 Kevin Gutsman is a New York Times best-selling author and professor of history at Western Connecticut State University. Three of his books, Virginia's American Revolution, James Madison and the Making of America, and Thomas Jefferson Revolutionary flesh out what Gutsman takes to be a radical, revolutionary time and place in American history. Many might join with Mainstream Academia in noting this generation in this place as shortcomings, but we would be remiss if we did not try to understand the world from above just as we try to understand it from below. Welcome to Liberty Chronicles, a project of libertarianism.org. I'm Anthony Comegna. We often hear, or at least sometimes now we hear, that there was a revolution of 1800, that it was an important year because here we have the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another, and Jefferson was a significant enough break from the old federal tradition that it qualifies as a revolution of 1800. So let me put it to you. Was there a revolution of 1800? Oh, yes. I certainly think there was. In what way? What was really radical or important about that year, that event? Well, not Washington himself, but people around him, other people high up among the federalists were essentially monarchists. That is, both Alexander Hamilton, the Treasury Secretary in Washington's early years as president, and John Adams made clear that they thought eventually the United States would have a monarchy. Hamilton had explained on June 18, 1787, in a day-long speech in the Philadelphia Convention as the Constitution was being written, what kind of monarchy he would like the United States to have. And at the conclusion of his description of this hypothetical government, he said, well, of course, the American people aren't ready for this now, but they are more congenial to it than they have been before, and I see that they're becoming closer to my position all the time. I think Hamilton's program is rightly understood then as having been intended to assimilate American government finance to the British model, and in doing so, also to assimilate the American social structure and the government itself to the British model. Adams told Jefferson at a dinner attended at Jefferson's house by Adams and Hamilton that, well, he responded to Hamilton's claim that, I'm sorry, Adams' claim that if the British Constitution could be purged of its corruption, it would be the best in the world to what Hamilton responded well. Without its corruption, it wouldn't work. It's already the best of the world. But Jefferson, hearing the Prime Minister essentially Hamilton and the Vice President Adams say this, thought, well, we have a general problem that there are a lot of prominent American politicians who think that a Republican experiment is a forlorn hope and we shouldn't have it. On the other hand, by the time the end of the 1790s came and the Federalists had launched their effort to make outspoken opposition to the administration illegal through the Sedition Act, a lot of people's minds had been changed. And so when in 1800, the Republicans won the elections, it seemed to Jefferson and into others that there had been a change not only in parties but in the actual principles that were going to underlie the administration from that point on. I tend to agree with that. Not only were the political predilections of the leaders of the two parties substantially different, but their programs were notably different. So Jefferson came into office and within a few months his allies in the Congress now in control of Congress for the first time had eliminated all the internal taxes, substantially reduced the size of the Navy, substantially reduced the size of the Army. Actually by 95 percent they reduced the number of men the President was statutorily entitled to recruit into the Army. Jefferson himself pardoned everybody who had been convicted under the Sedition Act of whom there were 12 people. It seems to me that this meant there had been a real change in the government. Jefferson said it was his real revolution in the principles of the government as that of 76 was in its form. I think that's true essentially. I do believe that there was real difference between the Federalists and the Republicans and that the right side won in the end and that immediately on taking office began making substantial changes. Was this only a revolution really for those in power, those with political influence? I mean this is an extremely tiny number of people actually voting for Jefferson or anybody else in the era. It's a very tiny number of essentially privileged white males with property, electing other white males with property. The vast majority of the population has little to no official say in the matter. Is it purely a policy change or a change in the minds of those who govern or was there a palpable sense among the population that the country was changing in dramatic ways? There was a substantial difference between the Federalists and the Republicans considering concerning the extent to which or the degree to which common people ought to be involved in the political life of the country. In the 1790s spontaneously in communities across the country there grew up what were called Democratic Republican societies which were common people generally who turned out to celebrate say to commemorate particular events in the history of the French Revolution or to celebrate the 4th of July which was a partisan Jeffersonian holiday in those days or otherwise to demonstrate that they were active members of the polity and on the other hand Federalists strongly disapproved of this and classically in his farewell address Washington said that the role of the average person in the political system