The new President was to the manor born, but he held theories dangerously akin to those put forth by the foreign faction, against which the Alien and Sedition laws had been aimed. Speculative philosophy, however philanthropic in its intent, was heresy to the practical Federalists. Hamilton, in the midst of the uncertain election, was reported to have given in a toast his preference for "a dreamer rather than a Catiline," as between Jefferson and Burr. During the campaign, pamphlets appeared describing Jefferson as a wild philosopher, one who believed the savage more independent and happy than the civilised man; who preferred newspapers to government; who believed that a little rebellion now and then was a good thing; who esteemed property and obligations of so little value as to declare that the actions of one generation were not binding on the next; who justified the excesses of the French Revolution by saying that if only an Adam and an Eve were left in every country and left free, it would be better than it had been before. Memories of Tory confiscations and penalties were sufficiently fresh to give credence to a rumour that the President-elect contemplated such retributive measures toward his political opponents. Memories of the disunion sentiments contained in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions were still fresher, although Jefferson's close connection with the latter was not yet generally known. Thomas Jefferson was an exponent of the democracy of his day, and with him democracy came into the National Administration. The "well-born" were discomfited. Yet it was not the democracy of Andrew Jackson's time. It was a democracy reflected from Europe like everything else in America at the time. It was the democracy of Montesquieu and the encyclopædists. It was a democracy which could be led by a college graduate and lawyer, who was also a gentleman farmer and a large landholder, bound to his party by a country residence, by being a borrower, and by speculative theories. Only such aristocratic democracy was possible on the Atlantic coast-plain. Pure American democracy would be born only after advancing civilisation found a majority in the mid-valley of the continent, with the barrier of the Alleghenies at its back. It reached a crude form in Andrew Jackson, the Indian fighter, and a slightly higher type in Abraham Lincoln, the prairie lawyer.