Cronyism

CHAPTER 6

THE JEFFERSONIAN REVOLUTION AND THE DEFEAT OF HAMILTON

The Republican Opposition Emerges

During the Adams administration, the battle between liberty and power entered its next phase. The Republican Party, composed of Antifederalists, Thomas Jefferson’s radical moderates, and James Madison’s disgruntled Federalists, developed the political infrastructure necessary to combat Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson refined the Antifederalist theoretical rationale—the compact theory—needed to justify nullification and secession. While the Republicans eschewed these anti-crony reforms, they successfully mobilized their political constituents in 1800 to seize control of the government legally. This highly significant victory—the so-called Revolution of 1800—ousted Hamilton and the High Federalists from power and changed the course of history.

Hamilton’s emerging economic and military program extremely worried the Antifederalists. But the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion made it clear that the Federalists would not tolerate resistance. Consequently, the classical liberals licked their wounds and went back to the drawing board. In the spirit of Patrick Henry and the Address of 1790, they interpreted the Constitution and Bill of Rights in a strictly enumerated fashion. These former Antifederals, such as William Findley, George Clinton, and Abraham Yates, now argued that the Constitution—properly interpreted—actually preserved the balance of power between the states and the central government. In other words, they championed the lie that Federalists such as Hamilton and Madison repeated during ratification. Such newfound admiration for the Constitution infuriated the Federalists. In 1792 Fisher Ames complained: “We hear, incessantly, from the old foes of the Constitution, ‘this is unconstitutional, and that is,’ . . . If the Constitution is what they affect to think it, their former opposition to such a nonentity was improper.” Ames was completely right.

Examples of Antifederalists now supporting the Constitution abound: the staunch advocate of the free market John Taylor of Caroline, senator for Virginia from 1792 to 1794 (he succeeded Richard Henry Lee), particularly stood out. Taylor, well-steeped in Enlightenment thought and Adam Smith’s economics, articulated strict constructionism to defend liberty against power, particularly in his A Definition of Parties and An Enquiry into the Principles and Tendency of Certain Public Measures (both published in 1794). He favored structural amendments to weaken the Hamiltonian program, especially to prohibit federal debt holders and Bank of the United States stockowners from holding office, limit government borrowing, and remove the vague clauses. The Virginia theorist fiercely opposed the BUS and went so far as to argue that all paper money was a fraudulent special privilege.

Another prominent Antifederalist, Congressman Albert Gallatin, turned into a strict constructionist and fierce critic of Hamilton. In 1796 he published the libertarian A Sketch of the Finances of the United States, striking at the heart of the Hamiltonian system: the national debt. Unlike Hamilton, Gallatin realized that deficit spending was dangerous since governments inevitably borrow and spend ad nauseam. He lashed out at Hamilton’s debt assumption because it funded state debts at face, and not market, value, an enormous privilege to the financial elite. In a similar vein, A Sketch reasoned that Hamilton’s BUS favored eastern stockholders and lent excessively to the federal government. Gallatin, a harsh critic of military expenditures, made the Smithian argument that wartime expenditures reduce the nation’s capital stock and burden the economy by diverting funds away from private enterprise. He concluded with several economic reforms: reduce military spending, sell western lands, revise the tax system, and pay off the public debt.

Antifederalists, especially Gallatin and Taylor, loyally followed Jefferson, the preeminent radical moderate. He strictly interpreted the necessary and proper and general welfare clauses, along with the (weakened) Tenth Amendment. Furthermore, he wanted structural amendments to enumerate the Constitution’s powers even more. In 1792, the secretary of state drafted the private Note of Agenda to Reduce the Government to True Principles, laying out a hard-core libertarian program to reduce cronyism and implement the Empire of Liberty: abolish the BUS, repeal excise taxes, lower tariffs, condemn the Report on Manufactures, downsize the debt, divide the Treasury Department and require greater congressional oversight, and make the government deal only in specie and not bank money. In November 1798 he even wrote to Taylor and advocated an amendment to prevent Congress from borrowing to reduce the military’s power and the chance of war. It is easy to see why former Antifederalists followed Jefferson, with the glaring exception of the bitter Henry. However, they rightfully remained less enchanted with Madison, the inveterate opportunist, and the Federalists he brought with him.

