Explain three ways the federal government changed or expanded from the time of Jefferson to Jackson

2. Explain three ways the federal government changed or expanded from the time of Jefferson to Jackson.

(200-350 words)

Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson had different priorities in their administrations. Jackson’s objective

was to have more people involved in governance. His goal was to have the working classes, such as farmers,

accorded an opportunity to air their grievances and opinions and have their views factored in the political

processes (Wulf, 2006). On the other hand, Jefferson was an elitist proponent and preferred their views since

they were informed, and better understood the governance issues than the masses. The federal government

changed and expanded in numerous ways from Jefferson’s to the Jacksonian era. During the Jacksonian era,

democracy was expanded to include more citizens than during Jefferson’s era. For example, Jackson's

objective was to have the masses involved in politics and governance by voting and contesting political seats.

He also wanted the working classes, such as the farmers, to air their grievances, decisions, and views in the

political processes. Jackson’s focus was to have a government where the majority wins; thus, promoting the

democratic ideals of having a government of the people ruling through the people's consent to address the

subjects’ needs. These leadership tenets were different from Jefferson’s era, which focused on the elites to

decide political activities. During Jefferson’s era, only the elite white men owning properties were allowed to

vote, while in Jacksonian democracy, all white men exercised democratic suffrage regardless of their property

ownership.

Secondly, during Jefferson’s era, education was a primary ideal in the exercise of democracy since he

preferred the elites to participate in government activities. The decision to have the elites involved in politics

was based on their intelligence, understanding, and wealth possession; thus, they were presumed to offer better

leadership. He involved the elites, aristocrats, property owners, and influential societal members to participate

in government in their endeavor to transform the United States. Democracy, as exercised by Jefferson, may

have been influenced by the understanding that the masses are not informed; therefore, he worked with the

informed groups to spur changes and offer leadership. However, Jacksonian democracy gave an equal

opportunity for all to exercise their democratic rights irrespective of their educational background (National

Humanities Center, 2020). Thus, all the white men were allowed to vote and contested political offices.

Finally, during Jefferson’s era, only the elites were allowed to contest political seats and hold government

offices. Thus, solid education was a pre-requisite for being elected or eligible for a government’s office in the

United States during this era. During this period, the political offices' election was only by those who had

already served in government offices since they had voting rights. However, numerous changes were evident

during the Jacksonian era as he championed the equality of all and valued their involvement as essential in a

working political system (National Humanities Center, 2020). Therefore, his leadership valued the views and

opinions of the masses to guide the political processes. This gave the people an equal opportunity to hold

political and government offices irrespective of their educational background.

3. Identify one way that democracy can be improved or continue to grow today. How can it be done? (350-

500 words)

Democracy has been applauded as the best political system compared to all other systems globally. It is an

open system where the government incorporates the governed's views and promotes their political

participation. The people have a say in the political processes through direct democracy where they are

individually involved in the political processes and indirect democracy through representation. Democracy also

has checks and balances through the three arms of government, such as the executive, legislature, and the

judiciary, to ensure that none of the branches abuses its authority. Checks and balances also ensure that none of

the arms has absolute powers to act contrary to the constitution. However, despite these mechanisms to cushion

the abuse of democracy, democracy still faces multiple challenges that have led to discontentment, especially

some election results. One major challenge affecting democracy in the current era is the manipulation of

election results; thus, some results do not depict the electorates' views—the surprising results like the EU

referendum in the United Kingdom and the 2016 U.S presidential results.

Survey findings by a democratic advocacy group in 2018 disclosed that more than half of the Americans

believe that their democracy is unstable, while two-thirds believe that it is continuously becoming weaker.

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Although Thomas Jefferson was in France serving as United States minister when the Federal Constitution was written in 1787, he was able to influence the development of the federal government through his correspondence. Later his actions as the first secretary of state, vice president, leader of the first political opposition party, and third president of the United States were crucial in shaping the look of the nation's capital and defining the powers of the Constitution and the nature of the emerging republic.

