{"id":84,"date":"2023-03-06T23:35:36","date_gmt":"2023-03-06T23:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1210\/chapter\/module-3-4\/"},"modified":"2023-04-26T22:55:34","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T22:55:34","slug":"module-3-4","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1210\/chapter\/module-3-4\/","title":{"raw":"3.4 The\u202fJefferson Administration\u202f","rendered":"3.4 The\u202fJefferson Administration\u202f"},"content":{"raw":"Thomas Jefferson called it the Revolution of 1800, and in many ways he was correct. One political party triumphed over another at the polls and the government quietly transitioned with no bloodshed, no violence, and no upheaval. The Federalists were through. They would exist for approximately another 15 years, but they would never again have a major voice or power. The Democratic Republicans were now ascendant and would dominate American political life in one form or another for the next 60 years.<\/span>\r\n
\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"700\"]\"Illustration The year 1800 brought about a host of changes in government, in particular the first successful and peaceful transfer of power from one political party to another. But the year was important for another reason: the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (pictured here in 1800) was finally opened to be occupied by Congress, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and the courts of the District of Columbia. William Russell Birch, A view of the Capitol of Washington before it was burnt down by the British, c. 1800 \u202fWikimedia<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nMeanwhile, the Sedition and Alien Acts expired in 1800 and 1801. They had been relatively ineffective at suppressing dissent. On the contrary, they were much more important for the loud reactions they had inspired. They had helped many Americans decide what they\u202f didn\u2019t<\/em>\u202f want from their national government.\r\n\r\nBy 1800, therefore, President Adams had lost the confidence of many Americans. They had let him know it. In 1798, for instance, he had issued a national thanksgiving proclamation. Instead of enjoying a day of celebration and thankfulness, Adams and his family had been forced by rioters to flee the capital city of Philadelphia until the day was over. Conversely, his prickly independence had also put him at odds with Alexander Hamilton, the leader of his own party, who offered him little support. After four years in office, Adams found himself widely reviled.\r\n\r\nIn the election of 1800, therefore, the Republicans defeated Adams in a bitter and complicated presidential race. During the election, one Federalist newspaper article predicted that a Republican victory would fill America with \u201cmurder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest.\u201d1<\/sup><\/a> \u202fA Republican newspaper, on the other hand, flung sexual slurs against President Adams, saying he had \u201cneither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.\u201d Both sides predicted disaster and possibly war if the other should win.2<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nIn the end, the contest came down to a tie between two Republicans, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia and Aaron Burr of New York, who each had seventy-three electoral votes. (Adams had sixty-five.) Burr was supposed to be a candidate for vice president, not president, but under the Constitution\u2019s original rules, a tie-breaking vote had to take place in the House of Representatives. It was controlled by Federalists bitter at Jefferson. House members voted dozens of times without breaking the tie. On the thirty-sixth ballot, Thomas Jefferson emerged victorious.\r\n\r\nRepublicans believed they had saved the United States from grave danger. An assembly of Republicans in New York City called the election a \u201cbloodless revolution.\u201d They thought of their victory as a revolution in part because the Constitution (and eighteenth-century political theory) made no provision for political parties. The Republicans thought they were fighting to rescue the country from an aristocratic takeover, not just taking part in a normal constitutional process.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"434\"]\"This This image attacks Jefferson\u2019s support of the French Revolution and religious freedom. The letter, \u201cTo Mazzei,\u201d refers to a 1796 correspondence that criticized the Federalists and, by association, President Washington. Providential Detection, 1797. Courtesy \u202fAmerican Antiquarian Society<\/a>. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).[\/caption]\r\n\r\nIn his first inaugural address, however, Thomas Jefferson offered an olive branch to the Federalists. He pledged to follow the will of the American majority, whom he believed were Republicans, but to respect the rights of the Federalist minority. His election set an important precedent. Adams accepted his electoral defeat and left the White House peacefully. \u201cThe revolution of 1800,\u201d Jefferson wrote years later, did for American principles what the Revolution of 1776 had done for its structure. But this time, the revolution was accomplished not \u201cby the sword\u201d but \u201cby the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a> \u202fFour years later, when the Twelfth Amendment changed the rules for presidential elections to prevent future deadlocks, it was designed to accommodate the way political parties worked.