A Blog Exploring American History and Politics
John Adams had strong opinions about federalism. He believed that the government should be structured similarly to the British Empire, given the British Empire’s extraordinary success. At the time of the signing of the Constitution, Adams firmly believed that the Constitution had secured a national government, as opposed to a government dividing its sovereignty into […]
MoreIn the early 1800s, America underwent a campaign of infrastructure building. The building of new roads, bridges, and canals were done in a spirit of “national grandeur and individual convenience.” Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty, 730 quoting Charles G. Haines, Considerations on the Great Western Canal (Brooklyn, 1818), 11. In 1806, Samuel Blodgett, an economist and architect, concluded […]
MoreIn large part, the War of 1812 was brought about by necessity but also by politics. In terms of necessity, the British were executing a policy of impressment where the British would inspect American ships for contraband or material support for the French. America’s foreign policy adopted in reaction to these events was to create […]
MoreIn the early Republic, trading became a staple of the American economy, which affected American relations with other countries in drastic ways. American merchants “brought home products from Canton, China, and ports in the Indian Ocean, including teas, coffee, chinaware, spices, and silks, before shipping them on to Europe . . . .” Gordon Wood, Empire […]
MoreThe early Republic years were filled with hope and optimism for what the new country could achieve. The Republicans, through the 1790s and into the first decade of the 1800s, had a new idea about what government should be and how it should fit into the citizens’ lives. Republicans imagined “that people’s natural sociability and […]
MoreFrom its declaration of independence to the start of Thomas Jefferson’s first term as president in 1800, the federal government had consistently taken on a significant amount of debt: $80 million in total. See Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty, 298. Prior to that, the federal government had taken out millions of dollars from Europe, including from the French […]
MoreWhen Thomas Jefferson and the Republicans came to power in 1800, they had a major priority: reverse the Federalist trend of expanding the federal government. In Thomas Jefferson’s first message to Congress, in 1801, Jefferson framed the role of the federal government as only being “charged with the external and mutual relations only of these states.” […]
MoreThe president’s role in the government in the early Republic was different than today, and sometimes, it was unclear exactly what role the president would play in the federal government. With the election of 1800, the newly elected Republicans introduced the “plebiscitarian principle,” according to one scholar, Bruce Ackerman. Bruce Ackerman, The Failure of the Founding […]
MoreThe election of 1800 ushered in a new era of American politics. Thomas Jefferson won the election to become America’s third president, but also, it was a defeat for the Federalists, who had dominated politics in the first few decades of the country’s life. This was not just any defeat, however. This would mark the […]
MoreAlexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson had a contentious relationship, from their time serving as Secretaries in Washington’s administration forward. That contentious relationship manifested itself, at least partially, in the fact that they had crucial ideological differences. At first, those ideological differences were not reflected by different memberships in political parties. During the time they were […]
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