What do you really know about American government, the Constitution, and your rights as a citizen?
Civics in a Year is a fast-paced podcast series that delivers essential civic knowledge in just 10 minutes per episode. Over the course of a year, we’ll explore 250 key questions—from the founding documents and branches of government to civil liberties, elections, and public participation.
Rooted in the Civic Literacy Curriculum from the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University, this series is a collaborative project supported by the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. Each episode is designed to spark curiosity, strengthen constitutional understanding, and encourage active citizenship.
Whether you're a student, educator, or lifelong learner, Civics in a Year will guide you through the building blocks of American democracy—one question at a time.
•The Center for American Civics•Season 1•Episode 154
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
0:00
|
14:36
We trace how a bitter tie, backroom assurances, and a soft-spoken inauguration produced a peaceful transfer of power and a new model of the presidency. Jefferson’s famous unity line meets the hard edges of judicial fights and the messy blend of ideals with continuity.
• Context of the 1800 election and party divides • Oral delivery and Jefferson’s anti-pomp style • Hamilton’s role in tipping support to Jefferson • Peaceful transfer from Adams and its meaning • “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists” unpacked • Tension between unity rhetoric and partisan moves • Court shutdown, appellate eliminations, Chase impeachment • Keeping the bank and governing through compromise • What still matters about the address and what does not • Framing disagreements without breaking the union
Make sure you join us as we talk about the Louisiana Purchase next time
Welcome back to Civics in a Year. We are looking at primary sources and American history through that lens. And today we are looking at Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural address with Dr. Sean Weinberg. Dr. Weinberg, you know, we're looking at this. What is happening when this document is written? When we talk about these early inaugural addresses, right? I think now we think like the first time the president speaks, he's speaking. But did Thomas Jefferson actually speak this address, or was this meant to be only written and read?
SPEAKER_00
So this one is this is actually one of the things I'm going to talk about. So I'm glad that you mentioned this. So this one is delivered orally. Jefferson's
State of the Union addresses, he switches to written. But this is basically a very short four paragraphs. It's basically four paragraphs, four or five. And I was actually rereading the sort of contemporary recountings of it. And they say he sort of sneaked in there quietly, talked quietly, and then sort of cleared out. He's very soft-spoken. But you raise a really important point about the way Jefferson understands politics, which is Jefferson does not like the idea of the sort of grandiose
federal government quasi-monarchical imagery. And so he says the presidency is, again, one of the themes we've talked about a lot with the earlier ones. The president is supposed to primarily be an implementer and administrator of Congress as the primary thing. And so this vision of the sort of imperial president roaming in here and everyone like groveling before his feet and standing and sitting and wearing silly-colored shirts to protest or whatever, like this is this is not something he's good with. So he does switch to State of the Union addresses being written, which remains the norm uh until Woodrow Wilson, who reverses it, basically the inversion of Jefferson's reasoning, because he wants to make the president look cool and strong and imperial and the leader of the United States government. So Wilson switches that. So this address is orally delivered, but basically the rest of what comes out of Jefferson is written because he has this vision of the presidency not as grandiose. So great, great question.
SPEAKER_01
Well, because I know that when we talked about, and I know Professor Careese has talked about this too, is the farewell address by George Washington is not meant to be read out loud. So when you read it out loud, it's kind of weird because it just wasn't meant for that. So that is why I asked that question.
SPEAKER_00
So it has lots of like poll quote lines that clearly sound better. Now it's it's distributed, it is distributed and printed very like the farewell address. But it this one is intended for oral delivery originally.
SPEAKER_01
So for the CEN, who is the intended audience and what is Jefferson trying to do with this inaugural address?
back up a little bit on the context is the bitter election of the war of um the 1800 election, which is itself sort of a fallout of what we were just talking about, the divides between the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans, basically, and how to deal with the quasi-war with France. So just a little bit of context at the end of Adams' presidency. He's getting pressed by Hamilton, who wants a massive army. The depiction of this in the John Adams series, I just absolutely love. I have a couple problems with that series, but on the whole, it's really good. Hamilton, Adams is a sort of moderate federalist. In some ways, he actually still is closer to Jefferson in some ways. He doesn't have this grand vision of America as this like sweeping imperial military power, this big, you know, federal bureaucracy, these things that Hamilton is sort of flirting with. But Adams, and Hamilton basically has Adams's cabinet is under Hamilton's effective control. And Adams eventually pushes Hamilton out. Uh Hamilton is himself retired by this point, but Puppet
basically he fires Hamilton's people. Hamilton in response writes a vicious letter torching Adams as a complete scumbag, mostly being vain. But uh and then at the end he says, but we should still probably support him anyway, although he probably seems to want Adams's vice president or Adams's other co-nominee as the leader. And so they were the 1800 election is really divisive. And we end up with the sort of the freak scenario of the before the 12th Amendment, the top two getters of the Electoral College are the president and the vice president. And so they end up as a tie with Jefferson and Burr. And you get a whole bunch of like nasty politics where some Federalists are willing to play with Burr because they hate Jefferson so much. Hamilton, who obviously hates Jefferson personally, and is actually somewhat fond of Burr personally, convinces them that Burr is in fact such a complete immoral mercenary scumbag that Jefferson, you know, famously leans on the allies. Excuse me, Hamilton leans on the moderate Federalists to back, to back Jefferson over Burr. It's still looking like it could be dicey. Jefferson's allies signal to the Federalists that he will leave the bank alone. He won't purge all the Federalists from office, he'll keep the Navy. So he's not just going to completely undo everything that they care about. And so enough Federalists abstain to give Jefferson the presidency over Burr. And they passed the 12th Amendment around at this point to basically say, no, we don't want to have we recognize political parties are a thing now. And so we want to make clear about that. So that's the backstory here is that Jefferson is taking power in what is, and it's easy to miss this. This is a peaceful handover of power from a defeated, a defeated individual, right? Washington gets credit for standing down for power. But Adams also, I think, gets credit for, yeah, he sulks and sort of storms off in the carriage or whatever. But he says, I took I lost. Like American people have spoken, the idiots, but like I lose. I'm going back, I'm gonna go hang out back in in Quincy, uh, which is where he'd actually been spending time anyway, because he was just so frustrated with government. Um so Ad Adams is probably not that unhappy to be leaving government, in fact. So Jefferson's speech here focuses on a few, it's it's pretty short. The sort of the most famous
