They had savagely criticized the Sedition law and Jefferson refused to enforce it.  They had been deeply offended by the assault on freedom of speech and press and they promptly impeached Samuel Chase, a justice of the Supreme Court, who had been especially severe in his attacks upon offenders under the Sedition Act.  Their failure to convict Justice Chase by a narrow margin was due to no lack of zeal on their part but to the Federalist strength in the Senate where the trial was held.  They had regarded the appointment of a large number of federal judges during the last hours of Adams’ administration as an attempt to intrench Federalists in the judiciary and to enlarge the sphere of the national government.  Accordingly, they at once repealed the act creating the new judgeships, thus depriving the “midnight appointees” of their posts.  They had considered the federal offices, civil and military, as sources of great strength to the Federalists and Jefferson, though committed to the principle that offices should be open to all and distributed according to merit, was careful to fill most of the vacancies as they occurred with trusted Republicans.  To his credit, however, it must be said that he did not make wholesale removals to find room for party workers.

The Republicans thus hewed to the line of their general policy of restricting the weight, dignity, and activity of the national government.  Yet there were no Republicans, as the Federalists asserted, prepared to urge serious modifications in the Constitution.  “If there be any among us who wish to dissolve this union or to change its republican form,” wrote Jefferson in his first inaugural, “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.”  After reciting the fortunate circumstances of climate, soil, and isolation which made the future of America so full of promise, Jefferson concluded:  “A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement and shall not take from the mouth of labour the bread it has earned.  This is the sum of good government; and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”

In all this the Republicans had not reckoned with destiny.  In a few short years that lay ahead it was their fate to double the territory of the country, making inevitable a continental nation; to give the Constitution a generous interpretation that shocked many a Federalist; to wage war on behalf of American commerce; to reestablish the hated United States Bank; to enact a high protective tariff; to see their Federalist opponents in their turn discredited as nullifiers and provincials; to announce high national doctrines in foreign affairs; and to behold the Constitution exalted and defended against the pretensions of states by a son of old Virginia, John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.