North and South. The marshy site has been purchased on orders from President Washington by Georgetown businessman Benjamin Stoddert, 39, who has taken care not to create a frenzy of land speculation. Congress meets for the last time at New York August 12, and the Washingtons leave in October, as does Jefferson, for the new capital at Philadelphia. Jefferson has called New York "a cloacina of all the depravities of human nature," and wives of Southern congressmen have pushed their husbands to move closer to home.

Revolutionary leader and former Massachusetts governor James Bowdoin dies at his native Boston November 6 at age 64.