Description
In The Second American Revolution, author James Thompson presents a long overdue examination of the ten-year insurgency James Madison managed under the supervision of his retiring mentor, Thomas Jefferson.
Mr. Thompson explains that they began their revolution in the winter of 1791 and continued into the winter of 1801 when Jefferson won his hair’s breadth victory over Aaron Burr and became the nation’s third President. Jefferson and Madison’s insurgency differed from Sam Adams’s because their aim was to rid the government of its wrongheaded administrators, not institute a new government. Mr. Thompson explains that the two Virginians ultimately won their revolution, but in doing so, they poisoned the nation’s enlightened majoritarian system and made it a tool for tyrannical politicians.
Mr. Thompson concedes that majoritarianism is vulnerable to this kind of abuse because it requires political rivals to divide the people against themselves and gain, somehow, the support of the greater number. But he explains that Jefferson and Madison were the first to exploit this anomaly, which they did to gain power for themselves and preserve it for their party.
Mr. Thompson explains that the two Virginians demonstrated their innovative brilliance by organizing and expanding an anti-government “party,” which they grew by recruiting eminent locals to solicit the support of their friends and neighbors. Madison aided his field agents by providing an unending stream of “Whig intelligence” promulgated by a growing network of “anti-Federalist” newspaper publishers and journalists.
By managing and winning local elections, the relentless Virginians built legislative majorities across the agricultural South. In 1800, Jefferson made a seemingly clever deal with New Yorker Aaron Burr. The author explains tha Burr’s victory in the election of 1800 certified the adversarial method the Virginians designed and made it the standard for all future office seekers.
There are no reviews yet.