False federalists

False federalists

(Based on my letter dated December 15, 1810)

I have ever been opposed to the party so falsely called federalists. They have hijacked a noble name to mask their true design, which is to centralize all power in the national government and strip the sovereign states of their rightful authorities.

To understand my opposition, one must understand what a true federal system is. It is a system where power is carefully divided and shared. The federal government should manage our foreign affairs, our defense, and our commerce with other nations. But the individual states must retain full control over their own local laws, their domestic concerns, and the daily lives of their citizens. This balance is the only shield we have against tyranny. I have always viewed our Constitution as a strict compact. If it does not explicitly grant a power to the federal government, that power belongs entirely to the states or to the people.

The faction led by Alexander Hamilton does not seek this balance. They look across the Atlantic to the British system with admiration. They desire a massive national bank, a powerful executive who might rule as a monarch in all but name, and a government that grows larger and more intrusive every day. By calling themselves "federalists," they pretend to be the sole defenders of our Union. In truth, they are consolidationists. They wish to sink the states into one giant, overwhelming central government, an authority independent of the national will.

Therefore, it is my fellow republicans and I who are the true federalists. We are the ones fighting to preserve the constitutional boundaries and protect state sovereignty from federal overreach. When I took the oath of the presidency, I declared that "we are all republicans, we are all federalists." By that, I meant that the vast majority of our citizens believe in our shared republican principles and the federal structure of our Constitution. We must not let a single political party distort those sacred principles to serve their own monarchical ambitions. A true federalist does not wish to crush the states, but to keep the central government small, just, and bound by the chains of the Constitution.

Read more about the term federalism: https://www.thomasjefferson.com/jefferson-blog/clarification-of-the-term-federalism