---

Historical Background

The Formative Years—Visions and Prospects of Nationhood (continued)

THE REVOLUTION OF 1800: ASCENDENCY OF THE JEFFERSONIANS

More than a decade of Federalist Government ended in 1800, when the Nation elected Jefferson to the Presidency. For the next 24 years, Virginians—Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe—would lead the United States, and the Democratic-Republican Party would guide the national destiny. Jefferson introduced a different political philosophy to the Executive Office. Economy, simplicity, informality, and noninvolvement in European affairs were its touchstones. But, for all his differences from his predecessors, his "Revolution of 1800" was less revolutionary than his followers boasted or the Federalists feared. Jefferson's greatest accomplishment was the Louisiana Purchase, his greatest disappointment the failure of the Embargo Act of 1807 during the Napoleonic Wars. James Madison, who succeeded Jefferson, inherited a political situation that was difficult to control. His efforts to keep the peace through diplomacy did not succeed, and, in 1812, the Nation found itself at war with Great Britain.

In 1800 John Adams stood a good chance of reelection. His handling of the dispute with France had made him popular. His defeat occurred in large measure because of disunity in the Federalist Party and because the Jeffersonians had created better party machinery and tighter party discipline. A national caucus, or meeting of party leaders, which directed the activities of local "Democratic" clubs and State committees, encouraged the election of State and National candidates pledged to support Jeffersonian principles. Party newspapers lauded Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr; and, in defiance of the Sedition Act, heaped scorn upon the Federalists. The Federalists' caucus, hopelessly divided, reflected the mutual enmity of the party leaders, Adams and Hamilton.

In the election the Jeffersonians won the Southern States and New York and the victory. They had elected a President, but whom? Jefferson and Burr were tied at 73 electoral votes each. By the rules of the electoral system, only the House of Representatives, voting by States, could break the tie. Democratic-Republican electors had intended that Jefferson should be President, but he had political enemies and Burr did not withdraw from the contest. Ironically, it fell to Federalist Party leader Alexander Hamilton to wield his influence to break a weeklong deadlock in the House and choose between two of his bitterest political enemies. He backed Jefferson as the lesser evil. Burr, irritated, had to settle for the Vice-Presidency.

On March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson became the first President of the United States to be inaugurated at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. The Federalists feared the worst from his ascendency. In the heat of the Presidential campaign, the philosophical differences between the two parties had been emphasized to a point where it seemed that the election of Jefferson would turn the country upside-down. Though the Jeffersonians made changes in national administration, they also continued many Federalist policies and never wavered from a basic commitment to the Constitution. The frequently quoted sentence from Jefferson's First Inaugural Address, "We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists," suggests that the political disagreements of the time took place within the framework of a basic faith in representative government. The Jeffersonians continued much of Hamilton's financial program, including the First Bank of the United States, funding, and assumption. They permitted some avowed Federalists to continue to hold administrative positions. Although Jefferson believed in an agricultural America, he encouraged commerce.

Yet Jefferson did bring new faces and ideas to the Government, and his Congress reversed some Federalist policies, particularly those concerning the Alien and Sedition Acts. James Madison, his friend and mainstay of the Democratic-Republican Party, became Secretary of State. Albert Gallatin, a Swiss emigré who shared Jefferson's economic views, took over the Treasury Department. Certainly Jefferson's appointments did not bear out the Federalist fear that he would fill the Government with inexperienced and undistinguished "democrats."

Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father, first Secretary of State, and third President. From a painting by Thomas Sully. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

Jefferson stressed informality. He discontinued the weekly Presidential levees and abandoned the practice of delivering his messages to Congress in person. He often dressed in an informal fashion and disdained the niceties of diplomatic protocol. Refusing to use an ornate Presidential coach, he walked or rode about the Capital City on horseback. And, perhaps most important, he made himself accessible to the public. If a citizen had a grievance or a problem, the President was willing to discuss it.

