Partisan Regimes and the Jeffersonians

The literature on partisan regimes in American politics sees them as important forces across time, focusing especially on the role of presidents in pushing for large-scale change at key moments within a regime’s cycle. In his work on the presidency, Stephen Skowronek has offered the most far-reaching analysis, arguing that when the old order weakens amid a crisis, an opportunity arises for a new president to reconstruct political commitments and lay the foundations for a new order. These regime leaders have the potential ability to remake existing institutions and reframe the terms of political discourse. Over time, however, reconstructive presidents have found this task increasingly difficult, as the “thickening” of institutions has made it progressively harder to dislodge the existing order.^{Footnote 5} According to this perspective, then, the first transition to a new regime that occurred under Thomas Jefferson’s presidency should have afforded the Republicans the maximum amount of space to remake the existing order. Skowronek also notes that the successors to a reconstructive leader struggle to continue his legacy as divisions within the reigning coalition make the task of reconstruction ever more challenging.

Later work on regimes has revised this portrait in several ways. Focusing on the New Deal, David Plotke has called attention to the power of a nascent regime to delegitimize its partisan opposition, driving it to the margin of political discourse.^{Footnote 6} Andrew Polsky has specified that regimes are fragile structures, coalitions of many different groups that must be carefully held together.^{Footnote 7} He argues that regimes “must secure cross-institutional control, they must incorporate members from different sections or regions, and they must restrict their policy scope.”^{Footnote 8} Similarly, Orren and Skowronek note, we must consider how a new regime solidifies its power, beyond merely breaking with the immediate past.^{Footnote 9} Cook and Polsky dispute Skowronek’s assertion that regimes have weakened over time, finding instead that they have found new tools, largely administrative in nature, to accomplish their goals.^{Footnote 10} Recently, Curt Nichols and Adam Myers have argued that establishing a new regime is often a more protracted event that requires more than one presidency to complete, while Donald Zinman specifies a new subcategory of “heir apparent” presidencies within the broader category of articulator.^{Footnote 11}

From the standpoint of this literature, however, Jefferson’s actions toward the army present a problem. Jefferson’s coalition was strongly opposed to the existing institutional and partisan structure of the army on ideological grounds, and had the maximum potential opportunity to remake it if it so chose, being at the strongest point in the regime cycle.^{Footnote 12} Skowronek does argue that “Jefferson’s authority to reconstruct proved singularly disarming and all-encompassing,”^{Footnote 13} emphasizing the “plasticity of institutional arrangements” that were inherited from the Federalists.^{Footnote 14} However, this does not seem to fully capture the dynamics at work in Jefferson’s reconstruction of the army. Rather than engaging in a frontal, public assault on the army’s existing structure, Jefferson opted instead for a behind-the-scenes effort. The army as an institution was weakened by the partisan tinge it acquired under the Federalists. Yet Jefferson did not attempt to reconstruct the entire edifice, opting instead for a different plan of mutating the institution from the inside out, relying on administrative tools to accomplish his goals. A close examination of Jefferson’s remaking of the army, we argue, will provide greater insight into the politics of reconstruction.

It seems that the present literature misses several important factors at work in explaining regime activity in the early national period. First, the ability to use a reconstructive era to shatter existing arrangements depends partly upon the perceived legitimacy of partisanship itself. As politics in the early period was characterized by a deep skepticism about the party system and factionalism, the Republicans were somewhat limited in their ability to pursue a public and partisan attack upon the army as a Federalist bastion. Additionally, those who focus on the use of administrative tools in the modern era neglect the increased capacity that creative regime leaders have to use these tools, regardless of the era. Finally, all presidents are constrained from pursuing all of their preferred ideological goals. Some policies are first-order priorities, while some inevitably must become secondary.^{Footnote 15} Remaking the army, for the Jeffersonians, may have been a second-order priority.

