As part of our celebration of America at 250, we’ve started a weekly newsletter by historian Jonathan Horn. Learn what happened this week in American history, why it matters, and what else you should see and read in The Free Press and beyond. This week, Jonathan looks at the preparation of Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address. To get this newsletter in your inbox every week, sign up here. —The Editors
Jefferson’s Words for a Fractured Country
By the election of 1800, the political parties that the Founding Fathers had hoped never to see had become impossible to ignore. Republicans (confusingly, the forerunner of the Democratic Party) accused Federalists of a conspiracy to transform the presidency into a monarchy, curtail freedom of speech, and menace immigrants. Federalists accused Republicans of seeking to render America lawless, defenseless, godless, and financially creditless.
Until recently, it was hard for historians trying to relay this history to explain how such apocalyptic-sounding accusations ever went mainstream. Now, anyone scrolling through social media has a decent sense. The timelier question is, how did our forebears move on after the experience? Two hundred twenty-five years ago this week, the winner of the presidential election, Republican Thomas Jefferson, went in search of words that could “restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty, and even life itself, are but dreary things.” That was how he described his goal with his first inaugural address, and it remains among the finest expressions of American values ever composed.
