Federalist Party

Jefferson and his connection to partisanship in early America.

Why liberals have embraced our most dangerously reactionary founder.

Quite the contrary. They used rhetoric to build a partisan community, and realized that parties needed to create and market identities, not simply agendas.

A conspiracy theory among New England Federalists led some to contemplate separating from the U.S. during the War of 1812.

Space and place in New York City's responses to the French Revolution.

The presence of Federalist judges frustrated Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican Party, bring justice Samuel Chase under fire.

Interposition was a claim that American federalism needed to preserve some balance between state and national authority.

1796, the first contested presidential election.

Many people celebrate the U.S. as a nation of immigrants, but nativism has infused its politics from the outset.

This armed uprising in 1794, over taxation by the fledgling new government, threatened to destroy the new union within six years of the Constitution’s ratification.

It forced a conversation about the dangers of misinformation, one we need to have again today.

How an Illuminati conspiracy theory captured American imaginations in the nation’s earliest days.

In “Radical Hamilton,” Christian Parenti argues that the left should use Alexander Hamilton’s mythologized status to drive home his full agenda.

On early American attempts to kick out foreigners.

A new book persuasively argues that the Federalists’ attempt to squash opposition and the free flow of ideas was even more nefarious than we thought.

The 1800 election shows there is nothing new about conspiracy theories, and that they really take hold when we don’t trust each other.

Why criminalizing political opposition can be dangerous.

The origins of our efforts to keep foreign countries out of our elections.

A new history of the early republic explores the origins of originalism.

Even America's founding document isn't immune to the powers of polarization.