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NA Boyer Ch 08.V2 CHAPTER 8 Jeffersonianism and the Era of Good Feelings, 1801–1824 n March 4, 1801, Vice President Thomas Jefferson walked from his board- Oing house to the Capitol to be inaugurated as the nation’s third president. His decision to walk rather than ride in a coach reflected his distaste for pomp and ceremony, which he thought had grown out of hand in the Washington and Adams administrations. The stroll was also practical, for the new capital, Washington, had scarcely any streets. Pennsylvania Avenue was no more than a path cut through swamp and woods (so dense that congress- men got lost in them) to connect the unfinished Capitol with the city’s only other building of note, the president’s mansion. Officials called the place “hateful,” “this abode of splendid misery,” a “desert city,” and the “abomina- tion of desolation.” After arriving at the Capitol, Jefferson was sworn in by the new chief jus- tice, John Marshall, a John Adams appointee whom Jefferson already had begun to distrust. The absence of the outgoing president reminded everyone of the bitterness of the 1800 election, which Federalists had interpreted as a victory for the “worthless, the dishonest, the rapacious, the vile and the ungodly.” CHAPTER OUTLINE Nevertheless, in his inaugural address, Jefferson struck a conciliatory note. The will of the majority must prevail, but the minority had “their equal The Age of Jefferson rights,” he assured the beaten Federalists. He traced the political convulsions The Gathering Storm The War of 1812 The Awakening of American Nationalism 227 228 CHAPTER 8 Jeffersonianism and the Era of Good Feelings, 1801–1824 of the 1790s to differing responses to the French divided along sectional lines over the extension of slav- Revolution, an external event whose fury had passed, ery into Missouri, much to the dismay of Jefferson, who and he thereby suggested that the source of American found nothing in the Constitution to prevent either slav- discord was foreign and distant. What Americans need- ery or its extension. ed to recognize was that they agreed on essentials, that “every difference of opinion is not a difference of princi- This chapter focuses on five major questions: ple,” that “we are all republicans, we are all federalists.” Newspapers added capitals and printed the last ■ How did Jefferson’s philosophy of government clause as “we are all Republicans, we are all Federalists,” shape his policies toward public expenditures, the but in Jefferson’s manuscript the words appear as judiciary, and the Louisiana Purchase? “republicans” and “federalists.” The distinction is criti- ■ What divisions emerged within the Republican party cal. Jefferson’s point was not that the Federalist and during Jefferson’s second term? Republican parties would merge or dissolve. Compared to President Adams, Jefferson would play a much more ■ What led James Madison to abandon Jefferson’s active role as leader of his party. Rather, Jefferson hoped policy of “peaceable coercion” and go to war with that, since the vast majority of Americans accepted the Britain in 1812? federal union (federalism) and representative govern- ■ How did the War of 1812 influence American domes- ment (republicanism), they would develop a more har- tic politics? monious spirit in politics. Jefferson’s ideals cast a lengthy shadow over the ■ To what extent did Jefferson’s legacy persist into period from 1801 to 1824. His purchase in 1803 of the the Era of Good Feelings? To what extent was it vast Louisiana Territory, motivated by a mixture of prin- discarded? ciple and opportunity, nearly doubled the size of the United States. His successors in the “Virginia Dynasty” of Republican presidents, James Madison and James THE AGE OF JEFFERSON Monroe, warmly supported his principle that govern- ments were strong to the extent that they earned the Narrowly elected in 1800, Jefferson saw his popularity affection of a contented people. Increasingly deserted by rise during his first term, when he moved quickly to voters, the opposition Federalist party first disintegrated scale down seemingly unnecessary government expen- and then collapsed as a national force by 1820. ditures. Increasingly confident of popular support, he Yet the harmony for which Jefferson longed proved worked to loosen the Federalists’ grip on appointive elusive. Contrary to Jefferson’s expectation, events in federal offices, especially in the judiciary. His purchase Europe continued to agitate American politics. In 1807 of Louisiana against Federalist opposition added to the United States moved to end all trade with Europe to his popularity. In all of these moves, Jefferson was avoid being sucked into the ongoing war between guided not merely by political calculation but also by Britain and France. The failure of this policy led to war his philosophy of government, eventually known as with Britain in 1812. Jeffersonianism. Foreign policy was not the only