\r\n\r\nDespite Adams\u2019s and Jefferson\u2019s attempts to tame party politics, though, the tension between federal power and the liberties of states and individuals would exist long into the nineteenth century. And while Jefferson\u2019s administration attempted to decrease federal influence, Chief Justice John Marshall, an Adams appointee, worked to increase the authority of the Supreme Court. These competing agendas clashed most famously in the 1803 case of\u202f Marbury v. Madison<\/em>, which Marshall used to establish a major precedent.\r\n\r\nThe\u202f Marbury<\/em> \u202fcase seemed insignificant at first. The night before leaving office in early 1801, Adams had appointed several men to serve as justices of the peace in Washington, D.C. By making these \u201cmidnight appointments,\u201d Adams had sought to put Federalists into vacant positions at the last minute. On taking office, however, Jefferson and his secretary of state, James Madison, had refused to deliver the federal commissions to the men Adams had appointed. Several of the appointees, including William Marbury, sued the government, and the case was argued before the Supreme Court.\r\n\r\nMarshall used Marbury\u2019s case to make a clever ruling. On the issue of the commissions, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Jefferson administration. But Chief Justice Marshall went further in his decision, ruling that the Supreme Court reserved the right to decide whether an act of Congress violated the Constitution. In other words, the court assumed the power of judicial review. This was a major (and lasting) blow to the Republican agenda, especially after 1810, when the Supreme Court extended judicial review to state laws. Jefferson was particularly frustrated by the decision, arguing that the power of judicial review \u201cwould make the Judiciary a despotic branch.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nThomas Jefferson\u2019s electoral victory over John Adams\u2014and the larger victory of the Republicans over the Federalists\u2014was but one of many changes in the early republic. Some, like Jefferson\u2019s victory, were accomplished peacefully, and others violently. The wealthy and the powerful, middling and poor whites, Native Americans, free and enslaved African Americans, influential and poor women: all demanded a voice in the new nation that Thomas Paine called an \u201casylum\u201d for liberty.5<\/sup><\/a> All would, in their own way, lay claim to the freedom and equality promised, if not fully realized, by the Revolution.\r\n

Policies and Contradictions<\/h3>\r\nJefferson and his successor, James Madison, looked askance at many Federalist policies \u2013 Hamilton\u2019s economic program in particular, and they tended to favor agriculture over commercial and industrial interests. Nonetheless, they preserved much of the Hamiltonian legacy, in part because many influential people in their own party wanted to keep it.\r\n\r\nThomas Jefferson reintroduced many ideas that had been part of the American cultural tradition, including an interest in the western wilderness. He purchased Louisiana Territory, sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and Zebulon Pike to explore it, and developed theories of how American yeoman farmers would settle it. Unwillingly, however, Jefferson and Madison had to give their attention to foreign policy. Familiar problems with Britain, including ship seizures and impressment, placed both men in an awkward position. They had previously opposed war with their old friend, France, over similar problems, so it was difficult to advocate for war against Great Britain. They delayed it by using economic sanctions, the embargo in particular, until finally Madison was forced to request a declaration of war.\r\n

Jeffersonian Republicanism<\/h3>\r\nFree and enslaved black Americans were not alone in pushing against political hierarchies. Jefferson\u2019s election to the presidency in 1800 represented a victory for non-elite white Americans in their bid to assume more direct control over the government. Elites had made no secret of their hostility toward the direct control of government by the people. In both private correspondence and published works, many of the nation\u2019s founders argued that pure democracy would lead to anarchy. Massachusetts Federalist Fisher Ames spoke for many of his colleagues when he lamented the dangers that democracy posed because it depended on public opinion, which \u201cshifts with every current of caprice.\u201d Jefferson\u2019s election, for Federalists like Ames, heralded a slide \u201cdown into the mire of a democracy.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a>\r\n

Indeed, many political leaders and non-elite citizens believed Jefferson embraced the politics of the masses. \u201cIn a government like ours it is the duty of the Chief-magistrate . . . to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people,\u201d Jefferson wrote in 1810.7<\/sup><\/a> \u202fNine years later, looking back on his monumental election, Jefferson again linked his triumph to the political engagement of ordinary citizens: \u201cThe revolution of 1800 . . . was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 76 was in it\u2019s [sic] form,\u201d he wrote, \u201cnot effected indeed by the sword . . . but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage [voting] of the people.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a> Jefferson desired to convince Americans, and the world, that a government that answered directly to the people would lead to lasting national union, not anarchic division. He wanted to prove that free people could govern themselves democratically.<\/p>\r\nJefferson set out to differentiate his administration from the Federalists. He defined American union by the voluntary bonds of fellow citizens toward one another and toward the government. In contrast, the Federalists supposedly imagined a union defined by expansive state power and public submission to the rule of aristocratic elites. For Jefferson, the American nation drew its \u201cenergy\u201d and its strength from the \u201cconfidence\u201d of a \u201creasonable\u201d and \u201crational\u201d people.