As Jefferson wrote the Kentucky Resolutions in 1798 and was elected
President in 1800, the people at least appeared to have sustained him in
his exposition of the Constitution, before he entered into office.
At this distance of time we find it hard to realize what the election of
1800 seemed to portend to those who participated therein. Mr. Jefferson
always described it as amounting to a revolution as profound as, if less
bloody than, the revolution of 1776, and though we maybe disposed to
imagine that Jefferson valued his own advent to power at its full worth,
it must be admitted that his enemies regarded it almost as seriously.
Nor were they without some justification, for Jefferson certainly
represented the party of disintegration. "Nullification" would have been
tantamount to a return to the condition of the Confederation. Besides,
Jefferson not so many years before had written, in defence of Shays's
rebellion, that the tree of Liberty could never flourish unless
refreshed occasionally with the blood of patriots and tyrants. To most
Federalists Jefferson seemed a bloodthirsty demagogue.
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