The disparate groups—former Antifederalists, radical moderates, and disgruntled Federalists—joined forces to create the Republican Party. The Republican alliance centered in New York and Virginia, the two former Antifederalist states that squandered their chance to officially collaborate during ratification. While the Federalists maintained a powerful grip on New England, the Republicans mustered formidable strength in the South (though as late as 1798 40 percent of southern congressmen were Federalists), and the middle states remained toss-ups. In the 1790s, the minority Republicans controlled the House only once (1793–95) and the Senate not at all. However, time was on their side: Republicans had developed better organizational skills than their Antifederalist ancestors and embraced democracy, unlike the elitist Federalists. By the end of the decade the Republicans formed the requisite machinery to fight the Federalists, developing a full-scale libertarian opposition.

Hamiltonian Federalists stood for an Empire of Power ruled by the elites, or more specifically, broad constructionism, centralization, bureaucratic entrenchment, central banking, protectionism, internal improvements, land grants, and international aggression. On the other hand, the Jeffersonian Republicans favored the Empire of Liberty: strict constructionism, states’ rights, rotation in office, hard money, free trade, opposition to federally funded internal improvements, settlers’ rights, and peace. Gordon Wood brilliantly describes how the radical Whig theories in John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon’s Cato’s Letters and the threat of Hamiltonianism bound the new Republican coalition together:

This Republican ideology, involving a deep hatred of overgrown central power and a fear of the political and financial mechanisms that sustained such power— inflated executive authority, high taxes, standing armies, and perpetual debts—had been inherited from the English radical Whig “country-opposition” tradition that had been sharpened and Americanized during the Revolution. . . .

To those steeped in this radical Whig ideology, Hamilton’s system threatened to re-create the kind of government and society that many Americans thought they had destroyed in 1776.

It is extremely important to note that slavery was not a party division. Although antislavery advocates filled both parties’ ranks, Federalists and Republicans defended the Constitution’s slavery protections. Throughout the 1790s, High Federalists worked to strengthen slavery because they wanted to establish an Empire of Power and secure favorable commercial regulations. In 1789 they scuttled the Pennsylvania Abolition Society’s petition to Congress so the legislature could concentrate on the nation’s finances. In 1793 they eagerly voted for a crony fugitive slave law that made it easier for slave owners to capture runaway slaves. Five years later, Essex Junto man Secretary Timothy Pickering and Congressman Harrison Gray Otis crushed a House proposal to ban slavery in the Mississippi Territory. During his time in power Hamilton made no serious effort against slavery, continually courting the ardently pro-slavery South Carolina Federalists, particularly the Pinckneys. The Federalists only complained about the slavery clauses (not slavery per se) after they lost political power in the early 1800s.

Overall, the new laissez-faire Republican Party was genuinely concerned about stopping the Federalists’ accretion of power and distribution of cronyism, a goal they hoped to accomplish through strict constructionism. The Republicans faced their toughest test during the foreign policy controversies of the late 1790s.

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions

During the Quasi-War’s frenzied atmosphere, Federalists insinuated that Republicans were French agents subversively destroying the federal government. In mid-1798, they enacted a series of highly controversial laws known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. Jefferson responded by developing the radical anti-crony reform tools necessary to thwart the legislation.

The Alien Acts increased immigration barriers and empowered the president to expel “hostile” aliens. The Sedition Act allowed the government to fine and imprison those critical of either the president or Congress. Crucially, the position of vice president—currently held by the Republican Jefferson—was exempt. The Federalists justified the acts with the necessary and proper and general welfare clauses, and with utter disdain for the First Amendment that supposedly protected free speech and the press. Inspector General Hamilton and President Adams approved the measures, but ever prescient, Hamilton worried of the vigor with which his High Federalists pursued their objectives because it could rouse intense Republican opposition.

Federalists did not use the Alien Acts to deport a single person, because Adams strictly interpreted the laws. However, Federalists did employ the Sedition Act to crack down on Republican newspapers that opposed the Federalist dispensation. Secretary Pickering assiduously sniffed out dissent, arrested twenty-five people for criticizing the government, and brought seventeen indictments of seditious libel against Republican journalists and editors. Federalists levied fourteen of the indictments under the new legislation (even before the Sedition Act they arrested people for seditious libel), convicting and punishing a total of ten men. The most prominent examples include the English lawyer and scientist Thomas Cooper, who sympathized with the Republican cause, and the editor of the radical Philadelphia Aurora, William Duane.

