both in territory and population. Second, it delegates government to
a small number of citizens, chosen as representatives of the larger
community and held accountable by various mechanisms, regular
elections being the most important.^6 A new form of government was
being created, representative democracy, which in due course would
be simply referred to as democracy, without the negative connotations
long associated with the ancient Greek word.
The establishment of this new political regime was the subject of
intense debates throughout the American states, regarding the appro-
priate forms of the institutions, the principles at stake, and the type of
society that could be fostered by democratic rule. Subjects of dis-
agreement were multiple, but early on an opposition divided those
who saw democratic equality as an equality of opportunity among
free individuals in an open process, and those who insisted on results
as well, and sought living conditions as equal as possible. The first
feared excessive popular demands, threats to property rights, and an
alliance with revolutionary France. The second worried about the rise
of a new aristocracy backed up by a strong state and a standing army,
and the “Anglicization” and corruption of American government.^7
Initially, this ideological division did not give rise to a partisan
cleavage, because there were no formal political parties in the new
democracy. It was not long, however, before the two sides organized
into coherent parties. In the election of 1796, voters could choose
between the Federalists led by George Washington, John Adams, and
Alexander Hamilton, and the Republicans of Thomas Jefferson. An
aristocrat and slave-owner worried by commerce and industrializa-
tion, Jefferson was an ambiguous figure, and some have portrayed
him as driven more by the interests of landowners than by an ideal of
equality.^8 In the end, however, Jefferson proved to be a pragmatic
politician. He built a party, reached out to city voters, and defined a
politics that “had a more popular, egalitarian impetus” than that of
(^6) Dunn,Setting the People Free, pp. 77–78.
(^7) Richard J. Ellis,American Political Cultures, New York, Oxford University
Press, 1993, pp. 45 and 63–67; Michael J. Sandel,Democracy’s Discontent:
America in Search of a Public Philosophy, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University
Press, 1996, pp. 133–39; Steven Mintz, “The First New Nation,” inDigital
8 History, Houston, University of Houston, 2003 (www.digitalhistory.uh.edu).
Richard Hofstadter,The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made
It, New York, Vintage Books, 1958, p. 33.
86 Left and Right in Global Politics