Since neither the Federalists nor the Republicans accepted the legitimacy of the other, partisan feelings ran very high, making the bitter clash between Hamilton and Jefferson, for example more than just personal. Indeed, the 1790's became one of the most passionate and divisive decades in American history.
This is the best context for understanding the 1790's and Jefferson's election as president in 1800. Otherwise we can never make full sense of the extraordinary events and behavior of people in the period: the many riots and burning of officials in effigy; the viciousness of the press; the many duels; the fighting and wrestling in the halls of Congress; the Alien and Sedition Acts that gave the government extraordinary powers to deal with aliens and to prosecute libel against federal officials; the astonishingly improper and indiscreet actions of officials in dealing with foreign powers, actions that in our own time might be labeled treasonous. Only by taking seriously the feeling of many Americans that the Federalist in the 1790's were well on their way to reintroducing monarchy in America can we understand the significance of the election of Thomas Jefferson as president in 1800.
(...the kind of quasimonarchical state the Federalists wanted for the United States has actually come into being; Hamilton surely would have loved the Pentagon and the CIA, and America's huge standing army).
Okay? Ho-ho-ho. Dude and dudette THIS WAS IN THE 1790'S! We had just become a COUNTRY. Nearly everything written in those three paragraphs could be superimposed onto the America of 2016-? And those words were not written in 2016 or since. They are chapter 8 in a book written (by Gordon S. Wood published in 2011). And Wood appends an afterword to the chapter: "This paper began as the Bernard Bailyn Lecture given at La Trobe University in Australia in 2000 and was published separately by La Trobe University." Scary stuff. Man, we Americans, we sure have come far! lolol.
The Idea of America, Wood pp 245-6, 249 (2011)
This is the best context for understanding the 1790's and Jefferson's election as president in 1800. Otherwise we can never make full sense of the extraordinary events and behavior of people in the period: the many riots and burning of officials in effigy; the viciousness of the press; the many duels; the fighting and wrestling in the halls of Congress; the Alien and Sedition Acts that gave the government extraordinary powers to deal with aliens and to prosecute libel against federal officials; the astonishingly improper and indiscreet actions of officials in dealing with foreign powers, actions that in our own time might be labeled treasonous. Only by taking seriously the feeling of many Americans that the Federalist in the 1790's were well on their way to reintroducing monarchy in America can we understand the significance of the election of Thomas Jefferson as president in 1800.
(...the kind of quasimonarchical state the Federalists wanted for the United States has actually come into being; Hamilton surely would have loved the Pentagon and the CIA, and America's huge standing army).
Okay? Ho-ho-ho. Dude and dudette THIS WAS IN THE 1790'S! We had just become a COUNTRY. Nearly everything written in those three paragraphs could be superimposed onto the America of 2016-? And those words were not written in 2016 or since. They are chapter 8 in a book written (by Gordon S. Wood published in 2011). And Wood appends an afterword to the chapter: "This paper began as the Bernard Bailyn Lecture given at La Trobe University in Australia in 2000 and was published separately by La Trobe University." Scary stuff. Man, we Americans, we sure have come far! lolol.
The Idea of America, Wood pp 245-6, 249 (2011)