\r\n\r\nRepublican celebrations often credited Jefferson with saving the nation\u2019s republican principles. In a move that enraged Federalists, they used the image of George Washington, who had passed away in 1799, linking the republican virtue Washington epitomized to the democratic liberty Jefferson championed. Leaving behind the military pomp of power-obsessed Federalists, Republicans had peacefully elected the scribe of national independence, the philosopher-patriot who had battled tyranny with his pen, not with a sword or a gun.\r\n\r\nThe celebrations of Jefferson\u2019s presidency and the defeat of the Federalists expressed many citizens\u2019 willingness to assert greater direct control over the government as citizens. The definition of citizenship was changing. Early American national identity was coded masculine, just as it was coded white and wealthy; yet, since the Revolution, women had repeatedly called for a place in the conversation. Mercy Otis Warren was one of the most noteworthy female contributors to the public ratification debate over the Constitution of 1787 and 1788, but women all over the country were urged to participate in the discussion over the Constitution. \u201cIt is the duty of the American ladies, in a particular manner, to interest themselves in the success of the measures that are now pursuing by the Federal Convention for the happiness of America,\u201d a Philadelphia essayist announced. \u201cThey can retain their rank as rational beings only in a free government. In a monarchy . . . they will be considered as valuable members of a society, only in proportion as they are capable of being mothers for soldiers, who are the pillars of crowned heads.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a> \u202fAmerican women were more than mothers to soldiers; they were mothers to liberty.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"700\"]\"The The artist James Pealse painted this portrait of his wife Mary and five of their eventual six children. Peale and others represented women as responsible for the health of the republic through their roles as wives as mothers. Historians call this view of women Republican Motherhood. \u202fWikimedia<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nHistorians have used the term\u202f Republican Motherhood<\/em>\u202f to describe the early American belief that women were essential in nurturing the principles of liberty in the citizenry. Women would pass along important values of independence and virtue to their children, ensuring that each generation cherished the same values of the American Revolution. Because of these ideas, women\u2019s actions became politicized. Republican partisans even described women\u2019s choice of sexual partner as crucial to the health and well-being of both the party and the nation. \u201cThe fair Daughters of America\u201d should \u201cnever disgrace themselves by giving their hands in marriage to any but real republicans,\u201d a group of New Jersey Republicans asserted. A Philadelphia paper toasted \u201cThe fair Daughters of Columbia. May their smiles be the reward of Republicans only.\u201d10<\/sup><\/a> \u202fThough unmistakably steeped in the gendered assumptions about female sexuality and domesticity that denied women an equal share of the political rights men enjoyed, these statements also conceded the pivotal role women played as active participants in partisan politics.11<\/sup><\/a>\r\n

Jefferson as President<\/h3>\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"591\"]\"Photograph Thomas Jefferson\u2019s victory over John Adams in the election of 1800 was celebrated through everyday Americans\u2019 material culture, including this victory banner. \u202fSmithsonian Institute, National Museum of American History<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nButtressed by robust public support, Jefferson sought to implement policies that reflected his own political ideology. He worked to reduce taxes and cut the government\u2019s budget, believing that this would expand the economic opportunities of free Americans. His cuts included national defense, and Jefferson restricted the regular army to three thousand men. England may have needed taxes and debt to support its military empire, but Jefferson was determined to live in peace\u2014and that belief led him to reduce America\u2019s national debt while getting rid of all internal taxes during his first term. In a move that became the crowning achievement of his presidency, Jefferson authorized the acquisition of Louisiana from France in 1803 in what is considered the largest real estate deal in American history. France had ceded Louisiana to Spain in exchange for West Florida after the Seven Years\u2019 War decades earlier. Jefferson was concerned about American access to New Orleans, which served as an important port for western farmers. His worries multiplied when the French secretly reacquired Louisiana in 1800. Spain remained in Louisiana for two more years while the U.S. minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, tried to strike a compromise. Fortunately for the United States, the pressures of war in Europe and the slave insurrection in Haiti forced Napoleon to rethink his vast North American holdings. Rebellious slaves coupled with a yellow fever outbreak in Haiti defeated French forces, stripping Napoleon of his ability to control Haiti (the home of profitable sugar plantations). Deciding to cut his losses, Napoleon offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million\u2014roughly equivalent to $250 million today. Negotiations between Livingston and Napoleon\u2019s foreign minister, Talleyrand, succeeded more spectacularly than either Jefferson or Livingston could have imagined.