page_title: History of the United States (1789–1849)
section_title: Thomas Jefferson
hierarchical_section_title: History of the United States (1789–1849) / Thomas Jefferson
context_page_description: George Washington, elected the first president in 1789, worked with the heads of the departments of State, Treasury, and War, along with an Attorney General, the group of which later became known as his cabinet. Based in New York, the new government acted quickly to rebuild the nation's financial structure. Enacting the program of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, the government assumed the Revolutionary War debts of the states and the national government, and refinanced them with new federal bonds. It paid for the program through new tariffs and taxes; the tax on whiskey led to a revolt in the west; Washington raised an army and suppressed it. The nation adopted a Bill of Rights as 10 amendments to the new constitution. Fleshing out the Constitution's specification of the judiciary as capped by a Supreme Court, the Judiciary Act of 1789 established the entire federal judiciary. The Supreme Court became important under the leadership of Chief Justice John Marshall, a federalist and nationalist who built a strong Supreme Court and strengthened the national government.
  The 1790s were highly contentious.
context_section_description: Jefferson is a central figure in early American history, highly praised for his political leadership, but also criticized for the role of slavery in his private life.  He championed equality, democracy and republicanism, attacking aristocratic and monarchistic tendencies.  He was a leader in American independence, advocated religious freedom and tolerance, and opposed the centralizing tendencies of the urban financial elite.  He formed the second national political party and led it to dominance in 1800, then worked for western expansion and exploration.  Critics decry the contradiction between his ownership of hundreds of slaves and his famous declaration that "all men are created equal", and argue that he fathered children with his slave mistress.
  Under Washington and Adams the Federalists had established a strong government, but sometimes it followed policies that alienated the citizenry. For example, in 1798, to pay for the rapidly expanding army and navy, the Federalists had enacted a new tax on houses, land and slaves, affecting every property owner in the country. In the Fries's Rebellion hundreds of farmers in Pennsylvania revolted—Federalists saw a breakdown in civil society. Some tax resisters were arrested—then pardoned by Adams. Republicans denounced this action as an example of Federalist tyranny.
  Jefferson had steadily gathered behind him a great mass of small farmers, shopkeepers and other workers which asserted themselves as Democratic-Republicans in the election of 1800. Jefferson enjoyed extraordinary favor because of his appeal to American idealism. In his inaugural address, the first such speech in the new capital of Washington, DC, he promised "a wise and frugal government" to preserve order among the inhabitants but would "leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry, and improvement".
  Jefferson encouraged agriculture and westward expansion, most notably by the Louisiana Purchase and subsequent Lewis and Clark Expedition. Believing America to be a haven for the oppressed, he reduced the residency requirement for naturalization back to five years again.
  By the end of his second term, Jefferson and Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin had reduced the national debt to less than $56 million. This was accomplished by reducing the number of executive department employees and Army and Navy officers and enlisted men, and by otherwise curtailing government and military spending.
  Jefferson's domestic policy was uneventful and hands-off, the administration mainly concerning itself with foreign affairs and particularly territorial expansion. Except for Gallatin's reforms, their main preoccupation was purging the government of Federalist judges. The president and his associates were widely distrustful of the judicial branch, especially because Adams had made several "midnight" appointments before leaving office in March 1801. In Marbury vs Madison (1803), the Supreme Court under John Marshall established the precedent of reviewing and overturning legislation passed by Congress. This ruling by leading Federalists upset Jefferson to the point where his administration began opening impeachment hearings against judges perceived as abusing their power. The attempted purge of the judicial branch reached its climax with the trial of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. When Chase was acquitted by the Senate, Jefferson abandoned his campaign.
  With the upcoming expiration in 1807 of the 20-year ban on Congressional action on the subject, Jefferson, a lifelong enemy of the slave trade, successfully called on Congress to criminalize the international slave trade, calling it "violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe."
caption: Growth in the US 1800–1810
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