First Political Parties and the Age of Jefferson

1.The main difference between the Jeffersonians and the Federalists in the political philosophies were that the Jeffersonians wanted a strict interpretation of the Constitution as well as having the states hold more power than the nation government. The Federalists believed in loose interpretation of the Constitution and a strong, central national government. Economically, the Jeffersonians were more for the agrarian farming, while the Federalists went more industrial for the society. The Jeffersonians supported farmers and the common people in their social philosophies while the Federalists supported the wealthy people.

2. The difference in the government’s response to the Whisky Rebellion differed from Shays’ Rebellion in that there was an actual militia that was brought up to take down the Whisky Rebellion, where as during Shays’ Rebellion, those who were rebelling, were the militia. The reason these rebellions had their outcomes was because of the difference in the government at the times. During Shays’ Rebellion, the country was still under the Articles of Confederation, which didn’t have the power to raise a militia. The Constitution had that power and therefore, the Whisky Rebellion was stopped much easier.

3. Early problems in the 1790s included the XYZ Affair and the Quasi War with France. The XYZ Affair took place in France because of how the French kept harassing American shipping. Three unnamed French agents tried to bargain, and soon America was in an undeclared war with France. The Quasi War was the next step to the XYZ Affair. Adams stopped all trade to France and allowed American ships to capture French ships. In 1800, Napoleon signed a peace treaty and restored it back to how things were. The Federalists handled the situations fairly well, but the American population didn’t seem to agree.

4. The cultural life in early 1800 was that of new beginnings. Many people were moving westward for expansion reasons and developed their own sense of personality. There were advances in machinery as well as education. This was what the Republicans wanted, a culture that was dependent on itself with its own identity and stood for the common people.

5. Constitutional issues began to rise with John Adams’ midnight appointments, where he tried to place as many Federalists in the court before he left office. Thomas Jefferson repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801 and canceled all of the judgeships Adams tried to create. One of the most important creations of the court was the ‘implied powers’ of the court. John Marshall asserted the powers in the McCulloh v. Maryland case in 1819 when he ruled that although it was not stated in the Constitution, the government had power over federal banks, not the states. Marshall made many important decisions while serving the Supreme Court as one of Adams’ midnight appointments.

6. The Revolution of 1800 was when Thomas Jefferson won election and ushered in the Democratic-Republicans. Jefferson’s domestic affairs included the purchasing of the

Louisiana Territory from the French. Although he was for a strict interpretation of the Constitution and didn’t believe that he should take it, he was urged by the negotiators to do so. There was also a stir in the courts over some of John Marshall’s rulings and his judicial review that gave the court much more power than before. Internationally, Jefferson enacted the Embargo Act of 1807, which didn’t allow any trade outside of the US, but this proved to be an economic disaster for the northeast part of the states.

7. The causes of the Second Great Awakening were the lack of piety the people had, and more people pushed for rationalism, as well as a decline in church members. The biggest event was in 1801 at Cane Ridge, Kentucky at the ‘camp meeting’. The effects this had on American citizens was that it helped boost the nationalistic overtones as wall as later movements in the 1830s and 1840s. These helped with the optimism in America because it renewed a growth of different denominations as well as a belief that God was an active force. The political optimism it had was that slaves and young women became more involved with the social aspects of the spiritual community.

8. The Federalists started to die out after Washington left office. Although they were not completely gone, they weren’t as influential on the government as they would have liked to been. The views that the Federalists had were too based in the northeastern states and towards the wealthy, which included them. One factor that included their downfall was the Hartford Convention, just before the War of 1812 was to end. It was a get together in order to change the Constitution to however it would have served them.

9. As a result of the War of 1812, the nationalism seemed to grow despite a tie between the states and Britain. The states began to develop a sense of their own identity as well as their own culture. Politically, the Federalists all but faded out and only one political party was the majority of the states. In the years after 1812, the British continued to dump goods in America to sell them for cheap. This led to a depression as well as the Protective Tariff of 1816 that was supposed to protect American businesses from the cheap items. The tariff placed a geographic tension between them because of the different types of business they did. The north was more industrialized, which was in need of the tariff, while the south was more agriculture where the tariff forced them to sell their foods for cheap and not make a lot of money.

10.The sectional crisis that threatened to destroy the Era of Good Feelings was the Missouri Compromise, suggested by Henry Clay. The Missouri Compromise was the line that divided free states from slave states, and although Missouri was above the compromise line that was supposed to be free states, but it was a slave state. The issue of slavery was postponed until the Civil War.