When Washington became the first president of the United States in 1789, American society contained a small commercial section along the seaboard and a larger semi-subsistence economy in the interior regions of the country. The party battles that erupted in the 1790s reflected the competing views of social and economic development that emerged from the conflicting interests of these two distinct perspectives. The Federalists hoped to create a commercial nation, while the Jeffersonian Republicans championed an agrarian, semi-subsistence republic. In the quarter-century after 1789, these two parts of the country continued to develop -- for the most -- part economically and socially independent of one another. As white settlers began pouring across the Appalachian Mountains, the lack of cheap land transportation prevented the integration of the interior regions into a larger market tied to the eastern seaboard. In 1815, with the restoration of peace with Britain, it remained unclear which vision of the Republic's future would prevail. But developments over the next generation would greatly strengthen the forces of commercialization in American life and decisively change the course of American development.