American History
Lecture 4
Federalists and Republicans (1789-1825)


KEY THEMES:

   * The Constitution in action: Was it a success?
   * Jefferson and Madison were two of the great intellectuals of the
     country's formative period. To what degree did each of them succeed or
     fail in implementing their ideals while serving as president?

THE STATUS QUO IN 1790:

Population (1790):

   * 3,930,000

Political:

   * The new constitution went into effect by the end of 1788, and the
     first Congress and administration were planned to meet in New York
     City (the new capital) in the spring of the new year.
   * Technically, the new republic had only 12 states. Rhode Island still
     adhered to the old Articles of Confederation, and thus was in practice
     an independent republic.
   * New states were nearly ready to enter the Union, as settlers had
     flooded over the Alleghenies and established subnational separatist
     movements from their distant eastern state capitals (in Virginia and
     North Carolina). In time, these breakaway areas would be admitted as
     Kentucky and Tennessee, respectively. In the north, a similar
     separatist group had successfully broken away from New York and set up
     an independent republic in Vermont, which was also now admitted as a
     state.

Military:

   * Britain and Spain still threatened the western and southern borders of
     the United States, but under the new constitution, the central
     government was empowered to maintain a permanent military. As well,
     America was growing so rapidly in population that it was starting to
     emerge as the most populous and hence the most defensible part of the
     entire continent. The internal security of the country was therefore
     almost entirely assured.

THE START OF 200 YEARS (SO FAR!)
OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

Introduction
The first three lectures have described what the Americans had tried to
escape from in becoming independent, what they had sought to preserve in
conducting their revolution, and the means (the Constitution) by which they
had attempted to preserve it. The rest of the course, starting with this
lecture, will be about how successful this experiment in
constitution-making was, during its first one hundred and ten years, in
preserving the liberties that the founders held so dear and in keeping at
bay the tyranny that they so greatly feared.

Most Americans think the record has been a smashing success. But I wonder
if the founders themselves, who had very high standards for the
commonwealth that they were building, would have been satisfied, if they
could have come back and surveyed their work from the perspective of 1898?
or 1998?

The Two Visions of the American Constitution.
Although there were many brilliant men present in America in 1787, there
were four in particular---John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton,
and James Madison---who had particularly acute insight into the fundamental
problems in the great constitutional enterprise on which they were
embarking. Adams and Jefferson were in England and France, respectively, on
diplomatic duty, and as a result their insights into constitution-building
must be gathered from their writings both before and after the
Constitutional Convention (samples of which are included on the Suggested
Readings list attached to this lecture and to Lecture #3).

However, Hamilton and Madison were both present in Philadelphia, and each
of them attended and participated with a very clear impression of what they
hoped to achieve. Both men then went on to record their views in The
Federalist. In Hamilton's case, the primary focus was upon:

   * A strong executive;
   * A strong central government, and subordinate states;
   * The maintenance of a propertied political elite, which would have a
     stake in maintaining a stable political order (from which all would
     benefit in the long run, including the very same poor people who might
     otherwise, in the absence of a dominant propertied elite, overthrow
     that order for their own short-term benefit).

In Madison's case, the primary focus was:

   * The preservation of property, very broadly defined (he believed that
     you have a property right to your speech and your body, for example,
     because they are the most personal forms of property);
   * A belief that all men are potential oppressors---that is, violators of
     the property rights of others---and that no individual or class can be
     trusted;
   * A use of government powers, balanced against one another, as a way of
     preventing any one person, any one government or any one agency of
     government from imposing a new tyranny upon the people.

These represent the two points of view that were encapsulated in the
Constitution of 1787. Hamilton's view was mercantilist, conservative and
centralist, while Madison's was libertarian, decentralist, and
market-oriented. To the modern viewer, who might be a socialist, a
post-modernist, or an adherent to some other ideology, these two points of
view will seem very close together (and indeed, I am inclined to think that
back in my home country (Canada), both would fit very easily into a single
wing of the Reform Party, which itself represents only a fraction of the
Canadian ideological spectrum). Nonetheless, with the exception of some of
the more radical anti-federalists, this was a pretty broad representation
of the ideological spectrum of America at the time of Ratification.

One has to wonder, therefore: Has the Constitution served to promote the
mercantilist ideals of Hamilton, or the libertarian values of Madison? Or
has it failed to do either?

My own view, which will be made clear in this lecture and in others that
follow, is that a constitution is not really required to create an
elite-driven, mercantilist society. I agree with Thomas Jefferson that "The
natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain
ground."1 Although Hamilton would not have thought so, I believe that
elitism and protected monopolies, along with militarism, tend to arise very
comfortably without any constitution to help them along. Therefore the
practical impact of the Constitution---after the initial period in which it
tightened up the old Confederation---has been to slow the growth of the
Hamiltonian anticipated constitutional conventions.

