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228 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1754–1800

prisoners, and Algerian ships were soon tak-
ing 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 appoin-
tees, including the formidable John Mar-
shall of Virginia, the new chief justice of
the Supreme Court. To add more Federal-
ist judges, the outgoing Federalist Congress
had passed the Judiciary Act of 1801. The
America in the Middle East, 1804 To protect American merchants from capture act created sixteen new judgeships and vari-
and captivity in the Barbary States, President Thomas Jefferson sent in the U.S. Navy. This ous other positions, which President Adams
1846 lithograph, created by the famous firm of Currier & Ives, depicts one of the three filled at the last moment with “midnight
attacks on the North African port of Tripoli by Commodore Edward Preble in August 1804. appointees.” The Federalists “have retired
As the USS Constitution and other large warships lob shells into the city, small American into the judiciary as a stronghold,” Jeffer-
gunboats defend the fleet from Tripolitan gunboats. “Our loss in Killed & Wounded has
been considerable,” Preble reported, and “the Enemy must have suffered very much . . . son complained, “and from that battery all
among their Shipping and on shore.” The Granger Collection, New York. the works of Republicanism are to be beaten
down and destroyed.”
EXAM TIP Jefferson’s fears were soon realized. When Republican legislatures in Ken-
The continuity of Federalist power tucky and Virginia repudiated the Alien and Sedition Acts as unconstitutional,
through the courts is important to John Marshall, chief justice of the Supreme Court, declared that only the Supreme
®
know on the AP Exam. Court held the power of constitutional review. The Court claimed this author-
ity for itself when James Madison, the new secretary of state, refused to deliver
the commission of William Marbury, one of Adams’s midnight appointees. In
Marbury v. Madison (1803) Marbury v. Madison (1803), Marshall asserted that Marbury had the right to the
A Supreme Court case that established the appointment under the Judiciary Act of 1789, but the clause of the act that gave
principle of judicial review in finding that him the right to bring his claim to the Supreme Court conflicted with Article
parts of the Judiciary Act of 1789 were in
conflict with the Constitution. For the first III, Section 2, of the Constitution. By finding that a clause of the Judiciary Act of
time, the Supreme Court assumed legal 1789 was unconstitutional, Marshall established the Court’s authority to review
authority to overrule acts of other branches
of the government. congressional legislation and interpret the Constitution. “It is emphatically the
province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is,” the chief jus-
tice 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 citi-
zens. Charging the Federalists with grossly expanding the national government’s 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’s
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 economi-
cally important Bank of the United States, which he had once condemned as uncon-
stitutional. But he chose as his secretary of the treasury Albert Gallatin, a fiscal
conservative who believed that the national debt was “an evil of the first magnitude.”
By limiting expenditures and using customs revenue to redeem government bonds,
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