FEDERALISTS, or FEDERAL PARTY. in the United States; in power 1789-4801; died nationally about 1817, locally about 1823; the lineal ancestor in succession of the National Republican, Whig and present Republican par ties. Its origin (see ANTI-FEDERALISTS) was on the question of adopting the Constitution; but it represented two unrelated elements. The commercial interests wished protection at once from foreign aggression and from barriers set up by independent selfish State legislatures; the patriots pure and simple wished a strong and energetic nation, able to command respect and secure fair treatment. The union of these, their reinforcement for the time by the more statesmanlike even of the Anti-Federalists and Washington's influence, gave them complete control of the new government. They organ ized the executive.departments (see ExEctrrive) anew and created the Federal judiciary and the Territorial system. Hamilton, the greatest man of the party and its natural leader, pushed through his schemes for paying the foreign and funding the domestic debt in full, restoring national credit and for assuming the State debts, binding the States to support the new government (see asTalc? or CoLuminA for the °log-roll" which carried it) ; excise laws, a United States bank, a protective tariff and bounty system to develop manufactures and agriculture, and a postal system, followed rapidly; and in 1794 the crushing of the Whisky. Insurrection (q.v.) showed the new national strength. Meantime the refusal to be dragged into an alliance with revolutionary France had fused the Democrats with the Republicans, the successors of the Anti-Federalists; and Jeffer son had organized and Madison joined the new Democratic-Republican party. The most in fluential Federalist leaders besides Hamilton were Adams and Jay; among others were the °Essex Junto" (q.v.), Fisher Ames, Roger Sherman, Jonathan Trumbull, Rufus King, Gouverneur Morris, Jonathan Dayton, Elias B Boudinot, William Bradford, James A. Bayard, John Marshall, Richard Henry Lee, C. C. Pinck ney and William Smith. The party began a new navy, but was prevented by the Democrats from going on with it. This ultimately killed the Federal party; unable to protect commerce by force, it had to do so by humiliating con cessions to England and thus become dependent on and an apologist for that country, which alienated public confidence. By 1796 it had be come almost entirely a northern party. .The French war afforded a chance of increasing the navy, which they did; but they committed the huge folly of passing the Alien and Sedition laws (q.v.), gratifying resentment at the ex
pense of votes. Finally, when Adams took away their one issue by ending the French war (see ADAMS, Joux), the Hamilton wing broke with his, and the Democrats ousted the party in the elections of 1800. Its course in opposition de prived it of respect ; when the Democrats almost at once dropped their original tenets, practically if not theoretically, and acted on those of the Federalists, the latter (as in the Louisiana Pur chase, a pure Federalist measure) changed coats with the Democrats and fought them on their own discarded ground. Their best patriotic ele ments deserted them in swarms and in 1804 they carried only Connecticut and Delaware and part of Maryland. But the Embargo (q.v.) and the selfish attempt of the agricultural sections to sacrifice the entire commerce of the country to their own supposed interests temporarily reinforced the Federalists; in 1808 they had every New England State but Vermont (the only one with no seaboard), besides Delaware and parts of Maryland and North Carolina. The War of 1812 was so unpopular in the North that in the elections of that year New York and New Jersey went Federalist also, and Maryland solid; and the balance of power was held by the three backwoods States of Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio — or by Penn sylvania, whose agricultural west had now swamped the Philadelphia region. But the party as such was really dead; half the old leaders were gone, several of the others had turned Democrat or Independent, Marshall was imbedding its best principles in the national system from the Supreme bench; the chief men now were King and Pinckney. When the war dosed, the issue on which the commercial sec tions had joined them was dosed and these at once deserted the party; the Hartford Conven tion (q.v.) had driven all the remaining leaders out of public life with the stigma of secession and treason; and in 1816 the party carried only Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware, with three Maryland electors who would not vote. The scattered Federalists in Congress did not act as a party, having no issues even as a pretense, and as a national party it ceased to exist. State wise, it controlled Connecticut and Delaware till after 1820 and Massachusetts till 1823, when the Democrats swept even Essex County from the ((Junto.° It lingered for some time also in Maryland and North Carolina. Consult Bas sett, 'The Federalist System' (New York 1906) and Morse, The Federalist Party in Massachusetts to the Year 1800) (Princeton 1909).