under the wise chieftainship of Washington, but their political
principles could never be merged. And when, finally, Jefferson
resigned, he became forthwith the leader of the opposition--not
to Washington, but to Federalism as interpreted by Hamilton, John
Adams, and Jay.

The name Anti-Federalist lost its aptness after the inauguration
of the Government. Jefferson and his school were not opposed to a
federal government. They were opposed only to its pretensions, to
its assumption of centralized power. Their deep faith in popular
control is revealed in the name they assumed,
Democratic-Republican. They were eager to limit the federal power
to the glorification of the States; the Federalists were
ambitious to expand the federal power at the expense of localism.
This is what Jefferson meant when he wrote to Washington as early
as 1792, "The Republican party wish to preserve the Government in
its present form." Now this is a very definite and fundamental
distinction. It involves the political difference between
government by the people and government by the representatives of
the people, and the practical difference between a government by
law and a government by mass-meeting.

Jefferson was a master organizer. At letter-writing, the one
means of communication in those days, he was a Hercules. His pen
never wearied. He soon had a compact party. It included not only
most of the Anti-Federalists, but the small politicians, the
tradesmen and artisans, who had worked themselves into a
ridiculous frenzy over the French Revolution and who despised
Washington for his noble neutrality. But more than these,
Jefferson won over a number of distinguished men who had worked