It reached a crude form in Andrew Jackson, the Indian fighter,
and a slightly higher type in Abraham Lincoln, the prairie lawyer.
Jefferson's democracy in the abstract was a kind of political
millennium, in which the people collectively exhibited traits quite
different from their individual components. The people, to Jefferson's
mind, were unselfish, by nature good, and needing no restraining bonds.
They were their own censors. His democracy in the concrete took the
shape of a great uprising of the people in 1800, temporarily led astray
from the true principles of self-government by the undue influence of
Alexander Hamilton acting through the moneyed interests, but returning
joyously and regenerate to the path of constitutional rectitude. The
election of 1800 he pronounced as real a revolution in the principles
of government as was that of 1776 in its form; the material difference
being that one was effected by the sword and the other by the rational
and peaceable method of suffrage. Jefferson had no more conception of
a modern political party than had Washington,--the latter because he
saw in them only factions; the former because his party embraced the
entire people.
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