By Douglas V. Gibbs
While not a participant as a delegate during the Constitutional Convention, Thomas Jefferson was highly influential in the delegation, corresponding daily with a number of the participants, including James Madison. During his presidency, Jefferson sought to put into practice the limiting principles of government embedded in America’s founding documents.
During the Constitutional Convention, though not directly, the battle between Hamilton and Jefferson found its start.
“Hamilton was indeed a singular character. Of acute understanding, disinterested, honest, and honorable in all private transactions, amiable in society, and duly valuing virtue in private life, yet so bewitched & perverted by the British example, as to be under thoro’ conviction that corruption was essential to the government of a nation.” — Thomas Jefferson, on Alexander Hamilton in The Anas.
Unlike Hamilton, Jefferson was a champion of a concept called Laissez Faire, or the proper limitation of the scope and powers of government. It was he that, though he was absent during the convention in 1787 due to diplomatic duties in France, was among the greatest influences upon the limitation of power embedded in the construction of our system of limited government. It largely was Jefferson’s ideals that the federal republic was founded upon, and to defend those principles during the Washington administration Jefferson created the Republican (not today’s GOP) political party to battle against Hamilton’s Federalist Party. The Jeffersonian Republicans adhered to the Constitution in such a way that the popularity of the party eventually led to the demise of the Federalist Party, and its ideology of nationalism.
After Jefferson’s victory in the 1800 Presidential Election, and his party’s success in achieving a majority in both Houses of Congress, he said of the big government leftist retreat to the court system, “The principal [leaders of the political opposition] have retreated into the judiciary as a stronghold, the tenure of which renders it difficult to dislodge them.” – Thomas Jefferson to Joel Barlow, 1801.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
Patrons: Read a deeper look into Jeffersonian Republicanism
Patrons: Read about Alexander Hamilton – Constitutional Liar
