The two most popular political parties in the United States during the early nineteenth century were the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Federalists. The Jeffersonian Republicans were a political group that were considered strict constructionists. They believed that the Constitution should be interpreted word for word. If something was not specifically stated to be legal in the Constitution, then it was not legally allowed. The Federalist Party, on the other hand, were called broad constructionists. Federalists viewed the Constitution as kind of a prototype that was meant to be changed, improved, and interpreted as they wanted. They thought that the Constitution was a framework that could be manipulated in order to fit the current situation. These characterizations of the political parties, though they usually were accurate, did not always prove to be true. Both Jeffersonian Republicans and Federalists made exceptions to rules that they usually stuck by strictly.
In the early nineteenth century, Jefferson was running for president as a Republican at the same time that the Federalist Party was beginning to lose popularity. Gideon Grange, a member of Jefferson's cabinet, received a letter from Jefferson that said, "It [our country] can never be harmonious ¦while so respectable a portion of its citizens support principles to sink the state governments, consolidate them into one, and to monarchise that” (document A). Jefferson believed that since the Constitution so clearly stressed the importance of state governments, the country should never resort to having just one powerful federal government, because this would emulate the ruling tactics of the monarchy that Americans fought so hard against during the Revolution. Also in this letter, Jefferson speaks about how the Constitution stated that the states should remain "Independent as to everything within themselves” (document A). Jefferson believed that the rights of states were clearly stated in the...