In the spring of 1798 Taylor despairingly wrote to Jefferson that the Federalists would suffocate the country with high taxes and standing armies, advocating secession. Corresponding again in June, Taylor warned Jefferson of the impending danger and in the spirit of Patrick Henry and the Address of 1790, articulated the compact theory. This theory argues that the people, working through their respective states, ratified the Constitution in a contract. The people agreed to give up some of their autonomy in return for possessing the ability to judge when the federal government overstepped its boundaries and there-fore violated said contract. Consequently, states could nullify federal laws, or, if this was not enough, they could withdraw from the compact and secede. The theory was a novel Antifederalist twist on the mendacious Federalist argument during the ratification debates that the states would be able to check unconstitutional federal legislation. It formed a significant defense against cronyism by elevating the state governments to a legal authority that could break the federal judiciary monopoly: no longer would a centralized oligarchy determine the legality of laws. The worried Jefferson accepted and refined Taylor’s ideas, because they fit in with his own radical moderate views, though of course he gave no credit to Henry.

Jefferson considered the Alien and Sedition Acts tyrannical, believing they portended more drastic measures: Congress would make the president and Senate elected for life, and with it, finally extinguish the American Revolution. Jefferson was pushed to the radical brink; desperate times called for desperate measures. Consequently, in late 1798, Jefferson and Madison anonymously drafted the respective Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, two radical documents that protested federal tyranny (Kentucky had entered the Union in 1792).

Unsurprisingly, Jefferson’s original Kentucky Resolutions were far more radical and pro–states’ rights than the lukewarm Madison’s. In his Resolutions, Jefferson trenchantly criticized the Alien and Sedition Acts as unconstitutional and outside the federal government’s enumerated powers. The similarity in Jefferson’s thought over the years on competing legal jurisdictions was evident. In his earlier Declaration of Independence Jefferson argued that

governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . . whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.

Put another way, in the Empire of Liberty the people had a right to compete with their government and decide what should be legal. By 1798, Jefferson echoed the same principle when he wrote

that whensoever the General government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force . . . the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself . . . each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measures of redress.

Jefferson continued to echo his revolutionary roots: whenever the federal government assumes powers not enumerated, thereby breaking the compact, “a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy.” Jefferson radicalized as the months progressed. By August 1799, he privately toyed with secession—the logical continuation of the compact theory—if the federal government did not change its ways . Unfortunately, the reactionary Madison swayed the theoretician from this preeminently radical option.

Jefferson dropped the Antifederalist bombshell—the states’ rights and strictly construed Tenth Amendment compact theory. It was the “Spirit of 1798,” a perfect complement to his Note of Agenda and Empire of Liberty. He continued the Antifederal tradition by arguing that the states could best stop power’s depredations. When the Kentucky legislature received Jefferson’s Resolutions in November 1798, it struck out nullification to facilitate passage. But in November 1799, the legislature repeated its opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts and stated “a Nullification of those acts by the States to be the rightful remedy.”

On the other hand, Madison’s Virginia Resolutions, while certainly evidence of his outward radicalization, were more moderate than Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions. While he did argue for a watered-down compact theory, he objected to Jefferson’s argument that the state legislatures could nullify federal laws. Ultimately, Madison wrote a protest, rather than an actual call for radical resistance. After all, unlike Jefferson, Madison participated in the Constitutional Convention and the Virginia ratification debate. However, Jefferson made some last-minute changes to Madison’s draft before Taylor introduced it into the Virginia legislature, declaring the Alien and Sedition Acts “utterly void, and of no force or effect.” Taylor happily agreed with this defiance of federal law, which he hoped would lead to a second constitutional convention. Unfortunately, a coalition of Virginia Federalists and hesitant Republicans struck it out.

The respective legislatures adopted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in late 1798. While the resolutions fell flat in the other state legislatures, which the Federalists mostly controlled, local support emerged: Virginia’s Dinwiddie County issued similar resolutions that protested the Alien and Sedition Acts as well as the standing army, naval buildup, formal alliances, and government borrowing. Other Virginia counties followed, and counties from New York, Kentucky, and Tennessee proclaimed similar sentiments. Republican newspapers in Philadelphia and Vermont joined the cause by printing related protests.

