Thomas Jefferson

"We are all republicans -- we are all federalists," Thomas Jefferson told the American people in his first inaugural address. A "President above Parties" who believed factionalism jeopardized the safety and security of republican government, Jefferson was here setting forth the common principles shared by all patriotic Americans. Jefferson's election -- the "Revolution of 1800" -- would, he confidently predicted, put an end to the frenzied, hysterical party struggles in the 1790s. Moderate Federalists who had voted for John Adams would soon see the errors of their ways. But "if there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." In contrast to the Adams Federalists, who had sought to suppress their opponents with the Alien and Sedition Acts and had instead spurred Jeffersonian-Republicans on toward their electoral revolution -- Jefferson would allow his critics to discredit and disgrace themselves before the sovereign people.1

If, as Richard Hofstadter suggests, the peaceful "transit of power" from Federalists to Republicans marked an epoch in the history of party government it does not follow that Jefferson saw a place for a "loyal opposition" in the new republican order.2 Having vindicated the principles of 1776 -- and of 1798 -- the triumphant Republicans would themselves cease to be a "party." As Republican party activists had insisted for almost a decade, they were the true representatives of the sovereign people. When they assumed the reins of power, the American people at last began to govern themselves. In perverting and corrupting the power of the federal government, the Federalists had accentuated the distance between the people and their self-professed rulers and then sought to bridge the distance with the kind of coercive force that propped up the monarchies of the Old World. Alexander Hamilton and his minions were enemies ofthe "republican form," determined to transform the new American regime into a replica of the British Constitution they so much admired. But the success of their counter-

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revolutionary project depended on secret machinations, behind the scenes: the corruption of the people's representatives by bankers, speculators, and Treasury operatives; or expansive interpretations ofthe federal Constitution that enhanced executive power at the people's expense. The Republicans routed the spectre of a counter-revolutionary monarchical revival not only by driving Adams and his supporters from office, but more profoundly and lastingly by shining the bright light of an enraged public opinion on the murky recesses of Federalist administration.

Jefferson's extraordinary interpretation of his rise to power seems unwarranted by what had been, after all, a rather narrow victory at the polls that was only finally secured -- on the eve of the inauguration after thirty-six congressional ballots. But Jefferson, with his already legendary distaste for the "torments" of political life, was not concerned with the wheeling and dealing that had broken the congressional stalemate. The people had already spoken: they had called Jefferson to the presidency, not his running mate Aaron Burr. And many voters who had supported Adams -- because ofthe habitual submissiveness that sustained monarchical rule, or the all-too-plausible mystifications of "aristocrats" and "monocrats" -- were good, educable republicans at heart. In bringing the good news to his fellow Americans, then, Jefferson was not a party leader with a policy agenda, but rather a guardian of liberty, a patriotic mentor to his people. As the heavy hand of Federalist administration was lifted -- with the end of excise taxes, the reduction of the national debt, the dismantling of the fiscal-military apparatus that threatened to plunge the new nation into a never-ending cycle of wars