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270 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1754%u20131800farmers in the South and West and strong Republican majorities in Congress, this %u201cVirginia Dynasty%u201d completed what Jefferson had called the Revolution of 1800. It reversed many Federalist policies and actively supported westward expansion.When Jefferson took office in 1801, he inherited an old international conflict. Beginning in the 1780s, the Barbary States of North Africa had raided merchant ships in the Mediterranean, and like many European nations, the United States had paid an annual bribe%u2014massive in relation to the size of the federal budget%u2014to protect its vessels. Initially Jefferson refused to pay this %u201ctribute%u201d and ordered the U.S. Navy to attack the pirates%u2019 home ports. After four years of intermittent fighting, in which the United States bombarded Tripoli and captured the city of Derna, the Jefferson administration cut its costs. It signed a peace treaty that included a ransom for returned prisoners, and Algerian ships were soon taking American sailors hostage again. Finally, in 1815, President Madison sent a fleet of ten warships to the Barbary Coast under the command of Commodore Stephen Decatur, which forced leaders in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli to sign a treaty respecting American sovereignty.At home, Jefferson inherited a national judiciary filled with Federalist appointees, including the formidable John Marshall of Virginia, the new chief justice of the Supreme Court. To add more Federalist judges, the outgoing Federalist Congress had passed the Judiciary Act of 1801. The act created sixteen new judgeships and various other positions, which President Adams filled at the last moment with %u201cmidnight appointees.%u201d The Federalists %u201chave retired into the judiciary as a stronghold,%u201d Jefferson complained, %u201cand from that battery all the works of Republicanism are to be beaten down and destroyed.%u201dJefferson%u2019s fears were soon realized. When Republican legislatures in Kentucky and Virginia repudiated the Alien and Sedition Acts as unconstitutional, John Marshall, chief justice of the Supreme Court, declared that only the Supreme Court held the power of constitutional review. The Court claimed this authority for itself when James Madison, the new secretary of state, refused to deliver the commission of William Marbury, one of Adams%u2019s midnight appointees. In Marbury v. Madison (1803), Marshall asserted that Marbury had the right to the appointment under the Judiciary Act of 1789, but the clause America in the Middle East, 1804 To protect American merchants from captivity in the Barbary States, President Thomas Jefferson sent the U.S. Navy to North Africa in 1804. To commemorate the American victory in Tripoli, Michel Felice Corne painted this panoramic scene showing an American squadron engaging Tripolitan gunboats. U.S. naval vessels in the foreground include, from left to right, the schooners Enterprise and Nautilus, brigs Argusand Syren, the schooner Vixen, and Commodore Edward Preble%u2019s flagship, the U.S.S. Constitution. %u201cOur loss in Killed & Wounded has been considerable,%u201d Preble reported after the battle, and %u201cthe Enemy must have suffered very much.%u201d GL Archive/Alamy.Marbury v. Madison (1803)A Supreme Court case that established the principle of judicial review in finding that parts of the Judiciary Act of 1789 were in conflict with the Constitution. For the first time, the Supreme Court assumed legal authority to overrule acts of other branches of the government.%u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Do not distribute.