Name Period
The Nation’s First Political Parties: the Federalists and the Democratic‐Republicans
Directions: (1) Read for flow; (2) Read for GIST (summary) in the left hand column and circle any unfamiliar vocabulary terms; (3) Read for reaction in the right hand column: ask questions, make
statements/opinions, define unfamiliar vocabulary terms, etc…
The Best Of Enemies
Jefferson was visionary and crafty. In Hamilton, he met his match. How the rivalry lives on.
GIST
On March 21, 1790, Thomas Jefferson belatedly arrived in New York City to assume his duties as the first Secretary of State after a five‐year ministerial stint in Paris. Tall and lanky, with a freckled complexion and auburn hair, Jefferson, 46, was taken aback by the adulation being heaped upon the new Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, who had streaked to prominence in his absence. Few people knew that Jefferson had authored the Declaration of Independence, which had yet to become holy writ for Americans. Instead, the Virginian was eclipsed by the 35‐year‐old wunderkind from the Caribbean, who was a lowly artillery captain in New York when Jefferson composed the famous document…At first, Hamilton and Jefferson socialized on easy terms, with little inkling that they were destined to become mortal foes. But their clash inside George Washington's first Cabinet proved so fierce that it would spawn the two‐party system in America. It also produced two divergent visions of the country's future that divide Americans to the present day.
REACTION
For Hamilton, the first Treasury Secretary, the supreme threat to liberty arose from insufficient government power. To avert that, he advocated a vigorous central government marked by a strong President, an independent judiciary and a liberal reading of the Constitution. As the first Secretary of State, Jefferson believed that liberty was jeopardized by concentrated federal power, which he tried to restrict through a narrow construction of the Constitution. He favored states' rights, a central role for Congress and a comparatively weak judiciary.
…The epic battle between these two Olympian figures began not long after Jefferson came to New York City to assume his State Department duties in March 1790. By then Hamilton was in the thick of a contentious campaign to retire massive debt inherited from the Revolution. America had suspended principal and interest payments on its obligations, which had traded as low as 15¢ on the dollar. In an audacious scheme to restore public credit, Hamilton planned to pay off that debt at face value, causing the securities to soar from depressed levels. Jefferson and Madison thought the original holders of those securities‐‐many of them war veterans‐‐should profit from that appreciation even if they had already sold their paper to traders at depressed prices. Hamilton thought it would be impractical to track them down. With an eye on future U.S. capital markets, he wanted to enshrine the cardinal principle that current owners of securities incurred all profits and losses, even if that meant windfall gains for rapacious
speculators who had only recently bought the securities.
That skirmish over Hamilton's public credit plan was part of a broader tussle over the U.S.'s economic future. Jefferson was fond of summoning up idyllic scenes of an agrarian America peopled by sturdy yeoman farmers. That poetic vision neglected the underlying reality of large slave plantations in the South. Jefferson was a fine populist on paper but not in everyday life, and his defense of Virginia interests was
inextricably bound up with slavery. Hamilton‐‐ derided as a pseudo aristocrat, an elitist, a crypto‐monarchist‐‐was a passionate abolitionist with a far more expansive economic vision. He conceded that agriculture would persist for decades as an essential component of the economy. But at the same time he wanted to foster the rudiments of a modern economy‐‐ trade, commerce, banks, stock exchanges, factories and corporations‐‐to enlarge economic opportunity. Hamilton dreamed of a meritocracy, not an aristocracy, while Jefferson retained the landed gentry's disdain for the vulgar realities of trade, commerce and finance. And he was determined to undermine Hamilton's juggernaut.
After Hamilton persuaded President
Washington to create the Bank of the United States, the country's first central bank, Jefferson was aghast at what he construed as a breach of the Constitution and a perilous expansion of federal power. Along with Madison, he recruited the poet Philip
Freneau to launch an opposition paper called the National Gazette. To subsidize the paper covertly, he hired Freneau as a State
Department translator. Hamilton was shocked by such flagrant disloyalty from a member of Washington's Cabinet, especially when Freneau began to mount withering assaults on Hamilton and even Washington. Never one to suffer in silence, Hamilton retaliated in a blizzard of newspaper articles published under Roman pseudonyms. The backbiting between Hamilton and Jefferson grew so acrimonious that Washington had to exhort both men to desist…Instead, the feud worsened…Throughout the 1790s, the Hamilton‐Jefferson feud continued to fester in both domestic and foreign affairs.
Jefferson thought Hamilton was "bewitched" by the British model of governance, while Hamilton considered Jefferson a credulous apologist for the gory excesses of the French Revolution…
The crowning irony of the stormy relations
between Hamilton and Jefferson is that Hamilton helped install his longtime foe as President in 1801. Under constitutional rules then in force, the candidate with the majority of electoral votes became President; the runner‐up became Vice President. That created an anomalous situation in which Jefferson, his party's presumed presidential nominee, tied with Aaron Burr, its presumed vice presidential nominee. It took 36 rounds of voting in the House to decide the election in Jefferson's favor. Faced with the prospect of Burr as President, a man he considered unscrupulous, Hamilton not only opted for Jefferson as the lesser of two evils but also was forced into his most measured
assessment of the man. Hamilton said he had long suspected that as President, Jefferson would develop a keen taste for the federal power he had deplored in opposition. He recalled that a decade earlier, in
like a man who knew he was destined to inherit an estate‐‐in this case, the presidency‐ ‐and didn't wish to deplete it. In fact,
Jefferson, the strict constructionist, freely exercised the most sweeping powers as President. Nothing in the Constitution, for instance, permitted the Louisiana Purchase. Hamilton noted that with rueful mirth.