was to vote every two years and that was it. It was supposed to be for policy makers to make the decisions to conduct the discussions to be involved in the actual political life of the country. So the Jeffersonian Republicans actually were more democratically oriented than the Federalists by far and people knew that. That was one and ground on which they tended to associate with one or the other party over time the Federalists actually became more aristocratic. As to this question about the suffrage there is some exaggeration in the common understanding of the extent to which suffrage was restricted to property owning males actually by the end of the Jefferson administration as I recall there are only two states New York and Virginia in which there are still any property qualifications for voting at all. So in general people could vote and even considering the property qualification in Virginia we think about half of adult white men of sound mind were eligible to vote which made Virginia more democratic than any country in Europe except for some cantons in Switzerland. So that in our own context that's not very democratic but in the context in which it lay which was the early 19th century Jefferson's Virginia was very democratic that of course the direction of reform was in favor or in the direction of more democracy whatever one thinks of that. So I think this criticism on one hand is generally uninformed or intentionally distorted but of course there's also some disagreement among libertarians about the question how Republican our society ought to be a lot of libertarian constitutional legal thinkers really don't mind the idea of an extensive policy making role for federal judges as long as they have the feeling that they'll get the policy outcomes from those judges that they prefer. You know I could name names but I'm sure you know whom I mean. So this is one way in which I find myself sometimes at variance with the main line of libertarian thinkers these days I am I consider myself a Jeffersonian I'm a libertarian personally but I think constitutional I have a fixed meaning not not whatever the judges can be persuaded to say it means and that's of course a Jeffersonian position. Anyway I think it's kind of Calumny to assert that these polities these states weren't very democratic compared to today when the Constitution declares that blacks and women and basically any man can vote it's it wasn't democratic but for the 18th century it was it was crazy democratic it was there was no place like it and of course I said that in Virginia they had more widely distributed suffrage than essentially any place in Europe except for some Swiss cantons and New England was even more democratic than that virtually every male could vote in New England. Yeah Rhode Island restricted the suffrage to property of holders until 1842. Was that right? But it caused significant constitutional crises in the government. Oh and you ended up with a rebellion right over the Constitution. The door war which we will get to on the podcast in all good time. Now let's let's dig into that Jeffersonianism that you said most libertarians share something with I think that's certainly true. It's hard to deny that at the very least our intellectual history leads back pretty strongly to the Jeffersonians. So I want to sort of dig into that and maybe if we could get a bit of a score card for the Jefferson administration especially considering that just a few years after he leaves office the conflict started during his term have rude into a war between two of the premier powers in the Atlantic. So let's talk about what were some of the successes for what we might call a libertarian radicalism under Jefferson and what were some of the most serious problematic or anti-libertarian policies that he advanced. Jefferson's platform included a serious retrenchment of federal spending and taxing and as I said before within a few months of his becoming president the Congress had repealed all of essentially all the federal taxes except for the tariff. So there no longer was going to be a carriage tax or a whiskey tax or any internal tax at all. In fact if you encountered the federal government in the early part of the 19th century likely you had you had met somebody who was associated with a local postmaster but if you weren't dealing with him and most people wouldn't have been then you were unlikely to encounter federal officials at all. This was Jefferson's and his party's doing and that was essentially his platform. He laid out this program in his first inaugural address. Another way that they were successful is that they decided to retrench the military. So in the quasi-war years of the Adams administration Congress had authorized the president to recruit as many as 50,000 soldiers into the army which would be about twice as many as Washington ever had during the revolution and they substantially increased taxes to pay for purchasing numerous warships not the top of the line the types that England had the Britain had 400 of but the next class down and when Jefferson came into office they essentially put those in dry dock and decided to do without them. The difference between the Adams administration and Jefferson administration in this regard was essentially we're not going to have a big military and we're not going to need the taxes to pay for it. Jefferson also immediately pardoned everybody who'd been convicted under the Sedition Act which were all 12 people who had been tried under the Sedition Act. That included a congressman from Vermont the chief the publisher of the chief Republican paper in the country the Philadelphia Aurora and other prominent Republicans. This was obviously substantial change. The Jefferson's