This paper seeks to answer a simple but salient question: Why? Scholarly literature on the election of 1800 avoids this line of inquiry. Instead, it tackles important but less sweeping tasks, such as chronicling what specific groups and individuals said about Jefferson during the campaign, how different constituencies in different locales reacted to this rhetoric, and what consequences ensued. In an attempt to contextualize existing historiography, this paper posits that two factors led to the Federalist demonization of Jefferson.
The first was the weakness of their own partisan alliance. By making Jefferson the issue, they drew attention away from President John Adams, the titular Federalist leader who alienated members of his constituency through his erratic behavior and conciliatory posture toward France. None other than Alexander Hamilton exposed the rift in Federalist circles by calling Adams to task in a published pamphlet, and some in 1800 so much doubted the president's scruples that they wondered aloud if he and Jefferson had "made a coalition." The party lacked not only a unifying leader, but also a compelling agenda. For more than a decade they had rallied behind George Washington and a vague constitutional vision. But Washington was now dead, and their nation-building project seemed, essentially, accomplished. For what did they now stand?
The second factor flows from the first. Unable to define for themselves a positive agenda, they defined themselves in opposition to Jefferson. Vilifying him confirmed, for them, the things that they had been saying about Jefferson for the better part of a decade. It also verified their self-image as virtuous and enlightened men, unselfish, disinterested, and independent--everything, in short, that Jefferson and his flock supposedly were not. They supported order, but Jefferson harbored a secret attachment to anarchy. They loved the Constitution, but Jefferson hated it. They were realists, but Jefferson was a visionary. They were men of faith, but Jefferson, as one Federalist said, was "a confirmed infidel" known for "vilifying the divine word, and preaching insurrection against God." Jefferson, the head, heart, and face of Republicanism, gave it its character; he was its personal embodiment and he embodied all of its faults. Federalists stood against him and all that they thought he stood for.
Within this context, Jefferson's inaugural address, moderate in tone and conciliatory in content, seems especially shrewd. He proclaimed that "we are all Republicans, we are all Federalists." By asserting that "we have called by different names brethren of the same principle" the triumphant new president minimized the factional distinctions on which his enemies depended for survival.