In the early days of the United States of America when the country was beginning to grow under the newly ratified Constitution, there were two main political parties in existence, the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans. From the time period of 1801-1817, the two presidents that were elected to rule the U.S. were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Both Jefferson and Madison were Jeffersonian Republicans who were characterized as strict-constructionists in respect to the federal constitution before they each took the office of the presidency, but when they took office the public found out that Jefferson and Madison's previous characterizations had not been very accurate when, as president, they began to act like the opposite of what they originally believed in.
In the years before his presidency, Thomas Jefferson was an anti-Federalist who believed in strict- construction of the Constitution. After the constitutional convention had taken place, Thomas Jefferson petitioned against the ratification of the newly written document, the Constitution.
James Madison, Hamilton's major collaborator, late...
Secretary of State James Madison, who won Marbury ...
Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale in...Jefferson also argued for a Bill of Rights in the Constitution. In a letter to James Madison Jefferson called for a Bill of Rights because it provided "freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, ... and trials by jury in all matters triable by the law." In 1800, Jefferson, along with Madison, wrote the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions to campaign against John Adams after the Alien and Sedition acts were passed. The Kentucky and Virginia resolutions proved Jefferson's strict-constructionism by combating the Federalist theory of a government's "implied powers" and they were written to stop the expansion of power of the government after they had passed two unconstitutional laws. In August of 1800, Jefferson once again expressed his previous beliefs of strict-construction in a letter to Gideon Granger; Jefferson said that America could never be...