Notably, the young John Randolph of Roanoke, a former Antifederalist and Jefferson’s distant cousin, radically urged the stockpiling of weapons. While running for Congress in 1799, he defended the Republican creed against a Federalist candidate for the Virginia legislature: Patrick Henry. Cognizant of his hatred of Jefferson and Madison, Federalists had previously offered Henry multiple position of power, such as original negotiator for Pinckney’s Treaty, chief justice, and even the presidency, but the old radical turned them down. But when Washington asked Henry to run for the lowly position of state congressman, Henry agreed to forsake his principles so he could spite his enemies. Against Randolph, Henry correctly stated that the Alien and Sedition Acts logically resulted from the Constitution but unfortunately attacked the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Still the radical, he argued that the proper response to oppression was to “overturn the government,” but only after provocation. Virginians elected both, though Henry died before he assumed office, an odd ending for the diehard Antifederalist. Unfortunately, Henry, blinded by his acrimonious relationship with Jefferson and Madison, could not see that the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions logically resulted from the Address of 1790. But Randolph would preserve Henry’s legacy by forcefully defending states’ rights and the principles of 1798 in Congress.

Naturally, Hamilton viewed the anonymous Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions as “signs of a gangrene begun” because they dared “to unite the State Legislatures in a direct resistance to certain laws of the Union.” The Inspector General insisted that the states did not create the federal government and had no ability to resist or judge the constitutionality of federal laws. Hamilton completely contradicted The Federalist Papers, particularly when he described the “State legislatures” as “jealous guardians of the rights of the citizens against encroachments from the federal government.” Hamilton even urged new interventions to Speaker of the House Jonathan Dayton, declaring that Congress should strengthen the federal judiciary, subsidize internal improvements, increase taxes, make the current armies permanent, pass an amendment breaking up Virginia and other large states, strengthen the sedition laws, and employ the alien laws to deport foreign Republicans. Hamilton also wrote to another Federalist and urged confrontation with Virginia. Clearly, the corrupt Hamilton wanted to tighten the Federalist noose and further establish his Old Order Empire.

However, neither the Federalist Congress nor Virginia and Kentucky took any action. The Republicans instead channeled their rebellion into peaceful political revolution. The “Spirit of 1798” served as an important radical impetus for the presidential election of 1800 and the coming decades.

The Revolution of 1800

By 1799, the corrupt Federalists had created a mighty imperial edifice; in March 1801, it all came crashing down. A personal feud between Adams and Hamilton split the Federalist Party. Consequently, the organization failed to stop the Jeffersonian Republicans from engineering a peaceful and popular political revolution. The Hamiltonian Federalists contemplated blocking the political winds by interfering with elections, incapacitating President Adams, and obstructing an overtime presidential election. They only succeeded in enacting a new law that maintained their grip on the federal judiciary. With the Revolution of 1800, the Republicans secured a deafening victory against cronyism.

Jefferson had developed his Note of Agenda and “Spirit of 1798,” but knew the Republicans still needed a campaign platform that promoted the Empire of Liberty. In early 1799, he wrote to Republican Elbridge Gerry and championed “a government rigorously frugal and simple . . . relying . . . on our militia solely, till actual invasion, and for such a naval force only as may protect our coasts and harbors . . . for free commerce with all nations; political connection with none.” The radical Philadelphia Aurora repeated similar free market sentiments in 1800. Against the Federalist “increase of public debt, additional taxes, further loans, new excises, higher public salaries, and wasteful expenditure of public money,” the Republicans supported “decrease of public debt, reduced taxes, no loans, no excises, reduced public salaries, and a system of economy and care of the public money.” In the same year, Gallatin published his Views of the Public Debt attacking Federalist fiscal policies, and for campaign distribution Jefferson ordered Cooper’s free trade Political Arithmetic, which blasted the Federalists’ naval protection of the mercantile community. Clearly, the Republicans had their laissez-faire platform.

In the fall 1799 elections, a political crack surfaced after Republican Thomas McKean defeated Federalist US Senator James Ross for the Pennsylvania governorship, capitalizing on the recent Fries Rebellion and utilizing the Jeffersonian anti-tax, anti-standing army, and anti-elitism platform. Pennsylvania Federalists tried to plug the fissure by blocking attempts to choose the method for selecting electors for the upcoming presidential election (state legislature, state-wide elections, or district elections), a move that could prevent the state from choosing any electors at all. Senator Ross even tried to create a congressional committee overseeing electoral returns to guarantee Federalist electors.

