Down to the end of the eighteenth century, the people of New England possessed a greater degree of social solidarity than any other section of the Union. Descended from English stock, imbued with common religious and political traditions, and bound together by the ties of a common ecclesiastical polity, they cherished, as Jefferson expressed it, "a sort of family pride" which existed nowhere else between people of different States. In New England, there were elements of political and religious dissent, to be sure, but the domination of the Congregational clergy and the magistracy was hardly less complete in the year 1800 than fifty years earlier. New England was governed by "the wise, the good, and the rich." All the forces of education, property, religion, and respectability were united in the maintenance of the established order against the assaults of democracy. New England Federalism was not so much a body of political doctrines as a state of mind. Abhorrence of the forces liberated by the French Revolution was perhaps the dominating emotion. Democracy seemed an aberration of the human mind, which was bound everywhere to produce the same results in society. Jacobinism was the inevitable outcome. "The principles of democracy are everywhere what they have been in France," wrote Ames. "Democracy is a troubled spirit, fated never to rest, and whose dreams, if it sleeps, present only visions of hell." In 1801, New England was in bitter, irreconcilable opposition to the National Administration. The situation was fraught with grave possibilities. Jefferson himself looked forward to "an uneasy government," if the whole body of New England continued in opposition to Republican principles. Ordinary political opposition was to be expected, of course; but a sectional opposition, fortified by a social solidarity like that of New England, was a menace to the Union. From the moment when he took the oath of office, Jefferson directed his best energies to the Republican conquest of New England. It was a policy dictated not only by partisan considerations, but also by the highest instincts of statesmanship. The fair-minded historian is bound to record that the Jeffersonian party in this period of its history was, in spite of all its inconsistencies, a potent agency in the maintenance of the Union.