believed in a strict interpretation of the Constitution, having a weaker national government that would be small in size, wanted low taxes, and opposed the national bank. They wanted to be friendly with France. James Madison was also closely tied to this party.

Because of these different viewpoints, and because these men were leaders of the people supporting these viewpoints, they are credited with starting our two-party political system.

We credit these two men with beginning the two-party system in the United States because the first two political factions (they weren't really parties as we know them today) formed around them, and their responses to the pressing issues of the early Republic. Jefferson was the Secretary of State under George Washington, and Hamilton the Secretary of the Treasury. Each man had a very different vision of what the United States would look like, and their differences came to the fore on a number of issues, including the assumption of state debts by the federal government, the imposition of an excise tax, and the chartering of a national bank. Jefferson, who favored a strict interpretation of the Constitution and a limited federal government, was suspicious of Hamilton's program for handling the nation's financial crisis. He thought that Hamilton's approach would give too much power to the federal government, and too much influence to bankers and "stock-jobbers," which Jefferson held in contempt. Supporters of these policies rallied around Hamilton, and opponents around Jefferson in the early 1790s. Jefferson was especially adept at using the media (newspapers) to excoriate Hamilton in the public mind, and Jefferson's hacks painted Hamilton as a dangerous Machiavellian bent on recreating the corruption of the British government in the United States. In the process, Jefferson's supporters came to refer to themselves as "Republicans," or "Democratic-Republicans," and Hamilton's preserved the moniker of "Federalists" from the days of the ratification debates. The single event that most shaped the development of the parties, however, was the outbreak of the French Revolution and the wars that followed. Republicans, especially urban workers, were enthusiastic supporters of the Revolution, but Hamilton and the Federalists were wary of its influence, especially when war broke out between the French and Great Britain. By the late 1790s, politics were being contested along explicitly partisan lines, and the divide reached a crisis point in the election of 1800. The parties, then, had their origins in the political positions, the philosophies, and the machinations of Jefferson and Hamilton.