A potential alternative explanation for Jefferson’s behavior could be that he felt forced to keep the army mostly in place because it was needed to hold the young country together in the face of internal and external threats. As Kevin Gannon has shown, it is not a foregone conclusion that the nation will stay unified at this point in history.^{Footnote 16} However, Jefferson initiated several other bold actions that demonstrate his willingness to go against the grain of his preexisting ideological commitments when a different policy would better serve his regime’s interests. The most striking example of this is Jefferson’s desire to expand the nation through the Louisiana Purchase, viewed by many Federalists as an attempt to add more Republican regions to the nation and permanently solidify Jeffersonian control of the government. This was combined with the potential for a further expansion of slavery into the new territory, a boon to Republicans and the South in particular (thanks to the Constitution’s 3/5 Clause).^{Footnote 17} Note here the ideological flexibility of the Democratic-Republicans in the face of a potential regime-building policy that suited their political interests. A hypothetical belief in strict interpretation of the Constitution quickly gave way to congressional approval of Jefferson’s purchase of Louisiana, despite the lack of explicit constitutional authorization.^{Footnote 18} Jefferson also engaged the military in suppressing domestic disorder, first against the Burr conspiracy, and then as part of his embargo policy from 1807 through 1809, the end of his presidency. Congress gave Jefferson “broader powers to use military force to back federal law than his Federalist predecessors had either explicitly sought or used,” a policy he was instrumental in creating.^{Footnote 19} He was authorized to use both regular federal forces and militia, a reversal of the Federalist policy in this area.^{Footnote 20} Clearly, Jefferson intended all along to make his mark, regardless of any other issues at stake. He could have pursued a thorough, public remaking of the army and still continued with many of his preferred policies.

Development of the American Military

Much as a new governing coalition may detest or distrust an institution as a haven of opposition power, a nascent regime may conclude that no better alternative exists for meeting urgent political or policy challenges. The failure of the militia system allowed the Federalists to create a national army dominated by the party. Naturally, the Republicans resented and distrusted it. Over time, however, their leaders also came to realize that the militia system was inadequate and could never be relied upon for national defense. This realization endured, setting the stage for Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans to transform the army from a Federalist force into a federal one.

Following the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the Congress largely disbanded the American army. Despite continuing tensions with Native American tribes on the western frontier and the refusal of the British to turn over forts as required under the peace treaty, the pressure to disband the army before it became too powerful was overwhelming. Richard Kohn states that the Continental army had always been “an ad hoc institution designed to oppose the British army in open eighteenth-century warfare.”^{Footnote 21} It is therefore unsurprising that it was so easily dismantled once the war ended. The republican fear of standing armies continued apace, despite these pressing new challenges.^{Footnote 22}

The question of centralized military power was one of the key issues leading to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. James Madison, for example, wrote about the “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” which included encroachments by the states on federal authority and the inability of the federal government to ensure to the states a secure form of government free from violence.^{Footnote 23} Underlying Madison’s fears was the lack of any ability on the part of the national government to protect citizens, fears that were reinforced by Shays’s Rebellion and the utter inability of the national government to do anything about it. Though the republican fear of standing armies continued as well, the nationalists (Madison included) represented a new ideological trend in American political culture that saw the centralization of power as ensuring protection for the citizenry.^{Footnote 24}

There were many reasons for the endemic failure of the militia “system,” the most important of which was that it was not a system at all. It was understood to be a defensive force, designed to repel an invading army in a war. As both Russell Weigley and Richard Kohn point out, in many states units could not even legally serve outside state borders.^{Footnote 25} But the truth was that the militias hardly functioned the way they were said to on paper or in speeches by politicians paying lip service to their honored place within the republican ideal. The “system” existed in name only. Just the same, many Americans still deeply believed in the enduring value of militias as guardians of liberty. As Lawrence Cress explains, militias were associated with liberty, freedom, and colonial virtue, while standing armies were synonymous with militarism, corruption, and tyranny. In the long run, that would be a very difficult tradition to overcome. “In short,” Cress says, “political and constitutional requirements of Revolutionary America would demand a means to rectify military necessity with republican theory.”^{Footnote 26} A resistance to standing armies was at the heart of the revolutionary ideology of America.

