I don't want to make a habit of this, but I have to agree with you about Jefferson. According to Ellis in current bestseller "Founding Brothers", Jefferson may even have invented the partisanship thing, before Washington retired, directed primarily at Washington. Jefferson also apparently worked hard at plausible deniability, but Washington saw through it pretty easily.
Funny thing about "federalism", the "federalists", in the founding fathers sense of the Washington/Adams/Hamilton wing, were for evil things like a strong federal government and central banking. The "republicans", or the Jefferson/Madison wing, were all for states rights and stuff, but Jefferson famously went the other way when the Louisiana purchase presented itself.
I don't much go in for alternative history hypotheticals, but I really wonder which way Jefferson would have went in the civil war. Washington freed his slaves in his will, but Jefferson's got sold down the river to pay his debts when he died, presumably including Sally Hemings and her children. |