\r\n\r\nJefferson made an inquiry to his cabinet regarding the constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase, but he believed he was obliged to operate outside the strict limitations of the Constitution if the good of the nation was at stake, as his ultimate responsibility was to the American people. Jefferson felt he should be able to \u201cthrow himself on the justice of his country\u201d when he facilitated the interests of the very people he served.12<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nJefferson\u2019s foreign policy, particularly the Embargo Act of 1807, elicited the most outrage from his Federalist critics. As Napoleon Bonaparte\u2019s armies moved across Europe, Jefferson wrote to a European friend that he was glad that God had \u201cdivided the dry lands of your hemisphere from the dry lands of ours, and said \u2018here, at least, be there peace.\u2019\u201d13<\/sup><\/a> \u202fUnfortunately, the Atlantic Ocean soon became the site of Jefferson\u2019s greatest foreign policy test, as England, France, and Spain refused to respect American ships\u2019 neutrality. The greatest offenses came from the British, who resumed the policy of impressment, seizing thousands of American sailors and forcing them to fight for the British navy.\r\n\r\nMany Americans called for war when the British attacked the USS\u202fChesapeake<\/em>\u202fin 1807. The president, however, decided on a policy of \u201cpeaceable coercion\u201d and Congress agreed. Under the Embargo Act of 1807, American ports were closed to all foreign trade in hopes of avoiding war. Jefferson hoped that an embargo would force European nations to respect American neutrality. Historians disagree over the wisdom of peaceable coercion. At first, withholding commerce rather than declaring war appeared to be the ultimate means of nonviolent conflict resolution. In practice, the embargo hurt the U.S. economy. Even Jefferson\u2019s personal finances suffered. When Americans resorted to smuggling their goods out of the country, Jefferson expanded governmental powers to try to enforce their compliance, leading some to label him a \u201ctyrant.\u201d\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"700\"]\"Illustration The attack of the Chesapeake caused such furor in the hearts of Americans that even eighty years after the incident, an artist sketched this drawing of the event. Fred S. Cozzens, The incident between HMS \u201cLeopard\u201d and USS \u201cChesapeake\u201d that sparked the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair, 1897. \u202fWikimedia<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nCriticism of Jefferson\u2019s policies reflected the same rhetoric his supporters had used earlier against Adams and the Federalists. Federalists attacked the American Philosophical Society and the study of natural history, believing both to be too saturated with Democratic Republicans. Some Federalists lamented the alleged decline of educational standards for children. Moreover, James Callender published accusations (that were later proven credible by DNA evidence) that Jefferson was involved in a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, one of his slaves.14<\/sup><\/a> \u202fCallender referred to Jefferson as \u201cour little mulatto president,\u201d suggesting that sex with a slave had somehow compromised Jefferson\u2019s racial integrity.15<\/sup><\/a> \u202fCallender\u2019s accusation joined previous Federalist attacks on Jefferson\u2019s racial politics, including a scathing pamphlet written by South Carolinian William Loughton Smith in 1796 that described the principles of Jeffersonian democracy as the beginning of a slippery slope to dangerous racial equality.16<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nArguments lamenting the democratization of America were far less effective than those that borrowed from democratic language and alleged that Jefferson\u2019s actions undermined the sovereignty of the people. When Federalists attacked Jefferson, they often accused him of acting against the interests of the very public he claimed to serve. This tactic represented a pivotal development. As the Federalists scrambled to stay politically relevant, it became apparent that their ideology\u2014rooted in eighteenth-century notions of virtue, paternalistic rule by wealthy elite, and the deference of ordinary citizens to an aristocracy of merit\u2014was no longer tenable. The Federalists\u2019 adoption of republican political rhetoric signaled a new political landscape in which both parties embraced the direct involvement of the citizenry. The Republican Party rose to power on the promise to expand voting and promote a more direct link between political leaders and the electorate. The American populace continued to demand more direct access to political power. Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe sought to expand voting through policies that made it easier for Americans to purchase land. Under their leadership, seven new states entered the Union. By 1824, only three states still had rules about how much property someone had to own before he could vote. Never again would the Federalists regain dominance over either Congress or the presidency; the last Federalist to run for president, Rufus King, lost to Monroe in 1816.\r\n

For more information on Thomas Jefferson and the Jefferson Administration\u2019s actions, please explore the following resources:<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

\u201cLewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery.\u201d - A Film by Ken Burns. Produced by PBS. <\/em>1997.<\/a> 1:45:16.<\/p>\r\n