Federalist Party Quotes
as opposed to favoring a monarch or a dictator Jefferson observed that the Federalists, led by John Adams, exaggerated reality and played to the peoples’ fears. This was very true and the accusations about Jefferson and his followers were as severe and untrue as ever in American politics. However, Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans were also not above exaggeration and hyperbole. The electorate generally saw through the Federalist exaggerations and not only threw the Federalists out of office but rejected them so thoroughly that the party was ended in American politics to be later replaced by the Whigs.
After defeating the Federalists, Jefferson tried to unite a politically divided and fractious country:
This is a clever variation on the slogan of the Federalist party of early America. See {604769}
The Federalist Party had controlled the Executive and Congress for the first 3 Presidential terms (2 for Washington and 1 for John Adams) but Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic Republicans were threatening to unseat the Federalists. Even with the Sedition Act, the Jeffersonians won and the Federalist Party was destroyed forever. Ironically, Jefferson and subsequent administrations saw advantages to the incumbent in the Sedition Act so did not repeal it. It was not until John Quincy Adams (John Adams’ son) had finished his Presidency and became a Congressman that he led the movement to finally repeal the hated Sedition Act.
This law would certainly be held unconstitutional today but at the time it wasn’t even clear that the Supreme Court could nullify a law of Congress. Virginia and Kentucky both passed resolutions however, protesting the law and challenging its constitutionality. The $2,000 maximum fine was huge for the day—the equivalent of more than $1 million today. The reason was that one of the major targets of the law was wealthy printers and publishers, who could be impoverished for a violation. The Sedition Act was in existence until Jefferson ousted the Federalists who passed it (John Adams signed it) and pardoned all those who had been convicted under the law. The Sedition Act is used today as evidence that the Founding Fathers really did not intend that the First Amendment protect speech that is potentially harmful to the country. The counter argument is that the Sedition Act was passed by John Adams and his allies at a particularly vulnerable time in America’s early history. And it was one of the biggest reasons that Adams and the Federalists were defeated after a single term by Thomas Jefferson and the Democrats. The Federalists were so badly beaten that their entire political party was destroyed. The Whig Party evolved as the opposition Party to Jefferson and the Democrats.