foreign and domestic policies were notably different from those of his opponents. He said in his inaugural address that there might have been the question whether there'd be reprisals against the federalists once the Republicans took office as of course there had been numerous instances of party change followed by mass murder in France and Jefferson said in his first inaugural address essentially that there would be no such thing in fact that those people who had been wrong in the past could be left as monuments to the safety with which error it could be tolerated where reason was left free to combat it. In other words if you saw Al Hamilton walking down the street just pointed him and laughed we didn't need a guillotine we just had voted him out and that was the end of it. Jefferson thought actually that since Americans had come to their senses there wouldn't be any more party disputation. People don't realize that the Republican dynasty those three two-term Virginia Republican presidents at the beginning of the 19th century they actually tried to implement this program so by the time James Monroe who was formerly Jefferson's law student and was a kind of political lieutenant of Jefferson's by the time he left office the federalist party had ceased to exist he actually Monroe was reelected with all but one vote in the electoral college and part of the reason the federalist party had ceased to exist was that Monroe made no attempt to keep the Republican party alive though he thought it didn't make sense to be appointing people's post masters or or court marshals or to other federal offices on the basis of service the Republican party and he he did not pursue that course this was again part of the Jefferson program he thought there Jefferson thought there was a kind of natural consensus among Americans that had only been disrupted by the malign influences he sought of Hamilton the unwitting support of Hamilton's malignity by the uniquely popular Washington do you think that's to some degree the result of you know people's proclivity to sort of make a cartoon out of their enemies you know Jefferson did plenty while he was in office to gain to gain himself detractors and to upset whatever consensus there might have been it's not as though partisan feelings are are always malicious right sometimes the person in power is genuinely misbehaving like I wanted to ask you especially about the Louisiana purchase because Jefferson himself seems to have thought well maybe this is unconstitutional for me to do but it's too good a deal to pass up so I'll I'll go ahead with it and send it to Congress to authorize later and you know if if people think I've acted unconstitutionally then so be it but I'm not going to let Louisiana just go and maybe Spain come in and take it or who knows what England invade or whatever I mean what did Jefferson do while he was in office to gain enemies it's not that he thought perhaps the Louisiana purchase was unconstitutional he he was certain that it was unconstitutional his initial response to news of the treaty was that well we could buy this territory but we could not make it into states and then his next his first reconsideration was to the effect that well actually we couldn't do that either we're going to need an amendment before we can take any further steps so he asked Madison to draft him an amendment and Madison did so and along with that Madison conveyed to him his opinion that well of course you can't try to amend the Constitution to empower the federal government to do this because for all we know the next ship from France is going to contain word that Napoleon has changed his mind so we need to hurry and strike in this regard and Madison actually believed that it was obviously constitutional that when the Constitution said in article two that the president could enter into treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate since the Constitution did not say what kind of treaties the president could enter into with the advice and consent of the Senate the only reasonable reading was any common kind of treaty and although today they're not common in those days treaties of peace treaties of alliance trade treaties and treaties for purchase and sale of land were all common so Madison said clearly this is covered by the general power to make a treaty however Jefferson seems to have been the only significant Republican who did not buy this argument including even John Randolph of Roanoke so ultimately Jefferson's conclusion was that it was unconstitutional but it was absolutely essential and so he hoped the people would forgive him a very rare sentiment isn't it that that itself is enough to give Jefferson some redemption in my mind whatever whatever you think the problems with it might be just that he would recognize that you know this thing I'm doing right now that I'm still going to do it might be illegal and you can hold me responsible for that boy that's that's a rare thing yes essentially unheard of now whatever they want to do is is permissible but they were in kind of a box Jefferson actually had written before this all happened that as he put it there's only one spot on the map the possessor of which must be an enemy of the United States and that is New Orleans so that's why he had sent Monroe to James Monroe to France to join Robert Livingston negotiating a purchase of New Orleans in the area right around New Orleans and of course the response they got from Talier on was was well how about if I sell you all of Louisiana as far as Jefferson was concerned obtaining New Orleans was essential it was just it was the one real geostrategic imperative that the country faced he did think it was unconstitutional he never changed his mind about