An even bigger crack emerged from the grisly fight between President Adams and Inspector General Hamilton. Adams had had enough of the “second”-in-command and his imperial visions. In February 1799 the former Revolutionary radical unexpectedly and courageously decided to send a new peace commission to France without discussing the matter with his cabinet. Hamilton, Pickering, and James McHenry understood that ending the Quasi-War would cripple their efforts to further enlarge the military, invade other countries, and suppress the Republicans. While Adams was away from Philadelphia in the summer of 1799, Hamilton flirted with a “voluntary” coup d’état. The cabinet (i.e., Hamilton’s men) would take effective control of the government per the president’s cooperation. When Adams refused, Hamilton personally stressed the need to delay peace. Adams later famously recalled that “never in my life did I hear a man talk more like a fool.” With some minor concessions, by November Adams had secured his commission. The High Federalists realized that Adams simply had to go. Hamilton unsuccessfully tried to drag Washington out of retirement before he died in December. Instead, the Inspector General set his sights on Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.

In May 1800, the breakages grew more numerous. The Republicans secured the New York legislature in the spring elections, thanks to the political renegade and former Antifederalist Aaron Burr, whom Hamilton detested. Burr won the state by catering his new Bank of the Manhattan Company to disgruntled Republican merchants and entrepreneurs who groaned under the established Federalist monopolies. Since the state legislature chose the New York electors, the Republicans now controlled the state’s electors. The mortified Hamilton wrote to Governor John Jay, asking him to call into session the lame-duck Federalist legislature and demand it change the state’s electoral rules to ensure a Federalist victory. This blatant cronyism and flirting with illegality was too much even for the reactionary Jay, who refused to respond to Hamilton’s order.

Soon enough, all hell broke loose. For the first time, the Republicans and Federalists formally nominated their presidential candidates in congressional caucuses. Jefferson initially asked George Clinton to be his vice president, but when the New Yorker declined, the Virginian choose the maverick Burr. For the Federalists, Hamilton engineered the ticket to be between President Adams and Pinckney equally, secretly planning for Pinckney to win. Adams, insulted by the equality, surmised that Hamilton schemed to deprive him of the presidency. Adams quickly summoned Pickering and McHenry and demanded their resignations. McHenry obliged, but when the Essex Junto man refused, Adams fired him and filled the vacancy with Virginia’s John Marshall. To make matters worse for the High Federalists, Congress winnowed the army down, thereby crippling the military establishment. In October, with the High Federalists at total war with the moderate Adams Federalists, Hamilton arrogantly circulated a hysterical diatribe against the president to secure electoral support for Pinckney. This further split the Federalists and alienated many leaders from Hamilton. “Prime Minister” Hamilton was no more.

During this time, states held elections for presidential electors and congressional delegations. In Congress, the results were a total smash for the Republicans, up and down the coast. For the first time, the Republicans controlled Congress, and the Federalists never again secured either chamber, proving that the Election of 1800 was truly a people’s revolution. Clearly, the Federalist system—excessive government spending, high taxes, standing armies, and the Alien and Sedition Acts—along with the Spirit of 1798 led to this spectacular victory. With the war crisis over, the public saw little need to maintain the Federalist measures and the Republicans brilliantly capitalized on their concerns. The proponents of liberty finally secured a reform tool—the party system and electoral change—to topple Federalist cronyism.

However, the Revolution of 1800 also concerned the presidency. Due to the various methods states could use to choose electors, the results for president were much closer, a clear demonstration of how the Federalists’ Electoral College weakened the public’s will. New England strongly voted for the Federalists, New York for the Republicans, Pennsylvania compromised and cast slightly more votes for Jefferson, and the South and West voted staunchly Republican. In the end, Jefferson and Burr tied with seventy-three votes while Adams and Pinckney trailed with sixty-five and sixty-four votes, respectively. The Republicans seized the presidency.

There was only one problem: against the plan, all the Republican electors voted equally. Per the Constitution, the Federalist lame, duck House would decide whether Jefferson or Burr would be president. Each state delegation had to cast one vote, with the majority (nine states of sixteen) picking the winner. Republicans controlled eight state delegations, Federalists six, and two states were divided.

