Early National Period Highlights
by Alan Brinkley
What follows is a highly subjective selection of events in the period 1796 to 1812. This reading is
excerpted from Chapters Six and Seven of Brinkley’s American History: A Survey (10th ed.). I wrote the
footnotes. If you use the questions below to guide your note taking (which is a good idea), please be aware
that several of the questions have multiple answers.
Study Questions
1. Why did the US fight a “quasi-war” with France? And what is a “quasi war,” anyway?
2. Why did Federalists pass the Alien and Sedition Acts?
3. Why did Republicans oppose these two laws so forcefully?
4. According to the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, why could states nullify acts passed by Congress?
5. How revolutionary was the “Revolution of 1800”? Did Jefferson substantially change the policies of his
Federalist predecessors?
6. Was Jefferson right to question his authority to purchase Louisiana? Why or why not?
THE DOWNFALL OF THE FEDERALISTS
The Federalists’ impressive triumphs [during the Washington administration] did not ensure their
continued dominance in the national government. On the contrary, success seemed to produce
problems of its own—problems that eventually led to their downfall.
Since almost all Americans in the 1790s agreed that there was no place in a stable republic
for an organized opposition, the emergence of the Republicans as powerful contenders for
popular favor seemed to the Federalists a grave threat to national stability. Beginning in the late
1790s, when major international perils confronted the government as well, the Federalists could
not resist the temptation to move forcefully against the opposition. Facing what they believed
was a stark choice between respecting individual liberties and preserving stability, the Federalists
chose stability. The result was political disaster. After 1796, the Federalists never won another
election….
The Election of 1796
Despite strong pressure from his many admirers to run for a third term as president, George
Washington insisted on retiring from office in 1797….
With Washington out of the running, no obstacle remained to an open expression of the
partisan rivalries that had been building over the previous eight years. Jefferson was the
uncontested candidate of the Republicans in 1796. The Federalists faced a more difficult choice.
Hamilton, the personification of Federalist, had created too many enemies to be a credible
candidate. So Vice President John Adams, who had been directly associated with none of the
unpopular Federalist measures, became his party’s nominee for president.
[Because of internal Federalist conflicts,] Jefferson finished second in the balloting and
became vice president. (The Constitution provided for the candidate receiving the second
highest number of electoral votes to become vice president—hence the awkward result of men
from different parties serving in the nation’s two highest elected offices. The Twelfth
Amendment, adopted in 1804, reformed the electoral system to prevent such situations.)
Adams thus assumed the presidency under inauspicious circumstances. He presided over a
divided party which faced a strong and resourceful Republican opposition committed to its
extinction. Adams himself was not even the dominant figure in his own party; Hamilton
remained the most influential Federalist…. Austere, rigid, aloof, [Adams] had little talent at
conciliating differences, soliciting support, or inspiring enthusiasm…. He seemed to assume that
his own virtue and the correctness of his positions would alone be enough to sustain him. He
was usually wrong.
The Quasi War with France
American relations… with revolutionary France quickly deteriorated. French vessels capture
American ships on the high seas and at times imprisoned the crews….
Some of President Adams’s advisers favored war… but Hamilton recommended conciliation,
and Adams agreed.
In an effort to stabilize relations, Adams appointed a bipartisan
commission… to negotiate with France. When the Americans arrived in Paris in 1797, three
agents of the French foreign minister, Prince Talleyrand, demanded a loan for France and a bribe
for French officials before any negotiations could begin.1 …
When Adams heard of the incident, he sent a message to Congress denouncing the French
insults and urging preparations for war.
He then turned the report of the American
commissioners over to Congress, after deleting the names of the three French agents and
designating them only as “Mssrs. X, Y, and Z.” When the report was published, it created
widespread popular outrage at france’s actions and strong support for the Federalists’ response.
For nearly two years after the “XYZ Affair,” as it became known, the United States found itself
engaged in an undeclared war with France.
Adams persuaded Congress to cut off all trade with France, to repudiate the treaties of 1778,2
and to authorize American vessels to capture French armed ships on the high seas…. The United
States also began cooperating closely with the British and became virtually an ally of Britain in
the war with France.
In the end, France chose to conciliate the United States before the conflict grew. Adams sent
another commission to Paris in 1800, and the new French government (headed now by “first
consul” Napoleon Bonaparte) agreed to a treaty with the United States that canceled the old
agreement of 1778 and established new commercial arrangements. As a result, the “quasi war”
came to a reasonably peaceful end….
Repression and Protest
The conflict with France helped the Federalists increase their majorities in Congress in 1798.
Armed with this new strength, they began to consider ways to silence the Republican opposition.
The result was some of the most controversial legislation in American history: the Alien and
Sedition Acts.
1
Talleyrand was renowned for such self-dealing. He would later serve as Napoleon’s foreign minister, and
Napoleon once said to him “vous êtes de la merde dans un bas de soie.” (You can look it up.)
2 These established the Franco-American alliance through which the French helped us defeat Britain in the
Revolutionary War. The end of the alliance would signal the last time the United States would formally ally with
any nation until World War II.
