ere now added Albert
Gallatin and Edward Livingston. Edward Livingston, from New York, was
young, and as yet inexperienced in debate, but of remarkable powers. He
was another example of that early intellectual maturity which was a
characteristic of the time.

When Congress met, the all-disturbing question was the foreign policy of
the United States. The influence of the French Revolution upon American
politics was great. The Federalists, conservative in their views, held
the new democratic doctrines in abhorrence, and used the terrible
excesses of the French Revolution with telling force against their
Republican adversaries. The need of a strong government was held up as
the only alternative to anarchy. In the struggle which now united Europe
against the French republic, the sympathies of the Federalists were with
England. Hence they were accused of a desire to establish a monarchy in
the United States, and were ignominiously called the British party.
Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts and the Whiskey Insurrection in
Pennsylvania gave point to their arguments.

On the other side was the large and powerful party which, throughout the
war in the Continental Congress, under the confederation in the national
convention which framed and in the state conventions which ratified the
Constitution, had opposed the tendency to centralization, but had been
defeated by the yearning of the body of the plain people for a
government strong enough at least to secure them peace at home and
protection abroad. This natural craving being satisfied, the old
aversion to class distinctions returned. The dread of an aristocracy,
which did not exist even in name, threw many of the supporters of the
Constitution into the ranks of its opponents, who were democrats in name
and in fact. The proclamation of the rights of man awoke this latent
sentiment, and aroused an intense sympathy for the people of France.
This again was strengthened by the memory, still warm, of the services
of France in the cause of independence. Lafayette, who represented the
true French republican spirit, and held a place in the affections of the
American people second only to that of Washington, was languishing, a
prisoner to the coalition of sovereigns, in an Austrian dungeon.

Jefferson returned from France deeply imbued with the spirit of the
French Revolution. His views were warmly received by his political
friends, and the principles of the new school of politics were