The election of 1800 gave the Jeffersonians control of two branches of the Government—the executive and legislative—but the Federalist-sponsored Judiciary Act of 1800 had created a number of Federal judgeships, to which Adams in his last days as President had appointed staunch Federalists. Particularly alarming to Jefferson was the activity of one of these "midnight appointments," Jefferson's own distant cousin, Chief Justice John Marshall. In Marbury v. Madison (1803), he asserted the right of the Supreme Court to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional, though he did not actually challenge specific acts of Congress. Jefferson became convinced that the Court in the hands of Federalist judges would thwart the will of the people. In 1802 the Jeffersonian Congress had repealed the Judiciary Act of 1800 and thus abolished many Federalist-held judgeships. In March 1804 the Senate removed Federalist Judge John Pickering, but, after an attempt to impeach Associate Justice Samuel Chase failed, the Jeffersonians abandoned this method of removing political enemies from the Supreme Court. Instead, they relied on the slower process of filling vacancies as they occurred with Democratic-Republicans.

The fiscal policies of Jefferson and Secretary of the Treasury Gallatin included the reduction of Government expenditures and taxes, an attempt to retire the national debt, and the elimination of internal taxes. Jefferson believed that the United States should withdraw from European affairs, at least while the Napoleonic Wars raged. The State Department slashed expenses. Army strength dropped from 4,000 to 2,500 men; State militias would serve if the country were invaded; to provide for a cadre of trained officers to lead the militia in time of war, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., opened on July 4, 1802. The naval buildup begun by Adams was halted. Ships were sold. Only coastal fortifications and a flotilla of inexpensive gunboats remained to repel invaders by sea.

Lt. Stephen Decatur, one of the first U.S. naval heroes, achieved fame for his daring attacks on the pirates of Barbary during the Tripolitan War (1801-5). His feats are memorialized in this print of a wood engraving by Whitney and Jocelyn, after F. O. C. Darley. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

In spite of his commitment to defensive warfare, Jefferson dispatched a naval force to the Mediterranean to end pirate raids on U.S. shipping along the Barbary coast. The Tripolitanian War, 1801-5, was inconclusive, but it produced a new naval hero, Lt. Stephen Decatur. Decatur's daring night raid, which destroyed the captured U.S. vessel Philadelphia under pirate guns in the harbor of Tripoli, brought him fame.

In another instance, Jefferson departed from the abstractions of his philosophy. Forswearing his "strict construction" of the Constitution, he supported the purchase of Louisiana. In 1800, in the Treaty of San Ildefonso, the Spanish King had secretly retroceded the vast but vaguely defined Territory of Louisiana to France. But Napoleon's dream of reestablishing a French empire in the North American West vanished with the lives of 50,000 of his soldiers who in 1800-1802 perished as a result of Toussaint L'Ouverture's uprising against French rule in Santo Domingo. By 1803 Napoleon, preparing for the next round of war with Great Britain, recognized that Louisiana was a far too distant outpost to be held by France against the British Navy. In French hands, Louisiana might precipitate a U.S.-British alliance against France. Why not satisfy the United States and make a profit by selling Louisiana?

French plans to sell Louisiana were unknown to Jefferson, but he recognized that New Orleans and control of the Mississippi River were vital to Western trade. In 1802, after the Spanish Intendant of New Orleans revoked the U.S. right of deposit, or the right to unload goods, Jefferson dispatched James Monroe to assist the U.S. Envoy to France, Robert R. Livingston, in negotiating the purchase of New Orleans and possibly the Floridas. Florida was not for sale—it was not even French! But to the surprise of Monroe and Livingston the French offered instead New Orleans and a vast area west of the Mississippi River—some 828,000 square miles as it turned out.

The U.S. diplomats swallowed hard and exceeded their diplomatic instructions. In April 1803 they agreed that the United States would pay $15 million for the Louisiana Territory. According to Jefferson's interpretation of the Constitution, the Government had no authority to purchase Louisiana. A constitutional amendment was necessary to grant that power. But an amendment might take too long, and in the meantime Napoleon might renege on the agreement. Recognizing the immense practical importance of obtaining Louisiana, Jefferson won congressional acceptance of the terms of the purchase, New England dissenting, and in December 1803 the U.S. flag was raised over New Orleans.

If the flag were to keep flying over New Orleans and the rest of the West, Spanish intrigue and domestic conspiracy had to be punished. To do so, Jefferson in 1807 influenced the trial of Aaron Burr, his former Vice President. Burr was charged with treason. The judge was Chief Justice John Marshall. Much about Burr's "conspiracy" remains a mystery to this day. After Hamilton used his influence in 1804 to help defeat Burr's bid for the New York Governorship, Burr believed that once again Hamilton had thwarted his plans and challenged him to a duel. The ensuing duel, in which Burr killed Hamilton, wrecked Burr's political fortunes in the East. Like many another, he sought a new fortune in the West.

