In the years that followed the American
Revolution, Jefferson held a number of political positions starting from
delegate in the Continental Congress, to governor of Virginia, to ambassador to
France under the Articles of Confederation government, to the Office of
Secretary of State under the Constitutional government of George Washington,
and later to the post of the Vice President under John Adams.
During the Articles of Confederation Government, Jefferson
was appointed as the Ambassador to France. Required by his position to live in
France in the five years following 1785, Jefferson naturally became a
francophile and was enticed with French culture. According to Meacham,
Jefferson “was a tireless advocate for things American while abroad, and a
promoter of things European while at home,” and that “he created a role for himself
as both intermediary and arbiter.”
During his stay in France, Jefferson received from his
colleague James Madison a draft of the newly written United States
Constitution. Although Jefferson “did not like the omission of a declaration
(bill) of rights,” Jefferson replied, “we must be contended to travel on
towards perfection, step by step,” demonstrating his belief that reaching
success in politics involved experimentation.
Jefferson continued to practice this belief over the course of the
following years, during his tenure in the positions of Secretary of State and
Vice President. A strict adherent to the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution, Jefferson was a firm believer in individual liberties and was
wary of any hints of monarchical culture that tended to appear in politics. For
this reason, Jefferson did not support the Federalist political views of the
Presidents George Washington and John Adams, and Treasury Secretary Alexander
Hamilton, which supported a strong national government with a national bank and
the strengthening of relations with Great Britain. According to Meacham,
Jefferson was unsettled by “the quasi-monarchical culture growing up around
President Washington,” and saw Hamilton as “the embodiment of the deepest of
republican fears: as a man who might be willing to sacrifice the American
undertaking in liberty to the expediency of authority.”
Thus in order to prevent what he believed to be a potential
threat of monarchy in the United States federal government, Jefferson conducted
a revolutionary act by effectively establishing an opposition party of
politicians, known as the Democratic-Republicans. Members of the
Democratic-Republican Party, which included James Madison, Elbridge Gerry, and
Jefferson himself, supported his view of strict adherence to Constitutional
doctrine. In this manner, Jefferson altered the future of American politics and
the American experiment by popularizing the opposition party, an institution
still held in American politics today. This is yet another manner in which
Thomas Jefferson has impacted the societal beliefs toward politics in the
United States.
Of all of these actions, I would say that Jefferson's lasting impact would have to be the formation of the opposing political party. You can agree or disagree with the basis of its formation, but you cannot argue that the idea of an opposing political party was a revolutionary idea, and in some ways, could have been classified as inevitable.
ReplyDeleteBy forming the opposing political party, Jefferson created a lasting impact on political science, as this event was the origin of countless political debates to come, political parties that would follow, and simply put, was the beginning of a new style of politics in the United States. This is one of several applications of how Jefferson used his fame and power to impact the sciences: he created an institution that, while responsible for considerable gridlock in the present day, is also what may well have prevented the nation from extremism in its development and in the totalitarian age. As such, Jefferson impacted the sciences with an act rooted in good will that has dramatically changed the course of history.
I agree that the rise of the opposition party in American politics drastically altered the course of American history from what would likely have been some form of constitutional monarchy. However, I will also state that the rise of the opposition party in the United States was in fact revolutionary.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the Democratic-Republican Party may not have been the first opposition party that history has seen, it arose in the United States during a time period in which an opposition party was very unlikely to have risen. During this period of time, under Adams' presidency, the Alien and Sedition Acts were in effect, essentially making illegal any insult against the national government run by the Federalists. And to counter this "quasi-monarchical" regime, Jefferson orchestrated the creation of an opposition in clandestine manner, which later became large enough to effectively counter the Federalist threat. In short, based on situation of the times, I would argue that the rise of the opposition party was in fact revolutionary.