Jeffersonian democracy

“ From that hour, too, the high-flying Federalists began to move with greater confidence and celerity toward the Sedition Law. The erstwhile members of the societies fell back into the body of citizenship, but more keenly and intelligently interested in politics than ever before, and more than ever determined to make their influence felt. They were not to forget what they had learned of tactics, organization, and propaganda, and very soon the Jeffersonian Party would be the beneficiary of the Washington assault. ”

“ Leaving this as a legacy to his party, Jefferson prepared for his return to his beloved Monticello. The executive branch of the Government was to be turned over to the enemy, for no Jeffersonian considered Randolph, who succeeded Jefferson, as a party man. Better a complete separation and open opposition than a further pretense at an unworkable coalition of the two parties. ”

“ Adams might resent the reference to Hamilton. Again he might interpret Jefferson’s expressed preference for the simple life as a reflection on his own ambition. ‘You know the temper of Mr. Adams better than I do,’ wrote Madison, ‘but I have always conceived it to be a very ticklish one.’ The Jeffersonian press had begun to speak in kindly tones of Adams to the disgust of the Federalists. ”

“ He did not join these imitation red men in their wigwam, nor drink of their ale, but John Pintard the chief became his friend and idolater, and with him the great man talked. The non-partisan society grew more and more democratic, soon intensely partisan, and at Tammany dinners the welkin rang to the toast to ‘Thomas Jefferson.’ New York became a cock-pit from the start.
But when the Jeffersonian board of strategy turned to New Jersey, the problem was more difficult. No outstanding leader, strong in the faith, stood ready to mount and ride. ”

“ Is it not better now that we return at once into that happy system of our ancestors, the wisest and most perfect ever yet devised by the wit of man, as it stood before the 8th century?" [55] This is the true foundation of Jefferson's political philosophy. No greater mistake could be made than to look for his sources in Locke, Montesquieu, or Rousseau. The Jeffersonian democracy was born under the sign of Hengist and Horsa, not of the Goddess Reason.
On September 26, 1776, Congress proceeded to the election of commissioners to the Court of France, and the ballots being taken, Mr. ”

“ If Jefferson raised a finger to prevent the passage of the bill, he covered his tracks. Even Giles, soon to become the most vehement leader of the Jeffersonian party, at first looked upon it with some favor. Madison could see no escape.
Among the masses throughout the country, however, the obscure orators were busy in the bar-rooms, on the streets, and at the crossroads. The character of the discussion among the people is indicated in imaginary conversations by a writer in a Baltimore paper. A friend of the excise fares forth into the streets and meets its enemies. ”

“ And it is in this matter especially that Jefferson left his mark on the institutions of his country,--as the champion of democracy, rather than as the champion of the abstract rights of man which he and Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams had asserted, in opposition to the tyranny of Great Britain in her treatment of the Colonies. And here he went beyond Puritan New England, which sought the ascendency of the wisest and the best, when the aristocracy of intellect and virtue should bear sway instead of the unenlightened masses. ”

“ During his six years' residence in France, as American minister, Jefferson had become indoctrinated with the principles of French democracy. His main service and that of his party—the Democratic, or, as it was then called, the Republican party—to the young republic was in its insistence upon toleration of all beliefs and upon the freedom of the individual from all forms of governmental restraint. Jefferson has some claims to rank as an author in general literature. ”

“ His sympathy with the Western expansion culminated in the Louisiana Purchase. In short, the tendencies of Jefferson's legislation were to replace the dominance of the planting aristocracy by the dominance of the interior class, which had sought in vain to achieve its liberties in the period of Bacon's Rebellion.
Nevertheless, Thomas Jefferson was the John the Baptist of democracy, not its Moses. Only with the slow setting of the tide of settlement farther and farther toward the interior did the democratic influence grow strong enough to take actual possession of the government. ”

“ The two men and the fate of the parties they led are understandable only by regarding one as the leader of reaction, the other as in line with the American tendencies. The educated classes characteristically furnished Federalism with a remarkable body of alarmist leaders; and thus it happened that Jefferson, because, with only a few of his great contemporaries, he had a thorough trust and confidence in the people, became the idol of American democracy. ”

“ Such was Thomas Jefferson who took upon himself the organization of the forces of democracy, when its enemies were in the saddle, booted and spurred, and with a well-disciplined and powerful army at their back. ”

“ THE great leader of American Democracy, Thomas Jefferson, was an ultra-abolitionist in theory, while from youth to age a slave-holder in practice. With a zeal which never abated, with a warmth which the frost of years could not chill, he urged the great truths, that each man should be the guardian of his own weal; that one man should never have absolute control over another. He maintained the entire equality of the race, the inherent right of self-ownership, the equal claim of all to a fair participation in the enactment of the laws by which they are governed. ”

“ Neither is there any doubt as to which of these ideas Jefferson and his followers really attached the more importance. Their mouths have always been full of the praise of liberty; and unquestionably they have really believed it to be the corner-stone of their political and social structure. None the less, however, is it true that in so far as any antagonism has developed in American life between liberty and equality, the Jeffersonian Democrats have been found on the side of equality. ”

“ Losing sight of those cardinal principles which the far-reaching sagacity of Jefferson had enunciated, and faithfully following which the Democracy had, during its early history, so completely controlled the country, the modern leaders, intent only on present success, had based all their political hopes on an intimate alliance, offensive and defensive, with that institution which Jefferson so eloquently denounced, and the existence of which awakened his most lively fears for the future of his country. ”