THE GEORGE WASHINGTON COALITION

Introduction.
The period during which George Washington was president represents an
eight-year interlude in which America was actually governed almost
exclusively by the principles of the written constitution. Few of today's
constitutional conventions existed, and there were few of the informal
institutions that today exist in the halls of power. For example:
1. There were no political parties.
2. The President was selected by an electoral college to which members had
been appointed by the state legislatures. As intended, it was a
non-contested election, in which a consensus was reached on the obvious
best candidate (in this case, George Washington).
3. The Senate was a small, appointed body, similar in intention to an
idealized House of Lords. Here is one description of it:

The original twenty-two United States Senators, meeting in New York in
1789, at first seemed to fulfill the expectations of the makers of the
Constitution, particularly regarding its resemblance to the House of Lords.
A distinguished and glittering gathering of eminent and experienced
statesmen, the Senate, as compared with the House of Representatives, was
on the whole far more pompous and formal, its chambers far more elaborate,
and its members far more concerned with elegance of dress and social rank.
Meeting behind closed doors, without the use of standing committees, the
Senate consulted personally with President Washington, an acted very nearly
as an integral part of the administration.2

The changes that would lead to the present-day system began slowly. The
popular election of the President does not take place for another thirty
years. However, parties began to develop almost at once.

This went against the president's intentions. President Washington chose
his cabinet to include men of the highest talent, but he also saw it as a
place where various interests could be reconciled and various geographical
sections of the country could be brought together. The Secretary of War
(Henry Knox) was from New England, the Secretary of the Treasury (Hamilton)
was from the Mid-Atlantic (New York) and the Secretary of State (Jefferson)
was from the South.

The Dramatis Personae---George Washington:
Before describing how these changes took place, and how the system worked
before they had happened, it is worth stopping and taking a look at some of
the key players. The most important figure, of course, was George
Washington.

In previous lectures, I've already mentioned Washington far more than any
other figure. By common agreement at the time, he towered over his
contemporaries. He was by now an accomplished general and the successful
chairman of the Constitutional Convention. Everybody knew that he was not
as brilliant as some of his contemporaries (Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton,
Adams and Madison almost certainly all had higher IQ's than Washington),
but this was an age that understood, as Hume has written, that the
intellect is the slave to the passions, and unlike many of his more
brilliant peers, Washington's passions were known to include no personal
ambition, no need to control others, and no desire for vainglory.

This is made clear by his record. He had served for years at the head of
the army without pay, had promptly resigned his commission upon the
conclusion of the war, and had been chosen to head the Convention of 1787
because of his recognized skills as a peacemaker and administrator. He was
accepted by all as their leader not because of his brilliance (although his
writings make it clear that he was a man of uncommon intelligence) but
because of his wisdom---and because it was clear that he was good at
brokering conflict, without becoming the instrument of any faction or
party.

In the assigned text for this course, Johnson describes Washington as a
"cold fish,"3 but this is unfair. He was reserved and cautious, and
probably shy. He seems to have been self-conscious about his appearance and
he probably was uncomfortable about the impression that his famous wooden
teeth would make. We know that he was a good husband to Martha, and an
affectionate stepfather to her children. As well, he was capable of
impulsive shows of affection. In December 1783, when taking leave for the
last time of his assembled officers, Washington impulsively embraced and
kissed Henry Knox, the general who had served him loyally in all his major
engagements.4 The best measure of his character that I have come across,
however, can be found in his Will, where he takes an extraordinary amount of
caution to ensure that his slaves will be well cared-for after his death.
This was an extraordinary act of generosity, in an age which treated slaves
shockingly.

     Upon the decease of my wife, it is my Will and desire that all
     the Slaves which I hold in my own right, shall receive their
     freedom. To emancipate them during her life, would, tho'
     earnestly wished by me, be attended with such insuperable
     difficulties on account of their intermixture by Marriages with
     the Dower Negroes, as to excite the most painful sensations, if
     not disagreeable consequences from the latter, while both
     descriptions are in the occupancy of the same Proprietor; it not
     being in my power, under the tenure by which the Dower Negroes
     are held, to manumit them. And whereas among those who will
     receive freedom according to this devise, there may be some, who
     from old age or bodily infirmities, and others who on account of
     their infancy, that will be unable to support themselves; it is
     my Will and desire that all who come under the first and second
     description shall be comfortably cloathed and fed by my heirs
     while they live . . . . The Negroes thus bound, are (by their
     Masters or Mistresses) to be taught to read and write; and to be
     brought up with some useful occupation . . . . And I do hereby
     expressly forbid the Sale, or transportation out of [Virginia],
     of any Slave I may die possessed of, under any pretence
     whatsoever. And I do moreover most pointedly, and most solemnly
     enjoin it upon my Executors hereafter named, or the Survivors of
     them, to see that this clause respecting Slaves, and every part
     thereof be religiously fulfilled at the Epoch at which it is
     directed to take place; without evasion, neglect or delay . . . . 5

The Dramatis Personae---John Adams:
Washington's Vice President was John Adams, who later would become the
second president of the United States. Adams was a lawyer and arguably the
only man who could rival Madison in his knowledge of constitutional design.
He was highly suspicious of human nature, and would never have had the
naive faith of Hamilton in the good intentions of the wealthy. Therefore it
is a shame that he was not present in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787.
He had earned his way up from humble beginnings, and had first become
famous in serving as the attorney for the defence in the trial of the
soldiers who had committed the Boston Massacre. In 1780 he had been the
chief architect of the Massachusetts state constitution, which remains in
force to this day and is the oldest operative constitution in the world.
Following the war, he had become Minister to Great Britain, where he had
struggled in a nearly impossible position to negotiate a commercial treaty
with the British. During his period in England, he had entertained himself
by writing learned books about constitutional design, which are still in
print to this day.

