Jeffersonian (or Madisonian) Republicans appeared within three years of the inauguration of the federal Constitution, as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and lesser figures in the infant federal government united with, encouraged, and assumed the leadership of popular opposition to Alexander Hamilton's financial programs. This resistance, though, assumed the shape of the first political party only as a conflict over foreign policy politicized and mobilized a mass electorate for national competition. In this sense, the Jeffersonian Republicans originated in conflicting sympathies about the French Revolution and were preoccupied, throughout their history, with the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

Alexander Hamilton's proposals for the funding of the national debt, federal assumption of the revolutionary obligations of the states, creation of a national bank, and federal encouragement of native manufacturers were intended to equip the new United States with economic and financial institutions similar to those that had...