Episode 61: The Decline, Fall, and Peculiar Afterlife of Federalism [The Federalists, Part 3]

03/20/20 • 91 min

The Adams administration saw the rapid, shocking collapse of Federalism as an organized force in American political life. The regnant faction that had forced through ratification, secured America's diplomatic position, and stabilized the public credit, disappeared utterly from the national stage. How did this happen? And if Federalist policies were so essential to American success, where did they go? Jay and Luke trace the ideological and personal divisions within Federalism, which led to its political weakening, the passage and deployment of the Sedition Act, and its complete collapse in the election of 1800. However, they also show how events and John Marshall conspired to preserve a species of Low Federalist ideology that, in the end, Jefferson's Republicans incorporated into their agenda and made their own.

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Episode 60: The Federalist Agenda: Foreign and Domestic Policy [The Federalists, Part 2]

Foreign policy became a key divide between Federalists and the emerging Jeffersonian Republicans, all the more so as Britain and France escalated a rolling series of continental wars. At the same time, domestic polarization around Hamilton's plan of public finance and its successor policies, contributed to a roiling base of political support for Jefferson's growing opposition. Despite Washington's unanimous reelection to the presidency, the divisions between Federalists and Republicans that would eventually doom the former were already at work.

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Episode 62: One-Term Wonders: John Quincy Adams, the Last Jeffersonian?

Like his father in so many ways, JQA was a man of immense talents, a statesman of vast achievements, a brilliant political mind, and -- like his father -- a one-term president. JQA may, still, be the most qualified person ever to reach the presidency. And yet from the outset, his presidency was a failure. His political angling to get the presidency, the so-called “Corrupt Bargain” between Adams and fourth-place finisher Henry Clay, pitched Adams into the presidency via the House of Representatives. Even though this conformed to the formal constitutional method of selection, it offended the political sensibilities of most Americans and limited Adams’s effectiveness. Jay and Luke trace Adams’s policy priorities, his role in advancing what became the American System, and how his administration paved the way for the Jacksonian era.