Photonic Torpedoes

Notes and tid bits I picked up while reading What Kind of Nation: Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and the Epic Struggle to Create a United States by James F. Simon:

Thomas Jefferson did not attend George Washington’s funeral. The explanation he offered was that he had difficulty traveling from Philadelphia to Mount Vernon, VA during the winter. However, Jefferson was known to be disdainful of elaborate political ceremonies and Washington’s funeral was certainly filled with pomp and circumstance.

It didn’t help matters that Washington had Federalist sympathies, though he never officially joined the party. Federalists were the party in power at the time of his death in 1799, so Jefferson, a rival Democratic-Republican, probably thought that he didn’t miss much.

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During the presidential campaign of 1800, Jefferson did virtually no campaigning of his own. He didn’t want the election to be about personality, so he let his ideas and principles speak for themselves. He believed that his Democratic-Republican ideals of state soveriegnty and the power of the legislature (over that of the executive) would win the day after twelve years of Federalist hegemony, especially with public resentment toward the Alien and Sedition Acts.