ABSTRACT
When Jefferson came to the presidency, he was brought there on the crest of the first popular revolutionary wave since the beginning of the republic. Even the purge of Federalist officials, for which the power-hungry Jeffersonians clamored, was carried out slowly, incompletely, and with little rancor. It should be noted about the Jeffersonian revolution that Jefferson was the first of the American presidents to use political patronage as a scrupulous but deliberate instrument of party power. Jefferson's was thus the first of a succession of revolutions in American history which were based on an effective alliance between the demos and the leverage elites, whether of intellectuals or of political organizers and professionals. Jefferson was staggered by the chance the new nation had—sudden and immense—to extend its domain beyond any dream hitherto. Jefferson had built the new Republican party organization skillfully, had waged political warfare against the Federalists brilliantly, and had routed the Federalists.
