DISTRIBUTION OF POWER

It had been relatively easy to choose the country’s first president. George Washington was loved by the populace and retained respect within the halls of power. By 1800, however, the political climate reflected two points of view: Republicans (those who followed Jefferson’s philosophy of a limited central government, with more power to the states) and Federalists (the Hamiltonians, including John Adams, who believed a stronger central government was essential to preserving national unity). John Adams had been elected president in 1796 over Thomas Jefferson, winning by a narrow margin of seventy-one electoral votes over Jefferson’s sixty-eight. Jefferson served as Adams’s vice president, and at this point it became obvious that a president and vice president with opposing philosophies created a somewhat unstable governing body. During Adams’s administration there had been…