Whether military and political elites admitted it publicly, they knew that the reality was very different than what the republican theorists and ideologues imagined. Although there were celebrated heroic moments, militias did not perform well in the Revolutionary War. The veteran military quasi-establishment knew that independence had left America vulnerable to three very serious threats: Indian attacks, claims on land west of the Appalachian Mountains, and British and Spanish troops positioned on America’s northern, western, and southern frontiers. But nevertheless, the nation’s security relied on the same haphazard militia system, and there were a total of only seven hundred regulars remaining by 1783.^{Footnote 27}

President Washington faced multiple crises involving the use of military force during his administration. Worsening relations with Native American tribes along the western frontier necessitated various military expeditions, many of which ended in failure.^{Footnote 28} Domestically, the Whiskey Rebellion provoked the greatest crisis of Washington’s presidency. In March 1791, Congress passed an excise tax on whiskey production as part of Hamilton’s fiscal program. The new tax provoked an uproar in western Pennsylvania, where the bulk of American whiskey production took place at this time. The Pennsylvania legislature denounced the tax, protest meetings formed across the state, and federal tax collectors were harassed, with several instances of violence.^{Footnote 29} In late September 1794, Washington and Hamilton personally led a force of twelve thousand men (a combination of national forces and state militia from New Jersey and Maryland) to crush the rebellion. The rebels quickly dispersed upon learning of the massive force coming for them, and only a few rebel leaders were ever arrested.^{Footnote 30}

John Howe has noted the intensity of political conflict in the 1790s between the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans.^{Footnote 31} The battles went far beyond normal levels of partisan disagreement to fundamental contestations over basic ideology. All actors of the era believed in the ideology of republicanism, broadly defined, but sharply argued over the boundaries of that concept. Howe says that “the concept of republicanism was obviously subject to a variety of readings,” from men as different in their politics as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.^{Footnote 32} This basis is necessary to comprehend the passions expressed in political disputation, and to understand the actions that President Adams took in his attempts to maneuver between extremists within his own Federalist Party and the opposition Democratic-Republicans.

After the XYZ Incident was revealed to the nation in all its horror,^{Footnote 33} Adams, who had never been particularly popular, suddenly found himself the symbol of a nation in crisis and essentially became the first president to benefit from what is now called a “rally around the flag” effect.^{Footnote 34} As Elkins and McKitrick argue, the “opposition in Congress to all intents and purposes collapsed,” and Adams suddenly found himself with an extraordinary opportunity to shape a military establishment to defend the nation in its time of crisis.^{Footnote 35} Adams had previously only proposed a small expansion of the navy. In the aftermath of the XYZ revelations, however, Congress decided to create an independent Department of the Navy, with the immediate completion of three frigates, along with “twelve sloops of war,” fifteen other ships, and funds to fortify harbors.^{Footnote 36} More important, again going against Adams’s wishes, in the spring of 1798 Congress also created a twelve-thousand man “New Army” and authorized the president to raise another ten thousand men as part of a “Provisional Army” in the event of war or invasion.^{Footnote 37} Adams had no intention of using the force he was given: he never asked for this New Army, and was displeased with those who became its commanders, George Washington as its titular head and Alexander Hamilton running its day-to-day operations.^{Footnote 38}

The ideological disputes between Federalists and Republicans led to conflict over the new institutional creations of the time. As Kohn states, “underneath Congress’s inaction [in 1797, before the XYZ Incident was revealed] lay fundamental disagreements about the nature of military power that were never resolved.”^{Footnote 39} Most Federalists supported the expansion of military capacity in any event, regardless of the circumstances, and most Democratic-Republicans remained opposed. Adams was somewhere in between these two positions. Supporting a stronger navy, he nevertheless was forced to accept the New Army, along with the subsequent Alien and Sedition Acts, by members of his own party.^{Footnote 40} While caught between the demands of his own partisans and the fierce opposition of the Democratic-Republicans, Adams delayed as much as possible the administrative creation of the New Army based on his own opposition to its existence. As Inspector General of the New Army, Hamilton intended to create a military academy, military hospitals, and “something very like a veterans’ administration that would tend men wounded in battle and their families,” as well as a series of measures for instituting a regulated, permanent army.^{Footnote 41} But Adams put as many roadblocks in his way as possible. He vacationed in Quincy, Massachusetts, during most of the summer of 1798, and did not sign the commissions to put Washington and Hamilton in charge before he left.^{Footnote 42} The crisis ended in 1799 and 1800, when Adams sent new emissaries to France and negotiated a truce.^{Footnote 43} With peace achieved, the Federalists had to abandon their ideas for a stronger permanent army and Congress gave Adams the authority to disband the New Army, which he did in May 1800.^{Footnote 44} Adams would go on to lose the election to Jefferson, partly over his supposedly poor conduct of foreign relations, but in fact he was successful in avoiding a war and he dismantled the most threatening parts of the new military establishment before leaving office.^{Footnote 45}