that people commonly say well you know he changed his mind when he got into office he bought Louisiana actually no he didn't change his mind he just decided that he had to do it anyway and he he said I hope the people will forgive me which apparently they did now lots of people never forgave him for the embargo act plenty of people threatened his life over it can you tell us why Jefferson who should I think at least should have known better economics than to support something like an embargo why did he support this thing did he really want war with Great Britain during the Napoleonic period is there any teeth to the the federalists claim that you know the republicans were all crypto Jacobins who wanted to make war on all the monarchies of the world was there any truth to that whatsoever that Jefferson was seeking out a war with Britain I don't read it that way I think that as early as the early 1780s James Madison had had the idea that the United States could coerce European powers with its economic might at one point he said that European countries would be dependent on American food stuffs as long as Europeans were in the custom of eating so Madison thought that military that economic embargo could be a substitute for military strength and Jefferson as was his greatest weakness was persuaded by Madison there are other instances where the same thing happened in 1807 in response to war fever up and down the east coast over what was called what is called the Chesapeake Leopard Incident where a British warship attack an American military vessel at Hampton roads just coming out of Chesapeake Bay within sight of numerous civilians watching this from on shore Jefferson heard from people from Georgia to New Hampshire saying it's time to declare war on the British and he thought the embargo was an alternative so on one hand this was a way to avoid war avoid admitting the federalist had been right avoid raising taxes and building up the military maybe even adopting a sedition act on the other hand it was a kind of enlightenment attempt to create a new world in which you wouldn't have military powers contending with each other violently but instead people would trade and if they cease trading maybe they'd have to negotiate their disagreements so I think it's obviously the idea that this could be successful in the context of world war between France and Britain in which one or the other of them was supposed to buckle in response to being deprived of George and rice or Virginia tobacco or Massachusetts fish the idea that this was going to be successful seems just ridiculous but Jefferson thought that the enlightenment had disclosed various truths that people hadn't apprehended before and one was that economics could be used in place of warcraft so if one criticizes him for having this Pollyanna idea what about his various other Pollyanna ideas that we still appreciate I think this is just typical Jeffersonian behavior it it strikes me as fanciful to the point of foolishness but consistent with a lot of his other initiatives that we find more appealing now though the war that followed the embargo is called mr. Madison's war at least by its opponents which were sizable in number this is one of the least least popular wars in American history probably not a coincidence that people were talking about a draft that was terribly disruptive to trade why did why exactly did the war of 1812 start and was it really about principle of you know Britain seizing American ships and interfering with our sovereignty or was it about conquest and trying to scoop up those Canadian colonies into the American Republic and blackened you know Britain's eye well that depends whether you ask an American or a Canadian in general there's a consensus among American historians that what Madison wanted to do was to grab Canada and then use it as a bargaining chip in order to to ring from the British and into impressments and free access for American ships to both Britain and British colonial ports in the Caribbean on the other hand Canadians think that America wanted to conquer Canada so they commonly depict the war of 1812 as this great Canadian victory even though Canada didn't exist yet as a separate country this British victory over the United States is a great Canadian identity point for Canadians my own feeling is that Madison did want it as a negotiating chip I don't think people generally thought of Canada as being that valuable possession remember in 1763 at the end of the seven years war Britain had taken from France India Martinique Guadalupe in Canada and then at the end of the war they told the French well if you want you could have two of these possessions back and France said okay we'll take Guadalupe and Martinique so we're prone today to think of a map with enormous Canada on it and and think well that that must have been very attractive but people didn't really think of it as being that wonderful a possession and on the other hand free trade that was the kind of reigning shibboleth for Madison he thought that was the Nipoulos Ultra you know that you you um you'd take that if you could get it and and really what it spurred the embargo as I said before was the policy of impressments the Chesapeake Leopard incident was about impressments and if only the Republicans could find some way to to make the British stop impressing American sailors then independence would be vindicated we of course we we saw a treaty that ended the revolution in 1783 with King George the third's recognition of all the states he listed them from north to south um but really the British hadn't quite accepted the idea that America was a an independent country so for example if you were a British sailor and you immigrated to the