Jefferson played a major role in the planning, design, and construction of a national capitol and the federal district. In the various public offices he held, Jefferson sought to establish a federal government of limited powers. In the 1800 presidential election, Jefferson and Aaron Burr deadlocked, creating a constitutional crisis. However, once Jefferson received sufficient votes in the electoral college, he and the defeated incumbent, John Adams, established the principle that power would be passed peacefully from losers to victors in presidential elections. Jefferson called his election triumph “the second American Revolution.”

While president, Jefferson's principles were tested in many ways. For example, in order to purchase the Louisiana Territory from France he was willing to expand his narrow interpretation of the Constitution. But Jefferson stood firm in ending the importation of slaves and maintaining his view of the separation of church and state. In the end, Jefferson completed two full and eventful terms as president. He also paved the way for James Madison and James Monroe, his political protégés, to succeed him in the presidency.

Writing to William Smith (1755–1816), John Adams' secretary and future son-in-law, Thomas Jefferson seemed to welcome Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts: “god forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion . . . the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it's natural manure.” Jefferson was confident that rather than repression, the “remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them.”

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Eighteenth-century political philosophers concerned themselves with the balance between the restrictions needed to make a government function and the individual liberties guaranteed by that government. Jefferson's efforts to protect individual rights including freedom of the press were persistent, pivotal, and not always successful. Jefferson was a staunch advocate of freedom of the press, asserting in a January 28, 1786, letter to James Currie (1745–1807), a Virginia physician and frequent correspondent during Jefferson's residence in France: “our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

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Thomas Jefferson's December 20, 1787, letter to James Madison contains objections to key parts of the new Federal Constitution. Primarily, Jefferson noted the absence of a bill of rights and the failure to provide for rotation in office or term limits, particularly for the chief executive. During the writing and ratification of the constitution, in an effort to influence the formation of the new governmental structure, Jefferson wrote many similar letters to friends and political acquaintances in America.

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Thomas Jefferson called the collected essays written by Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804), James Madison, and John Jay (1745–1829), the “best commentary on the principles of government which ever was written.” Jefferson, like many other contemporary Americans, tried to determine which essays had been written by each of the three authors. On this inside cover sheet Jefferson credited Madison with authorship of more than a dozen essays. The question of who wrote each of the essays has never been definitively answered.

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On July 4, 1776, in addition to approving the Declaration of Independence, Congress chose Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin to design a great seal for the new country. Franklin proposed the phrase “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God,” a sentiment Jefferson heartily embraced and included in the design for the Virginia seal and sometimes stamped it on the wax seals of his own letters. Although Congress rejected the elaborate seal, it retained the words “E Pluribus Unum,” which became the country's motto.

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Federal Hall in New York was the site of the meeting of the First Federal Congress in 1789. As secretary of state, Jefferson dealt with Congress here for less than one year before the Federal Government relocated to Philadelphia in 1790, as part of the agreement to create a permanent federal capital district. Jefferson was instrumental in building the national capital district both in his role as secretary of state, and, later, as president.

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Thomas Jefferson's February 15, 1791, opinion on the constitutionality of a national bank is considered one of the stellar statements on the limited powers and strict construction of the Federal Constitution. Alexander Hamilton, a proponent of the broadest interpretation of the constitution based on the implied powers of the Federal Constitution, was the leading advocate for the national bank. Jefferson and Hamilton quickly became outspoken leaders of two opposing interpretations of national government.

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National Partisan Politics

James Callender's (1758–1803) History of the United States for 1796 was the original public venue for reports of financial dealings by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton as well as his 1792 adulterous affair with Maria Reynolds (b. 1768), the wife of James Reynolds, a United States Treasury employee. Jefferson's political lieutenant, clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, and later first Librarian of Congress John James Beckley was the immediate source of the confidential documents used by Callender to discredit Hamilton. Callender was one of the political pamphleteers supported by Jeffersonians to attack their Federalist opponents.

