A Federal Army, Not a Federalist One: Regime Building in the Jeffersonian Era

The presidency of Thomas Jefferson is often seen as a moment in time when a new political order arose. Having defeated the Federalists, Jefferson was largely able to mold the American state as he saw fit. Stephen Skowronek has argued that Jefferson should be seen as the first reconstructive president, who at the head of a new regime had the maximum opportunity to reshape the surrounding political environment. Indeed, more than any other future regime leader, Jefferson had the maximum latitude to act, with relatively few preexisting institutions in place that could constrain his actions.¹ Jefferson and his partisans in Congress in fact used this occasion to change many national priorities: they ended the Sedition Act, blocked Federalist-appointed judges from taking their seats, lowered taxes, and cut government expenditures.

Yet this picture of an “order-shattering” regime coming to power raises a puzzle.² The theoretical expectation of a “battering ram” president able to bend the system to his wishes does not fully comport with Jefferson’s actions regarding the American military establishment.³ The Federalists had built a national army, and then expanded it greatly during the crisis with France of the late 1790s. This force scared the Jeffersonians and raised in their minds the specter of a British-style standing army that threatened the liberty of the people. They often argued instead for a more powerful navy, believing in the old radical Whig ideology that saw naval power as sufficient to protect the nation from external threats, as well as a greater reliance on state militias. But rather than attempting to dismantle the army and begin anew, Jefferson and his top supporters not only chose to retain the existing army, they in fact institutionalized its functions and moved toward a permanent military establishment, for instance, by creating the military academy at West Point. This raises the puzzle of how such a powerful president, who faced so little preexisting institutional resistance, managed to leave an institution that seemed to contradict his own professed ideology very much intact by the time he left office in 1809.

We argue that the answer lies in the inherent limits to presidential power, limits that exist even for a reconstructive president. Jefferson was still restricted in his ability to achieve all of his stated goals. As the head of a new regime, the reconstructive president may be able to “shatter” existing institutions, as Skowronek puts it,⁴ and proceed to remake much of the political universe. But his powers are still only partial and he must adapt both his priorities and administrative strategies. Therefore not all reconstruction can happen openly; much of it takes place behind the scenes. When a new regime cannot entirely unmake institutions regarded as hostile, it can take other measures. It can mutate those institutions into a form more in accordance with its own ideology. In this case, a Federalist army was mutated by Jefferson into an integral part of the Republican regime. Jefferson opted not to start the army from scratch, but rather he attempted to change it from the inside, as he wanted an army but only one that would reflect Republican values. He and his top advisers, relying largely on administrative authority, reestablished the army on the basis of Republican ideology. They tried to make the army part of their new regime through co-opting it. Jefferson in power showed himself to be a vigorous opponent of a Federalist army, but not a federal one.

A close examination of Jefferson’s actions toward the army demonstrates that a new regime, especially one at the height of its power, has the ability to colonize a portion of the old order and remake it in its image. This is true despite their occasional inability (or unwillingness due to other considerations) to remove such institutions entirely. Even prior to the modern era, creative regime leaders could use the tools available to them to mutate a resilient institution into a form more acceptable to their political ideology.

To make our case, we begin with a...