It’s On: Adams v. Jefferson!

One of the more interesting aspects of the conflict between Jefferson and Adams is how little difference it made in the long run in American history, except, perhaps, for an early establishment of the two party tradition.  For all Jefferson’s partiality to France, when he was in office he steered a strictly neutral course.  The economic development of the country was little changed by the switch in parties in power.  The battles over internal developments that marked the conflicts between Democrats and Whigs, were matters for a later time when expansion and technological progress brought them to the fore.  The Alien and Sedition Acts which loom large in the below video:

involved less of principle and more of politics.  Jefferson, for example, was in favor of prosecutions of federalists under state sedition laws in states which his followers controlled. 

As Jefferson and Adams found when they began an increasingly friendly private correspondence in 1812, the two old revolutionaries agreed on far more than they differed, and I would argue that their differences were usually more theoretical than practical, as both demonstrated in their presidencies.

Adams and Jefferson were both able men, and the country was fortunate to have each of them.