Thomas Jefferson on the Unity of the Nation

A number of factional divisions within both parties had revealed themselves over the course of the campaign. Aaron Burr, who had initially agreed to run as the Democratic Republican candidate for the Vice Presidency, surprised his party’s leadership when he attempted to seek Federalist support to take the highest office after achieving a tie with Jefferson in the electoral vote. The wrangling within the Federalist party itself revealed its own factional divides over everything from Alexander Hamilton’s financial system to the attempt to silence political debate by censoring partisan newspapers.

Much of the old Federalist guard had supported the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) in an attempt to counter what they believed to be dangerous foreign influences stemming from the French Revolution. The Acts were controversial in that they appeared to be in direct conflict with the First Amendment of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which had been ratified only seven years earlier. The dispute between the various groups revolved around differences of opinion regarding the meaning of free speech and the application of English Common Law doctrines to the interpretation of the Constitution.

Recognizing the severity of these divisions, Jefferson’s First Inaugural has generally been interpreted as a call for Americans to return to a consideration of the principles that had first informed the movement for independence from Great Britain. In broadest terms, it was a call for citizens to reflect that their Revolution had been about the viability of a free society under the rule of law in which differences of opinion could be respected. By reflecting on these basic principles, the new president hoped that much of the factionalism of the previous year would eventually resolve itself in favor of liberty and republican government.