Unfortunately, he also had a few weaknesses. Here's how Bernard Bailyn, the
distinguished historian of the revolution, describes him:

     He was, from his earliest recorded years, a driven and uneasy
     man. Born forty years before the revolution into a family of very
     modest means (his father was a farmer and shoemaker), he was
     impelled by a frantic desire for affluence and fame. but he had
     little besides a decent education to start with: `no books,' he
     wrote despondently, `no time, no friends', `it is my destiny to
     dig treasures with my own fingers [because] No body will lend me
     or sell me a pick axe' . . . . [H]e remained, to his everlasting
     chagrin, clumsy in society, awkward and self-conscious . . . . He
     had nothing of Franklin's casual wit or of Jefferson's natural
     elegance of address.6

He tried to compensate by means of a show of pomp and circumstance. One
observer his work as the president of the Senate (one of the Vice
President's jobs) found him so pompous that he referred to the Vice
President as "His rotundity". Adams didn't think much of his new job, which
he described as being "the most insignificant office that ever the
invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." This was the
first in a long line of memorably insulting descriptions of the job by its
incumbents, which culminated in Vice President John Nance Garner's
description of it as "not worth a pitcher full of warm spit." Rumour has it
that the word used in the original quotation was not "spit." Adams would
not be a major force until he became President in 1797.

The Dramatis Personae---Thomas Jefferson:
President Washington decided that his cabinet should include only
supporters of the new constitution, and so did not consider appointing any
active Anti-Federalists. However, Thomas Jefferson, who had been Minister
to France when the ratification debate was underway, might well have been
an Anti-Federalist, had he been in America at the time of the debate (he
had chosen instead to try and influence his friend Madison by means of
letters full of suggestions, sent from Paris during the Convention and the
ratification period). Jefferson was appointed Secretary of State.

Thomas Jefferson was almost certainly the most brilliant man ever to serve
as President of the United States. He was a diplomat, an inventor, a
political scientist, an agronomist, a pioneer meteorologist, and an
architect. He wrote the Declaration of Independence almost single-handedly.
John F. Kennedy, at a White House dinner being held for Nobel Prize winners
in 1961, observed that the evening's gathering had produced a greater
gathering of brilliant men than the White House had seen, since Thomas
Jefferson had dined there alone. Jefferson had been widowed young, and
never remarried. He had raised his family alone, and appears to have been a
devoted father; he was rewarded by a house full of adoring grandchildren in
his old age. Because he was so handsome and charming, he spent decades as
the most eligible bachelor in the Western Hemisphere. Naturally, there are
rumours. The most prominent ones are that he had an affair with a French
noblewoman while in Paris, and that he fathered an illegitimate family with
a slave woman. Neither rumour can be proved or disproved.

Jefferson is often seen as a "man of contradiction," who, like the Bible or
Shakespeare, can be quoted by everyone in support of almost anything.
Bailyn writes,

     Even before his death Jefferson's personality had become lost in
     polemics and political symbolism; he died a cause, an idea, a
     national institution. Since then, each major political battle,
     each era of American literature, historiography, and politics,
     has added another layer to the image of this extraordinary man
     until, in the late twentieth century, all human substance seems
     to have been lost.7

But it is possible to cut through the mythology. He was a prolific writer,
and this provides plenty of ammunition for those who want to quote him in
support of their own hobbyhorses. But in practice he was always loyal to a
single ideal---the preservation of Liberty. (I have provided a source on
the reading list that demonstrates this point effectively.) This could best
be done, he felt, by means of institutions that were both highly
decentralized and highly democratic, rather than by means of central
institutions full of checks and balances.

The Dramatis Personae---Alexander Hamilton:
If there is one area where I disagree strongly with the main text for this
course, it is in the description of Alexander Hamilton. Johnson, who is a
conservative, finds much to admire in Hamilton's vision of a centralized,
mercantilist state with its merchant elite. I see a man who was so
completely the prisoner of his personal ambition that he imagined he could
design national policy in defiance of all opposition, and who was incapable
of distinguishing between his own advancement and that of the republic he
sought to serve. He was brilliant and breathtakingly energetic, but not
half so clever as he was arrogant. This combination, in the service of an
ideology that held that people like himself should make all the important
decisions because their interests by necessity had to be those of the
nation, led him to repeated treachery and betrayal.

Washington sought, in a position of leadership, to reconcile and
conciliate. Hamilton, by contrast, as Washington's de facto prime minister,
sought to thrust forward an aggressive agenda supported by only a minority
within society. Eventually his aggressive temperament and his willingness
to use others and cast them aside on his way to achieving his goals would
cost him his life. He was killed in a duel with---of all people---the Vice
President of the United States, in 1804.