At the very best, the situation was gloomy for the Federalists. They definitively lost control of the legislative branch and now had to choose between two Republicans for the executive. Despondent, they quickly passed the Judiciary Act of 1801, an old Hamiltonian plan, in the waning days of Adams’ presidency. This crucial piece of legislation increased the number and jurisdiction of inferior courts, allowing Federalists to protect their special privileges. Soon after, Adams made a number of “midnight appointments” to fill the new positions. Crucially, one of these late-term appointments was the elevation of Secretary of State John Marshall to the Supreme Court. A prominent lawyer and land speculator, Marshall worked for Robert Morris and helped consolidate his financial empire (Marshall’s younger brother even married Morris’ daughter). He would soon act as Hamilton’s reincarnation in the Supreme Court and protect the Federalists’ special-interest legislation.

But this only softened the blow: the Federalists still had to choose the next Republican president. The Federalists thought that if they elected Burr he would forever be indebted to them. But the people wanted Jefferson, and if the Federalists managed to elect Burr or elect no one at all, there was a serious chance the country would plunge into a severe constitutional crisis, if not outright civil war. On the other hand, Hamilton abhorred his New York rival. Swallowing his pride, Hamilton urged congressmen to vote for Jefferson, though he only thought it proper to “throw out a line for [Burr] . . . and then lay the foundation of dissension between the two chiefs.” Thus, while Hamilton still committed to Jefferson, he wanted to provoke a fissure in the Republican ranks and potentially cause a serious constitutional crisis. Moreover, the reactionary urged his party to accept Jefferson only on the condition that he preserve Federalist cronyism: the fiscal system, foreign relations, army, and bureaucratic personnel. But Hamilton could not convince his congressional allies to elect Jefferson, a stark example of his fall from grace.

When the voting began in February, the first thirty-five ballots produced no victor. The gridlock had to be resolved before March to avoid a political crisis—the country could not be permitted to go without a chief executive for a couple of days! The lone congressman from Delaware, the moderate Federalist James A. Bayard, finally surmounted the impasse. Bayard, cognizant of the violent threats mounting against Federalists, realized that they could not elect Burr. In addition, Bayard received confidential assurances from Congressman Samuel Smith of Maryland, an ex-Federalist turned Republican, that most of the Federalist program would be maintained; a dark stain that symbolized the upcoming clash between the radical and moderate Republicans. The thirty-sixth ballot averted the crisis—the Federalists elected Jefferson.

The peaceful Revolution of 1800 ended the Hamiltonian era. In eleven short years the Constitution created a polity that led to many Antifederalists’ fears: mercantilism on a grand scale, high taxes, standing armies, and repression of personal freedom. This “monarchical program,” writes Wood, was “counter to the libertarian impulse of America’s republican ideology.” Consequently, Jefferson rallied the people and stopped the Federalist tyranny dead in its tracks. The recent move of the nation’s capital from the bustling metropolis of Philadelphia to the new backwater Federal City on the Potomac River (soon called Washington, DC) symbolically marked the Republican triumph. With the Federalists finally out of the way, the Republicans could now reform the government, roll back cronyism, and establish their Empire of Liberty.

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Richard Kohn, Eagle and Sword (New York: The Free Press, 1975), p. 197.

Saul Cornell, The Other Founders (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999), pp. 169–70, 200–12; Alfred Young, The Democratic Republicans of New York (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1967), pp. 331–32.

American Political Leaders (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2000), pp. 216, 241, 302; Paul Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), pp. 52, 56; Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Viking Press, 1946), pp. 301–04; Kevin Gutzman, Virginia’s American Revolution (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), pp. 118–19, 141–42; Herbert Sloan, Principle and Interest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 109, 191, 193, 308; Joseph Stromberg, “Country Ideology, Republicanism, and Libertarianism,” Journal of Libertarian Studies (Winter 1982): 35–48.

Gregory May, Jefferson’s Treasure (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 2018), pp. xxv, 74–76; Thomas McCraw, The Founders and Finance (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012), pp. 205–14; John Nelson, Liberty and Property (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp. 119–21.

Sloan, Principle and Interest, pp. 184, 196, 347, 352.