Building a Republican Regime

In constructing a new regime, a reconstructive president must choose among competing priorities. No president, regardless of political opportunity, can focus his full attention on every question. With many issues to consider, some will be first-order concerns, while others must be put aside or relegated to second-tier consideration.^{Footnote 46} Regime concerns that are lower priority may often be dealt with through administrative procedures rather than a full-scale legislative program.^{Footnote 47} Although reorganizing the army was an important goal for Jefferson, it was not necessarily his top priority.

Furthermore, at a time when explicit partisanship was not considered legitimate, Jefferson and his allies could not openly attack the army for being a Federalist-dominated institution. Jefferson’s inaugural address famously stated that the partisan differences separating Americans were merely obstructing the larger goals shared by all, a rhetorical move that further reinforced the prevailing opposition to a party spirit. Presidents of this era had to rise above party considerations, at least in their public pronouncements.^{Footnote 48} Any attempt to refashion the army, therefore, had to be done with a degree of legerdemain, so as not to bring widespread attention to the partisan nature of such a reorganization. Despite having large majorities in Congress, there were limits to Jefferson’s ability to act.

Although Jefferson inherited an army openly hostile to Republican political aims, he knew that regulars were essential. Republican rhetoric had long held that standing armies were a threat to republican liberties. But that was rhetoric. State militias by themselves were no solution and dismantling the army was not a viable alternative.^{Footnote 49} For Jefferson and the more moderate Republicans, the events of 1798–1800 demonstrated not the necessity of dissolving the army, but the necessity of creating a Republican army—a military appendage to the new regime. As Theodore Crackel explains: “The events of 1798, 1799, and 1800 had given a political character to the military establishment—and a Federalist, even Hamiltonian character at that. The army’s loyalty to Jefferson and to his new administration was an open question.”^{Footnote 50}

“The army,” Jefferson reported to Nathanial Macon just two months after his inauguration, “is to undergo a chaste reformation.”^{Footnote 51} Almost immediately after taking office, Jefferson and Secretary of War Henry Dearborn moved to Republicanize the army. In his first annual message to Congress, Jefferson argued that there were too many officers in the army, and stated that “we may well doubt whether our organisation is not too complicated, too expensive; whether offices and officers have not been multiplied unnecessarily.”^{Footnote 52} Dearborn’s plan was to consolidate units, discharging senior Federalist officers and others deemed unfit to serve, being careful to maintain the army’s effectiveness while still providing openings for new Republican appointments. Their plan for co-optation relied on the internal transformation of the army’s structure.^{Footnote 53}

In fact, the changes Jefferson made to the military were part of a broader plan to consolidate the new Republican regime. The process of reconstruction is not only about high-profile policy changes but also encompasses behind-the-scenes activities, such as administrative changes, that can effect great change in the long term. Many scholars have noted Jefferson’s partisan removals throughout the bureaucracy in his attempt to form a new regime, what Carl Prince has called “the passing of the aristocracy.”^{Footnote 54} Jeremy Bailey’s important work on Jefferson’s view of executive power demonstrates that removals were supposed to be connected to public confidence in good governance.^{Footnote 55} Theodore Crackel has shown how Jefferson instituted reforms throughout the national government to eliminate those segments most likely to oppose his plans. Postmasters, federal attorneys, federal marshals, and customs officers had all been loyal to the Federalists.^{Footnote 56} Jefferson either reformed these institutions or replaced Federalists with Republicans, in some cases publicly, in other cases quietly, depending on which approach yielded greater political advantage. The sheer quantity of pages in Jefferson’s files relating to appointments and removals demonstrates his concern both with building a competent administrative structure and maintaining the support of his Republican allies in Congress.^{Footnote 57}

Jefferson himself explained the principles under which he would determine how to pursue removals and what their purpose should be. In a letter sent March 23, 1801, to Democratic-Republican Congressman William B. Giles, Jefferson stated that “some ought to be removed from office, & that all ought not . . . where to draw the line, perhaps no two will agree. Consequently, nothing like a general approbation on this subject can be looked for.” Despite this qualification, he did lay out a political doctrine of regime building, under which some Federalists would be retained:

Republicans in Congress were not always pleased with the caution Jefferson exercised in gradually replacing Federalist officeholders. Although he declared appointments made by Adams after the results of the election became official on December 12, 1800, to be illegitimate, and dismissed Federalist marshals and attorneys, on the whole Jefferson exercised considerable restraint in removing federal officers.^{Footnote 59} On August 14, 1801, in a letter to Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin, Jefferson explained that while jobs should go first to good republicans, “we push the patience of our friends to the utmost it will bear in order that we may gather into the same fold all the republican federalists possible.”^{Footnote 60} In other words, as Leonard White points out, they were waiting on replacing some Federalists to encourage as many political conversions as possible, another step in the mutation project.^{Footnote 61} Jefferson told Henry Knox, a loyal Federalist who had served as Washington’s Secretary of War, that he knows many Federalists are good republicans, not monarchists like “our quondam colleague,” presumably a reference to Hamilton. He warns Knox that the removals he intends to pursue “may be misconstrued as done for political opinions” even though they are not.^{Footnote 62} Jefferson’s disavowal of partisan motives here does not fit with the available evidence regarding his actions, however. He also wrote to James Monroe shortly after his inauguration to say that “I have firmly refused to follow the counsels of those who have advised the giving offices to some of their leaders,” that is to say, Federalists.^{Footnote 63} We may safely assume his letter to Knox was part of an attempt to minimize partisan opposition to his plans as he continued his regime mutation project behind the scenes.

Legislative proposals regarding the army were always carefully cast in terms of troop and budgetary reductions. In his State of the Union address in December 1801, Jefferson said the armed forces should be reduced. But the particular way this was to be handled revealed Jefferson’s ultimate intentions. The strength of the new military establishment was to be 3,300 men, which was 60 percent of the old authorization under Adams. The four infantry regiments were to be reduced to two, and the two regiments of artillery and engineers were reduced to one corps of artillery and a tiny separate engineer element.^{Footnote 64}

The Military Peace Establishment Act of 1802 is often portrayed as indicative of Jefferson’s abhorrence of standing armies as well as being aimed at economization.^{Footnote 65} But in reality, reductions and savings were barely realized, and recruitment for the New Army had dwindled steadily as Adams’s administration was winding down. One-third of all officers were dismissed by Dearborn (Adams had filled many of these positions just before leaving the presidency). But between February 16 and March 3, 1801, more than eighty new appointments were made, creating a situation where there were too many officers, so dismissals had to be made in order to bring the number of officers and men into correct proportion, in accordance with the new law. In the end, 88 of 230 officers were dismissed. But twenty new officer positions were created, so the net reduction was really only sixty-eight.^{Footnote 66} The savings turned out to be only $35,000 per year, a far cry from the $500,000 Jefferson and Dearborn had promised. While some argue that Jefferson accomplished real spending reductions,^{Footnote 67} Crackel explains that “the Military Peace Establishment Act of 1802 was not intended to reduce the army; rather it provided the administration with a means to accomplish a political catharsis of the military establishment.”^{Footnote 68}

Ultimately, the act had four effects: it provided a means of eliminating Federalist domination of the army’s internal hierarchy; it served to eliminate Jefferson’s political opponents; it provided entrée for a new crop of loyal Republicans; finally, and most important, it established a source of loyal Republican officers for the future.^{Footnote 69}

Severing Federalist control of the army’s internal administration was no easy task. There had been a staff in the Revolutionary War army, but none in the early postwar years. In 1790, two inspectors were added, and then the staff was enlarged incrementally as the army grew in size. Jefferson and Dearborn set out to dismiss the administrative personnel, but the problem remained as to who could replace them, as most Republican officers were too junior for such assignments. The solution was to do away with as many of these positions as possible, while bringing others under civilian control, so as not to raise the ire of officers.