Hamilton was a lawyer, but during the Revolution he had served bravely and
had spent several years as Washington's chief aide. In 1786, he had been
largely responsible for calling the Constitutional Convention. However, his
proposals at Philadelphia had been so radical that his agenda was to a
great extent sidelined and replaced by that of James Madison. Now he was
appointed Secretary of the Treasury by Washington, and from that position,
he drove the political agenda for the next eight years. Unfortunately, he
drove it in the direction of the centralized, aristocratic state that had
been largely rejected in Philadelphia, and as a result he fragmented the
coalition that Washington was trying to create, thereby causing the
creation of the party system. In effect, the coalition that he led became
the first political party. Initially it was a faction, but soon it became
increasingly formalized into a real party in the modern sense. This was the
origin of the Federalist Party.

Dramatis Personae---James Madison:
Madison was, along with Adams, one of the two great constitutional minds of
the era. Fortunately, he had been at Philadelphia in 1787, where he was
responsible for far more of the design of the Constitution than any other
individual. He also kept a careful diary of the proceedings (heaven knows
how he found the time), which has allowed us to reconstruct the entire
Convention. He then wrote much of the Federalist papers, and also defended
the Constitution brilliantly in the Virginia ratifying convention. Had he
not been present at that time, the package might have been defeated right
then and there by the brilliant oratory of Patrick Henry. In 1789, he
designed the Bill of Rights, which included not only the ten amendments
that were added to the constitution at that time, but also another that was
ratified as recently as 1992, becoming the Twenty-Second Amendment.

Madison was elected to the House of Representatives, where he served from
1789 to 1797. In this position, he rallied members to oppose many of
Hamilton's proposals. In time he began to refer to those members who
consistently opposed Hamilton's initiatives as the "republican interest,"
which by 1792 had become the "republican party". In time, this term became
formalized to "Republican Party." By the end of 1791, the Republicans had
established a newspaper, the National Gazette, which challenged and quickly
outsold the pre-existing Federalist paper, the United States Gazette.

The Hamilton Agenda:
Hamilton sought to turn the United States into an industrial power with an
urbanized elite, like Britain. To do this, he hoped to establish the United
States as a creditworthy investment risk. Then he hoped to establish a
permanent debt, with the interest payments providing an income to a wealthy
merchant class, whose loyalty would therefore be purchased. If this sounds
like a system for state-sponsored transfers from the poor to the wealthy,
that's because that is what it was.

In support of this proposal, Hamilton urged the creation of a national
bank, which would serve as the issuer of a federal currency and as the
institution that would hold federal deposits and float federal bonds. This
was opposed by southern and agricultural interests, but supported by
northern and urban interests---as were all of Hamilton's proposals. It
passed in the House by a margin of 39 to 20, with all but three votes in
favour coming from the North, and all but one of the negative votes coming
from the South.

Hamilton also produced a report to Congress on the public credit, in which
he made the following proposals:
1. To repay the $12 million foreign debt by means of a new bond issue.
2. To repay the domestic debt (which, including back interest, amounted to
around $40 million) by means of another new bond issue, at full face value.
3. To assume all outstanding state debt, which then amounted to around $21
million.

The payment of the foreign debt was non-controversial. However, much of the
domestic debt had been purchased for a small percentage of its face value
by speculators, who seemed to be very well connected to the goings-on in
Congress. Therefore, they stepped up their purchasing activities when it
became more likely that the debts would be repaid in full. Madison and
Jefferson realized that this would result in speculators---the beginnings
of Hamilton's creditor class---being the main beneficiaries of a debt which
would amount to half or more of all government spending.  Redeeming notes
held by this class would require stiff taxes on the farmers and the working
poor.

Madison and Jefferson fought against it, proposing instead that only those
instruments still in the hands of those to whom they had been issued should
be redeemed at face value. Hamilton got his way in the end by offering them
a surprise deal: If they would agree to assume the debt, he would agree to
move the capital from New York (his home turf and the financial capital) to
a southern, rural location. The change would be made in 1800, and in the
meantime, the capital would move to Philadelphia, starting in 1790. They
agreed, and the debt repayment scheme went through, leading to a great
increase in taxes.

This produced America's first great tax revolt. The new tax package had
included an excise tax on whisky. But in some rural areas, farmers had to
distill their grain into whisky in order to transport it at reasonable
cost. In the absence of a stable system of currency, whisky was also used
in rural areas as a kind of currency (like cigarettes in a WW II
prisoner-of-war camp) and so this law was like a tax on money. As a result,
the farmers in western Pennsylvania rebelled and refused to pay the taxes
that would have ruined them. The rebellion was so severe that in October
1794, Washington led an army of 15,000 men---the largest army he had ever
led---into western Pennsylvania. He met no resistance at all, and only
around 100 arrests were made. Hamilton, who was also now in uniform,
happily rounded up the ringleaders. In the end, no severe punishments were
handed out, and other taxation measures were adopted.