“ On the other hand, his various schemes for making the government into an aristocracy instead of a democracy have all been abandoned, or, like the Electoral College, turned to a use the opposite of what he intended. So, Jefferson’s view of state rights has not strictly been maintained; but his fundamental principles of popular government and popular education have made the United States what it is, and are destined, we hope, when fully developed, to make it something better yet. ”

“ Jacobinism was the inevitable outcome. "The principles of democracy are everywhere what they have been in France," wrote Ames. [Pg 162] "Democracy is a troubled spirit, fated never to rest, and whose dreams, if it sleeps, present only visions of hell."
In 1801, New England was in bitter, irreconcilable opposition to the National Administration. The situation was fraught with grave possibilities. Jefferson himself looked forward to "an uneasy government," if the whole body of New England continued in opposition to Republican principles. ”

“ In Georgia, Jefferson had equal cause for satisfaction. There were small farms, poor industrious men, ardent republicans, with the frontiersmen’s natural democracy and the debtors’ suspicions of concentrated wealth allied with governmental power. And there to lead them was James Jackson, idol of the people, a boisterous, impassioned orator whose eloquence often gave more heat than light. ”

“ That party chose him because of his record for doing, because there was an inner conviction that he could enter upon a still larger field with a growing, an ever-expanding capacity.
This, too, furnishes a fitter chapter in the history of country and party. For the wise selection of men, even obscure men, has been the tower of our national strength. America had her Thomas Jefferson to expound for all the world the real underlying truth of her Revolution. The equality of rights and duties spread from a dream of philosophers to be the doctrine of warriors for freedom. ”

“ The violent Aristocrats would have wished to preserve all the powers of government in the hands of the Regents, and that these should remain self-elective: but choosing to receive a modification of these powers from the Stadtholder, rather than from the people, they threw themselves into his scale. The moderate Aristocrats would have consented to a temperate mixture of democracy, and particularly, that the Regents should be elected by the people. They were the declared enemies of the Stadtholder, and acted in concert with the Democrats, forming with them what was called the Patriots. ”

“ From Washington to Jackson the process of construing the Constitution had gone on, intermittently by the executive and legislative, steadily by the judiciary. "The judiciary of the United States," wrote Jefferson in 1820, "is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working underground to undermine the foundations of our confederate fabric. They are constantly construing our constitution from a coördination of a general and a special government, to a general and supreme one alone. ”

“ The mass of Americans had become democratic in thought as well as act; not even another political revolution could undo what had been done. As a democrat, Jefferson's social success was sweeping and final; but he was more than a democrat,—and in his other character, as a Virginia republican of the State-rights school, he was not equally successful. ”

“ Remembering, too, that the Jefferson party was formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and assuming that the so-called Democracy of to-day are the Jefferson, and their opponents the anti-Jefferson, party, it will be equally interesting to note how completely the two have changed hands as to the principle upon which they were originally supposed to be divided. ”

“ Memories of Tory confiscations and penalties were sufficiently fresh to give credence to a rumour that the President-elect contemplated such retributive measures toward his political opponents. Memories of the disunion sentiments contained in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions were still fresher, although Jefferson's close connection with the latter was not yet generally known.
Thomas Jefferson was an exponent of the democracy of his day, and with him democracy came into the National Administration. The "well-born" were discomfited. Yet it was not the democracy of Andrew Jackson's time. ”

“ The government had been, for eight years, in the hands of Federalist partisans. If, as Jefferson declared in his Inaugural Address, "we are all Republicans, we are all Federalists;" if differences of opinion were not differences of principle; if he seriously wished all Americans to "restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things,"—he could afford to make few removals for party reasons. ”

“ It is easier to understand the Hamiltonian distrust of democracy than to comprehend the faith of Jefferson—a faith of tremendous significance in history. Quite as remarkable as his faith was the ability of Jefferson to mobilize, organize, and discipline the great individualistic mass of the towns, the remote farms along the Savannah, the almost unbroken wilds of the Western wilderness. With a few notable exceptions, he was forced to rely for assistance on lieutenants pathetically inferior to the group of brilliant men who sat on the Federalist board of strategy. ”

“ In the South the planters still controlled affairs, but they treated the democracy with consideration, and directed, rather than thwarted, its energies. Of course, in developing this new political force, the teachings of Jefferson and his school had had much influence; but the growth and spread of population, the increase of territory, the development of means of communication, and the opening up of new industries had been more effective. Jefferson had wanted to have the people recognized as the source of power, but he wished to have educated men use the power thus obtained. ”

“ When Jefferson and the Republicans rallied to the Union and to the existing Federalist organization, the fabric of traditional American democracy was almost completely woven. ”

“ Hamilton could snap his fingers, and the merchants came; could lift his hand, and the officers of the Cincinnati were in the saddle; could wave his wand, and Fenno, Russell, and other potent editors would instantly do his bidding, and the preachers of New England scarcely waited for the sign to pass the devil by to damn democracy.
But Jefferson had his eye on other forces, numerically stronger, if less imposing. The farmers, comprising ninety per cent of the Nation, were resentful of policies that pampered the merchant and left them out in the cold. ”

“ The election of Jefferson would destroy the Constitution, result in anarchy, expel Federalists from office, wreck the financial system, and lead to Revolution, for ‘there is scarcely a possibility that we shall escape a civil war.’ This would be bad, but ‘less, far less, than anarchy or slavery.’ Secession would be almost certain. Where would the boundary be? At the Potomac?—the Delaware?—the Hudson? New England might{469} have trouble if New York and Pennsylvania were included in the Northern Confederacy. ‘They are large, wealthy, powerful. ”