But since government is getting [sic] into the habit of peeping into private letters, and is manufacturing a law, which may even make it criminal to pray to God for better times, I shall be careful not to repeat so dangerous a liberty.—I hope it may not be criminal to add a supplication [sic] for an individual—not—for I will be cautious—as a republican, but as a man.
One of the most enduring myths of American history centers on the “compact theory” of the Constitution. According to the standard interpretation, Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Republicans invented the “theory” to challenge Federalist control of the general government in the 1790s.
This implies that Jefferson and the other Republicans acted in bad faith by playing fast and loose with the history of the Constitution in a partisan hatchet job design to gain power. Simply put, they lied.
History does not support this position.
Jefferson certainly enjoyed political roughhousing, and he could be petty, but he was always a committed federalist—not Federalist—who understood the original intent of the Constitution better than most.
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