Nonetheless, the taxation measures were so severe, and the profiteering
among Hamilton's supporters was so rampant, that sectional conflict grew
substantially. There were hints that the whole union ought to be dissolved,
in order to stop federal depredations. Here's what Hofstadter, et al, have
to say:

     The Federalist crisis was no figment of a later generation's
     imagination. In 1792, Daniel Carroll, one of the commissioners
     for the development of "Federal City," explained Congress's delay
     in making appropriations for the new capital as arising from a
     strong suspicion that the government was about to be dissolved.
     In February 1793, Oliver Wolcott of Connecticut, who was to
     succeed Hamilton in the Treasury two years later, observed that
     if the funding and assumption policies did break up the Union,
     "the separation ought to be eternal." In 1795, the Reverend John
     Pierce, on observing the grandiose new state capitol at Hartford,
     Connecticut, wrote that it "excites the suspicion . . . that it
     is contemplated by some to make this a Capitol [of New England],
     should there be a division of the Northern from the Southern
     States.8

All of this upset Washington so much that he felt compelled to seek the
presidency a second time, despite a genuine desire to retire to his wife
and his farm. He also made speeches in favour of national unity, fought to
keep the key leaders within the cabinet so that their differences could be
resolved internally, and the crisis passed.

Hamilton, meanwhile, had begun to secretly report, under the code number
"7", to British intelligence officer George Beckwith, who had been
dispatched to America with instructions to try and influence American
policy. Hamilton delivered false information back to Washington on
Beckwith's activities, and tried to use this contact to maneuver the United
States into a more pro-British orientation.

The election of 1792 saw Washington again unanimously selected, but the
Republicans now contested the vice-presidency and almost unseated Adams
with their candidate, Governor George Clinton of New York.

The Election of 1796.
In 1796, Washington was firm: this time he really was retiring. The
Republicans now ran Jefferson as their candidate for the presidency, and
the Federalists ran John Adams. Under the system then in effect, the
candidate with the second-largest number of votes would become Vice
President. In the end, Adams won with 71 electoral votes to Jefferson's 68,
so Jefferson became Vice President. But the real story of the election was
the way in which Hamilton tried to rig the election to ensure that his own
candidate, Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina, would become President.
Pinckney was running as Adams' "running mate," aiming for the Vice
President's job. But if enough southerners who were supporting Jefferson as
their first choice could be convinced to make him their second choice
(after Jefferson) he might actually defeat Adams. This was possible because
only a single ballot, with two names, was cast by each elector, and the
preferential ballot had not yet been invented, so it was impossible to
indicate who was your first choice, and who was your second. As it turns
out, this strategy failed, but it made Adams suspicious of Hamilton.

The Adams Administration, 1797-1801.
Adams was curiously hamstrung as a President. Washington had been able to
rule by consensus, due to his enormous personal prestige. No party dared to
openly contradict him, given the reverence in which he was held. But Adams
had no such prestige, and he was the candidate of only one party, which
meant that he had open opponents in the other party. Their leader was his
own Vice President. Worse yet, his own party (the Federalists) was
fractious and he was not its formal leader. Nor was he its de facto leader.
That role went to Hamilton, who had just tried to defeat him. Jefferson
agreed to respect Adams' position as President, but Hamilton felt no such
loyalty, and proceeded to try to run the country indirectly, by means of
manipulating the cabinet, who had all been left behind by the retiring
President Washington---and whom had all been selected by Hamilton. Since
there was not yet a tradition that all cabinet officers would sign an
undated letter of resignation upon taking office (a later development that
is now part of the unwritten constitution), Adams was stuck with this
arrangement.

He then made the odd decision to stay at home in Massachusetts most of the
time, rather than being in Philadelphia. The result was that government
policy began to drift, and decisions were made that would eventually cost
him his presidency.

The main controversies of Adams' presidency arose over foreign policy
(foreign policy and Indian policy were about all that the federal
government did in those days, along with raising taxes to pay off its
accumulated debt). I'll discuss this in more detail when we get to the
foreign policy lecture, but the key thing to know at this point was that
the Federalists were pro-British, and the Republicans were pro-French. In
1797 the French foreign minister demanded a $250,000 bribe just to commence
negotiations over French boardings of American ships on the high seas. The
Americans refused and canceled their commercial treaty with France.

The two countries now began to move close to war over the continuing
boarding of ships. It was clear that what was needed to deal with France
was a navy. To deal with this need, Congress authorized the creation of a
Navy Department, and Adams appointed a Secretary of the Navy---who became
the sole cabinet member answering to Adams rather than to Hamilton. This
action meant that Hamilton would have no influence over the navy, so the
High Federalists (that part of the party under Hamilton's control, rather
than Adams') began to build up the army instead, happily driving up taxes
and the debt in the process. The cabinet, which was controlled by Hamilton,
now demanded that Washington be placed in charge of the army, and that
Hamilton be made his second-in-command, with no need to take orders from
anyone but Washington himself, thereby sidelining Adams. They also began to
demand war.

Meanwhile, it had become clear that France was willing to back down, and
that the High Federalists were seeking war in order to improve Hamilton's
control over the political agenda. War would have forced America into an
alliance with Britain (since Britain had a navy and America did not). Adams
therefore decided that the time had come to face down Hamilton, and he
fired his entire cabinet, other than the Secretary of the Navy.

