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revolutionary orators extolled the new divinity, "the people," in whose
name they claimed to speak. The people were taken to be the source of
all virtue and goodness. Ultimately Jacobins were willing to sacrifice real
people-rowdy, imperfect, Catholic, royalis t, apoli tical-to their abs tract,
rational concept of an "ideal people."
The Jeffersonian Model Of Party
Politics. In 1800, on the day it
became clear that he won a majority in the presidential election in New
York State, Thomas Jefferson called on President John Adams. "Well,"
Adams said, "I understand that you are to beat me in this contest, and I will
only say that I will be as faithful a subject as any you will have." "Mr.
Adams," replied Jefferson, "this is no personal contest between you and me.
Two systems of principles on the subject of government divide our fellow
citizens into two parties. With one of these you concur, and I with the
other. .. .Were we both to die to-day, to-morrow two other names woUld
be in the place of ours, without any change in the motion of the machin–
ery. Its motion is from its principles, not from you or myself." As Jefferson
carefully explained, the basis of party poli tics is ideological conflict
between two competing political parties-not conflict among branches of
government and not personal conflict between individuals. This new kind
of conflict, driven by political visions and principles, would provide the
momentum for change. Energy, through conflict, Jefferson remarked to
John Dickinson, had returned to government.
Now there was a second strategy for governing the nation. Whereas
the Madisonian model of fragmentation and checks and balances used con–
flict to impede the will of the majority, the Jeffersonian model of party
politics used conflict to empower the majority. Madison and Jefferson–
fellow Virginians, life-long friends, and confidantes--shared many ideas
about government, but one man feared a popular majority while the other
sought to shape and invigorate its voice. One proved to be a master theo–
retician of the system of checks and balances, the other a consummate
party poli tician.
Can a democratic election be considered a revolution? The watershed
election of 1800 changed so dramatically the principles of American gov–
ernment that the political historian James MacGregor Burns has called it a
second American Revolution. How was this election different from earlier
ones? It introduced not only politics based on two rival parties competing
for power and alternately governing but also created the virtually unheard–
of precedent of one defeated incumbent party peacefully turning over
political power to the opposition. The recognition of the legitimacy of the
opposition and the acceptance of a system of organized, adversarial politi–
cal parties marked the final stage in the American Revolution.
