For the future of the nation, the dozen years from Washington’s inauguration in 1789 to Jefferson’s in 1801 were fully as “critical” as the preceding era. The Americans had to establish both new policies and new machinery of government. They had to meet challenging problems of foreign policy, some inherited from the Confederation period and others generated by the outbreak of a new European war. Perhaps most important, they had to prove that the new structure had a chance to become permanent. Here, they accomplished things that today seem foreordained but ones that distinguished the United States from most other postcolonial nations. In 1796 they showed both that power could be shifted into new hands from the hero of their revolution and that it could be done by election. In 1801 they proved it possible to change political direction without a coup d’état, a striking accomplishment, “the first election in modern history which, by popular decision, resulted in the quiet and peaceful transition of national power from the hands of one of two embattled parties to another.”

Central in these developments was the emergence of political parties. The Federalist and Antifederalist groupings of the fight over the Constitution were essentially coalitions for the occasion. True parties emerged only after the new government was well under way. To a large degree, the Federalist and Republican parties were, in terms of leaders and support, heirs of the earlier coalitions, but there were sufficient exceptions so that a direct line of descent cannot be assumed.