In mid-February 1801, after a contested election that took 36 ballots in the House of Representatives, Thomas Jefferson was elected president. He had promised to end the "reign of witches" of the Federalist Party in a visceral, nasty campaign in which he, in turn, was branded an atheist not to mention a threat to the republic. On March 4th, he took the oath to became the first president resulting from a change of political parties. His political rivals feared the worst. Many had been told to bury their bibles in their wells as he would soon confiscate them.
Jefferson was a proponent of limited national government. He felt that the Federalists, first under Washington (with the aid of Alexander Hamilton) and then under John Adams had "monarchical" tendencies, drawing power to the center at the expense of the states and the people. He believed that the common man - his ideal "yeoman farmer" - was being replaced by "stock jobbers" - financiers who represented the antithesis of the founding principles of 1776. Jefferson called his election the "revolution of 1800."
So in some ways, as Ecclesiastes put it, "there is nothing new under the sun." President-elect Trump and his supporters feel they have achieved a similar revolution, seemingly making him the first president of a new re-ordering of political parties. They too have endured a brutal campaign. They claim to have restored the primacy of the forgotten over the favored - and their opponents fear the worst.
A victorious Jefferson faced the task of how to govern a starkly divided nation. Trump faces a similar challenge. Jefferson's inaugural address, delivered barely three weeks after his election, was his first chance to preserve and strengthen the fragile republic, torn by the election, and then just a dozen years old.
Jefferson first reminded his country that they were a government of laws and not of men, borrowing directly from John Adams, the Federalist he had defeated. The choice of a new first magistrate, he said, imposed an obligation on the defeated. The choice of a president "now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good."
Yet Jefferson reminded the victors that they also had an obligation. While they may rule, they must "bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."
Jefferson also saw the compelling need for healing. "Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions."
Donald Trump, as Thomas Jefferson, won an election. Jefferson knew that his mandate was constrained by the fact that he was not yet a president for all of the people, though that was his solemn responsibility upon taking the oath. His is a good historical lesson in humility, empathy, and the meaning of republican government. Jefferson did not always remember it after March 4th. When he did not, as in his effort to purge the Federalist judiciary, the country - and his presidency - suffered. But when he did, as in doubling the size of the country with the Louisiana Purchase, the nation and his leadership soared. Donald Trump now faces the choice of how to launch his own presidency - and heal the nation. Let us hope he learns from the very first president to preside over an electoral revolution.