It is none the less true that the pioneer Democracy soon came to differ
with Jefferson about some important questions of public policy. They
early showed, for instance, a lively disapproval of Jefferson's
management of the crisis in foreign affairs, which preceded the War of
1812. Jefferson's policy of commercial embargo seemed pusillanimous to
Jackson and the other Western Democrats. They did not believe in
peaceful warfare; and their different conception of the effective way of
fighting a foreign enemy was symptomatic of a profound difference of
opinion and temper. The Western Democracy did not share Jefferson's
amiable cosmopolitanism. It was, on the contrary, aggressively resolved
to assert the rights and the interests of the United States against any
suspicion of European aggrandizement. However much it preferred a
let-alone policy in respect to the domestic affairs, all its instincts
revolted against a weak foreign policy; and its instincts were outraged
by the administration's policy of peaceful warfare, which injured
ourselves so much more than it injured England, not only because the
pioneers were fighting men by conviction and habit, but because they
were much more genuinely national in their feelings than were Jefferson
and Madison.
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