United States and became an American citizen the British did not recognize that they didn't recognize that you could be a former britain now an American and so the nub of the war of 1812 was Americans wanted access to British ports they wanted British respect they wanted an end of impressment these three things were all tightly linked and for a lot of people the war took on almost apocalyptic tones you know here were this ragtag new country fighting the world's premier power uh who sort of run wants to uh re enslave us you know put us put us back into the empire um they're stirring up native american tribes on the frontier making the frontier another a place of violence again uh fusion between british and american indian interests that terrified american frontiersmen shaped the the mindset and the way of life out there for decades to come you know this used to be a major point of periodization for historians the war of 1812 separates the early republic from the jacksonian era and they're very different um there's the the world before the war of local and regional markets and then there's the world after the war where like you said this greater free trade zone has now been fought for and established especially after napoleon's gone and you know now we have swifter globalization we have market revolutions and things like that what's more we have a growing sense of nationalism and a whole cast of characters who comes to dominate politics for the next generation or two um can you say a bit about how the war wrapped up and what its long-term effects were on what was the early republic well uh you began by saying this used to be a point of periodization actually it still is so my current project is uh history of the virginia dynasty 1801 to 25 and i'm cutting against the grain of saying that the the war of 1812 marked a point of departure and my contention is that the Monroe administration was kind of culmination of the jeffersonian program or jeffersonian um really continuous administration from 1801 but it's true that americans saw the war of 1812 as making a substantial difference you can say though that same thing would have happened even if there hadn't been a war of 1812 people of course didn't know at the time that napoleon was going to abdicate in 1814 and be defeated at waterloo in 1815 but what that meant was that impressement was going to end regardless of the war of 1812 in fact it did end regardless of the war of 1812 the british never conceded that they didn't have a right to impress sailors from american ships they just stopped doing it because the napoleonic wars came to an end uh another significant result of the war of 1812 uh was as you mentioned that the the indians who had tended to align themselves first with the french before the seven years war and then with the british uh in the war in the war of 1812 now they found themselves essentially stranded in north america at the tender mercies of the united states which were despite the sentimentality of people like jefferson concerning the indians which were not going to be very tender i think the idea of a market revolution is emblematic of the general ignorance of economics among historians of the early republic and the idea the idea that people didn't act in markets before the war of 1812 is just somewhat ridiculous to me um but it is true and actually it also the idea that there's going to be the market revolution starting after the war of 1812 assumes that it takes the government building roads and bridges to make a market right you didn't really have a market until you had government expenditure on canals most of which virtually all of which and virtually all the states that tried canal building um were not self-sustaining in fact virtually every state found um that its canals didn't pay for themselves and a lot of states ended up really stuck with substantial debt because of this binge of canal building i think then that again that this idea of a market revolution starting after the war of 1812 is just thoroughly wrongheaded but that is exactly what the nationalists like calhoun clay daniel webster other people in the in the period who dominate politics leading up to jackson uh that is exactly what they argue though right that the government does have to step in and create this bold new world conquering space and uh you know extending the market all over for the benefit of the people surely the war did impress itself upon the minds of the leadership at least in a way that's pretty significant i see uh henry clay as a kind of case study in public choice theory i mean you know you're bound to have somebody who says well if i'm the guy who could be associated with building roads uh in the western part of the country where there aren't any at all then i'll make myself popular in every congressional district and i can be elected president if you know to borrow a phrase that if there hadn't been henry clay we would have had to invent him he he seems just somebody who was bound to exist but the fact of henry clay's steering the government toward protective tariffs and and log rolling doesn't mean that that's why we have a market economy the war years cast a long dark dangerous shadow over the still young republic the shadow of expansionary nationalism a permanently militarized frontier and an ever present ever threatening juggernaut on the northern border people felt a palpable mix of hope and fear for the future the world was changing quickly and everyone took note liberty chronicles is a project of libertarianism.org it is produced by test terrible if you've enjoyed this episode of liberty chronicles please rate review and subscribe to us on itunes for more information on liberty chronicles visit libertarianism.org