In 1796, John Adams won the presidential election by three electoral college votes over his nearest competitor, Thomas Jefferson. Failing to envision a two- or even three-party system, the Constitution dictated that the man who received the most votes would become president, and the second highest vote getter would become vice president. However, by 1796 political parties had become a reality and Adams was faced with the consequences of a political split in the executive branch.
John Adams was a member of the Federalist Party that believed in a strong central government and the fiscal policies of Alexander Hamilton. As a result of the 1796 election, they controlled both chambers of Congress as well as the White House. Jefferson led the Democratic-Republican Party, which wanted more power to rest in the hands of the state governments under a stricter interpretation of the Constitution.
The two parties also differed in their views of foreign policy, which was highlighted by their respective responses to the French Revolution. The Democratic-Republicans tended to feel sympathy for the French people while the Federalists were more concerned with preserving the French monarchy. The French Revolution caused a wave of immigration into the new nation. According to Jack Lynch’s writings for the Colonial Williamsburg Journal, the Federalists were concerned about the political leanings of the immigrants.
They looked at the demographics of the immigrant population, and did not like what they saw: recent immigrants overwhelmingly supported the Democratic-Republicans.
And so, within a few years of our birth, a political party used national security to suppress voices it did not want to hear. Its a suppression which has been widely imitated by Republicans in states across the nation today.