Such a policy was
odious anywhere; in a democracy it was also insane. Further the Aliens
Law and the Sedition Law which he induced Congress to pass were in
flagrant and obvious violation of the letter and spirit of the
Constitution. They were barely through Congress when the storm broke on
their authors. Jefferson, in retirement at Monticello, saw that his hour
was come. He put himself at the head of the opposition and found a whole
nation behind him.

Kentucky, carved out of the western territory and newly grown to
Statehood, took the lead of resistance. For her legislature Jefferson
drafted the famous "Kentucky Resolutions," which condemned the new laws
as unconstitutional (which they were) and refused to allow them to be
administered within her borders. On the strength of these resolutions
Jefferson has been described as the real author of the doctrine of
"Nullification": and technically this may be true. Nevertheless there is
all the difference in the world between the spirit of the Kentucky
Resolutions and that of "Nullification," as South Carolina afterwards
proclaimed its legitimacy. About the former there was nothing sectional.
It was not pretended that Kentucky had any peculiar and local objection
to the Sedition Law, or was standing against the other States in
resisting it. She was vindicating a freedom common to all the States,
valued by all and menaced in all. She claimed that she was making
herself the spokesman of the other States in the same fashion as Hampden
made himself the spokesman of the other great landed proprietors in
resisting taxation by the Crown.

The event amply justified her claim. The oppression laws which the
Federalists had induced Congress to pass were virtually dead letters
from the moment of their passing. And when the time came for the nation
to speak, it rose as one man and flung Adams from his seat. The
Federalist party virtually died of the blow. The dream of an
oligarchical Republic was at an end, and the will of the people,
expressed with unmistakable emphasis, gave the Chief Magistracy to the
author of the Declaration of Independence.

CHAPTER V

THE VIRGINIAN DYNASTY

I have spoken of Jefferson's election as if it had been a direct act of
the people; and morally it was so. But in the actual proceedings there
was a certain hitch, which is of interest not only because it
illustrated a peculiar technical defec