section, I think, is when he is talking about sort of the classic vision of I won the election, everybody should come together, which is a very a version of this is in basically every inaugural address, pretty much. But the most famous line, and I'll just read this, is he says, Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all federalists. And here he's being kind of clever because he's playing on the party names, but of course, everyone will say, I am a Republican as opposed to a monarchist, I'm a federalist as opposed to a unitary person, right? So it's a clever play. And then he says, if there are any among us who wish to dissolve this union or change its Republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it. So, like, yeah, if there are some secessionists or monarchists, like we'll leave them alone because like we're such a free cult, we're a free people. Now, this is a slightly disingenuous line from Jefferson because he had been flirting with secession if the elections had gone bad, and some of his letters to Madison and others. So I guess he was saying we should have tolerated him too if it had gone the other way around. So Jefferson takes so Jefferson takes office and he has a control he has Congress uh as well. And it's worth emphasizing many historians think that one of the, if not the pivotal cause of this is in fact backlash to the Sedition and Alien Acts. Uh that this had been something that was passed, it had a sunset. Jefferson and crew very much signaled they were against
this, and seemingly the American people backed them on this. Or at least the state, again, the state legislatures are doing much of the picking, but they're still elected by the people indirectly, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? So I guess the question would be: does Jefferson actually follow through on this? So his audience is all of the American people. I mean, strictly speaking, it's still the people assembled in this, but it's basically the American people. Yeah. And particularly embittered Federalists. What happens when he takes power? Well, the Jeffersonians move to close down the Supreme Court temporarily, and they do. John Marshall and Friends basically get a vacation for a year, which the Supreme Court says is constitutional, over the protests of several of their internal members. But Marshall isn't going to fight it. Again, going back to my drum I beat, that Marbury Madison is not a sweeping assertion of judicial power because they hand that down at the same time and say, Yep, see you guys in a year, close us down, that's fine. The Jeffersonians eliminate the appellate judges, which is, I think, quite unconstitutional. You can maybe reassign them, you can maybe leave them benched or something, but they have that there is a guarantee of good behavior, life tenure under the under the under the Constitution. And at one point, Jefferson, Jefferson's allies moved to impeach the Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, who is admittedly a jerk and admittedly on the bench is basically saying, heck yeah, let's use the Sedition Act against these traitorous Jeffersonians. So it's not unreasonable that they would dislike this fellow. Now, and this one, in some sense, vindicates Jefferson's sort of message because you end up with a coalition of moderate Federalists
who are closer to Adams, and moderate Jeffersonians say, we do not want to set the model of we sack justices, judges we don't like. We're just, we're not, that is so dangerous. And so you do have at least a modest, moderate faction, both of them comes together. And in some ways, Jefferson does end up keeping, does end up governing as a sort of blend of his own personal preferences and some of the things the Federalists had done. They they keep the bank, uh, for example. His Treasury Secretary, Albert Gallatin, doesn't like some of Hamilton's constitutional theories, but he defends the bank. They do various other things like that. So yeah, so it is a it's a sort of a vision of the country coming back together and places where the Republicans and the Federalists can can work together, but not all Jefferson's allies are quite so magnanimous in in victory. Again, as I laughed before, Jefferson had been happy using state libel laws under common law to go after Federalists. So it's uh there are ways in which it rings hollow. And I say that as somebody who's often, I think, more sympathetic to Jefferson than, say, my colleague Paul Caris. But that there are some places here where Jefferson is uh he's a party man, even if he thinks he's not a party
I I'm not totally convinced that it does, uh, is my slightly hot take, but it is often quoted for the section that I read. I mean, there's other parts, but basically the section that I read. I mean, I I think that's about the only part people care about. Are there other parts that people quote? I think it's mostly that.
SPEAKER_01
I think the quote on civic virtue, where he says, and can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only from basis a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God.
SPEAKER_00
So, I mean, that's a that's a true sentiment. I agree with all of that. People agree with all that. It's fairly sort of generic and platitudinous, which is why it doesn't sort of jump out at me. But the line about sort of we got to come back together after an election, and ideally we recognize that at least at the time, you know, the the division the division between the Federalists and the Republicans really isn't that large compared to other moments in American political history. So I think it's I I I don't like the sort of election's over, let's pretend that we don't have disagreements. Like Tokville explains why that's a bad idea. Yes. It's wrong uh scriptively and it's wrong normatively. But the idea that we should keep some perspective and say, what are we actually disagreeing about? And are we is the scope of this disagreement sufficient that like now we're talking about dissolving the union, for example? Like maybe there comes a point when that's true, but like that's that's a bell you don't you can't unring. So the the Jefferson inaugural address, I think, is useful as a sort of a call to sort of pause and say, what are we actually disagreeing about? How fundamental is that disagreement? Are we really going to destroy the union, in this case, over a disagreement about the bank and the now expired sedition acts? Like probably not.
SPEAKER_01
All right. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Beinberg. And we're gonna get into another Jeffersonian thing on our next episode and talk about the Louisiana Purchase. So make sure you join us.
