Thomas Jefferson

By Atlas MeyersThe 3rd Presidency (1801–1809)

Length1h 4m

Summary

Thomas Jefferson entered the presidency as a theorist, a man who believed the federal government was a necessary evil to be starved into submission. He left it as the architect of an imperial presidency who had doubled the physical size of the nation and utilized the machinery of the state to enforce an economic quarantine on his own citizens. We analyze the years 1801 through 1809 as a test of the "Empire of Liberty." This was an era defined by the breathtaking expansion of the American horizon and the simultaneous contraction of its political idealism when faced with the realities of global conflict. It is the story of a man who successfully dismantled the pomp of the Federalist court only to replace it with the cold pragmatism of territorial acquisition. This is the chronicle of the moment the United States stopped being a defensive experiment and began its march toward continental hegemony.