Jeffersonian democracy

Cultural  

1. A movement for more democracy in American government in the first decade of the nineteenth century. The movement was led by President Thomas Jefferson. Jeffersonian democracy was less radical than the later Jacksonian democracy. For example, where Jacksonian democracy held that the common citizen was the best judge of measures, Jeffersonian democracy stressed the need for leadership by those of greatest ability, who would be chosen by the people.

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Jeffersonian democracy

“That is a very Jeffersonian democracy approach on siting and permitting,” said Silverman, a former top official at the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

From Seattle Times ● Oct. 31, 2023

It wasn’t a Jeffersonian democracy, but the system had legitimacy.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2018

Jackson’s predecessor, John Quincy Adams, knew well the strains rending Jeffersonian democracy.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 24, 2017

If you want to read an uplifting story about Jeffersonian democracy in action, this post isn’t for you.

From The New Yorker ● Feb. 18, 2015

It was but the deepening, the application to an enslaved race of laborers, of the work which Jeffersonian democracy had done, to remove the infinitely less grievous restraints upon the white laborer thirty year before.

From American Eloquence, Volume 2 Studies In American Political History (1896) by Johnston, Alexander