By 1809 which political party's beliefs prevailed?
In the election of 1800 there was a great political power change from the Federalists to the Democrat-Republicans, or the Jeffersonian Democrats as they came to be known due to the appellation of the first Democratic Republican president, Thomas Jefferson. But while Jefferson was an open minded and liberal man who believed in agrarian societies, he was a conservative president who hedged his bets many times while in office. Clearly, although the Democratic-Republicans we in power the ideas and powers of the federalist party were still a dominant factor by 1809.
Jefferson went against his own ideology many times while in office, as clearly seen in Alexander Hamilton's, a federalist, financial program. First enacted while Washington was still president, Hamilton's financial program made the national government assume the debts of the states, impose tariffs on imported and exported goods and tax the Whiskey distilleries in the mountains. Going against his personal, and party, beliefs of small national government, Jefferson kept Hamilton's financial program, with the exception of the whiskey tax. In addition the Democrat-Republicans went against the grain and purchased large tracts of land from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
When the United States approached France in 1803 with the desire to purchase the port city of New Orleans the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Federalists looked at it as a necessary purchase. But when France, in war and in debt, offered to sell all of it's land holdings in America to the United States government there was a definite split in beliefs. The offer was almost immediately taken up on by the United States, even though it fell against the beliefs of the party in power. The Jeffersonian Republicans were strict constitutionalists, if it isn't stated in the Constitution it is illegal, and purchasing land is not stated in the constitution. Jefferson was conflicted but purchased the land anyway. He went against his own beliefs, and allowed the federalist beliefs to live on.
The federalists sought a large national government led by the elite. Even when the federalists fell out of favor at the election of 1800 and never fully regained their power, their ideas and beliefs lived on through an unlikely source- their opponents, the Jeffersonian Democrats. Thomas Jefferson could hardly have know the effect of his continuation of the federalists policies and beliefs, that by doing so he would eventually assure the presence of a large national government, a primarily city-dwelling society with a national debt, in today's society. The federalist beliefs were in power for long after the party fell into obscurity.
