The Americans were forced by public sentiment to take a stand for national citizenship. A broad patriotism was rallied which overcame all scruples about the differences between national and State citizenship. The matter manifestly belonged to the central rather than the individual governments. When threatened by foreign powers, Federal citizenship assumed a new value in the eyes of the Jeffersonians, much akin to that which it had long borne in the opinion of the Federalists. The party which ten years before was endeavouring to distinguish between State and national citizenship was now compelled to take action to protect sailors who were not residents of any State. Many of them had no homes. They could look to no protector except the Union, under whose flag they sailed.
It is questionable whether the Federalists, had they remained in power, could have avoided a war with Britain when once the people had become fully aroused by the continued attacks of Britain on American commerce and American citizenship. Long-suffering and patient toward British offence, that party had avoided war for at least ten years. Jefferson and Madison, more devoted to maintaining neutrality than restrained by love of Britain, postponed the inevitable war for twelve years more. But Madison's was a gradually waning power. The end of his first administration marks the termination of the one-man era. Hamilton and Jefferson by turn had dominated national affairs. Perhaps no man could have continued the monopoly. The day of many counsellors was at hand. Revolutionary statesmen and warriors alike were to be cast aside by a second generation, which knew not the horrors of war. The supremacy of the Atlantic coast in national affairs had begun to wane. Political power was moving westward with the people.
This war element, which practically took matters from Madison's hands, was composed of men who were to measure their careers by decades instead of years. Its constituents had been reared in the strenuous life of the frontier. Separated from Old World influence by the Allegheny barrier, they felt the first impulses of true Americanism. A continuation of dominant foreign influence under them was impossible. Instead of seceding to a foreign power, as their fathers had threatened, these trans-Allegheny frontiersmen had now been absorbed by the Union and were to secure their long-delayed rights by controlling their own government, which had once been disposed to neglect them. They were, for the most part, country-bred lawyers, belonging to the agricultural and borrowing class rather than the bank-founding, lending Federalists. In this respect, they would be in accord with Jefferson and Madison, but totally at variance with them in their inland attitude toward ocean commerce.