4.2

• Political parties


  Groups that fiercely opposed one another in policy debates in the early American republic
• Federalist Party


  • Fought for a powerful and vigorous central government
  • Favored manufacturing interests
• Democratic Republicans


  • Fought for a more limited central government
  • Favored the ideal of agrarianism (a nation of self-sustaining farmers)
• Thomas Jefferson won the presidential election, marking a peaceful transfer of power between rival parties (the "Revolution of 1800")


  1800
• Policy debates over the power of the federal government

  1. Abolishing the whiskey tax

  2. Limiting the military and reducing federal jobs

  3. The Louisiana Purchase (Jefferson abandoned his Democratic Republican values)
• Strict constructionism


  The view that the federal government can only do what is explicitly written in the Constitution
• Exploration of the Louisiana Territory

  1. Corps of Discovery led by Lewis and Clark

  2. Zebulon Pike explored the southern part of the territory
• John Marshall and the Supreme Court


  • Expanded federal power and the power of the court
  • Established judicial review (the power to declare laws unconstitutional)
  • Ruled that national law trumps state laws
• Policy debates over relationships with European powers

  1. Refusing to pay tribute to the Barbary States, leading to the Barbary Wars

  2. The War of 1812 with Britain (over impressment of American citizens and British aid to Native Americans)
• The War of 1812


  Led to a great swelling of nationalism and the demise of the Federalist party