Page 69 - Demo

CHAPTER 7 Hammering Out a Federal Republic, 1787%u20131820 271of the act that gave him the right to bring his claim to the Supreme Court conflicted with Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution. By finding that a clause of the Judiciary Act of 1789 was unconstitutional, Marshall established the Court%u2019s authority to review congressional legislation and interpret the Constitution. %u201cIt is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is,%u201d the chief justice declared, directly challenging the Republican view that the state legislatures had that power.Ignoring this setback, Jefferson and the Republicans reversed other Federalist policies. When the Alien and Sedition Acts expired in 1801, Congress branded them unconstitutional and refused to extend them. It also amended the Naturalization Act, restoring the original waiting period of five years for resident aliens to become citizens. Charging the Federalists with grossly expanding the national government%u2019s size and power, Jefferson had the Republican Congress shrink it. He abolished all internal taxes, including the excise tax that had sparked the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. To quiet Republican fears of a military coup, Jefferson reduced the size of the permanent army. He also secured repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801, ousting forty of Adams%u2019s midnight appointees. Still, Jefferson retained competent Federalist officeholders, removing only 69 of 433 properly appointed Federalists during his eight years as president.Jefferson likewise governed tactfully in fiscal affairs. He tolerated the economically important Bank of the United States, which he had once condemned as unconstitutional. But he chose as his secretary of the treasury Albert Gallatin, a fiscal conservative who believed that the national debt was %u201can evil of the first magnitude.%u201d By limiting expenditures and using customs revenue to redeem government bonds, Gallatin reduced the debt from $83 million in 1801 to $45 million in 1812. With Jefferson and Gallatin at the helm, the nation%u2019s fiscal affairs were no longer run in the interests of northeastern creditors and merchants.Jefferson and the WestJefferson had long championed settlement of the West. He celebrated the yeoman farmer in Notes on the State of Virginia (1785); wrote one of the Confederation%u2019s western land ordinances; and supported Pinckney%u2019s Treaty (1795), the agreement between the United States and Spain that reopened the Mississippi River to American trade and allowed settlers to export crops via the Spanish-held port of New Orleans.As president, Jefferson pursued policies that made it easier for farm families to acquire land. In 1796, a Federalist-dominated Congress had set the price of land in the national domain at $2 per acre; by the 1830s, Jefferson-inspired Republican Congresses had enacted more than three hundred laws that cut the cost to $1.25, eased credit terms, and allowed illegal squatters to buy their farms. Eventually, in the Homestead Act of 1862, Congress gave farmsteads to settlers for free.The Louisiana Purchase International events challenged Jefferson%u2019s vision of westward expansion. In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in France and sought to reestablish France%u2019s American empire. In 1801, he coerced Spain into signing a secret treaty that returned Louisiana to France and restricted American access to New Orleans, violating Pinckney%u2019s Treaty. Napoleon also launched an invasion to restore French rule in Saint-Domingue. It was once the richest sugar colony in the Americas, but its civil war had ruined the economy and cost France a fortune. Napoleon wanted to crush the rebellion and restore its planter class.Napoleon%u2019s actions in Haiti and Louisiana prompted Jefferson to question his pro-French foreign policy. %u201cThe day that France takes possession of New Orleans, we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation,%u201d the president warned, dispatching James Monroe to Britain to negotiate an alliance. To keep the Mississippi River open to western farmers, Jefferson told Robert Livingston, the American minister in Paris, to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans.Jefferson%u2019s diplomacy yielded a magnificent prize: the entire territory of Louisiana. By 1802, the French invasion of Saint-Domingue was faltering in the face of disease and determined Black resistance, a new war threatened in Europe, and Napoleon feared an exam tipThe impact of early Supreme Court decisions on the issue of federal laws taking precedence over state laws is important to know on the AP%u00ae exam.exam tipA key idea to trace starting with the Louisiana Purchase is the conflict between national and sectional interests as a result of western expansion.%u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Do not distribute.