By Peter Bratt

Staff Writer

In 1820, back in the days when stockings for men were finally going out of style, partisanship was thrown into the mission box as well. James Monroe, the fifth president and fourth of that number to belong to the Virginia Dynasty, was elected to the presidency by an electoral vote of 219 to 1. The one vote against him was cast by a John King, who was intent on preserving George Washington's record for being the only candidate every elected by unanimous consent in the electoral college, and thus granting Washington the status of deity. When Monroe took his oath of office on March 4, 1821, he could remark, as historians later would, that this ``was the era of good feelings.'' Few would disagree: the country was at peace, the national debt was being paid down and it appeared that political partisanship was as dead as Napoleon Bonaparte.

The triumph of ``Jeffersonian Democracy'' in 1821 was not guaranteed in 1801, though, when Thomas Jefferson took office in the presence of John Marshall and Aaron Burr, Chief Justice and Vice-President, respectively. Speaking before the members of Congress, overwhelmingly of Jefferson's party, he laid out his goals for the next four years. Jefferson laid the olive branch before the Federalists present by saying ``we are all Republicans; we are all Federalists.'' He then urged the Congress to pass his legislative agenda that was entirely composed of Jefferson's campaign platform.

The man, who once said that a revolution every twenty years would be good for the American republic, laid a political one out at the feet of the audience, calling for the elimination of the United States' army and navy, the reductions of tariffs and the elimination of support for manufacturing industries in New England.

In short, the Hamiltonian vision of an America guarded by a strong army and navy and blessed with cities and manufacturing was, after ten years of existance, replaced by the Jeffersonian vision of an agarian paradise. In this vision, the United States republic would be blessed with self-sufficient farmers who had no need for cities, maufacturing or armed forces.

Between the twenty years of Jefferson's ``we are all Republicans; we are all Federalists'' speech and Monroe's near unaminous victory, the Republicans had completely eliminated the political opposition. The Federalists Party, once blessed with such leaders as John Adams and Alexander Hamliton, received the kiss of death at the hand of poor leadership and Jefferson's political genius. The Republican Party of 1820 had taken pieces of the Federalist Party's platform, such as internal improvements, and made them their very own. In a sense, there was no opposition, since the Republicans had taken everything possible from the opposition. Everyone was a Federalist and a Republican.

This triumph of the Republican Party of 1821 is similiar to the political situation in 2001. The Republicans hold two of the three branches of government and seek to take the Democrats' best ideas and claim them as their own. Witness President Bush's desire to be called the ``education President'' and his promoting of a kinder and friendlier Republican Party.

This is a Republican Party that doesn't stone homosexuals anymore, claimed a cartoon this past summer, and indeed it appears that there is nothing but smiles on the faces of Tom DeLay and others. They feel they have won.

In a sense, they have. The political debate and discussions of 2001 are decidedly dominated by conservative thought. There is no debate on whether to cut taxes; rather, the argument is whether by $1.6 or $1.2 trillion. There is no questioning whether welfare reform works; everyone accepts that it does. Democrats refuse to embrace the term ``liberal''; ``progressive'' has a much nicer ring to it.

However, the Republicans of 2001 would do well to check what happened to the Republicans of 1821. The next election saw the party break apart and form into two separate groups, the Whigs and Jacksonian Democrats, that were to dominate the political scene until the Civil War thirty years later. The issues that rose after 1821 were not discussed in the days of the 1801 Republican revolution: slavery, funding of internal works, and the destruction of the United States Bank. Likewise, the issues being discussed for the next thirty years will probably bear little resemblance to the ones that brought the Republican Party to where it is in 2001. Issues such as health care, reforming the electoral system and rebuilding our national infrastructure will surely gain importance over the coming years, just as the issues in 1821 did.