Anti-Federalist Presidents

Thomas Jefferson and Anti-Federalism

Thomas Jefferson, one of the most successful U.S. Presidents and “Father of the Constitution” believed in extremely limited federal government. Jefferson subscribed to the political ideals expounded by Locke, Bacon, and Newton. In A Summary View of the Rights of British America, he argued people have the right to govern themselves. He thought the independent and rural life were ideals of republican virtues. He distrusted cities and financiers, favored decentralized government power, and believed that tyranny was due to corrupt political establishments and monarchies. Jefferson was steeped in the tradition of the oppressed majority set against a repeatedly unresponsive government. He justified small outbreaks of rebellion as necessary to get monarchial regimes to amend oppressive measures compromising popular liberties.

Jefferson founded the Republican(Anti-Federalist) Party in opposition to the Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton. The Republicans under Jefferson were strongly influenced by the 18th-century British Whig Party, who believed in limited government. The Jeffersonians were deeply committed to Republicanism in the United States, which at the time meant opposition to aristocracy and corruption, insistence on virtue, and equal rights for all citizens, with a priority for the ordinary folk. He used agrarian resistance to banks and speculators as the first defining principle of an opposition party, recruiting candidates for Congress on the issue as early as 1792. In 1801 the Anti-Federalist/Republican Party started gaining steam and Jefferson was elected 3^rd President of The United States. As president, Jefferson feared the Federalist system enacted by Washington and Adams. He tried to restore a balance between the state and federal governments more nearly reflecting the Articles of Confederation, seeking to reinforce state prerogatives where his party was in a majority.

Jefferson distrusted government banks and opposed public borrowing, which he thought created long-term debt, bred monopolies, and invited dangerous speculation as opposed to productive labor. In one letter to Madison, he argued each generation should curtail all debt within 19 years, and not impose a long-term debt on subsequent generations. Jefferson and Madison thought a national bank would ignore the needs of individuals and farmers, and would violate the Tenth Amendment by assuming powers not granted to the federal government by the states. As president, Jefferson was unfortunately persuaded by Secretary of Treasury Albert Gallatin to leave the bank intact, but sought to restrain its influence.

As Jefferson saw his party triumph in the two terms of his presidency and launch into a third term under James Madison, his view of the U.S. as a continental republic and an "empire of liberty" grew more upbeat. On departing the presidency in 1809, he described America as "trusted with the destinies of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government".