The Alien Act placed new obstacles in the way of foreigners who wished to become
American citizens, and it strengthened the president’s hand in dealing with aliens. The Sedition
Act allowed the government to prosecute those who engaged in “sedition” against the
government.3 In theory only libelous or treasonous activities were subject to prosecution; but
since such activities were subject to widely varying definitions, the law made it possible for the
federal government to stifle virtually any opposition. The Republicans interpreted the new laws
as part of a Federalist campaign to destroy them and fought back.
President Adams signed the new laws but was cautious in implementing them. He did not
deport any aliens, and he prevented the government from launching a major crusade against the
Republicans. But the legislation had a significant repressive effect nevertheless…. [T]he
administration made use of the Sedition Act to arrest and convict ten men, most of them
Republican newspaper editors whose only crime had been to criticize the Federalists in
government.
Republican leaders pinned their hopes for a reversal of the Alien and Sedition Acts on the
state legislatures. (The Supreme Court had not yet established its sole right to nullify
congressional legislation, and there were many who believed that the states had that power, too.)
The Republicans laid out a theory for state action in two sets of resolutions in 1798-1799, one
written (anonymously) by Jefferson and adopted by the Kentucky legislature and the other
drafted by Madison and approved by the Virginia legislature. The Virginia and Kentucky
Resolutions, as they were known, [argued] that the federal government had been formed by a
“compact” or contract among the states and possessed only certain delegated powers. Whenever
it exercised any undelegated powers, its acts were “unauthoritative, void, and of no force.” If the
parties to the contract, the states, decided that the central government had exceeded those
powers, the Kentucky Resolution claimed, they had the right to “nullify” the appropriate laws.
The “Revolution” of 1800
These bitter controversies shaped the 1800 presidential election. The presidential candidates
were the same as four years earlier: Adams for the Federalists, Jefferson for the Republicans.
But the campaign of 1800 was very different from the one preceding it.
Indeed, it may have
been the ugliest in American history… The Federalists accused Jefferson of being a dangerous
radical and his followers of being wild men who, if they should come to power, would bring on a
reign of terror comparable to that of the French Revolution. The Republicans portrayed Adams
as a tyrant conspiring to become king, and they accused the Federalists of plotting to subvert
human liberty and impose slavery on the people….
The election was close, and, [after considerable electoral shenanigans involving Aaron Burr,
Jefferson’s vice presidential running mate, that would result in a fatal enmity between Burr and
Alexander Hamilton,] Jefferson was elected.
After the election of 1800, the only branch of the federal government left in Federalist hands
was the judiciary. The Adams administration spent its last months in office taking steps to make
the party’s hold on the courts secure. By the Judiciary Act of 1801, passed by the lame duck
Congress, the Federalists reduced the number of Supreme Court justices by one but greatly
3
Sedition: speech intended to encourage people to rebel.
increased the number of federal judgeships as a whole. Adams quickly appointed Federalists to
the newly created positions. Indeed, there were charges that he stayed up until midnight on his
last day in office to finish signing the new judges’ commissions. These officeholders became
known as the “midnight appointments.”
Even so, the Republicans viewed their victory as almost complete. The nation, they believed,
had been saved from tyranny. A new era could now begin, one in which the true principles on
which America had been founded would once again govern the land. The exuberance with
which the victors viewed the future—and the importance they attributed to the Federalists’ defeat
—was evident in the phrase Jefferson himself later used to describe his election. He called it the
“Revolution of 1800.” It remained to be seen how revolutionary it would really be.
JEFFERSON THE PRESIDENT
Privately, Thomas Jefferson may well have considered his victory over John Adams in 1800 to
be what he later termed it: a revolution “as real… as that of 1776.” Publicly, however, he was
restrained and conciliatory at the time, attempting to minimize the differences between the two
parties and to calm the passions that the bitter campaign had aroused. “We are all republicans,
we are all federalists,” he said in his inaugural address. And during his eight years in office, he
did much to prove those words correct. There was no complete repudiation of Federalist
policies…. Indeed, at times Jefferson seemed to outdo the Federalists at their own work—most
notably in overseeing a remarkable expansion of the territory of the United States.
In some respects, however, the Jefferson presidency did indeed represent a fundamental, if
temporary, change in the direction of the federal government. The new administration oversaw a
drastic reduction in the powers of some national institutions, and it forestalled the development
of new powers in areas where the Federalists would certainly have attempted to expand them.
Neither the executive nor the legislative branch of government was willing or able to exercise
decisive authority in most areas of national life by the end of the Jeffersonian era. Only the
courts continued trying to assert federal power in the ways the Federalists had envisioned….
President and Party Leader
...Jefferson was, above all, a shrewd and practical politician. On the one hand, he went to great
lengths to eliminate the aura of majesty surrounding the presidency that he believed his
predecessors had created. He decided, for example, to submit his messages to Congress not by
delivering them in person, as Washington and Adams had done, but by sending them in writing,
thus avoiding even the semblance of attempting to dictate to the legislature. (The precedent he
established survived for more than a century, until the administration of Woodrow Wilson.) At
the same time, however, Jefferson worked hard to exert influence as the leader of his party,
giving direction to Republicans in Congress by quiet and sometimes even devious means.
