ABSTRACT
The War of 1812 was to eat up a good deal of what Jefferson and Gallatin had done in reducing the public debt, and laid waste to his dream of peace. Jefferson the continentalist and expansionist triumphed over Jefferson the humanitarian. In a later period the Jacksonian concept of education held that no special training was necessary for the arts of government and leadership. In effect it held that a farmer or artisan of intelligence could fill a leadership post as well as any highly educated person. This was not Jefferson's view, and the opposition between the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian approaches is an authentic one. Jefferson's plan had been to abolish slavery by stages, by setting a date after which the children born of slaves parents would be born free, thus cutting away the roots of the tree of slavery, and leaving the branches to wither with time.
