Most everyone knows that Washington was elected unanimously to the office of the president for the first, last, and certainly only time in our nation's history. He did not campaign, deliver rousing speeches, kiss babies, or try to reach out to Joe Sixpack. He was just like, "Look, who else would it be?" and people were like, "Yeah, you right." There were no challengers and there were no parties.
Washington saw himself as above the idea of a party politician and actively hoped that the partisan spirit would not take root in the United States. Ha! Politicians love arguing and politicians also love being able to blame some other people if stuff goes bad. Parties were bound to happen. None of us can conceive of politics without parties for a reason. The alternative is hard to imagine. Also, you need people to disagree about stuff. You need people to say, "Government is bad! Businesses never do anything shadily or excessively." And you need other people to say, "Government is good. Government can solve all of our problems. You like roads, dontcha?" Both people are idiots but they provide a nice balance to each other.
Anyway, Washington's high-mindedness aside, parties were always going to happen, but Washington was probably pretty p-o'd that the first real division was within his own cabinet. On the federalist team we have Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, who was like, "Remember how we needed a national army to win the war? Maybe we need a strong federal government." On the republican side we have Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, who was like, "We must be debt free as a nation, but taxes levied to pay those debts are evil. Oh, and the states pretty much have things covered, you snooty northerners." These guys hated each other. They each funded newspapers to sling mud at the other side. The dude Jefferson hired even castigated Washington for owning slaves. Thomas Jefferson, plantation owner of Monticello, baby daddy to Sally Hemings, berating another man for owning slaves. Pot, kettle, etc. It was weird stuff.
Washington's own affections were more of a Federalist nature. The war had impressed upon him the need for a strong federal government, without which the unity and cohesion needed to win another war would be severely lacking. Washington was not a big government Democrat, by today's standards, just convinced that the nation needed an identity as a nation and not merely a conglomerate of states geographically related.
Given this bent, much of Washington's implicit and explicit support was directed toward Hamilton. This, of course, earned him the ire of Jefferson and Madison and some of the other republicans. Which Washington hated. People could badmouth him in that purple prose eighteenth century style and he just had to take it. It frustrated him to no end, but he held the dignity of his office as of more value than scoring political points. Though he vented his exasperation in private, he never let it spill over to the public. He was a good man.
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