To his cabinet he appointed members of his own party who shared his philosophy….
Although the Republicans had objected strenuously to the efforts of their Federalist predecessors
to build a network of influence through patronage, Jefferson, too, used his powers of
appointment as an effective political weapon. Like Washington before him, he believed that
federal offices should be filled with men loyal to the principles and policies of the
administration. He did not attempt a sudden and drastic removal of Federalist officeholders, but
at every convenient opportunity he replaced the holdovers from the Adams administration with
his own trusted followers. By the end of his first term about half the government jobs, and by
the end of his second term practically all of them, were in the hands of loyal Republicans.
When Jefferson ran for reelection in 1804, he won overwhelmingly. The Federalist
presidential nominee, Charles C. Pinckney, could not even carry most of the party’s New
England strongholds. Jefferson won 162 electoral votes to Pinckney’s 14, and the Republican
majorities in both houses of Congress increased.
Dollars and Ships
Under the Federalists, the Republicans believed, the government had been needlessly
extravagant…. The Jefferson administration moved deliberately to reverse the trend. In 1802, it
persuaded Congress to abolish all internal taxes, leaving customs duties and the sale of western
lands as the only source of revenue for the government. Meanwhile, Secretary of the Treasury
[Albert] Gallatin drastically reduced government spending, cutting the already small staffs of the
executive departments to minuscule levels. Although Jefferson was unable to retire the entire
national debt as he had hoped, he did cut it almost in half (from $83 million to $45 million)
during his presidency
Jefferson also scaled down the armed forces. He reduced the tiny army of 4,000 men to
2,500. He cut the navy from twenty-five ships to seven and reduced the number of officers and
sailors accordingly. Anything but the smallest of standing armies, he argued, might menace civil
liberties and civilian control of government….
Conflict with the Courts
Having won control of the executive and legislative branches of government, the Republicans
looked with suspicion on the judiciary, which remained largely in the hands of Federalist judges.
Soon after Jefferson’s first inauguration, his followers in Congress launched an attack on this last
preserve of the opposition. Their first step was the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801, thus
eliminating the judgeships to which Adams had made his “midnight appointments.”…
[We will have much to say about these efforts in a future class.]
DOUBLING THE NATIONAL DOMAIN
Jefferson and Napoleon
Jefferson was unaware at first of [French ruler] Napoleon’s imperial ambitions in America, and
for a time he pursued a foreign policy that reflected his well-known admiration for France….
Jefferson began to reconsider his position toward France when he heard rumors of the secret
transfer of Louisiana [from Spain to France]…. Always before, America had looked to France as
its “natural friend.” But there was on the earth “one single spot” whose possessor was “our
natural and habitual enemy.” That spot was New Orleans, the outlet through which the produce
of the fast-growing western regions of the United STates traveled to the markets of the world. If
France should actually seize New Orleans, Jefferson said, then “we must marry ourselves to the
British fleet and nation.”
Jefferson was even more alarmed when, in the fall of 1802, he learned that the [governor] at
New Orleans…. had announced a disturbing new regulation. American ships sailing the
Mississippi River had for many years been accustomed to depositing their cargoes in New
Orleans for transfer to oceangoing vessels. The [governor] now forbade the practice… thus
effectively closing the lower Mississippi to American shippers.
Westerners demanded that the federal government do something to reopen the river….
Jefferson saw [a] solution. He instructed Robert Livingston, the American ambassador in Paris,
to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans. Livingston on his own authority proposed that the
French sell the United States the vast western part of Louisiana as well.
In the meantime, Jefferson persuaded Congress to appropriate funds for an expansion of the
army and the construction of a river fleet…. Perhaps that was why Napoleon suddenly decided
to accept Livingston’s proposal and offer the United States the entire Louisiana territory.
The Louisiana Purchase
Faced with Napoleon’s
startling proposal,
Livingston and James
Monroe, whom
Jefferson had sent to
Paris to assist in the
negotiations, had to
decide first whether they
should even consider
making a treaty for the
purchase of the entire
Louisiana Territory,
since they had not been
authorized by their
government to do so. But fearful that Napoleon might withdraw the offer, they decided to
proceed without further instructions from home…. By the terms of the treaty, the United States
was to pay a total of 80 million francs ($15 million) to the French government….
In Washington, the president was both pleased and embarrassed when he received the treaty.
He was pleased with the terms of the bargain but uncertain whether the United States had the
authority to accept it, since he had always insisted that the federal government could rightfully
exercise only those powers explicitly assigned to it. Nowhere did the Constitution say anything
about the acquisition of new territory. But Jefferson’s advisers persuaded him that his treatymaking power under the Constitution would justify the purchase of Louisiana. The president
finally agreed, trusting, as he said, “that the good sense of our country will correct the evil of
loose construction when it shall produce ill effects.” The Republican Congress promptly
approved the treaty and appropriated money to implement its provisions. Finally, late in 1803,
the French [turned] the territory over to… the United States.