Burr later said that he had hoped to become Emperor of Mexico, but the charge against him was treason and stemmed from the belief held by many people that he had endeavored to separate the West from the rest of the United States. Whatever his true purpose, Burr spent much time during the years 1804-7 in conferring with westerners and Spanish and British officials and seeking money to finance his schemes. Finally, in 1807, U.S. authorities arrested Burr in the Southwest and returned him to Richmond, Va., for trial before a Federal court. The trial was rife with political overtones. Jefferson, in his zeal to see Burr convicted, virtually conducted the prosecution by proxy. But the presiding magistrate, Chief Justice Marshall—political enemy of Jefferson and known for his "broad" interpretation of the Constitution—chose a "strict" interpretation of treason in the Burr case. For conviction, the Constitution required two witnesses to the act of treason. The Government could not produce them. To Jefferson's disgust the verdict was "not guilty."

In 1804 Jefferson won reelection by a landslide of electoral votes. C. C. Pinckney, the Federalist candidate, won only Connecticut. The Federalist Party was no longer a serious contender for national political power. The continuing effort to avoid involvement in the Napoleonic Wars dominated Jefferson's second term. Neutrality was difficult to maintain because the agricultural United States needed overseas outlets and European manufactured goods. The world's second largest merchant fleet carried the U.S. flag to the centers of world trade, where U.S. neutral rights clashed with the military strategy of one or the other of the European powers. In 1806-7 Napoleon, whose armies controlled Europe, promulgated the Continental System in his Milan and Berlin decrees. They closed the ports of Europe to British trade. Great Britain retaliated with Orders in Council that forbade neutrals such as the United States to carry goods to Europe. As the powers attempted to strangle one another's commerce, U.S. shipping suffered. The Royal Navy seized and confiscated U.S. vessels bound for Europe or the French West Indies. French privateers did the same to ships carrying goods to British ports. Before the struggle ended, the French had confiscated about 500 U.S. ships, the British 1,000.

The British war effort depended heavily upon the Royal Navy, whose desertion rate was high because of harsh conditions. To maintain adequate crews, the British stopped, searched, and removed suspected British deserters from neutral ships, especially U.S. ships. This practice violated the sovereignty of the United States and inflamed public opinion against Great Britain. In 1807 a flagrant incident occurred. The Leopard of the Royal Navy accosted the U.S. Frigate Chesapeake in U.S. territorial waters. When the surprised Chesapeake ignored the Leopard's challenge, she received a deadly broadside. The British then boarded her and removed four crewmen, one of whom they later hanged as a deserter.

Construction of the U.S. Frigate Philadelphia. Because a naval war between France and the United States seemed imminent, by 1800 the newly created Navy Department had built 14 warships. From a drawing and engraving by William Birch and Son. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

As word of the affair spread across the country, war appeared imminent. Jefferson immediately ordered British warships out of U.S. waters, and demanded an official apology and the return of the seamen. The apology and the return of the seamen would not be forthcoming for 5 years. But Jefferson did not call for war. Instead, he turned to economic sanctions to persuade both the British and French to abandon their maritime harassment. His Embargo Act of 1807 withdrew the Nation from world trade. Drawing strong protest from shippers, it prohibited the export of U.S. goods and denied ships the right to leave U.S. ports for foreign ports. Many New England shippers violated the embargo. Those who did not, as well as Southern export agriculturists, suffered economically. Once again some New Englanders talked of secession. In 1809 Jefferson acquiesced in the repeal of the embargo. It had averted war, but at a high cost to North-South relations and to U.S. trade.

Jefferson's two terms as President had been physically and mentally exhausting. Believing that a President should serve no more than two terms and preferring life at Monticello to a third term, Jefferson proposed James Madison as his successor. Eastern antiembargo Democratic-Republicans nominated George Clinton of New York for President. John Randolph of Roanoke and John Taylor of Caroline, leaders of the extreme Southern agrarian wing of the party, favored an unwilling James Monroe, who soon withdrew from the race. Despite Democratic-Republican Party dissidence, Madison easily defeated his competitors and Federalist C. C. Pinckney. In March of 1809 Madison began 8 difficult years as President.