The Louisiana Purchase. The War of 1812. Marbury v. Madison. Something about good feelings. The existence of these things may be about the extent of the average American’s—even an educated American’s—knowledge of the Jeffersonian era. Narratives of the American Founding may occasionally extend into the party conflicts of the 1790s, where the pressing unanswered questions of the Constitution were vigorously debated. But 1800 is often the end of the story.
Almost twenty years later, however, Jefferson would look back at the election of 1800 as a turning point in America. It was, he wrote to Spencer Roane, “as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 76. was in it’s [sic] form; not effected indeed by the sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.”
In The Jeffersonians, Kevin R. C. Gutzman offers a sweeping view of the aftermath of that “revolution,” when Democratic-Republicans dominated politics for twenty-four years. Gutzman’s history is an emphatically political history. It is not about daily life or underrepresented classes; it is about the men who made the most important decisions of the age, and about the principles and necessities that informed their choices. Gutzman seeks to present those decisions and principles as they were understood by the men themselves: much of the narrative is structured around inaugural addresses, annual addresses to Congress, presidential correspondence, and newspaper coverage of notable presidential tours.
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