A Republic No More. Jay Cost

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      The political battles of the 1790s were some of the most polarizing and divisive that the country has ever seen. Hamilton’s economic agenda of the early part of the decade set the stage, but the outbreak of war between Britain and France—the country’s two largest trading partners—meant that foreign affairs would dominate much of George Washington’s second term. The Federalists narrowly carried the day in 1796, with Vice President John Adams barely edging former Secretary of State Jefferson in the Electoral College. Political intrigue by the French gave the pro-British Federalists the advantage in the 1798 midterm elections, after which they controlled nearly 60 percent of all House seats and better than two-thirds of the Senate.

      But the Federalists overplayed their hand, expanding the military and passing the grossly un-republican Alien and Sedition Acts, politicized laws that trampled on the Bill of Rights to target their Republican opposition. That, plus the abatement of war fever, led to a Republican resurgence in 1800, with Jefferson narrowly winning the presidency and the Republicans taking control of the entire Congress.

      This would mark the beginning of the end for the Federalist Party. Ironically enough, it was strong trade with Britain that facilitated economic prosperity and thus the Republicans’ political victories during the first term of Jefferson. The breakdown of relations with Britain in Jefferson’s second term and Madison’s first term helped bring about a Federalist mini-revival in the Northeast, but none of this was enough to give them control of either chamber of Congress, let alone the presidency. During the War of 1812, economic tumult hit the Northeast particularly hard, and radical Federalists in New England floated the idea of secession during the Hartford Convention in 1814, which further delegitimized Hamilton’s old party.¹ With the conclusion of the war in 1816, the country rejoiced and the Federalists were finished, not even running a presidential candidate in 1820.²

      With the decline of the Federalists, New England was essentially left on the outside looking in. Control of the country shifted to a coalition of the South and West, helmed for twenty-four years by the “Virginia Dynasty.” Jefferson served two terms as president, to be followed by his friend Madison for another two, then for another two by Monroe, a sometimes friend, sometimes foe of Madison but always a close confidant of Jefferson. To this day, the Republican dominance of government for the first quarter of the nineteenth century is unmatched in American history in terms of length and breadth.³

      This dominance of the government meant that the Republicans alone had to face the very problems that had bedeviled the Federalists during the 1790s. And of course, these were tribulations that Republicans did not have to endure at that point, seeing as how they were a minority coalition. Jefferson and Madison could cite chapter and verse of republican philosophy to decry the Bank of the United States, but that is not to say they had an alternative to stabilize the currency, promote credit, or facilitate tax payments. They did not.

      This goes a long way to explaining why, after acquiring control of the government, they slowly but surely adopted much of the Federalist program, and even expanded the scope of government beyond what the Hamiltonians had proposed. And as for the republican ideals of the 1790s? Implicitly, the Republicans adopted a vaguely aristocratic attitude: as long as the government was controlled by sensible Republicans (such as they), the country need not fear the kind of corruption that was supposed to have been ruining the body politic in the decade prior.

      The Republican comfort with governmental power began to grow in Jefferson’s first term. His first annual message to Congress called for the reduction of taxes, a cut in the military, and a plan to retire the national debt, all consistent with the Republican policy of the 1790s. However, Jefferson ultimately made no moves against the Bank. Over the course of his term, he made noises within his cabinet about ending the Bank’s monopoly on federal deposits, but his secretary of the treasury, Albert Gallatin, consistently stayed his hand. An enormously influential Republican who had served as Republican House leader after Madison departed the lower chamber, the Swiss-born Gallatin was a close confidant of Jefferson and probably the only major party leader with a firm grasp of how public credit actually functioned. He saw the utility of the Bank and consistently sidestepped the issue whenever Jefferson pressed him to take action on it.⁴

      Interestingly, the Jefferson administration also spent more on internal improvements than either of its Federalist predecessors, despite the Republican insistence on economy in government. The Republicans could have their cake and eat it too: economic prosperity meant they could cut taxes while also spending more than Washington or Adams had on domestic projects. Yet Jefferson’s most extraordinary expansion of government power, especially the authority of the president, came in the realm of foreign affairs.

      The Louisiana Purchase is the most striking example. After the successful coup by former slaves in Haiti, Napoleon Bonaparte effectively gave up his pretensions to a French empire in North America, and looked to divest his nation of its expansive holdings on the continent. The Republicans, naturally, were more than happy to cut a deal, but Jefferson worried about the constitutional implications. There was nothing in the founding document to empower the government not only to acquire new territory, but also integrate foreign peoples such as those living in New Orleans. The president floated the idea of an amendment so empowering the government, but concerns about whether the fickle Napoleon would have second thoughts made that inadvisable.

      In the end, Jefferson cast aside his constitutional scruples, implicitly adopting the very same sort of rationale that Hamilton had argued in his defense of the Bank to Washington some twelve years prior: that this power, while not explicitly enumerated, was nonetheless implicit in the very nature of sovereignty itself.⁵ According to John Quincy Adams, Jefferson’s action was “an assumption of implied powers greater in itself and more comprehensive in its consequences than the assumptions of implied powers in the twelve years of the Washington and Adams administrations put together.”⁶

      The prosperity the nation enjoyed during Jefferson’s first term turned out to be fleeting, premised largely upon Great Britain indulging American traders with unique access to its markets. But as the Napoleonic Wars once again heated up, Britain cracked down, and soon so also did Napoleon. How would America handle this two-sided squeeze? Madison, who by this point was serving as Jefferson’s secretary of state, suggested an embargo: America would not trade with either country as long as they violated her rights as a sovereign and independent nation.

      Madison believed that this would inflict more pain on the European powers than the Americans, but he was sorely mistaken. American commerce suffered and, worse, the federal government instituted what historian Forrest McDonald calls a “15 month reign of oppression and repression that was unprecedented in American history.”⁷ In response to the embargo, many merchants simply ignored the law, prompting Jefferson to come down on state governors with a vehemence that was uncharacteristic of the eighteenth-century champion of states’ rights. What’s more, Jefferson proposed that the government be empowered to seize cargo without a warrant or promise of a trial, even on the barest suspicion of violation; he also suggested that the army and navy be empowered to enforce the Embargo Act. Such a failure of public policy was this initiative, and so contrary to the republican principles that led to Jefferson’s triumph in 1800, that the Republicans replaced it with the less onerous Non-Intercourse Act early in Madison’s tenure, and historians have since judged it a black mark on Jefferson’s record.⁸

      It is easy to castigate Jefferson for his hypocrisy in both instances, but that would overlook the tension at the heart of the early nineteenth century, between American aspirations to greatness and her republican ideals. This was hardly resolved by the defeat of the Federalists in 1800; instead, the burden, and priorities, of the empire shifted to the Republicans. Hamilton primarily envisioned an Atlantic-focused empire, or at least his policies were primarily concerned with carving out America’s role in the world vis-à-vis the European СКАЧАТЬ