“Many years after his first election to the presidency, Thomas Jefferson commented that ‘the revolution of 1800’ was as ‘real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form.’…For him the election of 1800 was a turning point because it marked a turning back to the true republican spirit of 1776.…Within the Jeffersonian framework of assumptions and beliefs, three essential conditions were necessary to create and sustain such a republican political economy: a national government free from any taint of corruption, an unobstructed access to an ample supply of open land, and a relatively liberal international commercial order that would offer adequate foreign markets for America’s flourishing agricultural surplus.”
Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America, 1980