James Broussard, The Southern Federalists (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1978), p. 16; Noble Cunningham, The Jeffersonian Republicans (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1957), pp. 46–49, 256; Historical Statistics of the United States, vol. 5, ed. Richard Sutch and Susan Carter (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 200; John Miller, The Federalist Era (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), pp. 99, 125.

Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 172.

James Banner, To the Hartford Convention (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), pp. 105–07; Thomas J. DiLorenzo, “Yankee Confederates,” in Secession, State and Liberty, ed. David Gordon (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998), pp. 145–46; Miller, Federalist Era, pp. 125, 200–01, 259–61; Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005), pp. 219–20; Sean Wilentz, No Property in Man (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), pp. 154–72, 316–17.

John Miller, Alexander Hamilton and the Growth of the New Nation (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), pp. 484–85; William Watkins, Crossroads for Liberty (Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute, 2016), p. 194; Wood, Empire of Liberty, pp. 247–62.

Cornell, Other Founders, p. 239; Norman Risjord, Chesapeake Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), p. 240; Wood, Empire of Liberty, pp. 267–69.

Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, vols. 1–4 (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute 2019), p. 1292.

William Watkins, Reclaiming the American Revolution (Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute, 2004), p. 67.

Ibid., p. 68.

Wood, Empire of Liberty, p. 271. See also Watkins, Reclaiming the American Revolution, pp. 67–71; Wood, Empire of Liberty, pp. 269–70; Thomas E. Woods Jr., Nullification (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2010), pp. 44–50.

Richard Beeman, The Old Dominion and the New Nation (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1972), pp. 190–91.

Ibid., pp. 191–94; Cornell, Other Founders, pp. 241–45; Wood, Empire of Liberty, pp. 269–70.

Daniel Sisson, The American Revolution of 1800 (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), pp. 299–302, 324–25; Wood, Empire, pp. 269–70.

David Johnson, John Randolph of Roanoke (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012), p. 41.

Ibid., pp. 39–41, 55; Thomas Kidd, Patrick Henry (New York: Basic Books, 2011), pp. 237–43; Jon Kukla, Patrick Henry (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), pp. 367–68; Harlow Giles Unger, Lion of Liberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2010), pp. 264–72; Nicholas Wood, “John Randolph of Roanoke and the Politics of Slavery in the Early Republic,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (Summer 2012): 110–11.

Sisson, American Revolution of 1800, p. 312.

Dumas Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1962), p. 397.

Manning Dauer, The Adams Federalists (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins Press, 1953), pp. 202–04; Malone, Ordeal of Liberty, p. 397; Miller, Alexander Hamilton, pp. 489–91; Sisson, American Revolution of 1800, pp. 302–15.

Cunningham, The Jeffersonian Republicans, p. 211.

Ibid., p. 214.

Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order (New York: New York University Press, 1984), pp. 88–89; Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, p. 163; May, Jefferson’s Treasure, 91.

Malone, Ordeal of Liberty, pp. 462–64; John Miller, The Federalist Era (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), pp. 255–57.

Miller, Hamilton, p. 502.

Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, pp. 182–85; Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 149–58; Miller, Federalist Era, pp. 258–60; Miller, Hamilton, 500–03; Sisson, American Revolution, pp. 369–74; Wood, Empire of Liberty, pp. 271–74.

Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, pp. 162–66; Kohn, Eagle and Sword, pp. 266–67; Malone, Jefferson, Ordeal, pp. 473–75; Miller, Federalist Era, pp. 259–63; Miller, Hamilton, pp. 514–24; Sisson, American Revolution of 1800, pp. 384–85; Wood, Empire of Liberty, pp. 271–75.

Dauer, Adams Federalists, pp. 256–59; Historical Statistics, 5, p. 200; Miller, Federalist Era, pp. 267–68.

Miller, Federalist Era, pp. 268–71; Watkins, Crossroads for Liberty, pp. 243–44.

Philip Burch, Elites in American History, 1 (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1981), p. 107; Richard Ellis, The Jeffersonian Crisis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 15; Miller, Alexander Hamilton, pp. 535–36; Wood, Empire of Liberty, p. 419.

Sisson, American Revolution of 1800, pp. 412–13.

Burch, Elites in American History, 1, p. 90; Miller, Federalist Era, 270–76; Sisson, American Revolution of 1800, pp. 411–14; Wood, Empire of Liberty, pp. 282–86.

Wood, Empire of Liberty, p. 276. See also pp. 287–89.