Adams might have recovered from this mess had he not acquiesced in the
passing of a series of laws, known collectively as the Alien and Sedition
Laws, which were enacted in June and July 1798. These laws were designed to
suppress civil liberties for overtly partisan (that is, pro-Federalist and
anti-Republican) purposes. There were four laws in all:
1. The Alien Enemies Act called for the restraint of citizens of
belligerent countries in time of war.
2. The Naturalization Act boosted the number of years' residency needed to
acquire U.S. citizenship from one to fourteen (new citizens were suspected
of being generally pro-Republican).
3. The Alien Friends Act gave the President the ability to deport any alien
whom he felt to be a threat to national security.
4. The Sedition Act allowed for fines and imprisonment of any person found
guilty of conspiring "to oppose any measure or measures of the United
States" or criticizing the government or President "with intent to defame .. . or
to bring them or either of them, into contempt or disrepute."

This final Act was precisely the sort of law that the First Amendment had
been intended to prevent. If such a law were passed nowadays, one would
anticipate that it would be struck down almost at once by the Supreme
Court. But in 1798, the courts were partisan Federalist institutions,
controlled by a class of politicized lawyers (the same lawyers that
Hamilton had insisted would be impartial defenders of the public interest!)
Instead of striking down the laws, the courts were happy to enforce them
and allow them to be used to shut down Republican papers.

Given that the courts would not act, Jefferson and Madison turned to the
state legislatures to enforce the Constitution. Madison convinced the
Virginia legislature to pass a series of resolutions declaring that it had
the right to judge the constitutionality of federal enactments, and further
stating that the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional. Jefferson,
working with the state legislature of Kentucky, convinced the legislators
to pass two series of resolutions. The first set declared the laws to be
unconstitutional and hence "void and of no force." The second set declare
that state legislatures had the power to "nullify" any federal law judged
by the state legislature to be unconstitutional. Other states did not
follow suit, so the laws remained in effect, and nullification became a
marginal constitutional concept---but one that would be revived a few
decades later.

The Election of 1800.
Madison and Jefferson now turned their attention to building a practical
political machine out of the Republican Party. By the time of the election
of 1800, they had created a mass party, and were able to carry the House of
Representatives. To do this, they not only relied upon their newspapers,
but also on less savoury techniques (and less savoury individuals).

One particularly notable individual was Aaron Burr, the New York political
"fixer" who controlled the drinking society known as Tammany Hall, and
through it was able to control the state legislature. This meant that Burr
would determine where New York's votes were placed (remember, it was still
legislatures, not voters, who chose the members of the electoral college).
This was a big deal, given that New York was Hamilton's home turf. Because
of the importance of New York's electoral votes, Burr was given the
Republican Party's vice-presidential nomination.

In the election, Jefferson and Burr ran against Adams and Pinckney.
Hamilton again tried to have Pinckney slide past Adams on the basis of his
support in the South, but this time his machinations were simply
irrelevant, as Adams and Pinckney were both out-balloted by Jefferson and
Burr. But something extraordinary happened. Jefferson and Burr each
received 73 electoral votes. This created a tie, which had the effect of
instantly terminating the Electoral College and sending the election to the
House of Representatives. Burr should have voluntarily stepped aside at
this point, but he was thrilled at the prospect of becoming President, and
so he did not. The House cast 35 successive ballots without achieving a
majority for either candidate. Finally, however, Hamilton intervened on
behalf of his old enemy Jefferson, who at least was not a threat in his
home state, as Burr was. He convinced some Burr supporters to cast blank
ballots, and Jefferson was elected.

This action proved fatal for Hamilton. Burr now found himself shunned by
President Jefferson and shut out of the Republican Party, and for this he
blamed Hamilton. In desperation, he tried to seek the governorship of New
York as the candidate of the Federalist Party, and to help his nomination
he agreed to talk with a group of New England Federalists, the "Essex
Junto", who were debating secession from the Republican-dominated Union.
His discussions were revealed to Hamilton, who made them public, thereby
ruining his chances of winning the governorship. Within a short space of
time Burr, who had almost become President, had seen himself ruined and his
career destroyed by Hamilton. He now challenged Hamilton to a duel, and
shot him dead. Burr then became involved in a hair-brained scheme to cause
parts of the western United States to break away from the Union and become
a separate country. He was arrested, tried for treason, and acquitted, but
he was by now an object of universal contempt.

The election of 1800 had another important consequence. In order to ensure
that this sort of electoral tie could never occur again, the Twelfth
Amendment was ratified in 1804. This amendment provided for the use of
separate ballots for the election of the President and Vice President, and
was the final amendment until 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment abolished
slavery.

The Jefferson Administration, 1801-1809.
Jefferson's most famous words are, "That government governs best, which
governs least." On another occasion he had stated, "If left to me to decide
whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers
without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the
latter." He believed that the Federal government should be vigorous in
prosecuting a foreign policy of armed neutrality and trade with everybody,
much on the lines of Switzerland today. But domestically, he felt that the
federal government should have almost no presence at all.