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President Jefferson's support for freedom of the press was sorely tested in 1802 when James Callender publicly charged that Jefferson “keeps and for many years has kept, as his concubine, one of his slaves. Her name is Sally.” The Richmond Recorder, first printed Callender's account of Jefferson's intimate relationship with his wife's half sister, Sally Hemings, but controversy has surrounded the accusation and the relationship to the present day. Callender, whose vitriolic attacks on Federalist opponents of Jefferson in the 1790s had been secretly funded by Jefferson and Republican allies, turned against Jefferson when the president failed to give him a patronage position.

The Richmond Recorder, September 1, 1802. Courtesy of the Virginia State Library, Richmond (117a)

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Thomas Jefferson seldom wrote articles or essays for the press, but he did urge his supporters such as James Madison, James Monroe (1758–1831), John Beckley (1757–1807), and David Rittenhouse (1732–1796) to publicly counter the Federalists. In this July 7, 1793, letter, Jefferson urges Madison to attack the ideas of Alexander Hamilton: “for god's sake, my dear Sir, take up your pen, select the most striking heresies, and cut him to peices [sic] in the face of the public.” Both Republicans and Federalists engaged in critical attacks on their opponents.

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The Second American Revolution

Jefferson viewed the presidential election of 1800, which won him the presidency, as a second American Revolution. Jefferson believed in “the true principles of the revolution of 1800. for that was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 76. was in it's form; not effected indeed by the sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people. The nation declared it's will by dismissing functionaries of one principle, and electing those of another in the two branches, executive and legislative, submitted to their election.”

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Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated third president of the United States on March 4, 1801, after being elected by the House of Representatives on February 17, 1801, on the thirty-sixth ballot in one of the nation's closest and most divisive presidential contests. In this first inaugural address President Jefferson reached out to heal the political wounds by appealing to non-partisan political unification. This draft shows the careful preparation, including the insertion of a paragraph, with key phrases, such as “we are all republicans: we are all federalists,” that are still used in political arenas.

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In his “Sixth Annual Message to Congress” on December 2, 1806, President Jefferson, at the earliest moment allowed by the Constitution, called on Congress to abolish the importation of slaves from outside the United States. The United States Constitution had forbidden Congress to abolish “the Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit” prior to 1808. Congress readily complied with the president's request and the importation of slaves was prohibited as of January 1, 1808.

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Thomas Jefferson believed strongly in religious freedom and the separation of church and state. While President, Jefferson was accused of being a non-believer and an atheist. Jefferson attended church services in the Capitol and on several occasions expressed his beliefs including this letter explaining his constitutional view. “I consider the government of the US. as interdicted by the constitution from intermedling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. this results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment, or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the states the powers not delegated to the US.”

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In this critical cartoon, Thomas Jefferson as the cock or rooster, courts a hen, portrayed as Sally Hemings. Contemporary political opponents of Jefferson sought to destroy his presidency and his new political party with charges of Jefferson's promiscuous behavior and his ownership of slaves. The cock was also a symbol of revolutionary France, which Jefferson was known to admire and which, his critics believed, Jefferson unduly favored.

James Akin. “A Philosophic Cock,” Newburyport, Massachusetts, c. 1804. Hand-colored aquatint. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts (140)

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The conservative Federalist Party still had hopes of regaining the presidency when this anti-Jefferson political cartoon appeared in The Echo, a book critical of Jefferson, published by New Englanders. The creators of the cartoon attempted to link fears of excesses of “republican” mobs, Irishmen, blacks, and Democratic Clubs, such as Tammany Hall. Their effort failed. James Madison, Jefferson's closest political protege was elected the fourth president of the United States.

William Leney after a drawing by Elkanah Tisdale in [Richard Alsop and Theodore Dwight] The Echo, with Other Poems. New York: Porcupine Press by Pasquin Petronius, 1807. Copyprint of engraving. Rare Book and Special Collections Division (142)

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The north wing of the Capitol housed the Congress, the Supreme Court, and Library of Congress when the federal government moved to Washington, D.C. in the fall of 1800. At that time, the north wing, designed to house the United States Senate, was the only finished part of the Capitol. Beyond the Capitol is a view westward towards the President's House and Georgetown.

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