sical progress.

As the head of a party which had effected a revolution in government,
Jefferson's first care was to reconcile his opponents to Republican
rule. The inaugural address emphasized the principles upon which all
republican governments must be based. It is often said that these
principles might have been uttered by Washington with equal
propriety--as good Federalist doctrine. This is to mistake the
significance of the revolution which had occurred. A party had triumphed
which Federalists firmly believed inimical to all government. The
announcement that the fundamental principles to which all Americans were
attached would guide the new Administration had a meaning which it would
not have had if uttered by a Federalist President. So far did Jefferson
lean in holding out the olive branch that he ran the risk of minimizing
the revolution of 1800. To say that "every difference of opinion is not
a difference of principle. We are all Republicans, we are all
Federalists," was to contradict his often expressed conviction that his
party had saved the country from monarchy.

Aside from such generalities as that wise government consists in
restraining men from injuring one another and leaving them free to
regulate their own pursuits, the inaugural address contains no
declaration of purpose or policies. No such reticence marks Jefferson's
private letters, which are, indeed, the best expression of his political
philosophy. Nowhere is the governing purpose of his Administration
stated more clearly than in a letter written just before his
inauguration. "Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns
only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other
nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the
better the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our
general government may be reduced to a very simple organization and a
very unexpensive one,--a few plain duties to be performed by a few
servants."

The first and most troublesome task of the Administration was to select
these few servants. Even in naming the heads of departments, the
President experienced some embarrassment, for, while Madison accepted
readily the Secretaryship of State and Albert Gallatin that of the
Treasury, the naval portfolio went begging. Robert Smith, of Maryland,
was finally persuaded to accept the post. Two New Englanders, Henry
Dearborn and Levi Lincoln, became Secretary of War and Attorne