The most important item on the agenda, therefore, was to pay down the
federal debt. This would have the effect of killing off Hamilton's creditor
class (or at least forcing them to make their profits by means of lending
to private interests rather than to government). To do this, Jefferson
ruthlessly cut down the size of the tiny federal establishment. Just before
leaving office, John Adams had tried to fill every federal job, and
particularly the courts, with Federalist appointees. Rather than attempting
to replace them, Jefferson now simply eliminated as many of these posts as
he could.

Hamilton had hoped to boost his own power by means of a standing army.
Jefferson wanted to cut off the power of his enemy, and also to save money,
so he reduced the standing army from 4,000 officers and men to 2,500. To
compensate for this cut, he emphasized the need for state militias to be
improved, and from 1808 onwards the federal government helped to defray the
cost of these militias. Also, Jefferson was responsible for setting up a
military academy at the site of the great fortress of the Hudson, at West
Point. He also cut the size of the navy, reducing it in large measure to a
sort of coast guard.

He also repealed the excise tax that had led to the Whiskey Rebellion, so
now the federal government had only two revenue sources: a customs duty (by
now, such duties really were enforced, unlike colonial days) and the sale
of public lands in the vast territories lying west of the Alleghenies, in
the North West Territory.

By means of the economies described above, Jefferson hoped that even with
his tax reductions, he would be able to run an ongoing surplus, and to pay
off the entire federal debt---$83 million at the time he took office---in
sixteen years. In the event, the War of 1812 interceded and caused new
debts to be taken on, and the full debt was not paid off until 1837. Also,
another enormous expense occurred within two years of his coming to office,
in the form of the Louisiana purchase. The details of this purchase will be
described in the next lecture, on foreign policy, but the relevant point to
be made at this time is that in order to obtain Louisiana, the United
States had to pay France $15 million.

Initially, Jefferson had intended only to purchase the shaded portion on
the river's east bank, shown in the inset map.

In addition, it was now necessary to engage in some form of exploration in
order to secure the grip of the United States on this new territory, and
Congress now secretly appropriated some money to pay for two expeditions.

LEWIS, CLARK, AND PIKE'S EXPLORATIONS.
One, led by Zebulon Pike, would explore the upper reaches of the
Mississippi, thereby determining where the real boundary with British
territory lay. The other, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, would
follow the course of the Missouri River (the main tributary of the
Mississippi lying to its west) to learn more of the new lands now in
America's possession, and then cross into the almost completely unexplored
territory west of that, which was claimed by Spain, Britain and Russia. The
reason for the secrecy was to avoid foreign hostility, since the explorers
would traveling through territory claimed by Spain, and where such 'explorations'
could be interpreted by the Spanish as the first move to incorporate these
territories into the United States.

The Madison Administration, 1809-1817.
Madison's administration was dominated by a single great event, which will
be discussed in the next lecture. This was the War of 1812, in which
America struggled for two years to defeat the British Empire, and in the
end came out in a draw.

Although I will not deal with the war in this lecture, I will mention its
domestic repercussions, all of which had the effect of dragging Madison
away from the non-interventionist, small-government philosophy that he had
espoused in his congressional battles with Hamilton back in the 1790s, and
towards a sort of halfway house settlement with Federalism. By 1815,
Madison made the following proposals to Congress, which together came to be
known (in the phrase coined by Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky) as the
"American System":
1. Expand the navy beyond the mere coast guard function imagined by
Jefferson.
2. Reorganize the militia.
3. Enlarge the West Point military academy.
4. Since the federal government had been responsible for starting the war
with Britain, the federal government should now assume the state debts
created to pay for the efforts of the militia during the war.
5. A national bank would create a uniform national currency (Americans at
this point still used mostly foreign currency, or bills issued by private
banks).
6. A protective tariff designed not only to raise revenue, but to protect
infant industries.
7. Federal financing for internal infrastructure measures (known in those
days as "improvements") such as public roads.
Another measure which was part of the American system, although not
initiated in this particular speech, was the appropriation of funds to
build the first federally-sponsored road, known as the "Cumberland Road,"
which ran through Virginia across the crest of the Appalachians, thus
becoming the best and fastest route across the mountains.

However, he had not become a complete sell-out to the Federalist cause.
Madison did two very important things to shore up the old-style Republican
cause:
1. In 1817, he vetoed a bill by which Congress had hoped to distribute
$1,500,000 to the states, conditional upon the money being spent on
internal improvements. This would have been the first-ever example of
federal tied aid, and it is almost certain that had Madison anticipated
this kind of action when he was at the Constitutional Convention thirty
years earlier, he would have included a provision in the Constitution to
prevent it.
2. He nominated an arch-decentralist, James Monroe, to be his successor.

The Presidency of Monroe / The Era of Good Feelings (1817-1825)
James Monroe was the final member of the Revolutionary generation to hold
office as President. By the standards of his illustrious predecessors he
was pretty commonplace, but by the standards of some of the mediocrities
who would follow him in the pre-Civil War era, he looks pretty good.

James Monroe had served as a member of the Continental Congress during the
Revolution. He had attended the Virginia ratifying convention in 1788 and
had voted against the ratification of the new constitution. Thus, his
Anti-Federalist credentials were excellent. He had also served as Governor
of Virginia at the turn of the century, and had been one of Virginia's two
appointments to the Senate. He was an accomplished diplomat who had been
minister to France, to Britain, and to Spain.

