Presidency of Thomas Jefferson
| The Jefferson Cabinet | ||
|---|---|---|
| Office | Name | Term |
| President | Thomas Jefferson | 1801–1809 |
| Vice President | Aaron Burr | 1801–1805 |
| George Clinton | 1805–1809 | |
| Secretary of State | James Madison | 1801–1809 |
| Secretary of Treasury | Samuel Dexter | 1801 |
| Albert Gallatin | 1801–1809 | |
| Secretary of War | Henry Dearborn | 1801–1809 |
| Attorney General | Levi Lincoln Sr. | 1801–1804 |
| John Breckinridge | 1805–1806 | |
| Caesar A. Rodney | 1807–1809 | |
| Secretary of the Navy | Benjamin Stoddert | 1801 |
| Robert Smith | 1801–1809 | |
The presidency of Thomas Jefferson began on March 4, 1801, when he was inaugurated as the 3rd President of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1809. Jefferson assumed the office after defeating incumbent President John Adams in the 1800 presidential election. The election was a realigning election in which the Democratic-Republican Party swept the Federalist Party out of power, ushering in a generation of Democratic-Republican dominance in American politics. It also exposed a serious flaw in the original procedure established in the Constitution of the United States for electing the president and vice president. Under it, members of the Electoral College were authorized to vote for two names for president. The candidate with the most electoral votes would become president and the candidate with the second most would become vice president. In the 1800 election however, Jefferson and Aaron Burr received the same number of votes and tied for first. The election was then put into the hands of the outgoing House of Representatives, which, after 36 votes, elected Jefferson as president.
In domestic affairs Jefferson sought to put the principles of republicanism into action. He succeeded in limiting the size of government by reducing taxes and the national debt. He established a military academy, used the Navy to protect merchant ships from Barbary pirates in North Africa, and developed a plan to protect U.S. ports from foreign invasion by the use of small gunboats (a plan that proved useless when war came in 1812).
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