source of discord. The Federalist decline opened the way for intensified Jefferson and Jeffersonianism factionalism in the Republican party during Jefferson’s second term (1805–1809) and again during the mislead- A man of extraordinary attainments, Jefferson was fluent ingly named Era of Good Feelings (1817–1824). Repub- in French, read Latin and Greek, and studied several lican factionalism often grew out of conflicting assess- Native American languages. He served for more than ments of Jefferson’s philosophy by his followers. Some, twenty years as president of America’s foremost scientif- like the eccentric John Randolph, argued that, as presi- ic association, the American Philosophical Society. A dent, Jefferson was deserting his own principles. Other student of architecture, he designed his own mansion in Republicans interpreted the often inept performance of Virginia, Monticello, and spent over forty years oversee- the American government and army during the War of ing its construction. Gadgets fascinated him. He invent- 1812 as proving the need for a stronger centralized gov- ed a device for duplicating his letters, of which he wrote ernment than Jefferson had desired. Most ominously, over twenty thousand, and he improved the design for a in 1819 and 1820 northern and southern Republicans revolving book stand, which enabled him to consult up The Age of Jefferson 229 to five books at once (by 1814 he owned seven thousand ing the timing of Jefferson’s visits to Monticello with the books in a host of languages). His public career was start of Sally’s pregnancies, most scholars now view it as luminous: principal author of the Declaration of Inde- very likely that Jefferson, a widower, was the father of at pendence, governor of Virginia, ambassador to France, least one of her four surviving children. secretary of state under Washington, and vice-president Callender’s story did Jefferson little damage in under John Adams. Virginia, not because it was discounted but because Yet he was, and remains, a controversial figure. His Jefferson acted according to the rules of white Virginia critics, pointing to his doubts about some Christian doc- gentlemen by never acknowledging any of Sally’s chil- trines and his early support for the French Revolution, dren as his own. Although he freed two of her children portrayed him as an infidel and radical. During the elec- (the other two ran away), he never freed Sally, the tion campaign of 1800, Federalists alleged that he kept a daughter of Jefferson’s own father-in-law and so light- slave mistress. In 1802 James Callender, a former sup- skinned that she could pass for white, nor did he ever porter furious about not receiving a government job he mention her in his vast correspondence. Yet the story of wanted, wrote a newspaper account in which he named Sally fed the charge that Jefferson was a hypocrite, for Sally Hemings, a house slave at Monticello, as the mis- throughout his career he condemned the very “race- tress. Drawing on the DNA of Sally’s male heirs and link- mixing” to which he appears to have contributed. Jefferson did not believe that blacks and whites could live permanently side-by-side in American socie- ty. As the black population grew, he feared a race war so vicious that it could be suppressed only by a dictator. This view was consistent with his conviction that the real threat to republics rose less from hostile neighbors than from within. He knew that the French had turned to a dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte, to save them from the chaos of their own revolution. Only by colonizing blacks in Africa, an idea embodied in the American Colonization Society (1816), could America avert a simi- lar fate. Jefferson worried that high taxes, standing armies, and public corruption could destroy American liberty by 230 CHAPTER 8 Jeffersonianism and the Era of Good Feelings, 1801–1824 turning government into the master rather than servant Jefferson’s “Revolution” of the people. To prevent tyranny, he advocated that state governments retain considerable authority. In a Jefferson described his election as a revolution, but the vast republic marked by strong local attachments, he revolution he sought was to restore the liberty and tran- reasoned, state governments would be more responsive quillity that (he thought) the United States had enjoyed to the popular will than would the government in in its early years and to reverse the drift toward despot- Washington. ism that he had seen in Alexander Hamilton’s economic He also believed that popular liberty required popu- program and John Adams’s Alien and Sedition Acts (see lar virtue. For republican theorists like Jefferson, virtue Chapter 7). One alarming sign of this drift was the consisted of a decision to place the public good ahead of growth of the national debt by $10 million under the one’s private interests and to exercise vigilance to keep Federalists.
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