Describe the political warfare between the Federalists and their opponents, the Jeffersonians, during the 1790

Answer 1

Best seen in the election of 1796 and 1800, which pitted John Adams (vice president) against Thomas Jefferson (Secretary of State).
http://www.multied.com/elections/1800.html
http://www.multied.com/elections/1796.html

The best reflection of the intensity of this fight can be seen in the Alien and Sedition Acts, which Adams passed in an attempt to cripple Jefferson and his supporters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts
http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/sedition/
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=16

Answer 2

The Federalist administration and the formation of parties
The first elections under the new Constitution were held in 1789. Washington was unanimously voted the nation's first president. His secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, formed a clear-cut program that soon gave substance to the old fears of the Anti-Federalists. Hamilton, who had believed since the early 1780s that a national debt would be “a national blessing,” both for economic reasons and because it would act as a “cement” to the Union, used his new power base to realize the ambitions of the nationalists. He recommended that the federal government pay off the old Continental Congress' debts at par rather than at a depreciated value and that it assume state debts, drawing the interests of the creditors toward the central rather than state governments. This plan met strong opposition from the many who had sold their securities at great discount during the postwar depression and from Southern states, which had repudiated their debts and did not want to be taxed to pay other states' debts. A compromise in Congress was reached—thanks to the efforts of Secretary of State Jefferson—whereby Southern states approved Hamilton's plan in return for Northern agreement to fix the location of the new national capital on the banksof the Potomac, closer to the South. When Hamilton next introduced his plan to found a Bank of the United States, modeled on the Bank of England, opposition began to harden. Many argued that the Constitution did not confide this power to Congress. Hamilton, however, persuaded Washington that anything not expressly forbidden by theConstitution was permitted under implied powers—the beginning of “loose” as opposed to “strict” constructionist interpretations of the Constitution. The Bank Act passed in 1791. Hamilton also advocated plans for the support of nascent industry, which proved premature, and he imposed a revenue-raising whiskey excise that led to a minor rebellion in western Pennsylvania in 1794.

A party opposed to Hamilton's fiscal policies began to form in Congress. With Madison at its centre and with support from Jefferson, it soon extended its appeal beyond Congress to the constituencies. Meanwhile, the French Revolution and France's subsequent declaration of war against Great Britain, Spain, and Holland further divided American loyalties. Democratic-Republican societies sprang up to express support forFrance, while Hamilton and his supporters, known as Federalists, backed Britain for economic reasons. Washington pronounced American neutrality in Europe, but to prevent a war with Britain he sent Chief Justice John Jay to London to negotiate a treaty(1794). The United States gained only minor concessions and—humiliatingly—accepted British naval supremacy as the price of protection for American shipping.

Washington, whose tolerance had been severely strained by the Whiskey Rebellion and by criticism of the Jay Treaty, chose not to run for a third presidential term. In his farewell address (in a passage drafted by Hamilton) he denounced the new party politics as divisive and dangerous. Parties did not yet aspire to national objectives, however, and, when the Federalist John Adams was elected president, the RepublicanJefferson, as the presidential candidate with the second greatest number of votes, became vice president. Wars in Europe and on the high seas, together with rampant opposition at home, gave the new administration little peace. Virtual naval war with France had followed from American acceptance of British naval protection. In 1798 a French attempt to solicit bribes from American commissioners negotiating a settlement of differences (the so-called XYZ Affair) aroused a wave of anti-French feeling. Later that year the Federalist majority in Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which imposed serious civil restrictions on aliens suspected of pro-French activities and penalized U.S. citizens who criticized the government, making nonsense of the First Amendment's guarantee of free press. The acts were most often invoked to prosecute Republican editors, some of whom served jail terms. These measures in turn called forth the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, drafted respectively by Madison and Jefferson, which invoked state sovereignty against intolerable federal powers. War with France often seemed imminent during this period,but Adams was determined to avoid issuing a formal declaration of war, and in this he succeeded.

Taxation, which had been levied to pay anticipated war costs, brought more discontent, however, including a new minor rebellion in Pennsylvania led by Jacob Fries. The rising was put down without difficulty, but widespread disagreement over issues ranging from civil liberties to taxation was polarizing American politics. A basic sense ofpolitical identity now divided Federalists from Republicans, and in the election of 1800 Jefferson drew on deep sources of Anti-Federalist opposition to challenge and defeat his old friend and colleague Adams. The result was the first contest over the presidency between political parties and the first actual change of government as a result of a general election in modern history.


