In his inaugural address to Congress, at the very beginning of his administration, Jefferson announced principles totally and fundamentally opposed to the Kentucky resolutions. He pleaded for unity, and denied that every difference of opinion was a difference of principle. “We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists.”[81] He declared “the preservation of the general government, in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet-anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad.” He also said “absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics from which there is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.”[82] Can anything be more directly opposed to the Kentucky resolutions, that give to every State a veto of every United States law or act that it deems unconstitutional, than these declarations of the preservation of the government in all its constitutional vigor and of _absolute acquiescence in the will of the majority_? Have they not been, ever since that inauguration day, the cardinal principles of Jeffersonian democracy? Perhaps it is strange that Jefferson, coming from Virginia, did not make the exception of the resolutions of the Legislature of that State, that in case of plain palpable usurpation of powers the people of the States could interpose to redress the evil by constitutional methods. Absolute acquiescence in every decision of the majority abrogates even the right of rebellion against oppressive usurpations that Webster announced. It is but reasonable to suppose that Jefferson would have made this exception of Webster’s and the reasonable affirmations of the Virginia resolutions, if he had been obliged to notice them. No possible argument, however, can reconcile these inaugural principles with the Kentucky resolutions. Is it possible that the great leader of the Republican party could have announced such doctrines if the Republican party of Virginia, of which he was the chief, held precisely the contrary, as Mr. Adams informs us? [81] H. Adams, vol. i., p. 200. [82] H. Adams, vol. i., p. 203. Jefferson’s policy during the eight years of his administration was emphatically national, and not that of a favorer of State rights nor even of a strict construction of the powers delegated to the General Government. In March, 1806, he signed an act laying out and making a road from Cumberland, on the Potomac, in Maryland, to Ohio. Again he approved a bill for this purpose in 1810, though from his writings it is apparent he doubted their constitutionality. Madison, Monroe, and Jackson afterwards vetoed bills passed by Congresses of their political faith in favor of this or other roads, because, as they declared, they were beyond the powers granted by the Constitution.