33.8 America: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 5/31)

The united states before the civil war

The east

Presidential candidates for the election of 1800 were selected by party caucuses in Congress, with no public electioneering and no speeches or statements by the candidates. Even so, the politicians managed to make it a scurrilous campaign with the Republican winner, Jefferson, being accused of being a Jacobin, an atheist and a French agent. Jefferson himself believed that his election saved the country from militarism and monarchy. As for "monarchy", it was Jefferson who founded the "Virginia Dynasty" consisting of 4 presidents, who reigned for almost a third of a century. Each of these administrations will be briefly discussed.

Thomas jefferson administration (1801-1808) 3rd president

By 1803 a doctor in backwoods Kentucky had vaccinated 500 people for small-pox. Through the Napoleonic Wars, the United States attempted a neutrality policy, but she could not avoid some combat with the pirates of Tripoli between 1801 and 1804, as we noted on page 1051. Meanwhile, the boundary of the nation went west to the Rocky Mountains through the purchase of the Louisiana territory from Napoleon for $16,000,000, since the little emperor was afraid Britain would soon pluck it from him anyway. But we shall discuss this more in a later paragraph when we outline the Mississippi valley region. (Ref. 140 , 151 ) Jefferson himself was a most complex man and we have noted many of his characteristics on page 1028. A few additional remarks may be of interest here. The existence of his mulatto children was made public by the journalist James Thomas Callender in 1802 and again by the New England Palladium in 1805. In the field of religion, he re-wrote the New Testament, leaving out all mysticism, Virgin Birth, miracles, etc., entitling the work The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth. It was not published until after his death. As this man and his party gained power, the New England Federalists and their clergy worried about terror, atheism and free-love resulting from all this triumph of democracy. Alexander Hamilton, rising in stature on the political scene, truly expected Jefferson's regime to end in anarchy like the French Republic and he was ready to step in as the United States Bonaparte. He was killed in a duel by Aaron Burr, the vice-president, who was politically dead, himself, after that duel. Burr, 1806, tried to hatch a conspiracy against the United States from the region of New Orleans and that lead to a treason charge, from which he was finally freed by the work of his attorney, John Marshall. Burr left for Europe, there to try still more conspiracies unsuccessfully and finally returned to the United States in disguise in 1812. (Ref. 151 , 123 )

To go back a few years, Jefferson, concerned with the European situation which saw Napoleon still strong and the British navy supreme, built up the federal government to cope. But high wages in the United States navy and merchant marine began to attract deserters from the Royal Navy, so that the latter soon began to use that as an excuse to stop neutral U.S. ships and search them for deserters. Such an episode in June 1807, involving the U.S.S. Chesapeake, brought the new country and Britain to the brink of war. (Ref. 151 )