The Jeffersonian Republicans in power
Jefferson began his presidency with a plea for reconciliation: “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” He had no plans for a permanent two-party system of government. He also began with a strong commitment to limited government and strict construction of the Constitution. All these commitments were soon to be tested by the exigencies of war, diplomacy, and political contingency.

On the American continent, Jefferson pursued a policy of expansion. He seized the opportunity when Napoleon Bonaparte decided to relinquish French ambitions in NorthAmerica by offering the Louisiana territory for sale (Spain had recently ceded the territory to France). This extraordinary acquisition, purchased at a price of a few cents per acre, more than doubled the area of the United States. Jefferson had no constitutional sanction for such an exercise of executive power; he made up the rules as he went along, taking a broad construction view of the Constitution on this issue. Healso sought opportunities to gain Florida from Spain; and, for scientific and political reasons, he sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on an expedition of exploration across the continent. This territorial expansion was not without problems. Various separatist movements periodically arose, including a plan for a Northern Confederacy formulated by New England Federalists. Aaron Burr, who had been elected Jefferson'svice president in 1800 but was replaced in 1804, led several western conspiracies. Arrested and tried for treason, he was acquitted in 1807.

As chief executive, Jefferson clashed with members of the judiciary, many of whom hadbeen late appointments by Adams. One of his primary opponents was the late appointee Chief Justice John Marshall. In the case of Marbury v. Madison (1803), in which the Supreme Court first exercised the power of judicial review of congressional legislation, Marshall's main target was the executive, not the legislature; he dexterously succeeded in confirming but judiciously limiting the court's constitutional role without putting its actual authority at risk.

By the start of Jefferson's second term in office, Europe was engulfed in the NapoleonicWars. The United States remained neutral, but both Britain and France imposed various orders and decrees severely restricting American trade with Europe and confiscated American ships for violating the new rules. Britain also conducted impressment raids in which U.S. citizens were sometimes seized. Unable to agree to treaty terms with Britain, Jefferson tried to coerce both Britain and France into ceasing to violate “neutral rights” with a total embargo on American exports, enacted by Congress in 1807. The results were catastrophic for American commerce and produced bitter alienation in New England, where the embargo (written backward as “Ograb me”) was held to be a Southern plot to destroy New England's wealth. In 1809, shortly after Madison was elected president, the embargo act was repealed.

Madison as president and the War of 1812
Madison's presidency was dominated by foreign affairs. Both Britain and France committed depredations on American shipping, but Britain was more resented, partly because with the greatest navy it was more effective and partly because Americans were extremely sensitive to British insults to national honour. Certain expansionist elements looking to both Florida and Canada began to press for war and took advantage of the issue of naval protection. Madison's own aim was to preserve the principle of freedom of the seas and to assert the ability of the United States to protect its own interests and its citizens. While striving to confront the European adversaries impartially, he was drawn into war against Britain, which was declared in June 1812 ona vote of 79–49 in the House and 19–13 in the Senate. There was almost no support for war in the Northern states.

The war began and ended in irony. The British had already rescinded the offending orders in council, but the news had not reached the United States at the time of the declaration. The Americans were poorly placed from every point of view. Ideological objections to armies and navies had been responsible for a minimal naval force. Ideological objections to banks had been responsible, in 1812, for the Senate's refusalto renew the charter of the Bank of the United States. Mercantile sentiment was hostile to the administration. Under the circumstances, it was remarkable that the United States succeeded in staggering through two years of war, eventually winning important naval successes at sea, on the Great Lakes, and on Lake Champlain. On land, a British raiding party burned public buildings in Washington, D.C., and drove President Madison to flee from his capital. The only action with long-term implications was Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans—won in January 1815, two weeks after peace had been signed in Ghent, Belg. Jackson's political reputation rose directly from this battle.

In historical retrospect, the most important aspect of the peace settlement was an agreement to set up a boundary commission for the Canadian border, which could thenceforth be left unguarded. It was not the end of Anglo-American hostility, but the agreement marked the advent of an era of mutual trust. The conclusion of the War of 1812, which has sometimes been called the Second War of American Independence, marked a historical cycle. It resulted in a pacification of the old feelings of pain and resentment against Great Britain and her people—still for many Americans a kind of paternal relationship. And, by freeing them of anxieties on this front, it also freed Americans to look to the west.