In his inaugural address Jefferson aimed at reconciliation. It was time to banish intolerance and come together “with one heart and one mind.” America remained, he argued, “the world’s best hope.” Its government was the “only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern.” Differences of opinion should not be construed as differences of principle.
