The Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon in 1803 opened vast Western expanses of fertile land, which exactly met the needs of the rapidly expanding population of yeomen farmers whom Jefferson championed.

All the leaders of the new nation were committed to republicanism, and the doubts of the Anti-Federalists of 1788 were allayed with the passage of a Bill of Rights as the first ten amendments to the Constitution in 1791.

With Washington's support and against Thomas Jefferson's opposition, Hamilton convinced Congress to pass a far-reaching financial program that was patterned after the system developed in England a century earlier.

There were early signs of the economic and cultural rift between the Northern and Southern states that was to burst into flames seven decades later: the South and its plantation-based economy resisted a centralized federal government and subordination to Northeastern business interests.

The First Bank of the United States was thus created that year despite arguments from Thomas Jefferson and his supporters that it was unconstitutional while Hamilton declared that it was entirely within the powers granted to the federal government.

[7] Foreign policy unexpectedly took center stage starting in 1793, when revolutionary France became engulfed in war with the rest of Europe, an event that was to lead to 22 years of fighting.

The Washington administration's policy of neutrality was widely supported, but the Jeffersonians strongly favored France and deeply distrusted the British, who they saw as enemies of republicanism.

The Republicans gained support in the winter of 1793–94 as the Royal Navy impressed alleged deserters serving on American merchantmen, but the tensions were resolved with the Jay Treaty of 1794, which opened up 10 years of prosperous trade in exchange for which Britain would remove troops from its fortifications along the Canada–U.S border.

The Federalists likewise rallied supporters in a vicious conflict, which continued until 1795 when Washington publicly intervened in the debate, using his prestige to secure ratification.

By this point, the economic and political advantages of the Federalist position had become clear to all concerned, combined with growing disdain for France after the Reign of Terror and Jacobin anti-religious policies.

[13] These domestic difficulties were compounded by international complications: France, angered by American approval in 1795 of the Jay Treaty with its great enemy Britain proclaimed that food and war material bound for British ports were subject to seizure by the French navy.

The Naturalization Act, which changed the residency requirement for citizenship from five to 14 years, was targeted at Irish and French immigrants suspected of supporting the Republican Party.

Napoleon, who had just come to power, received them cordially, and the danger of conflict subsided with the negotiation of the Convention of 1800, which formally released the United States from its 1778 wartime alliance with France.

Serving until his death in 1835, Marshall dramatically expanded the powers of the Supreme Court and provided a Federalist interpretation of the Constitution that made for a strong national government.

[16] Thomas Jefferson is a central figure in early American history, highly praised for his political leadership but also criticized for the role of slavery in his private life.

He led and inspired the American Revolution, advocated freedom of religion and tolerance, and opposed the centralizing tendencies of the urban financial elite.

In 1798, in order to pay for the rapidly expanding army and navy, the Federalists had enacted a new tax on houses, land and slaves, affecting every property owner in the country.

In it, Jefferson promised "a wise and frugal government" to preserve order among the inhabitants but would "leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry, and improvement".

[citation needed] Jefferson encouraged agriculture and westward expansion, most notably by the Louisiana Purchase and subsequent Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Jefferson and his associates were widely distrustful of the judicial branch, especially because Adams had made several "midnight" appointments before leaving office in March 1801.

In Marbury vs Madison (1803), the Supreme Court under John Marshall established the precedent of reviewing and overturning legislation passed by Congress.

This ruling by leading Federalists upset Jefferson to the point where his administration began opening impeachment hearings against judges perceived as abusing their power.

[20] With the upcoming expiration in 1807 of the 20-year ban on Congressional action on the subject, Jefferson, a lifelong opponent of the slave trade, successfully called on Congress to criminalize the international slave trade, calling it "violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe.

Believing that Britain could not rely on other sources of food than the United States, Congress and President Jefferson suspended all U.S. trade with foreign nations in the Embargo Act of 1807, hoping to get the British to end their blockade of the American coast.

[34] James Madison won the U.S. presidential election of 1808, largely on the strength of his abilities in foreign affairs at a time when Britain and France were both on the brink of war with the United States.

[35] At the same time, the size of the U.S. Navy was reduced due to ideological opposition to a large standing military and the Federal government became considerably weakened when the charter of the First National Bank expired and Congress declined to renew it.

A clamor for military action thus erupted just as relations with Britain and France were at a low point and the U.S.'s ability to wage war had been reduced.

Recovery from the destruction left in the wake of the war began, including rebuilding the Library of Congress collection which had been destroyed in the Burning of Washington.

[39] Judith Sargent Murray published the early and influential essay On the Equality of the Sexes in 1790, blaming poor standards in female education as the root of women's problems.

[40] However, scandals surrounding the personal lives of English contemporaries Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft pushed feminist authorship into private correspondence from the 1790s through the early decades of the nineteenth century.