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Politics can't be zero sum
The principle
Jefferson put that principle at the center of his 1801 inaugural address. He called it sacred that the will of the majority must prevail in all cases, but that to be rightful it must be reasonable, and that the minority possess equal rights which equal law must protect and to violate would be oppression.
The bitter campaign
The campaign behind it had been vituperative. Adams, Hamilton, and their Federalist allies accused Jefferson of being an atheist and a Jacobin, the kind of man who would start guillotining his opponents once he won. Jefferson's side painted Adams as a crypto-monarchist and a British stooge. Jefferson did not guillotine anyone, and he did not raise a gibbet in Washington.
The aftermath
His win showed that power could pass peacefully from one party to another. Afterward he repaired his friendship with John Adams, though not with Abigail Adams. He also came to treat Hamilton as a worthy rival: in the hallway of his private residence, he kept a bust of Hamilton facing his own bust.
Why did Federalists fear a Jacobin president?
The Jacobins were the radical French revolutionary faction behind the Reign of Terror of 1793 and 1794. Historians estimate roughly 17,000 people were officially executed during that period, many by guillotine. Federalists tied Jefferson to the French Revolution because he had lived in Paris and supported it. They warned that his election would bring the same violence to America.
How did Jefferson and Adams make up?
Their friendship broke over the bitter campaign and the midnight appointments Adams made as he left office. In 1812 their mutual friend Benjamin Rush encouraged each of them to write to the other. The correspondence that followed ran for fourteen years and covered politics, religion, and old age. Both men died on the 4th of July 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
What was the Revolution of 1800?
Jefferson used the phrase for his election in a letter written years later, calling it as real a revolution in the principles of government as that of 1776. It was the first time in the new republic that the presidency passed from one party to its opponents. The Federalists, who held the presidency and Congress, handed over power without violence. Later historians adopted the term as the standard name for the election.
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