The second step involved the elimination of specific regiments, which in turn meant the elimination of their officers. But many of the less obstreperous Federalists and nonaffiliated officers were retained. The dismissals were organized so that the second in command would then take over, and Dearborn made sure it was almost always a loyal Republican. All of these decisions were carefully disguised in republican principles of reducing the size of both the army and the federal budget.^{Footnote 70}

To ensure the durability of the changes, Jefferson was formally granted the power to establish a military academy at West Point as part of the Peace Establishment Act of 1802. He had already created the academy, in fact, in 1801.^{Footnote 71} Some scholars point here to Jefferson’s Enlightenment interest in engineering as the impetus for creating the academy.^{Footnote 72} Indeed, the academy did later become a center of engineering expertise.^{Footnote 73} But the facts suggest that Jefferson’s approval of an academy, which he had previously opposed during Federalist administrations, was about something other than science. For one thing, the curriculum at West Point revealed a serious lack of emphasis on science. In addition, the first head of the academy, Jonathan Williams, was a moderate Federalist who seems to have been selected more for his political value (as a former Adams supporter) than for his educational philosophy.^{Footnote 74} Formal engineering training did not even begin there until a decade after Jefferson’s presidency, when Sylvanus Thayer became superintendent of the academy in 1817.^{Footnote 75} Of the twenty officers and cadets, only four were engineering appointees. And of the fifty total commissioned cadets during Jefferson’s two terms, fourteen were made engineers, twenty-seven artillery, eight infantry, and one dragoon. Cadets were selected based on explicitly political criteria.^{Footnote 76} Further, the legislation was carefully drawn to give the president significant power over promotions. This core truly was “Mr. Jefferson’s Army.”^{Footnote 77}

Dearborn used his administrative power to reshape the army from the inside, in a strikingly modern way. Working closely with Jefferson, Dearborn took control of military affairs and appointments to both the army and West Point. Between 1802 and 1804, Dearborn proposed appointing ninety-two specific men in his correspondence with Jefferson.^{Footnote 78} He divided management of the army into three geographic districts, each run by Republicans. With the expansion of the army in 1808, the number of cadets authorized jumped from forty-four to two hundred. Crackel concludes that “under Jefferson the army—and its officer corps—passed irrevocably into the hands of the people. His was truly a Republican solution—an army with its leadership drawn from every segment of the citizenry and every corner of the nation. Jefferson, who had long prized a citizen army, ultimately created one out of the regular establishment.”^{Footnote 79}

Madison, Monroe, and the Limits of Republicanization

Jefferson’s successors, James Madison and James Monroe, were faced with attempting to continue Jefferson’s policies toward the army while dealing with a new set of political circumstances. Under Skowronek’s categorization, Madison and Monroe are both considered articulators, believers in the Jeffersonian regime’s project who carried those ideas forward into a new age. Looking at these two presidencies, we argue, provides useful insights into understanding the continuation of this regime, and why the mutation of the army did not persist beyond Jefferson’s presidency. For both, regime consolidation sometimes had to take a back seat to other presidential responsibilities. Reconstructions may only be partial and temporary.

As Donald Zinman notes, Madison was in the unique position of “heir apparent,” the first affiliated successor to a reconstructive president. This limits the articulator’s flexibility in continuing the regime-building project, as he must hew closely to his predecessor’s path.^{Footnote 80} Gordon Wood similarly points out that Madison did not even have a free hand in the selection of his own Cabinet due to interference by those from his own party in Congress.^{Footnote 81} So it is not surprising that, at least initially, Madison did pursue a policy that resembled his predecessor’s. Congress had authorized an expansion of the army in 1808 in preparation for a possible war with Great Britain, as the embargo policy enacted following the Chesapeake affair in 1807 did not seem to be changing British attitudes toward the United States. Many of the new officer positions created by the law were not filled until Madison’s administration. Historians William Skelton and Samuel Watson both agree that Madison continued the policy of filling these slots with committed Republicans.^{Footnote 82} So Madison began with every intention of continuing Jefferson’s Republicanization of the army.

