Power promotes pragmatism

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Warren Winter 2/23/04

US History I Honors

"In his inaugural speech, Jefferson stated: 'We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists' - yet the greatest irony of the Virginia Dynasty was that by 1820, the Republicans were Federalists and the Federalists were gone, thus proving the political dictum: 'power promotes pragmatism.'"

Etymologically derived from the Greek prassein ("to do, act, perform"), pragmatism is defined as "the doctrine that practical consequences are the criteria of knowledge and meaning and value." Inextricable from the dynamic nature of politics is the pragmatic tendency for those in power to orchestrate practical consequences to benefit themselves and their parties. As is evident in the history of the Virginia Dynasty, the most effective way to assuage the political rift between parties is for the dominant party to appeal to an opposing constituency and to its rival party by embracing their ideology. This fluid adaptation of value, as in ideology, to practical outcomes establishes the dictum that "power promotes pragmatism."

Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe constitute the Virginia Dynasty, the Republican line of Virginian presidents who came to dominate American politics for the first two decades of the 19th century. Deemed a "consummate politician" for his ability to espouse his enemies' persuasions, Jefferson set the precedent for the proceeding Republican presidents to integrate Federalist ideology into their executive policies. Regarding Jefferson's political orientation as a whole, it is only consistent in its ambivalence. Simultaneously an aristocrat and a liberal, a pacifist and a nationalist, an agrarian and a proponent of economic progress, a slaveholder and a revolutionary, his ideological composition was demonstrably ambiguous. According to Richard Hofstadter in The American Political Tradition, "[Jefferson] tried to adapt his views to changing circumstances" (33). In a letter to Horatio Gates, Jefferson expressed his hope to "be able to obliterate, or rather to unite the names of federalists and republicans" (46). The consequences of this union of political orientation resounded through the succeeding administrations. The contradictorily Federalist-natured domestic and foreign policies enacted by both Jefferson and Madison reflect the plasticity of party ideology, best demonstrated by their treatment of the Louisiana Purchase, the Hamiltonian financial system, the Barbary pirates, and the War of 1812.

With Napoleon's signing of the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso of 1800 with Spain, France acquired the Louisiana Territory, more than half of whose population consisted of white Americans. By 1801, both parties agreed upon the necessity of acquiring New Orleans, the "Guardian of the Mississippi River," in order to guarantee the right to unload goods there and to sail trade vessels down the Mississippi River. Eschewing the militaristic course of action encouraged by Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson instead pursued diplomatic means and, acting in concert with Secretary of State James Madison, sent James Monroe and Robert R. Livingston to negotiate with the French with a Congressionally-limited offer of $10 million. Monroe and Livingston were unaware of Napoleon's determination to sell the Louisiana Territory in its entirety to the United States. Incited by Napoleon's petulance, on April 12, 1803, Monroe and Livingston hastily agreed to purchase the Louisiana Territory for $15 million in bonds, exceeding by $5 million the Congressionally-approved limit.
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When the news reached the American shores, Federalists decried the purchase for three primary reasons. Holding true to the Federalist tradition of Anglophilia, they opposed the purchase in favor of close relations with Britain over Napoleon. They feared secondly for the security of the political power of New England bankers and merchants along the Atlantic seaboard states, now in opposition to the Republican-inclined Western farmers. The Federalists' other principal grievance ran contrary to their traditionally loose constructionist proclivities - by which the Constitution was deemed merely a broad framework implicitly holding powers for the central government - that ...

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