ABSTRACT
Americans began to divide along fluid party lines of Federalists and Republicans, defined largely by differing opinions about the French Revolution and British-French warfare. Federalists argued that the United States depended on a close commercial relationship with Britain, and they concluded that the French Revolution had descended into a morass of blood and chaos. By the time Madison became president in 1809, partisans routinely conflated their political foes with their geopolitical enemies. Madison and other Republicans thought they saw a dangerous coalition among Federalists, the British, and western Indian nations. The diverging opinions grew more pronounced in 1791, when Madison called for discriminatory tariffs against Great Britain, hoping to swing US commerce closer to France. Great Britain retained Western forts that they had ceded on paper at the end of the Revolutionary War.
