Thomas Jefferson

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Election of 1796

In the election year of 1796, Washington announced that he would not seek a third term. Jefferson was prevailed upon to accept the Republican nomination for president. John Adams, nominated by the Federalists, polled three more electoral votes than Jefferson. According to the system of election then prevailing, Adams became president of the United States and Jefferson vice president.

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Vice President of the United States

Jefferson was 54 years old when he became vice president. His duties were not clearly set forth in the Constitution, and to Jefferson it appeared that he had only to preside over the Senate. This he did ably. He also wrote the Manual of Parliamentary Practice, a book of parliamentary rules (published in 1801), many of which still apply to both houses of Congress. In other matters, Jefferson had little to do with the Federalist administration of President Adams.

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XYZ Affair

Party friction was increased by the XYZ Affair in 1797 and 1798. Jay's Treaty, so unpopular at home, had also had repercussions abroad. The French government considered it a sellout to the British, despite the American declaration of neutrality, and therefore felt justified in interfering with United States-British trade. By the summer of 1797, France had seized 300 American ships and broken off diplomatic relations. There was talk of war, especially among the pro-British Federalists.

President Adams sent a three-man diplomatic team to France in an effort to negotiate a solution. The French government did not receive the diplomats. Instead they were approached by agents of Charles Talleyrand, the French foreign minister. The agents proposed that the United States could make reparations for its alleged injuries to France by paying Talleyrand a huge bribe and financing a large loan to the French government. These terms were so exorbitant and dishonorable that the American diplomats rejected them. When Adams, who had been waiting anxiously for news, got their report, he tried to keep it secret. But Jefferson's pro-French Republicans raised a great outcry. They accused Adams of suppressing information that was favorable to France and thereby driving America into war with that country.

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Adams finally let the report be published. The names of the French agents were changed to X, Y, and Z, but the details were left unchanged. Jefferson now found himself on the defensive as anti-French feeling rose over the corrupt proposal. He argued that there was no reason to believe that the agents were actually speaking for the French government. But the antagonism toward France continued to grow and was exploited by the Federalists to the damage of the Republican Party.

Through his control of the Federalist Party, Hamilton rallied the United States to take action against France. Congress renounced all the treaties it had made with France during the American Revolution. It ordered an expansion of the army, created the Department of the Navy, and commissioned the building of naval fighting ships. George Washington was called out of retirement to lead the army, with Hamilton as his second in command. By the end of 1798 more than a dozen American men-of-war had been put to sea and an undeclared naval war with France had begun.

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Alien and Sedition Acts

During this period of war fever in the United States, the Federalists passed a number of bills for national defense and for the suspension of trade between the United States and France. They also passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. These acts placed many restrictions on noncitizens and prohibited criticism of the president or the government of the United States. They effectively muzzled the Republican press, which had been critical of President Adams and the Federalist-dominated Congress. Even Hamilton thought the provisions of these bills excessive. Republicans were enraged. Indeed, Republican leaders Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe believed that the XYZ Affair had been invented by the Federalists to whip up anti-French feeling and to assure the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

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Kentucky Resolutions

In June 1798, while the Alien and Sedition Acts were still being considered by Congress, Jefferson left Philadelphia. He felt that there was no effective action he could take in Adams's Federalist administration.

At Monticello, Jefferson secretly drafted what were to be called the Kentucky Resolutions, in which he declared that the federal government was not “the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself.” On the contrary, Congress was merely a creation of the states and was subject to the “final judgment” of the states. He concluded that “whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.” Here was the first statement of the doctrine of nullification. Jefferson's primary purpose was to defend human rights and civil liberties, which he believed were violated by the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Kentucky legislature adopted the Kentucky Resolutions, and similar resolutions were passed in Virginia. They were not acted upon, the Alien and Sedition Acts expired in 1801, and the furor died away. Later, however, the nullification doctrine was used by supporters of states' rights to deny what the Federalists thought the Constitution had settled: that the federal government was the primary government of the land. Opponents of nullification argued that it would break up the federal Union. Southern politicians invoked nullification in their 19th-century rivalry with the Northern states, an antagonism that finally reached its climax in the American Civil War (1861-1865).

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