Soon, however, events forced Madison to rethink his position. As relations with Great Britain continued to deteriorate, it became apparent that a military conflict was a possibility. Madison’s own party in Congress was split between war hawks such as Henry Clay, who were pushing Madison into war, and traditional Republicans like John Randolph, who maintained their opposition to standing armies. Madison eventually decided to side with the war hawks, and started requesting increases in the military establishment. Resistance from the Old Republicans slowed the buildup, but in early 1812 Congress passed a measure authorizing an increase in the size of the army to twenty-five thousand men.^{Footnote 83}

Now Madison had a pivotal decision to make: Would he continue to staff the army exclusively with Republican officers? As appealing a prospect as that might have been from the standpoint of regime building, the president was faced with conflicting imperatives. Federalist opposition to the war was so intense that some in the New England states publicly argued for secession, perhaps allying with Great Britain as part of a new confederacy.^{Footnote 84} Historian Scott Silverstone contends that Federalist opposition made prosecuting the war more difficult and made the desired conquest of Canada impossible.^{Footnote 85} Federalists had also gained strength in Congress and at the state level, particularly in the restive New England region, making them a more potent opponent if angered.^{Footnote 86} To maintain as much political support for the war effort as possible, Madison made the explicitly political decision to also appoint Federalists as officers, some of them to quite high-ranking positions. One of the slots as Major General, for instance, was initially filled by Thomas Pinckney of South Carolina, a committed Federalist. Many in Madison’s own party were upset with his appointments.^{Footnote 87} Under the new circumstances, however, Madison could not simply continue Jefferson’s policies of institutional mutation; he also needed to keep the country unified while prosecuting the war. Like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, he faced the need to balance his regime’s best interests with considerations of military strategy. In the end, he subordinated partisanship to the needs of wartime unity.^{Footnote 88} We do not need to enter here into the contentious debate over whether Jefferson and Madison’s cutbacks led directly to American failure in the War of 1812. However, we would briefly note that neither president proposed or accomplished a wholesale gutting of the military apparatus. Reductions could certainly have been much more severe, as some Republicans in Congress might have preferred. These presidents left a national military capability in place, though whether it was sufficient to win in an international conflict is another matter.

Monroe faced a different set of problems. The so-called “Era of Good Feelings” left no organized political opposition to the Democratic-Republicans, but that did not mean a lack of intraparty strife. Factionalism continued within the Republican Party and ended up splitting Monroe’s own cabinet into warring parties.^{Footnote 89} Monroe was in many ways a nationalistic Republican, who supported the idea of internal improvements and the aggressive use of American military and diplomatic power at home and abroad. For example, when General Andrew Jackson overstepped his official authority and seized Spanish-controlled Florida during a mission to prevent borderland violence with Indians in Georgia, Monroe used it as an opportunity to negotiate the purchase of the territory.^{Footnote 90} Monroe’s Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun, was at that time known as a strong nationalist and supporter of a strong army, and he helped to make the War Department the most capable branch of the government.^{Footnote 91}

Calhoun soon became embroiled in a spat with Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford over the future of the army, which ultimately led to Calhoun joining the 1824 presidential race against Crawford. When Congress requested that Calhoun prepare a plan to reduce the size of the army, he responded with a report that defended centralized military power and gave very little ground. Despite his pleadings, Congress passed a bill requiring substantial force reductions. Calhoun, relying on the advice of his top generals, made as many cuts as possible from the enlisted force and attempted to keep the officer corps intact. Crawford and his orthodox Jeffersonian supporters in Congress fought hard to get Monroe to agree to cuts in the officer corps as well.^{Footnote 92} Subsequently, Congress rejected several officer nominations that Monroe had made at Calhoun’s behest, and soon “the Jeffersonian coalition was shattered.”^{Footnote 93} Throughout this entire episode, Monroe remained hands-off and did not intervene to stop Crawford from undercutting his own policies.^{Footnote 94} As the Republican regime began to dissolve, Monroe was apparently powerless to stop the factionalism and continue forward with the Jeffersonian project of remaking the army into a Republican institution.

Madison and Monroe’s presidencies demonstrate certain limits to the politics of articulation. The War of 1812 caused Madison to prioritize his role as a military leader and subordinate regime-building goals to wartime needs. Monroe’s peculiar position during a time when explicit partisanship was lacking shows that not all regimes are the same, and therefore we need to take into consideration the degree to which partisanship is considered acceptable in assessing regime politics. The collapse of the two-party system during Monroe’s presidency led to factional divisions within the Republican coalition and stunted Monroe’s ability to continue the regime-building project. The Jeffersonian reconstruction of the army faltered when the regime was faced with new challenges.