Monroe's major accomplishments took place in foreign policy, and will be
mentioned here only in passing, since I'll deal with them next week. In
1819 he purchased Florida from Spain. In 1823 he announced the Monroe
Doctrine, which stated that the United States would guarantee the freedom
of the newly-free countries of the Americas against colonization.

The most important domestic accomplishment of his term will also be set
aside for a future lecture, since it is the first warning sign of the
brewing storm over slavery. This is the "Missouri compromise," in which
Missouri was permitted to enter the Union as a slave state only after a
careful deal was brokered to deal with the future westward expansion of
slavery and a free state was admitted, with an eye to keeping a balance
between the slave and free states in the Senate.

One thing that should be mentioned: The Federalist Party had largely
destroyed itself during the years of Jefferson and Madison's
administrations. The most important Federalist leader, Hamilton, had died
in 1804. The party had remained strong enough in New England to debate the
merits of secession from the United States, but had gradually lost even
this base. Its demise was helped along by the Republican adoption of the
American System with its obviously Federalist elements. Monroe was
therefore able to easily beat his Federalist opponent, Rufus King, in the
1816 election, which was the last to be fought exclusively in the state
legislatures in order to swing their votes in favour of sending the proper
electors.

In the election of 1820, the Federalists were so weak that they were unable
to put forward a candidate. Monroe was therefore acclaimed by a unanimous
vote---although one elector cast his ballot for John Quincy Adams, arguing
that it would be wrong for anyone else to match Washington's accomplishment
of winning a unanimous victory.

This was a prosperous period. By the time of the 1820 election, nine new
states had entered the Union. In the 1820 census, the population had
skyrocketed to 9,640,000---nearly three times its level in 1790. The
frontier had also marched hundreds of miles westwards, crossing the
Mississippi in many spots, and spreading downwards into Florida.

It was also the end of the era of idealistic constitutional design, and the
beginning of the practical era of "politics as usual," with just as much
petty corruption and partisan maneuvering as Adams and Madison might have
anticipated, when they were drafting their state and federal constitutions,
respectively. This is the era, for example, when the word "Gerrymander" is
invented.  The first "Gerrymander: was an electoral district in Massachusetts so
bizarre in shape that it looked like a salamander.

READINGS FOR THIS LECTURE:

Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People. London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1997, pp. 176-214.

Sources that students may wish to consult:

Aaron, Daniel, Richard Hofstadter, and William Miller, The United States.
Third edition. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1972. (pp.
160-195, 207-212)
A solid, factual account of the period, and a good supplement to Johnson's
livelier but more opinionated version.

Adams, John, Letters to John Taylor from 1814 in Bernard Brown (ed.), Great
American Political Thinkers. Vol. I. New York: Avon, 1983, pp. 204-208.
These letters are Adams' response to a book that Taylor had written. In
them, he outlined his concerns with the dangers of democracy and his
perspective on the utility of a natural aristocracy. Therefore, they
represent a key insight into the Federalist mind.

Ames, Fisher, excerpts from "The Dangers of American Liberty," in Russell
Kirk (ed.), The Portable Conservative Reader. Harmondsworth, England:
Penguin, 1982, pp. 84-112.
Ames was a prominent Federalist who explained why, in this 1803 essay, the
Jeffersonian practice of democracy would destroy the United States.

Billington, Ray, Samuel Brockunier, and Bert Loewenberg (eds.), The Making
of American Democracy: Readings and Documents. Volume I. New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston. (Documents on pp. 119-168 only).
Original documents from the period, and also excerpts from the classic
historiography on the period.

Commager, Henry Steele (ed.) Documents of American History. Volume I: To
1898. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. (Documents 90-106 only; in the
Seventh Edition, these are found on pp. 150-186).
Original documents from the period.

Mayer, David, "The Misunderstood Mr. Jefferson," in Liberty. Vol. X, no. 5
(May 1997), pp. 29-39.
Jefferson is often portrayed as a "Man of contradictions," full of
brilliant insights but not of a consistent nature in his thinking. This
essay argues that on the contrary, Jefferson was a highly consistent
defender of "the holy cause of freedom."

McLaughlin, Jack (ed.), To His Excellency, Thomas Jefferson: Letters to a
President. New York: Avon Books, 1991.
This selection of letters to Jefferson, and his method of responding to
them, reveal a great deal about the man.

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1 Jefferson, Letter to Edward Carrington, May 27, 1788.
2 John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage, p. 22.
3 See the blurb accompanying his portrait, between p. 238 and p. 239.
4 This story is related in W.B. Allen's prologue to George Washington: A
Collection, p. 2.
5 George Washington, Last Will and Testament, July 9, 1799, in W.B. Allen
(ed.), George Washington: A Collection, pp. 667-668.
6 Bernard Bailyn, Faces of Revolution. pp. 5, 15.
7 Ibid., p. 23.
8 Hofstadter, et al, The United States. Third edition. Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1972, p. 170.