‐‐‐‐‐
Source: Chernow, Ron. Time. 7/5/2004, Vol. 164 Issue 1, p72‐76. 4p.
Directions: Read the following excerpts and respond to the corresponding question(s) in the space provided.
Document 1
Source: Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, a future member of Jefferson’s cabinet, 13 August 1800
1. Based on the document above, state one belief of the Jeffersonian Republicans.
I
believe
[we]
shall
obtain…a
majority
in
the
legislature
of
the
united
states
attached
to
the
preservation
of
the
federal
Constitution,
according
to
its
obvious
principles
and
those
on
which
it
was
known
to
be
received;
attached
equally
to
the
preservation
to
the
states
of
those
rights
unquestionably
remaining
with
them;
…in
short,
a
majority
firm
in
all
those
principles
which
we
have
espoused,
and
the
Federalists
have
opposed
uniformly…it
[our
country]
can
never
be
harmonious
and
solid
while
so
respectable
a
portion
of
its
citizens
support
principles
which
go
directly
to
change
of
the
Federal
Constitution,
to
sink
the
State
governments,
consolidate
them
into
one,
and
to
monarchise
that.
Our
country
is
too
large
to
have
all
its
affairs
directed
by
a
single
government…
Document 2
2. Based on the document above, state two beliefs of the Federalists.
(1) (2)
Document 3
3. Based on the document above, state one belief of the Republicans.
“For, when the credit of a country is in any degree questionable, it never fails to give an extravagant premium, in one shape or another, upon all the loans it has occasion to make. . . . By what means it [maintenance of public credit] is to be effected? The ready answer to which question, is by good faith: by a punctual performance of contracts….
To justify and preserve their (the states) confidence; to promote the increasing respectability of the American name; to answer the calls of justice; to restore landed property to its due value; to furnish new resources, both to agriculture and commerce; to cement more closely the union of the States, to add to their security against foreign attack; to establish public order on the basis of an upright and liberal policy;‐these are the great and invaluable ends to be secured by a proper and adequate provision at the present period, for the support of public credit. . . .
Document 4
4. Based on the document above, state one belief of the Federalists.
Document 5
5. Based on the document above, state one action taken by the Federalist in the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.
Document 6
6. Based on the document above, state two reasons why the Republicans wrote the Kentucky Resolution of 1798.
Directions: Using the information from the previous two activities, complete the following chart by marking which column the belief represents, Jefferson or Hamilton.
On Who Should Govern
JEFFERSON HAMILTON
Believed that the common people often acted foolishly
Had deep faith in the common people, especially farmers
Distrusted special privilege
Thought that the rich, educated and wellborn were the people who should rule
Wanted to raise voting qualifications
Wished to lower voting qualifications
On the Structure of Government
Favored a weak central government, strong state governments
Favored a strong central government
Thought that the American government should be modeled on the British system
Preferred a more democratic government
Wanted to reduce the number of federal employees
Wanted to increase the number of federal employees
Supported a loose interpretation of the Constitution
Favored a strict interpretation of the Constitution
Believed that individual liberties must be protected by laws
Thought that individual liberties, such as freedom of speech, should be sometimes restricted
On Economics
Thought that agriculture should be the backbone of the nation Wanted a balanced economy of agriculture, trade, finance, and manufacturing Favored giving government aid to trade, finance, and manufacturing Did not support giving government aid to trade, finance, and manufacturing
Established a national bank
Opposed the establishment of a national bank
Wanted to eliminate internal taxes
Wanted to maintain internal taxes
Wanted to use the national debt to establish credit
Wanted to pay off the national debt
On Foreign Policy
Supported Britain, the parent country
Believed that America was obligated to help France
Support/Political Party
Democratic‐Republican Party
Federalist Party
Consisted of bankers, manufacturers, merchants, professional people, and wealthy farmers
Artisans, shopkeepers, frontier settlers, and small farmers
Directions: The followers of Hamilton and Jefferson grouped together to form the new nation’s first political parties
– the Federalists and the Republicans (first called the Democratic Republicans). Read about the stands
those parties took, then imagine you are each of the people described below. Which party might your
join? Why?
1. You are an aristocratic South Carolina plantation owner.
2. You are a well‐to‐do New York merchant.
3. You are building a homestead for your family in Kentucky.
4. You distill whiskey on your farm in western Pennsylvania.
5. You are a banker in Philadelphia.
6. You are a Connecticut veteran of the Revolutionary War, and you haven’t lost your revolutionary fervor.
7. You are a small merchant in debt to creditors. You have had to sell your Confederation securities for very little to a speculator.
8. You are a prominent Virginia lawyer.
